Makes sense. I'll have to look at my copy in and see if it mentions anything about mines and such. Thanks.
Just to intercept this point because I know it's coming: The SotSF books work on the assumption that photon torpedoes are essentially caseless energy-bolt weapons that otherwise lack a physical projectile. They cannot actually be used to deploy mines that way. The Akulas were capable of deploying sensor drones through specialized hatches, though.
In looking through my copy again, I think the parts JES is referring to are probably photon exhaust ports/vanes. That's how they're labeled for the Akyazi and Akula, even though the exact configuration varies on each design.
That isn't quite accurate. We worked from the description in TMoST and examples we took to be torpedo warheads from Arena and Obsession. Particularly that antimatter bomb from Obsession. The idea was a rapid fire, "point and shoot" torpedo was caseless but its momentum vector couldn't be altered once fired. Case it in the spherical housings seen in the two episodes mentioned and you lose firing speed but gain control over the torpedo after firing. So those are your mines. But you have specialized mine launchers because you don't necessarily want to occupy your torpedo launchers with mines if possible. We debated the TWoK torpedoes. I don't think we ever considered talking about them in the books because we hated the TWoK torpedo room (we much preferred the layout David Kimble showed in his cutaway poster). I remember only that I thought that if you were to take the TWoK/Klingon bridge layout seriously, it must represent a refit for training torpedo ops the long, slow manual way for those desperate times when all power is down. The chiclet/coffin torpedo casing was a warp-capable housing developed post-TOS that necessitated the new torpedo launchers installed on the refit. So, at the core of the spherical torpedo housing is the caseless energy bolt, and inside the chiclet is the energy bolt inside the spherical housing. Matryoshka dolls.
HAH! I thought it was just me! I actually thought that the "chiclet" is more of a "case" that is used to generate the initial photon bolt from an internal fuel source. Like a shotgun shell, carrying both the fuel and the projectile, except in this case the casing has the capacity to fire multiple times before it's expended. This new method probably allows for external guidance of the torpedo bolt in ways that weren't possible before, something like quantum entangelment between the bolt and the casing that generated it (and you can only tangle a bolt with a single casing). I always kind of thought that mines should be way more sophisticated than just patient torpedoes. I always figure that in order to be really effective they would have to have the capacity to do damage over a massive area, maybe half a million kilometers across, and thus have the capacity to detonate at a distance far enough that the starship that hits them doesn't know they're there. Gravitic mines would probably have this feature.
It would have made tons more sense if the "photon torpedo room" was actually a science probe launcher.
You know what also would have made sense? A cloaking device. The PAs have them. And this makes sense to me.
It never, ever made sense that the Federation would sign away the ability to see their adversary. I understand the dramatic necessity, but a simple explanation that the cloak was made obsolete by some new gravitic sensor would have sufficed to get them out of the way until the Romulans reappeared with some new type of cloak.
I figured that Starfleet hadn't figured out how to make cloaking devices even with the few they managed to capture. By the time they figure one out, it is obsolete. If we consider the treaty with the Romulans having been the treaty just before the Romulans abandon's contact with the Federation around 2311, I would image that Starfleet finally did prefect a cloaking device. It was used and something happened that caused the Tomed Incident. After which, the Romulans I guess had a negotiation advantage and somehow got the Federation to sign away the right to make cloaking devices. This I suppose satisfied the Romulans into thinking the Federation neutral zone was secure and could deal with other problems away from Federation space for over 50 years. It is interesting that the Pegasus Phase Cloak project was being secretive, but it was still a few years before the Romulans returned to the neutral zone and open contact with the Federation. How did they manage to have basically no contact with Romulas for 50 years when they Romulans are still engaging the Klingons during the 2340s. The USS Enterprise-C had some pretty direct contact, though I guess that doesn't count as the ship was lost and little of the incident got out aside from Klingon sources.
As I understand it, it is. Science probes replace the warhead on a photorp with the sensors and comm gear. A dedicated probe launcher is a photorp launcher with modified fire control and no warheads in the magazine.
