There have been two classes of destroyers to bear the Essex name, the first seeing service in the Hegemony Navy during the 25th and 26th centuries. It was designed for sentinel duty in the space around important worlds as a command ship for squadrons of corvettes. The class performed well until 2645, when the new Nagas began to replace the Essex destroyers.
         In 2707, the Star League Defense Forces called for a new destroyer to supplant the Naga. Disenchanted with the slow Baron and Carson destroyers, the Star League admirals wanted a quicker ship that could also make sustained voyages far from support.
         The SLS Essex slipped its moorings from the Mitchell Vehicles shipyards above Graham IV in late 2711. Because its designers had wished to emphasize the vessel's swiftness and reliability, they had given it three compact and dependable InterSystem Class VII engines, built by the Saro company of Keid, which produced great thrust.
         The computer system, a Diamond Green Combat Computer, was manufactured by the Nirasaki Computers Collective. Though not the most powerful or versatile computer available, it was simple and reliable, qualities that the Star League admirals prized. Some Essexs were retrofitted with the more powerful but harder to operate Diamond Plum system, but the Hammerstrike always seemed to miss its retrofit schedule due to emergencies, and that kept it operating with minimal refits in the ComStar navy to this day.
         The Essex's main weapons are its twelve autocannons, manufactured by Karon Naval Armaments of Terra and mounted in four turrets. The Whirlwind-20 Series are unmatched for reliability and continue to serve well even three centuries after the death of the Star League. Only periodic cleaning needs to be performed to keep them in top notch operation. Three missile tubes can fire Barracuda missiles, still the smallest and smartest naval missile available. Since the Jihad, ComStar has added some anti-fighter weapons as well, but these weapons are limited and swarms of fighters can still threaten it. The addition of a naval C3 system though allows the Hammerstrike to focus the full fire of a naval level II on any target, and so she is careful never to leave her escorts behind.
         One of the main drawbacks of the design is in its ammunition bays. They are far too lightly armored to protect the missiles and shells adequately, and two Essex destroyers died in the Periphery because of that. Mitchell Vehicles added armor to the ships still in service, but the extra plating does not attach to the main hull as well and many ships of the class died during the Amaris Civil War because of this flaw.
         The Hammerstrike was crippled by just such a blow and the Star League Defense Force decided it was incapable of leaving with the fleet, mothballing it in a solar orbit in the Terran system. Over the centuries, ComStar used their resources to bring the ship back online, and they finally deployed it after the ComGuards were revealed against the Clans. It has fought in numerous battles since then, but is most well known for fighting the Word of Blake in the Lyran Alliance(Commonwealth) during the Jihad. The Hammerstrike was the only ComStar WarShip to return from that long campaign, and was one of only three other ships to survive the intense campaign to retake Terra from the Word. She has rarely left the Terran system since, prowling its orbitals, watching for interlopers and smugglers.