Starfleet Carrier Ship

[neozeks]

In Trek, we're not talking mass, but we ARE talking about energy. The amount of energy required to generate a certain degree of deflector/shield protection for a small craft is much, much less than that required to generate the same level of protection (in "inches of armor equivalence" I suppose?) for a larger vessel.

That's an assumption. We don't know how well the energy requirement for a certain "shield strength" scales with ship size. Maybe an energy source that you can fit into a fighter simply isn't strong enough to give you the same strength of shields as a full-blown ship has. The scaling issue could explain why personal phaser-resisting shields don't seem to exist.

The same thing with phasers. Maybe it's simply impossible to mount a phaser of the same power level and endurance on a fighter, whatever the reasons. Just like you can't mount a huge-ass gun that a battleship is able to carry on a small torpedo boat. Like has already been said, Trek fighters are much more PT boats than naval fighters. Except torpedo boats at least have torpedoes (and missiles, I guess, in more modern times). Trek fighters have no equivalent instant kill/small size weapons, respective to the other sides defences. Photon torpedos, despite the name, are something much less effective.So sending a fighter against a full size ship may be like sending a patrol boat armed with just a machine gun and a couple of not-too-effective missiles against a fully armed destroyer or even battleship. Okay if you have no other option but not something you'll ordinarily want to do.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Since starfleet is very much like the the navy in the days of sail, the comparison seems appropriate. The technology and location has changed but the role of exploration and defense in the unknown is appropriate. Read stories from the historic age of exploration; many similarities there. Shoot, Roddenberry sold trek as a wagon train to the stars so we could compare ds9 to Bonanza and it would work.

True as that is, Star Trek isn't set in the age of sail, nor is Starfleet an ACTUAL navy. The analogy only goes so far before it begins to break down altogether. There's also the little fact that there weren't any fighters OR aircraft carriers in the age of sale; by that analogy, fighters would be hot air balloons.

Starfleet's shipyards and launch facilities can therefore be anywhere they want them to be, for geographical or bureaucratic convenience, for strategic considerations, etc. They can park 60 fighters on an outpost in the middle of deep space or they can land them in a field outside their starbase. They can put those fighters on a starship to carry them to the front or they can give the pilot/captains of those fighters their orders and have them get there on their own. The kinds of missions those types of craft are likely to have would be limited to those missions in areas too remote or too unimportant to devote an entire starship, in which case they wouldn't be "fighters" as much as pickets/patrol craft like the Danube class.

 

[Timo]

...Which jibes well with the idea that the Maquis could get hold of a pair.

OTOH, patrolling is never really implied to be their function. Starfleet calls them "attack fighters", and implies that they are unfit for the role they are forced to serve in, that of attacking starships. The Maquis in turn use them for striking at a weakly defended solar system's surface installations.

It would be quite logical for Starfleet to deploy these cheap-o ersatz starships on forward bases for the purpose of providing offensive capabilities and offensive fire support for ground forces, while omitting all other starship functions from their mission profile. Attack sorties would call for less endurance than patrol, and would thus befit small craft that lack crew amenities (a limiting factor even when we recognize that Starfleet hardware seldom seems to require fuel or ammo replenishment). And while forward colonies might need a wide range of services, forward colonies bordering on Cardassian space would be the most pressed for rapid-reaction ground attack craft, capable of thwarting the sorts of Cardassian attack that we have evidence of: small but deadly surface raids.

FWIW, the fact that Starfleet bothers to call these craft "attack fighters" would seem to imply that Starfleet has, or at least recently has possessed, fighters of some other description as well. Not necessarily the logical "defense fighters", but something of the sort, to make the expression "attack fighter" non-redundant.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MatthiasRussell]

Starfleet isn't a Navy!?! What are you smokin? It follows a naval tradition with naval terms and rank. It is a defense and exploratory organization, yes, but functions as a marine navy. It is more like the Navy than NASA.

 

[BK613]

It is more like the Navy than NASA.

