In fact, I'd suggest that this is also true in Star Trek for the most part, and they are typically employed for planetary defense, anti-piracy and the like (which is why the Maquis had access to them) but are rarely used in fleet actions as even if a smaller "target" is required, a runabout can do anything they can do and more while being more inline with Starfleet "military last or never" (depending on who you ask) doctrine.
Why Didn't Starfleet Command Use Starfighters? | The Templin Institute
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In fact, I'd suggest that this is also true in Star Trek for the most part, and they are typically employed for planetary defense, anti-piracy and the like (which is why the Maquis had access to them) but are rarely used in fleet actions as even if a smaller "target" is required, a runabout can do anything they can do and more while being more inline with Starfleet "military last or never" (depending on who you ask) doctrine.
You're assuming that if you made a practical Space Fighter with current era tech, that they would be "Paper Mache" level of defense and get one-shot-ed.
If you're going to make a StarFighter, it needs to be able to take quite a few hits, deliver damage back at range, and harass the target.
It's supposed to use a doctrine similar in concept of a bunch of smaller weaker vessels harassing a larger vessel and whittle them down.
Here's a example from Crest of the Stars Anime.
Where the Gothlauth lost against fighting multiple smaller vessels.
It was a 1 vs X situation and the Gothlauth lost, which was the starting incident between a war between the HumanKind Empire of Abh against the Four Nations Alliance composed of the 4 Nations of Humanity.
If you're going to make a StarFighter, it needs to be able to take quite a few hits, deliver damage back at range, and harass the target.
It's supposed to use a doctrine similar in concept of a bunch of smaller weaker vessels harassing a larger vessel and whittle them down.
Here's a example from Crest of the Stars Anime.
Where the Gothlauth lost against fighting multiple smaller vessels.
It was a 1 vs X situation and the Gothlauth lost, which was the starting incident between a war between the HumanKind Empire of Abh against the Four Nations Alliance composed of the 4 Nations of Humanity.
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There could be significant advantages to having a carrier type capital ship acting as a mobile starbase to smaller but still capable starships - say two or three Defiant class ships docked between the nacelles, a couple of Steamrunners or Norway's on top of / slung under the primary hull, and several conventional hangars with a small fleet of other ships, scouts, runabouts, shuttles and fighters.
Useful for long / distant deployments and to facilitate flexible crewing of the ships and avoiding cramped conditions and limited facilities for the crews of smaller craft.
Neutronium Hulls should be relatively rare given the difficulty in manufacturing it and how durable the material is.
It also makes the story boring if everything had a hull that was indestructable.
While I'm not entirely convinced by some of the rest of this, the above I agree with.
My main objection to "cockpit only" fighters being a normal part of the Starfleet inventory for "deep space work"* particularly from the 2360s onwards is that I can't see anything they can do, that versitile multi-role auxiliary vessels like the Argo, the Delta Flyer and runabouts can't do at least as well, while being able to do many things that such a limited platform can't.
* As noted, use of surface/orbital fighters in "colonial guard" in-system roles alongside the NX shuttle pod and other sublight-only early utility designs is much more plausible (though effectiveness is still debatable), and the Bajoran Militia's designs suggest that this has a limited, in extremis currency through the mid-24th.
What the Bajorans have is interesting in itself. The gracefully winged craft that hunt Kira and Dax in "The Siege" are of considerable size and, while equipped with impulse engines (unlike the mount of said heroes), also apparently quite capable of warp (as seen in their TNG appearance and in the Mirror Universe). Basically, the Bajoran BoP, even if Bajorans in most timelines have no exstrasolar ambitions.
Is the small sub-impulse raider a Bajoran thing? Or something the freedom fighters purchased along with those Klingon rifles and whatnot when having to engage in this atypical guerilla war for perhaps the first time in Bajoran history? The resistance hid those craft "ten years" before the adventure, thus in retrospect supposedly long after the occupation and the fight against it began. None appear in post-occupation militia or military hands, and we can argue whether this is because they are worthless or because they were all expended in the fighting against the occupying forces already.
Timo Saloniemi
Is the small sub-impulse raider a Bajoran thing? Or something the freedom fighters purchased along with those Klingon rifles and whatnot when having to engage in this atypical guerilla war for perhaps the first time in Bajoran history? The resistance hid those craft "ten years" before the adventure, thus in retrospect supposedly long after the occupation and the fight against it began. None appear in post-occupation militia or military hands, and we can argue whether this is because they are worthless or because they were all expended in the fighting against the occupying forces already.
Timo Saloniemi
You only have to look at the Mars Defense Forces.
The Synth Ship that was used to defend the Utopia Planetia is an example of a fighter.
High amounts of Offense with adequate enough defense and mobility.
The failure with the Attack on Mars was the infiltration of the Tal Shiar Operative that became Commander Oh and head of StarFleet Security where she pulled a inside job to attack Utopia Planetia to by hi-jacking the Synths and forcing them to rebel / destroy Utopia Planetia.
The issue here is one of
1) Cyber Security
2) Personnel Background Security Check failures..
How did StarFleet let a Tal Shiar operative rise to the ranks of the "Head of StarFleet Security"?
