Strident-class heavy frigate

"We can handle those cruisers, we'll kick 'em to the curb harder than a nail into wood. But if those frigates close up, they'll just burn holes through our thin armour - let's hope the shields are as good as they say."

- Shannon Hambleton

The Strident-class light destroyer (: DDL), sometimes misidentified as the Strident-class heavy frigate due to it's superstructure, is a class of heavily-armed, short-ranged warships built for the. Entering service in to rapidly relieve the depleted UNSC fleet, the Strident represents the culmination of everything learned from captured  technology. Sporting the strongest ever fitted onto a ship of it's size, the Strident is designed to be easy to build as a rapid-response vessel, bringing it's heavy firepower to any battlefield that requires it.

The Strident was first deployed during the Siege of Sol, when not even a month after christening the prototypes were pressed into combat above and. Proving that humanity had finally created a line warship capable of matching the capabilities of their equivalents, the Strident would quickly enter mass-production once the war was over. It's raw power for it's size overshadowed it's design issues, and within a few years would become one of the most common ships in the revitalised UNSC fleet.

Role
The Strident-class destroyer is designed to augment UNSC fleets and defensive clusters with heavy MAC fire support, which is assisted by it's modular superstructure and thinner armour then most UNSC destroyers. Although armed with missiles and point-defence guns, the Strident is best-used to fire from behind lines of larger, more durable UNSC vessels. This is because that despite featuring, these destroyers are actually inferior in direct combat, lacking the raw numbers of missiles it can launch at once, the armour and has a weapons blind-spot on it's belly and to a lesser extent it's aft. This is supported by it's incredible manoeuvrability which ensures it can hit small threats even at range.

The Strident can also be deployed as a short-range defence ship, not unlike a heavy corvette. The Strident can only have an operational range of one months travel, as it only has enough fuel for a maximum of three months of patrol. It can use it's sophisticated sensor array to detect stealth vessels, however due to resource limitations it cannot do any other role besides patrol, ship-to-ship combat and cargo-checking, unlike corvettes a third of it's size.