OBT Forum

The same way they don't officially have the TCS Vandenberg floating around in space in the 3050s & 3060s. 

Falsify production & loss records, and it'd be pretty easy to fool the Star League into thinking all the ships were destroyed, leaving the ~9 or so that the Concordat was listed as having at the end of the RW.  The information presented in H:RW wasn't necessarily known to the Star League at the time. 

As for the loss of the WarShips, it could have been maintenance rather than combat which did in the majority of the remaning Taurian ships, leaving only the essentially-useless Vandenberg worth calling a "ship".  Plus, if they had to keep their warships secret, opportunities for training the crew properly would be very limited, making what few training operations they did perform that much more dangerous, and thus more likely to result in the accidental loss of the ship.

Or we could just point to this as one more inconsistency in H:RW.  YMMV.

That's certainly an argument, yes.  But perhaps the Taurians wanted to keep them hidden for either countering what they always believe is the inevitable Davion invasion, or to spearhead their eventually triumphal reconquest of the territory they lost in the RW.  The sudden appearance of unknown Taurian warships would be a benefit to either of those circumstances.

And while "the last few survived until the First Succession War" still doesn't mean that all 9 ships survived until then.  Consider, the Periphery states were used more for their raw materials than their industry, so it's possible the Taruians actually had to import the parts and equipment from the Inner Sphere to keep their ships operational (even if on the black market to avoid going public with their fleet), then the First Succession War would have destroyed the factories which made those parts, causing the rapid downward-spiral of the Taurian Fleet even without combat losses.

Or the Taurians did go public with their tiny fleet, but no one else cared and we're changing a little history. 

For the Uprisings, I always took the position that if the Amaris family could provide 40 Divisions worth of BattleMechs (between 120 and 240 BattleMech regiments), then the Rim Worlds could probably be relied upon to provide a number of WarShips, as well.  Whether these were merely lots of Pintos or more advanced designs is another story, but if the Rim Worlds had an unexpected Dart-class cruiser 50 years after the last one was thought destroyed and the Taurians had Lola IIs, there is clearly room for a lot of warships to appear.

Of the 9 surviving Taurian warships, the Vandenberg seems one, and the Dart-class was thought extinct after SLS Gettysburg destroyed the last in the Vandenberg revolt of 2722, so another of the 9 survivors was likely a Dart, which clearly did not live to see the First Succession War.

Yeah I guess it is like the Iranian Air Force after the fall of the Shah. The US stopped supplying parts and without proper maintenance their high tech fighter jets quickly became inoperable.

The Reunification War gutted Taurian industry and the Star League was very careful on what they rebuilt. We know this from canon texts. Thus maintaining any fleet would be extremely difficult for the Concordat.

The Periphery as envisioned by Irose for BTSD already had a small hidden fleet of warships. The Taurians in particular had some.

As to what happened to any surviving ships in canon there is three possibilities.
1. They were mothballed somewhere and are still there.
2. Were gradually scrapped for parts during the Succession Wars,
3. Destroyed in war.

The Concordat fought two significant conflicts about the time of the 1st Succession War. One was the Periphery Uprising were "rebels" could have seized some of these vessels for use against the SLDF. Two was the brief border war that erupted between the Magistracy and Concordat in 2812. Fought over worlds like Detroit it wasn't a glorious conflict but it could have claimed the last of these relics.

Last but not least ComStar is watching during the Succession Wars for lostech like warship. See the Tirpitz Incident. If they found out I'm sure they screwed with any remaining warships.