Attackship carrier ships

[The Badger]

Up until the Dominion war there is, AFAIK, no evidence to suggest that the Federation, or any other major power, used fighter craft. So why the change?

I've been thinking about this, and have some ideas that, whilst purely speculation, make sense to me.

We know that, as part of their campaign against the Cardassians, the Marquis adopted stolen Federation vessels, including (but not necessarily limited to) Peregrine class couriers. These were armed (DS9 'The Marquis-Part 1) with class eight phasers and photon torpedoes.

I got the impression, purely subjective, that these ships were great for raids and hit and run attacks, but would be too fragile to risk in a stand up battle unless absolutely necessary, or you had overwhelming numerical superiority. The Marquis used them for the simple reason that they had nothing better. And not in a good way.


So why would Star Fleet adopt them? I would put it down to the nature of the enemy during the Dominion war. Whilst there were many large capital ships in the opposing forces, there were also vast numbers of Jem Hadar attack craft. Small, manoeuvrable ships whose crew had no compunction about kamikaze runs to destroy capital ships.

An effective countermeasure would be to use small, well armed ships to escort larger craft, and eliminate potential threats before they could cause harm. Unlike the Klingons, who had large numbers of Birds Of Prey, the Federation had no small craft suited for this role (apart from the Defiant, which always struck me as too resource intensive to mass produce in anything like the necessary numbers). I'd speculate that the Federation, remembering it's experience with the Marquis, looked to the Peregrine and similar vessels for this task.

Rather than the jury rigged systems used by the Marquis, I think it likely that the Fleet used the latest technology. By this time a whole raft of new technologies suitable for small craft had been developed, thanks to the Danube runabout project. Better warp systems, power generators, shields and weapons.

Possibly, after being brought into service, it was discovered that in certain circumstances it could be used with moderate success against larger ships. Some sources suggest it can carry photon or even quantum torpedoes under it's wings, though I don't think this was ever seen on screen.

 

[ThunderAeroI]

Does any race use a star ship designed to function just like an Aircraft Carrier? Rather then the battleships they all seem to be?

The Scimitar from Star Trek Nemesis carried a large number of small fighter craft.

I'm sorry what? My canon source book says nothing about a movie called Nemesis.

 

[Praetor]

^That, to me, seems plausible; since it seems warp towing is possible by extending the warp field around the towed ship (albeit probably at a reduced efficiency), maybe fighters, runabouts and similar small ships can hitch a warp ride with big sisters. That probably requires some careful positioning and planning and isn't an off-the-cuff thing, but I can see the gangs of little ships having made it to the assault on Cardassia Prime that way.

Good, I'm glad that didn't seem too off the wall. The reason I specifically mentioned the Galaxys and Excelsiors is because they have all that space under their saucers and above (on the Galaxy) and below (on the Excelsior) of the secondary hull that fighters might 'latch on' to the warp field. Heck, any ship, even Akiras, might be carriers in that regard.

It always bothered me that the fleet would probably have had to pull less than warp factor 5 for the fighters to keep up by themselves. "Gul, a large Federation fleet is sauntering across our borders! We only have a couple of weeks to assemble a defense!"

Me too.

I think this:

I also wondered if the fighters had a decent "dash" warp capability but pretty much used up their fuel supplies after only a few days at significant warp (maybe 6), but then it seems less likely the runabouts wouldn't have this capability.

goes nicely with this:

Fighters should really be shuttles with high-yield (short duration) warp engines and a couple of torpedo launchers. Honestly, they SHOULDN'T exist to get into a phaser battle with a capital ship any more than you would expect an A-10 to go mano-y-mano against the USS Arizona with its chain gun.

You fly in fast, drop the ordinance, and get the hell out. The only thing the guns are for is dealing with those pesky interceptors, other fighters, or MAYBE a slightly bigger ship (like a corvette) that's between you and your target.

That's exactly how they work in Star Fleet Battles, too.

Yep. A figher should go one or two pegs of warp faster than most capital ships, but not for very long - just on their 'circuit' and patrol route, then back to base. (One extra warp factor doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up pretty damn fast, particularly when you're at WF 9 against WF 8, and so on.)

I can see why this was done in a combat game, especially one with a lot of analogies to real combat. But the idea that small craft can exceed the warp factor of the big ships, even for brief periods, seems very poorly supported by canon Trek.

Maybe, but why not have a very very brief dash speed, with the range at that performance of, say, less than a solar system's width. Hence the need for the big ships to carry them in.

Up until the Dominion war there is, AFAIK, no evidence to suggest that the Federation, or any other major power, used fighter craft. So why the change?

I've been thinking about this, and have some ideas that, whilst purely speculation, make sense to me.

We know that, as part of their campaign against the Cardassians, the Marquis adopted stolen Federation vessels, including (but not necessarily limited to) Peregrine class couriers. These were armed (DS9 'The Marquis-Part 1) with class eight phasers and photon torpedoes.

I got the impression, purely subjective, that these ships were great for raids and hit and run attacks, but would be too fragile to risk in a stand up battle unless absolutely necessary, or you had overwhelming numerical superiority. The Marquis used them for the simple reason that they had nothing better. And not in a good way.


