Why Didn't Starfleet Command Use Starfighters? | The Templin Institute

A oldie, but a goodie of a topic.

Does anybody have thoughts on this?

 

This is a topic I always go back and forth about, largely because I like starfighters and also they don't always seem to fit in to Star Trek's world. Largely because Star Trek has primarily presented technology as being better when it is bigger. A shuttle was largely limited in its functionality, speed and range and that appears to be due to its smaller size. So, a fighter will operate within similar limits, i.e. less range, less power, compared to larger starships.

So, while I think fighters could be appropriate in specific situations, I think that Starfleet would not utilize them as much because they are so limited in except in specific situations. I think the Dominion War provided an opportunity to prove themselves, but still not enough to be common.

 

Er, they did use starfighters.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Federation_attack_fighter

 

There's little advantage when mass and inertia are not a factor due to dampers and artificial gravity technology. There's no reason a capital ship should be significantly slower or less manoeuverable.

I can see some use in sending a powerful one or two seater ship to tie up larger enemy assets with little expenditure of manpower, and presumably small ships are easier to manufacture in quantity.

It's more complex than current thinking of small/fast vs large/powerful.

 

I concur, but that's the first time I've ever seen them used in the Star Trek franchise, was during DS9 and the war with the Dominions.

But even IRL, when humanity first learned how to use fighter aircraft, they didn't use it to it's max potential.

It took many generations to evolve the combat doctrine, and even now, it's still evolving.

A mix of Man & Machine with 1 or 2 pilots per fighter with a dozen or more AI fighters and maybe lots of Gundam Style Attack Bits will be the future of ranged combat.

There's really no reason to fight the enemy at close range when you can fight them light-seconds to light-minutes away.

 

There seems to be a desire to replicate aircraft carriers in space but what always seems to be missed that the underlying reason that aircraft carriers work is that the aircraft they carrying operate in a different medium (air) than the ship that carries them.

 

I still remember in the old Home World PC games, there are multiple attack patterns that your Fighters/Drones can use on a target.

My favorite was always spherically enveloping a enemy and whittle them down =D.

The Fighters/Drones always kept pace with their target and rained death on them from all angles, eventually destroying them.

I wish I'd see more of that kind of higher level tactics in fleet action.

StarFleet needs to also incorporate alot more Attack Bits/Drones

Here's Gundam Zabanya from "Gundam 00 the Movie: A Wakening of the Trailblazer" in action



Fighting off millions of smaller ELS Enemy Attack craft should be a piece of cake in fleet action.

1 vessel should be able to down thousands upon Ten's or Hundred's of thousands of smaller enemy vessels.

Kind of like Krall from Star Trek: Beyond. Where he depended on over-whelming #'s to beat the USS Enterprise.

 

In my own little world, I imagined starfighters as being ideal in situations when there isn't a starship available, like on a distant space station or a planet-side starbase. DS9 kind of solved this issue by having the Defiant, but not every outpost may have an assigned starship to it, IMO. During the Dominion War, I think Starfleet was utilizing every gun they had, and the attack fighters were just additional firepower with its existing mix of starships.

 

Well, we never really saw any active wars going on in TOS, TNG, or DS9 up to that point. So for all we know, conflicts like the Cardassian War, the Talarian skirmishes, etc. could have had fighters used in combat situations.

 

Yup. And it was a disaster: wave after wave of them threw everything they got at a single Galor, and achieved basically nothing but their own deaths. And perhaps some superficial damage to said Galor (this is marked with huge gasoline explosions elsewhere in DS9), so that when Dukat duplicitously commanded the Galor to move to open a hole in the formation, it was merely an obvious trap, rather than a ridiculous one...

The heroes themselves seemed conviced from the get-go that the only effect they could have on the enemy would be psychological. So we know now what the fighters are incapable of, regardless of numbers: challenging starships.

Since they exist nevertheless, they probably are capable of something, though. Perhaps the attacks against planetary bases that the Maquis intended to use them for?

The DIS fight also showed the armed shuttles, special fighting craft (drones?), and those fancy hypermaneuverable pods from "Brother" merely fighting their peers the Control drones (and very poorly at that). They didn't make any attempt to attack Control's starships, even when those might in theory have been an Achilles heel of the Droid Command Ship ilk; anti-ship stuff was left to the phasers of the Enterprise. So we have precedent and consistency in-universe...

...Although no pressing reason to think anti-starship fighters would never make an appearance. Seven's Ranger craft in PIC seemed to pack a punch that would have made a difference in DS9 and DIS, and the Ni'Var seemed to believe in swarming, too.

And yes, the relative punch-packing might have been there in earlier, more primitive Trek eras, too. Only not during TNG/DS9/VOY, or DIS. And the DIS example sort of makes me doubt TOS/TAS, too. Especially since Kirk often suffered from acute shortages of starships, and might have been expected to deploy fighters to Organia at least, in expectation of fighting a guerilla action without his starship!

Timo Saloniemi

 

IMO, the big reason why we don't see traditional one or two seat fighters much is that we're "looking in the wrong direction".

The first time we see fighters is the hands of the Maquis. Which makes sense as they are probably repurposing support ships assigned to the colonies in the DMZ initially, which would probably use dirt-side or orbital facilities to house them unless they are actively responding to something.

Starfleet proper probably rarely uses traditional fighters for the simple reason that they are at best no faster than larger starships (and comparably sized shuttles appear to be a good deal slower either in overall speed, acceleration or both), are less capable of non-combat applications than standard shuttles and particularly more advanced auxiliary vessels like the runabout and the Argo-type, Delta Flyer and some of the auxiliaries attached to the Sovereign class, and aren't set up for more than a day's operating at maximum.

