I would imagine that if a carrier lost its entire flight compliment (including the pilots), then Confed might deploy a Home Guard unit as a replacement. Of course, the chances of that happening without losing the carrier, as well, as pretty low, but it is possible. One example is if a carrier is forced to sacrifice its fighters to make it through a jump point while fleeing a vastly superior force. With that example, to avoid making the captain seem to callous (unless you want him to be callous, of course), I would suggest having the late wing commander ignore orders to return himself and his pilots to the carrier before making the jump (much like Blair has the option to do in WC3 - though for entirely different reasons...), as the wing commander figures buying the carrier some time is preferable to the entire unit going down together (incidentally, that's the prologue to the Mekton Zeta campaign that I'll probably never quite get off the ground). In that instance, instead of deploying a green group of recruits to the carrier, Confed might transfer a Home Guard unit from a quiet system to serve as the nucleus of the new squadrons.