Yes, Commodore Oh was ½ Vulcan & ½ Romulan, but StarFleet didn't do enough background investigation to figure out that she was a double agent working for the Tal Shiar.
That's a HUGE Red Flag.
Then of course, because Commodore Oh got accepted into StarFleet, more Romulan Tal Shiar operatives got accepted into StarFleet like Lt. Rizzo.
For all we know, half of Vulcan is sympathetic to the Romulan cause, and only to be trusted because this has not resulted in the destruction of the UFP so far and thus probably never will. Having the Tal Shiar piu vicino might be how SF Intel prefers it - and here it just so happened that the Romulan in their midst was also atypically a religious fanatic.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
The recent Designing Starships: DS9 book I acquired suggests the Bajoran fighters were largely cobbled together by the resistance movement, and were fairly ramshackle on a good day. They got the job done at times but they weren't as well built as an imported fighter would be. Not quite the same as say Maquis using the Federation fighters, for example.
While it's actually one of the few examples of a "fighter" being used in a credible manner, I'm not entirely convinced that this is as small as say Hudson's fighters or the "sub-impulse raiders" -- although the roomier ones used by Macias' faction (latter lead by one or more of Ro, Kalita and Tom Riker) are perhaps a little more likely -- as there isn't much to scale it against, and AFAIK no size figures have ever been given.
This is complicated by a similar model to the latter being used as Chakotay's raider despite being around four times the length and probably at least dozens of times the tonnage (the KBoP still takes the prize on this one though).
Now that’s what I thought the big Romulan Warbirds did…carry two BoP type ships (the ones from Enterprise looked post TMP).
In fact…I think Space Station V (from 2001) had a small docking port on the side so a craft could slide between upper and lower rings.
In the TNG episode "Conundrum" we see USS enterprise vaporise a mere couple fighter sized starships in mere seconds. Starfighters we see in trek are average 25-40 meters long. Almost a small starship, unlike the Star wars universe where they're less than 20. In battles like Operation: Return, fighters took tremendous losses. By the time Modern phasers achieve pinpoint accuracy firing; fighters with weak shields became useless. "Starfighters" became Larger attack vessels,
The Defiant or jem'hadar attack ship is a fighter. We're already seeing the rise of drones in real life. In a space future they'd likely rely more on such drones than manned fighters.
All in all a fighter would have to be One big shield generator with a torpedo launcher, in essence a dive bomber
The Defiant or jem'hadar attack ship is a fighter. We're already seeing the rise of drones in real life. In a space future they'd likely rely more on such drones than manned fighters.
All in all a fighter would have to be One big shield generator with a torpedo launcher, in essence a dive bomber
More like a large gunship (AC-130 or similar) but with ant-air/anti-ship missiles rather than air-to-ground, combined with a modernised monitor or the prototype https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_M-class_submarine on the naval side of things.
Agreed.
Frankly the only justification for something resembling "cockpit" in fleet use as that they are drones first and have cockpits mostly for diagnostic and testing purposes.
I don't see the complete eradication of Manned Fighters in the future.
It's not Man OR Machine.
The best results will be Man AND Machine.
That means combining the two and get the best possible results.
Yes, There will be a place for Manned Fighters, but for every 1 Manned Fighter, the rear operator might manage a entire Squadron of Drones with him.
Kind of like 1x Hunter with a Dozen Drone attack dogs.
That Force Multiplier attached to every Manned Fighter can dramatically increase the Air Fleet's #'s.
Imagine for every pilot & one rear systems operator, they can have 12x more drones of similar quality and range.
Your Air Force #'s got multiplied by 12x.
It's not Man OR Machine.
The best results will be Man AND Machine.
That means combining the two and get the best possible results.
Yes, There will be a place for Manned Fighters, but for every 1 Manned Fighter, the rear operator might manage a entire Squadron of Drones with him.
Kind of like 1x Hunter with a Dozen Drone attack dogs.
That Force Multiplier attached to every Manned Fighter can dramatically increase the Air Fleet's #'s.
Imagine for every pilot & one rear systems operator, they can have 12x more drones of similar quality and range.
Your Air Force #'s got multiplied by 12x.
I don't know about that - no pilot, no problems with high g-forces, no need for inertial dampers sucking power from weapons, shields and propulsion...
But following that logic, wouldn't a more survivable, medium endurance platform that can carry the same armaments or better like the runabout be the superior option to a smaller "front and back" or "side by side" cockpit fighter? As it can be used for at least days on end (vs hours for a fighter) and by re-tasked to other jobs during the majority of the time that it's not needed in the "Drone Commander" role?
...Also, why put the rear operator in the fighter in the first place? He needs to be in communication with the drones in any case. If said comms can't be jammed, then the operator really ought to get the hell out of Dodge and only ever have the drones involved in the fighting.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Battletech experimented with this in the Space Defense System, where the Star League had developed an advanced system of automated drone stations, warships, and small craft intended to protect the Terran Hegemony. The system was never intended to be fully independent, but to allow a handful of human controllers to protect an entire star system. The Caspar warship drones were especially nasty, as they combined the speed and mobility of a destroyer with the armament of a battleship, controlled by a highly sophisticated AI that could perform maneuvers a human crew couldn't have endured.
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