 

I wonder about that endurance thing. The cramped cabin would already appear to rule out these being the "couriers" we hear about: if there's something physical to be couriered around, across distances of note, these craft won't cut it.

Now, the externally comparable, apparently older type Lieutenant Ro flew, with the standard Alien Shuttle interior... That one probably reads as counterindication to the craft having been an attack fighter back in its day. Plus the Maquis had it before Starfleet got all worried about them operating military hardware.

Might this mean fighters are a sporadic phenomenon, being designed or at least manufactured only in times of specific need? Perhaps Starfleet had some in stock due to the largely nondescript Border Wars, but wouldn't have had any in the early 24th century or around TOS. Or then we're not seeing a continuum of designs chiefly because small craft get outdated real fast, and multiple generations don't operate side by side. Heaven knows Starfleet introduces new shuttle designs basically biweekly...

Timo Saloniemi

 

I think it's mostly a StarFleet "Doctrinal issue", we see Seven's StarFighter doing comparable power/damage to the Warlord controled old TOS era Romulan Bird of Prey / Warbird, similar to what the La Sirena can output, but in a far smaller package.

So it's not a matter of can it be designed, it's a matter of doctrinal will and training dedicated to maximizing a fleet of Space Superiority Fighters and how to best use it.

StarFleet likes shuttles because they are truly multipurpose while dedicated fighter craft are only good for Combat, Recon, Patrol, Interdiction. That's a limited range of mission types while Shuttles are more flexible / Versatile at the sacrifice of superior combat capability.

Dedicated Fighters won't be useful for the total # of Non-Combat Missions that a typical shuttle would be good for.

So it's a matter of how much of your Shuttle Bay parking Space are you willing to dedicate to Non-Combat purposes.

 

DIS would suggest you can go modular, stocking up in combat pods you can bolt onto shuttles. It's probably the least detrimental "resource attached to a resource" arrangement, less wasteful than, say, carrying warp engines as separate modules on shelves. Storing something like Killer Bee kits aboard just in case would be weird, and if there is a real need, whole ready-to-go craft would probably be preferable to kits. But a phaser saddle pack per shuttle seems doable, assuming the constant carrying of such packs would somehow be too detrimental to shuttlecraft general performance.

It's a bit weird that none of the usual players see any doctrinal point in fighters. Of course, it's a budget/FVX technique issue, but what about in-universe?

Klingons fly ships from BoP size up, which fits their Gesamtkunstwerk approach to fighting: you need something as big as the D-4 of ST:ID to rappell swordsmen to battle after space-fighting your way to the surface first. Romulans might be like the Japanese in thinking that they can never win by numbers so they can only ever afford to build humongous and utterly superior. Cardassians just plain mightn't fight much, except to crush their weakers, and big bombers do that better than small fighters. Perhaps Talarians loved fighters, and Starfleet deployed some to fight that fire with fire in the Border Wars?

Timo Saloniemi

 

The Klingon BoP is more like a heavily armed Corvette.

A high performance compact vessel.

Same with the Romulans, their TOS BoP was small and had a cloaking device as well.

The Cardassians had the small Hideki that was comparable to the Klingon BoP in terms of size / crew complement.

Given what we've seen on screen, alot of the issues stems from the super close range combat for ship to ship fighting.

Almost every battle is WVR (Within Visual Range), ergo the Phasers don't really miss since they're computer targeted and generally 99.99% accurate at WVR ranges.

If you're far enough to be light-seconds away from your target and you can bombard them at long range with little to no loss of particle density/power, then I don't see a reason as to why they can't fight at longer ranges.

I have a feeling that all Star Trek Particle/Beam weaponry suffer from the Inverse Square Law.

Ergo, the further you are from the Beam emitters, the weaker your beam attack is due to particle spreading out.

It probably takes alot of energy to concentrate a beam at super long distances.

Here's an example of Inverse Square Law and how much damage you might lose over distance due to spread of the particles within your beam.

This could potentially explain why most Star Trek Combat is at such close ranges for most of the Star Trek series that we've been watching. They haven't figured out a way to collimate their beam damage to avoid or delay the effects of the Inverse-Square Law.

IRL reason (They want to animate ships that are like WW2 or age of sail where everybody is next to each other, within spitting distance).

 

Here's my own personal rationale, though it could change, especially with the Defiant and Voyager technology coming back. In universe, the inverse square law comes in to play, as well as needing more power in order to project further beams, achieve faster warp for longer, and other operational considerations. More power means a larger plant of some kind to draw upon, and a fighter simply is not effective enough of a platform to utilize in more than a handful of situations. It is useful in very close quarters style combat involving multiple targets, and fleet action. Most ships are not engaging in huge fleet battles, so carrying fighters is a waste of space.

In real life, there is always the drama part to consider. Ships are to be close together because a lot of people (myself included) cannot fathom space as big as it is, or weapons that can fire over the large distances in that void. So, having the ships next to each other is more visually relatable, rather than basically playing missile command from far away.

 

I think that's the other aspect that informs this discussion is Starfleet's main doctrine is what ship can do the most jobs. So, kind of in contrast to the real world navy moving to the carrier from the battleship Starfleet seems to have gone more to a battleship or cruiser type of operational vehicle. Which, makes sense when you consider how much space they have to cover.

 

Tangentially, I just find it interesting that the topic of space fighters is one of the relatively few where Trek is in agreement with 'harder' SF. The argument has often been made that they don't make sense for a variety of reasons, though Trek's sheer amount of magitech may go a long way of addressing at least some of them.