Interestingly, all the science probes we ever see tend to be somewhat larger spacecraft than the TWoK style torpedoes, often explicated to have their own warp propulsion after a sedate swim-out launch. A ship dedicated to scientific probing might do well to have a launcher that is completely different from the military photon torpedo launchers, actually... "Multimissioning" just hobbles everybody with compromises, even in the Trek universe - at least until the introduction of replicators which might make the very concept of "hardware" redundant eventually. Until that happens, carrying one sort of gear still makes it less possible to carry another sort. So for serious science or serious fighting, Starfleet would build serious ships; it's only for half-baked frontier stuff that a compromise design such as a heavy cruiser is of practical use. Timo Saloniemi
Though this is around five to eight years late, it is always a good thing to look back and get comments from people who weren't around when this first post came out. I'm a brand new member, and I had this idea for a PA group, and after reading the majority of the post here, I would like to add my two cents here. Wll the big thing that most people don't undrstand about the PA group is that we've grown so accustomed in having th Exploration and Scientific division of ST being shown, we therefore refuse to believe that SF could have ships that go out and do what else; kill things. We've grown up with the idea of Spock and the gang, plus the folks at STTNG, VOY, DS9, and so forth. To bring a war, we've seen DS9 bring us the Dominnion War, plus things like the Borg, Jem'Hadar, Hirrogen's, Changelings, and others just to give the stories a bit of a punch. So as in everything else in this world.... "How do we know what is in th minds of Starfleet, when we don't even know how much of what we've seen on the television and movies work, except that the set designer, special effects, and prop folks have designed a super duper cool looking bridge, and have it filled with everything that is in Science Fiction. So as to my original train of though. In my opinion the reason why PA's exist in the first place is "defense, and offense" of the Federations 300 or more sectors. to do that it would have cost trillions of Fedration Credits to build enough Starships, Starbses, land bases, refueling dumps, and also Ship yards, to keep those ships going. The idea behind the PA's is like what was done in WWII, a hunter-killer pack that goes out and looks for trouble, in this case enemy vessels such as the Klingons, Romulans, Gorns, Tholians, Kznti's and others. With so much territory to cover, the smaller ships have done away with the nicieites, such as lounges, diplomats, Marines, families, and are in essence the 23-24th century version of a US SSBN submarine, that prowls the seas. So for the Federation to actually protect its real estate they have created not one but two fleets; the Scientific and Exploration Fleet of Jim Kirk and Company, a Tactical Fleet of PA's, and a Border Patrol Fleet (which we've never seen just yet). With so much territory to cover, the ships go out for either a 12 to 24 month long patrol then back to port where another ship goes out to patrol its sector. While in port (see th movie PT109) there is enough action from repairing the ship, rebuilding and retraining the crews while they go and retrain in their fields, go home to their home planet for military leave, and return back for another round of retraining, going out on tactical training exercises, and of course the usual bar fights and brawls between crews, then once the other ship in thir group come homes, they go back out for another round of patrol. Its not every time that you can have them fighting, maybe during that long 12-36 months on patrol they just get bored with life, and now you have to figure out what to do with a crew of 75-80 crew members. But there is that one time that their blood boils and it is when they actually find an enemy to fight. A movie produced in the 1980-90's was just that ("Das Boot"), if you want to see boredome, and sheer panic then go see this movie, this is what life aboard a hunter-kiiller starship like a PA is like, days and months of boredom, then sheer panic as the sky falls down on them. Whether or not they sink or destroy a merchantman or a man of war, its still the sam. Another collorary is the adventures of the American PT Boats in the Pacific during WWII, these small agile PT Boats armed with nothing but torpedoes went out and sank as much japanese shipping, but also suffered heavy losses. The movie "PT109" the life history of deceased President; John F. Kennedy on the PT109, also showed the dangers of being out on a PT Boat. I would class the German Underseas boats, and the American PT boats as an example for the PA class ships. So a squadron of PA's going out and trying to sink or destroy a wayward Klingon, Romulan, Gorn, Tholian, Kznti, or what have you that is in Federation Space is probably the best idea for the PA squadrons.
