Science fiction needs more escort and screening ships

Which underappreciated naval vessel type deserves more science-fiction attention?

Escorts and screening assets deserve the spotlight because they explain how fleets actually protect, scout for, and support their prominent heavy ships.

Escorts and screening assets are the preferred subjects for more science-fiction attention. Stories regularly concentrate on large ships while giving little explanation of what the smaller vessels around them do. Deep Space Nine's Defiant is remembered partly because it brought a smaller combatant into that foreground, although it was sometimes treated like an enlarged runabout. Glynn Stewart's destroyer books are praised for giving such vessels more attention.