It's more like these guys or these guys with a dash of Coast Guard thrown in for flavoring...

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Starfleet isn't a Navy!?! What are you smokin? It follows a naval tradition with naval terms and rank.

But it does not operate in the ocean, which means it is therefore--BY DEFINITION--not a navy.

Really, the only thing they have in common with the Navy is the fact that their largest vehicles are called "ships." If the U.S. Air Force began referring to its long range bombers as "fixed-wing airships" then even THAT commonality would disappear. It actually seems to me that Starfleet operates a bit more like the Strategic Bomber Command on steroids, if you can imagine a force of B-52s that never have to land or refuel and can stay aloft for years at a time.

 

[Timo]

OTOH, we can stretch the "naval" analogy back to the age of sail without losing sight of the fighter question.

The age-of-sail navies did have fighters in the Trek sense - they had small boats. These (funnily enough) meet all the criteria of the onscreen Trek fighters.

- The boats operate in the same medium as the big ships
- The boats are slower than the big ships in the general case
- The boats are more maneuverable than the big ships in the general case, if only in the sense of being faster to point in a new direction
- The boats mainly serve in "medium-interfacing" tasks (ship to shore)
- The boats tend to be operated with oars (quite analogous to impulse)
- The boats can be rigged with sails (warp), but aren't competitive there
- The boats can be rigged for combat
- The armament then will consist of smaller or fewer versions of ship armament
- The boats cannot use that armament successfully against ships
- The boats can fight each other with it, though
- The boats can use the armament successfully against shore targets
- The boats can be carried aboard the big ships, but only certain very special ships carry them in large quantities, and not for combat purposes

That's our Star Trek shuttles / attack fighter right there...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[NSTrekfan]

Starfleet isn't a Navy!?! What are you smokin? It follows a naval tradition with naval terms and rank.

But it does not operate in the ocean, which means it is therefore--BY DEFINITION--not a navy.

Really, the only thing they have in common with the Navy is the fact that their largest vehicles are called "ships." If the U.S. Air Force began referring to its long range bombers as "fixed-wing airships" then even THAT commonality would disappear. It actually seems to me that Starfleet operates a bit more like the Strategic Bomber Command on steroids, if you can imagine a force of B-52s that never have to land or refuel and can stay aloft for years at a time.

They do have the AquaShuttle from TAS so perhaps there is a Naval component somewhere as well. Just because we haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^ Mean the Federation Naval Patrol (or whatever it was Tom Paris called it in Voyager).

 

[MatthiasRussell]

The air force and navy are both military organizations. However, Starfleet uses mostly navy terminology and rank structure (as does NASA due to the NACA's close relationship with the navy). It is a valid question, however: is it a navy if it doesn't operate on water? Not literally, but starfleet is navy by tradition, if not operational medium.

Also, the NAVY had the USS Akron and Macon. Airships which used fighters for defense and scouting missions.

 

[MatthiasRussell]

And if starfleet isn't a navy, why does it use torpedoes instead of missiles?

 

[Trelane]

There's already Valkyrie-Class / Banzai-Class torpedo bombers, at least in fanfic / fanon.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And if starfleet isn't a navy, why does it use torpedoes instead of missiles?

Considering that modern navies use more missiles than torpedoes, I'm not sure it would make a difference if they did.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

And if starfleet isn't a navy, why does it use torpedoes instead of missiles?

Because it's just splitting hairs over terminology?

 

[Cary L. Brown]

And if starfleet isn't a navy, why does it use torpedoes instead of missiles?

Because it's just splitting hairs over terminology?

Same argument applies to the "in the water" versus "not in the water" argument, of course.

Realistically, Starfleet is like the navy because that's the model that the creators of TOS chose to use. And yes, that includes Roddenberry (who didn't become anti-military til much later in his life, and after a lot more drug abuse too).

The USS Enterprise from Star Trek (TOS) was absolutely patterned after naval tradition in every meaningful way.