So why would Star Fleet adopt them? I would put it down to the nature of the enemy during the Dominion war. Whilst there were many large capital ships in the opposing forces, there were also vast numbers of Jem Hadar attack craft. Small, manoeuvrable ships whose crew had no compunction about kamikaze runs to destroy capital ships.

An effective countermeasure would be to use small, well armed ships to escort larger craft, and eliminate potential threats before they could cause harm. Unlike the Klingons, who had large numbers of Birds Of Prey, the Federation had no small craft suited for this role (apart from the Defiant, which always struck me as too resource intensive to mass produce in anything like the necessary numbers). I'd speculate that the Federation, remembering it's experience with the Marquis, looked to the Peregrine and similar vessels for this task.

Rather than the jury rigged systems used by the Marquis, I think it likely that the Fleet used the latest technology. By this time a whole raft of new technologies suitable for small craft had been developed, thanks to the Danube runabout project. Better warp systems, power generators, shields and weapons.

Possibly, after being brought into service, it was discovered that in certain circumstances it could be used with moderate success against larger ships. Some sources suggest it can carry photon or even quantum torpedoes under it's wings, though I don't think this was ever seen on screen.

This all seems generally very logical.

Does any race use a star ship designed to function just like an Aircraft Carrier? Rather then the battleships they all seem to be?

The Scimitar from Star Trek Nemesis carried a large number of small fighter craft.

Ah, I'd forgotten about those tiny fighters. I believe they were expressly called "fighters" in all the publication surrounding the movie, weren't they?

I'm sorry what? My canon source book says nothing about a movie called Nemesis.

Ouch.

 

[137th Gebirg]

I think the closest thing we have to a "canonical" thru-deck carrier is the Shelly class from "A Time To stand". Yes, the Akira was initially designed to also be a thru-deck, but as it was pointed out, too small to be effective, so it became more of a large torpedo carrier. Fighters never really served much point in Trek, as I suspect it is assumed that phaser banks can easily double as point-defense batteries. Starfleet Battles were the ones to really make it "work".

Here are all the carriers I'm aware of (mostly fan-made):
http://www.shipschematics.net/cgi-bin/startrek/federation.cgi?Carrier

And small craft, including fighters:
http://www.shipschematics.net/cgi-bin/startrek/federation.cgi?Small

 

[Myasishchev]

I always figured that the big phaser arrays weren't fully capable of fending off numerous small targets, especially ones that could absorb some phaser fire. (If they were, photon torpedoes would be useless.) This is pretty much the situation of say, the Galactica, which was a carrier in all but name--aside from the dramatic conceit that required fighter jockeys for characters, neither battlestars nor basestars seem totally able to defend themselves adequately against swarm attacks.

Post-DW, the major powers probably fixed that with greater numbers of less powerful phasers to use as CIWS (for example, the Scimitar bristled with fifty-two disruptor banks, but I doubt all of them were heavy-duty capital-ship-killers). Likewise, greater numbers of Defiant-class escorts were probably pressed into service, filling the swarmer role with more firepower than could be generated from what basically amount to torpedo bombers.

At any rate, a carrier--or probably more precisely, a tender--probably wouldn't be caught dead on the battleline (rather if it were caught on the battleline it would be dead). A dedicated attack fighter tender is likely just a converted antimatter tanker without armament to speak of. So it's no surprise that we never see one. You'd never see an enemy carrier as part of a real navy in WWII, either, unless you were a pilot, or they just bumbled into you, like the taffies at Leyte Gulf. In a navy today, you'd probably never get within visual range of one ever, even as a pilot.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It always surprised me that the Romulan's or the Klingon's never developed a small cloaked fighter that could sneak in on a larger enemy ship and do some serious damage ahead of a larger ship arriving on the scene to finish off the victim...

They did. It's called the "bird of prey."

 

[Crazy Eddie]

That is a good point, although a BoP does not seem all that small too me, it certianly is not a fighter craft.

Why not? Think about what a fighter is for: an agile weapons platform capable of evading enemy defenses, lingering over/near the target persistently in order to guarantee firepower is placed on target to maximum effect. The only difference between a fighter and a bomber is the type of target being hit, which has different technical requirements depending on the weapons and engines available.

So in World War-II, bombers could be quite huge, because of the need to put alot of bombs on a particular ground target, while fighters needed to be more manueverable and were therefore very small. In Naval combat, fighters and bombers were sometimes the same size, since their principal target was other ships and the weapon for attacking them was a torpedo. In another environment--say, some feindish alternate reality where armies use propeller-driven aircraft equipped with lasers and guided missiles--it's actually likely that fighters would be larger than bombers, the former needing more bulk to carry heavy anti-aircraft weaponry and the latter needing more speed to evade those weapons and hit ground targets.

When you get down to mission roles, a "fighter" is a thing that shoots down other ships.As long as a bird of prey is still effective in this role, a small single-seat X-wing thing isn't much use to anyone unless the larger ships just aren't available.

