A tier two or three military tech, Military Intelligence creates and stores a running document of the ship classes you have encountered.  It would be catagorized by faction, and visible as a sub menu in the ship design interface.  It would provide a more friendly and streamlined way to outfit your vessels to counter your enemies, but beware, because one can't know immediately about technological advances or loadout switch-ups.  This would be especially helpful to factions that rely on loadout countering, like the Horatio and the Riftborn