That said... we all know it's not a "water-borne Navy" at all... you might choose to call it a "space Navy."

Every element of Starfleet is patterned after a Navy. Every mission undertaken by a Starfleet ship has a parallel in historical naval tradition (though this is not based upon just one navy or just one time period).

I tend to associate TOS with "Age of Sail" ideas, to associate the TMP-era with "WWII" era ideas, and to associate TNG with "Post-cold-war" ideas about how a navy operates.

Most of the TOS Starfleet nomenclature and practice is taken from 1940s-60s US Navy practices. due to actual real-world familiarity with this era among many who worked on the series, but also borrows from the British Imperial Navy period (largely due to Hornblower influences, I suspect).

The less people with any actual knowledge of how military organizations run, the less that connection seems to be there, though. For instance, JJ Abrams and his team obviously have no idea of the LEGITIMATE reasons why it is forbidden for someone in a position of authority to "fraternize" with a subordinate. There are very sound reasons why this is forbidden... but if you've never been in that environment, and never learned about it, you'd never even think of those reasons, I'm sure.

So... I tend to use TOS as the best example of how Starfleet should operate, and any deviations from that in later-era Trek flicks are errors, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^ Funny you mention fraternization, but I seem to recall Kirk having a brief fling with at least one of his yeowmen, and then there's Scotty's little puppy-love episode in "the Lights of Zetar."

I think most of the legitimate reasons for fraternization bans are probably more often reactions to the maturity of the officers (or lack thereof) and their ability to manage relationships in a militaristic setting. Where they can't manage, duty requires they work out some sort of solution, like breaking off the relationship or getting a transfer.

Suffice to say, Spock is the kind of person who can control his personal feelings when he needs to. Arguably, the same can be said for Uhura.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Kirk never "had a fling" with any yeoman, and Scotty's relationships have never been with anyone under his direct authority.

And the reasons for restrictions on fraternization go far beyond the relative maturity of either of the parties.

 

[J.T.B.]

And if starfleet isn't a navy, why does it use torpedoes instead of missiles?

Plenty of non-naval air forces have used torpedoes, so I don't really see the relevance.

The closest real life analogue to the Starfleet we have seen is the 19th century British Royal Navy. They had an essentially unlimited propulsion energy supply (wind) and could/did take on missions of years' duration, the main limiting factor being provisions. They had no ongoing enemy threat, just sporadic brush-fire conflicts. They had a far-flug territory of various-sized dominions and colonies to protect and police. That being said, there were limitations of technology that are simply not comparable. You'll never hear of a Starfleet vessel waiting for favorable conditions (wind again) to leave port, nor see a fleet stretch into a long line-ahead to slug it out at close range with another line of ships.

--Justin

 

[T'Girl]

Suffice to say, Spock is the kind of person who can control his personal feelings when he needs to. Arguably, the same can be said for Uhura.

But in the last movie, Uhura utilized her previous fraternization with Spock in order to get herself a more prestigious assigment aboard the new flagship. It would have been difficult to imagine her pulling the same stunt with a superior officer she'd never met before.

Or slept with before.

And if starfleet isn't a navy, why does it use torpedoes instead of missiles?

Plenty of non-naval air forces have used torpedoes, so I don't really see the relevance.

The USAF can drop encapsulated torpedo mines, which are simply a torpedo inside a protective cylinder that waits for a enemy ship to happen by before launching.

nor see a fleet stretch into a long line-ahead to slug it out at close range with another line of ships.

Sacrifice of Angels?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Suffice to say, Spock is the kind of person who can control his personal feelings when he needs to. Arguably, the same can be said for Uhura.

But in the last movie, Uhura utilized her previous fraternization with Spock in order to get herself a more prestigious assigment aboard the new flagship. It would have been difficult to imagine her pulling the same stunt with a superior officer she'd never met before.

Or slept with before.

We don't know that she DID sleep with him. We also know the only reason she didn't get assigned to the Enterprise was because Spock was trying to avoid the appearance of favoritism.