The subject certainly is interesting enough, especially for fans of the original fan concept. Then again, the US submarines that "went looking for trouble" were specifically built to be more luxurious than most things afloat, luxury being the weapon by which they defeated the vast distances of the oceans. Without air conditioning, extra berthing space and the like, the subs would have had little use for propulsive endurance or other range- or loitering-enhancing measures. Even with the economy-sized German subs, the effectiveness of covering the hunting grounds depended mostly on the hunter chancing upon its prey and then being big enough to bring down said prey. Shortage of space for torpedoes and fuel was a major limiting factor; bigger boats would have been better, had Germany been able to afford those. The German wolfpacks were a decent means of compensating for primitive sensors. PA ship packs might similarly share targeting data. But they would probably need extra good sensors to being with, to spot and then corner their elusive, possibly cloaked prey across great ranges. A PA ship might end up being a hyperexpensive supersensor platform, while a general purpose ship only tasked with defending herself or meekly tagging along in a combat formation could be built more economically, with funds to spare for science gear or whatnot. Or then Starfleet has centralized sensors that can relay the targeting data. The Dominion certainly had those - but they seemed to be a form of asymmetric warfare, a cool special target for our heroes who in turn didn't have to worry about the enemy hitting back at similar UFP facilities. If the distances involved were very long, it might even pay off to leave the ships out there on the far frontier. Instead of the PA ships wearing down their engines in transit to station and back to port, they would be replenished and repaired on the spot by dedicated tender vessels with less high-strung, endurance-optimized propulsion. Well, what we're talking here seems to be interception. And for that, response time is paramount - perhaps the best border defense might consist of extremely fast long range vessels, instead of stealthy pack stalkers like those subs of old, or short-ranged PT boats. The deciding factors would no doubt again chiefly be economical. Is it cheaper to build a big fleet of stalkers loitering in wait of the enemy, or a few silver bullet superships that can deploy from a central base and outrun the enemy once he is spotted? Timo Saloniemi
In the movie " Search For Spock", the Photon torpedoes were all hard oblong cylindrical caskets, that housed the the guidance and control, small warp drive engine, and of course the items needed to cause a photon torpedoe to go "boom" So the idea of a caseless ball of photons, needs work.
Similar to the F22 Raptor perhaps. Designed and intended to be a air superiority fighter, it's much more commonly used today (Syria, elsewhere) as a reconnaissance platform and to guide ground attack planes to their targets. For the "caseless" torpedo, I imagine it does have a physical core for propulsion, guidance and a force field generator. Around this would be generated a force field with separate areas (pockets) for antimatter, matter and charged plasma to power the warp drive and sensors.
The nature of torpedoes in TOS is never really discussed, nor shown. But all things thus otherwise being equal, the actual usage is telling. "The Changeling" is especially informative there, with Kirk at first generally ordering the preparing of torps, and then carefully specifying the launching of torpedo #2. Would caseless discharges of energy have identity? The PA ships might have U-boat style trouble on long patrols if they had to stockpile physical torpedo projectiles aboard. Then again, the U-boats did exactly that, even though they could have carried just compact shells for their deck gun (as they fought on the surface anyway, even with torps). Torps just might be the only things enabling a small ship to kill big ones, just as in WWII where a small ships could only carry small guns. The Trek version might have small ships be limited to weak powerplants the output of which would determine the punching power of death rays, but not the punching power of pre-loaded (even if only a few minutes prior to use) projectiles. Timo,Saloniemi
I started this project because I liked the idea I had of the PAG as paramilitary, policing. Seems to me that the PAG would be a lone wolf group and act in similar fasion to cops in any large city. They can't be everywhere on the drop of a hat and distances between calls would be a factor of consideration so PAG groups would not be economical as none of them would really see each other for months or years at a time. Groups might work at the general level of command but below that no real command need would exist. Because of the distances and solidarity of the missions a lose moral structure would also be prominapr. Honor would be covered but rules would be flexible. These groups would not mix well with science and exploritory crews since PAGs would be always in combat calls and as such, consider the S&E crews as wimps. Politics would be for others to deal with and there would be no grey areas that they would have to consider, only black and white. Is it considered right or wrong. PAGs would be cop, judge, jury and exicutioner. The ships would be dirty, banged up and worn on the outside but clean as a whistle inside and while military discipline would be lax, pride and honor in command and duty would be high. Repairs to external damage would be infrequent and mostly only as really needed. Victories would be celebrated but only amount others of the PAG clan. There would also be the less honorable crews on the line as well.