Charon-class light frigate

The Charon-class light frigate is a type of escort ship in service with the UNSC Navy. Ships of this class are used primarily in fleet escort duties and planetary defense. The class is named after either Charon, a minor god who ferried the souls of the dead to the underworld in Greek mythology, or after a natural satellite of Pluto.

Hull and complement
At 490 meters in length, the Charon is a rather small vessel. Owing to its enlarged hangar bay, the Charon-class frigate is better suited to landing forces groundside than other frigate classes. The ship's sublight power plant is a Naoto Technologies: V4/L deuterium fusion reactor. Translight power is provided by a Series IV CODEN Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine. The Charon has a maximum crew and complement of 782. It can carry several D77 or D79-TC Pelican dropships as well as around two dozen ground and air vehicles.

Armament
The Charon-class frigate's primary armament is a Mark II, Light Coil – 83B6R3 Magnetic Accelerator Cannon. It also boasts fifty M58 Archer missile pods, each of which carries thirty missiles. Two M870 Rampart point defense turrets are mounted on either side of the hull, each of which has three 50mm guns. In addition to the Ramparts, each side of the ship boasts three quad-linked guns of a different type; given their downward-facing orientation, these appear to be designed for both point defense and bombardment akin to the M910 point defense network. A third type of point defense gun is mounted aft, both on the main hull and on the wings. Rather than the s carried by most UNSC warships, the Charon sports three M4093 Hyperion silos.

Ships of the line

 * FFG-127
 * (FFG-307)
 * CMA Arabia
 * (FFG-201)
 * Iliad (Captured and used by the Eridanus Secundus Insurrectionists)
 * CMA Vostok
 * Algolis-based frigate
 * Algolis-based frigate

Halo 4 redesign
Despite maintaining a similar profile, the Charon class, namely Forward Unto Dawn, was redesigned in Halo 4. The Dawn appears much larger, though it is canonically still 490 meters long. This increase in scale was intended to create a more interesting playspace, much like the dramatic upscaling of the in The Maw; otherwise, the first level would be cramped and would require a great deal of backtracking. Other UNSC frigates seen in the game, most notably in Spartan Ops, follow a general design aesthetic similar to the redesigned Dawn, although they have a number of differences in details.

The enlarged cargo bay, a defining feature of the Charon class, is greatly reduced in size and is moved farther forward; presumably, most of the bay now exists within the main hull. Rather than having two primary engines on the main hull and two secondaries on the "wings", there are only two primary engines with one secondary nestled between them. The port and starboard hangar bays have been reduced from five small bays on either side to one or two much larger bays on either side; they are moved much farther back, remaining with the aft section. The point defense guns have been retconned into three separate models, increased in number, and moved to different areas on the hull.

The redesigned Forward Unto Dawn would serve as the basis for the more modern Strident-class heavy frigates, to which it closely resembles.

Trivia
The Charon class' distinctive, oversized cargo bay resembles that of the eponymous Firefly class from the television series Firefly. The resemblance is rendered moot in Halo 4, as the cargo bay is no longer externally visible.

List of appearances

 * Halo 3
 * Halo Wars: Genesis
 * Halo: Helljumper
 * Halo 3: ODST
 * Halo Legends
 * Origins
 * Prototype
 * Halo: First Strike (2010)
 * Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn
 * Halo 4