At the Q&A session held by Dr Forbidden, the head of DDS Research, last thursday a new frigate class was announced. The new class, to be built as well as the current Terran Sea and future Isometric 3 programmes is to be a long-range patrol ship to replace the Solaris II in that role. Dr Forbidden called the programme the LRF programme or Long Range Frigate and said the design would be based on the Isometric platform but would be enlarged for longer range missions. Dr Forbidden said the LRF would reach operational status in Q2 2107 with the design being unveiled hopefully by Q1 2106.
The current Solaris II fleet would be relegated to secondary patrol tasks including space mapping which is going to become a growth area of revenue over the next few years. Recently the DDS won a contract from the UNP to map the space in the former Rim Worlds worth 3.7 billion zarks.
