DDS in the 2110s

Admiral Sea Urchin has completed a thorough review of the DDS and presented a report on how the DDS needs to change and evolve to best meet the challenges of the next decade. At a media briefing to present his report Sea Urchin said the DDS would face a number of potential threats over the next few years from a number of different potential foes.

"I will not name names but you all know who our potential future enemies could be. What is startling about them is the variety of threats they present to us. The DDS of the future therefore needs to be flexible to meet these threats." he said. Sea Urchin also mentioned the expansion of the DDS into DDS West and the challenges this would present as DDS territory reached further and further away from it's traditional centre of power at Proxima-Solaris.

In summary the report says :

• The DDS need to decentralise from their existing centre at Proxima-Solaris to 3 centres. One centre at Proxima-Solaris, one based at Rathun's World-Starbot and another in DDS West, perhaps Arit-Sirikwan. Each of these centres will have major maintenance and construction facilities.
• The DDS need to find a bigger role for their allies in operations. Allies like the Aritans and Raegris will be need to take their share of patrol and operation duties. DDS fleets will need to routinely include ships from their allies.
• The DDS Army needs to be greatly increased and organised as a priority, plans are already in place for this.
• Communications need to be upgraded with DDS West bought into the main DDS network as soon as possible. A fleet of high-speed transports (800-900c) should be explored for operation along core routes.
• Intelligence gathering and analysis needs to be improved, again using DDS allies knowledge and resources to the full. All DDS ships should include intelligence gathering systems (even if just a passive sigint module) which seamlessly feeds into centralised analysis centres. Dedicated strategic intelligence gathering assets should be considered, perhaps unmanned.
• Special forces needs to be further improved, with the Prowler units bought up to full operational status ASAP. More Marconis and Fulcrums should be considered. The DDS need to move to a more pro-active policy and put out fires before they become infernos as is DDS policy now.
• Modest increases in the fleet are needed with extra Panthers and Solaris IIIs and also the forthcoming Berlin class corvette.

Sea Urchin will present the report to the DDS Central Committee next week though Windscorpion, currently away, will have the final say.