The DDS are looking into improving the performance of its 3 classes of Heavy Combat Ships (which are given the ironic acronym of HCS in the DDS fleet list) - this means the Panther 35A, Indy 35B and Solaris 37C classes, the Remedian Perimpaz and legacy Velocities although officially HCS are considered "transitional types".
Dr Forbidden has announced a joint-programme between DDS Research and DDS Engineering to examine ways to improve agility, protection and tactical capabilities. It is thought the DDS will be looking to retrofit vectored thrust at some stage and one of the final Indies may trial a test version.
The 3 types will also be fitted with a next generation combat suite known as 6509-A to replace the 5036 derived systems used on these classes (and the Isometric and Rome fleets). Not much is known about the new suite at the moment but it is thought it will use massive parallelism and artificial intelligence in order to collate, filter and interpret vast amounts of instantaneous tactical data from the ships' own sensors and from other sources.
Dr Forbidden said that it might take some time to see the fruits of any changes, one possible date is by 2114 when the Panther fleet is scheduled to receive a major update to bridge the time until its ILU rebuild at the end of the decade.