 

[cwl]

Too bad we never saw more fighters during those big battles in DS9.

I never liked the fighters- too small & seem pointless.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Too bad we never saw more fighters during those big battles in DS9.

I never liked the fighters- too small & seem pointless.

Agreed.

I would have liked to see more Defiants or more Maquis raiders at least; that would seem consistent with the whole "we don't have enough ships, so we're building littler ones" meme.

 

[Omega_Glory]

Seems like it wouldn't be too diffucult to mount some photon torpedo cansiters onto fighter craft...they should be effective then. And, I doubt that any ship or shield would be immune to phasers a little less powerful than standard ship mounted versions. But, then fighters wouldn't likely have shields...probably not enough room to get a shield generator inside them.

 

[Myasishchev]

Why not? Think about what a fighter is for: an agile weapons platform capable of evading enemy defenses, lingering over/near the target persistently in order to guarantee firepower is placed on target to maximum effect. The only difference between a fighter and a bomber is the type of target being hit, which has different technical requirements depending on the weapons and engines available.

So in World War-II, bombers could be quite huge, because of the need to put alot of bombs on a particular ground target, while fighters needed to be more manueverable and were therefore very small. In Naval combat, fighters and bombers were sometimes the same size, since their principal target was other ships and the weapon for attacking them was a torpedo. In another environment--say, some feindish alternate reality where armies use propeller-driven aircraft equipped with lasers and guided missiles--it's actually likely that fighters would be larger than bombers, the former needing more bulk to carry heavy anti-aircraft weaponry and the latter needing more speed to evade those weapons and hit ground targets.

When you get down to mission roles, a "fighter" is a thing that shoots down other ships.As long as a bird of prey is still effective in this role, a small single-seat X-wing thing isn't much use to anyone unless the larger ships just aren't available.

You know, if I remember correctly--and I forget if I read this in Douhet's Command of the Air or if it was Billy Mitchell or Hugh Trenchard or whoever--but there was some notion after World War I that fighters would be either the same size as or bigger than bombers, armed with multiple arrays of machineguns. Practical experience in the 1930s showed that maneuverability and speed were much more important than heavy armament and spherical fire coverage, but there were still plenty of people who believed that fighters could not stand up against the mass of firepower that a bomber formation represented. And thus we got the B-17 and B-24 and a near-religious adherence to daylight precision bombing.

There were still many people going into WWII who thought that aircraft could never directly threaten a battleship, either, and that CVs were for spotting, not for combat.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Seems like it wouldn't be too diffucult to mount some photon torpedo cansiters onto fighter craft...they should be effective then.

Not as effective as a slightly larger ship with three times the torpedo load and designated launchers. The only advantage to having a smaller single-seat/single-engine craft is maneuverability to avoid other people's fighters; if nobody else has them, or if nobody else is using fighters defensively, then this requirement vanishes altogether.

But, then fighters wouldn't likely have shields...probably not enough room to get a shield generator inside them.

Then you make the fighter bigger. Expand the hull until it can support a full-sized warp core, shield generators, a large torpedo magazine and some heavy phasers.

And then what have you got other than a Maquis Raider or a Bird of Prey?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You know, if I remember correctly--and I forget if I read this in Douhet's Command of the Air or if it was Billy Mitchell or Hugh Trenchard or whoever--but there was some notion after World War I that fighters would be either the same size as or bigger than bombers, armed with multiple arrays of machineguns. Practical experience in the 1930s showed that maneuverability and speed were much more important than heavy armament and spherical fire coverage, but there were still plenty of people who believed that fighters could not stand up against the mass of firepower that a bomber formation represented. And thus we got the B-17 and B-24 and a near-religious adherence to daylight precision bombing.

There were still many people going into WWII who thought that aircraft could never directly threaten a battleship, either, and that CVs were for spotting, not for combat.

This is because of the changes to the environment in air combat. In WW-I, fighter aircraft really WERE threatened by the existence of heavily armed bombers with large arrays of machineguns on board; this is because the maneuvering envelope between fighters and bombers wasn't all that different. The advent of the turbocharger, plus more maneuverable aircraft like the the American P-40 and the German Me-109s changed this dramatically, especially the latter's heavy cannon armament that was more than enough to do the job.

Even in WW-II, a fighter could threaten a battleship by virtue of its ability to very precisely put ordinance on a target: two or three bombs could disable it, two or three torpedoes could sink it, and a fighter could deliver those weapons more quickly and more accurately than another ship. Partly this is because fighters could get in closer than other ships, but mostly it's because the delivery methods at the time weren't reliable over long ranges. This, however, has changed, and though it galls many in the U.S. Navy to admit it, aircraft carriers are NO LONGER the ideal weapon for naval combat. Submarines are, since they enjoy all the advantages of aircraft carriers with none of the vulnerabilities and disadvantages.

Likewise, when you take tactical considerations of space combat in effect, you find that there is little difference in accuracy between starships and fighters: in star trek, phasers and photon torpedoes rarely miss. Small fighters therefore will not have an advantage over capital ships in combat, but they might have a maneuvering advantage that would allow them to perform highly effective hit-and-run attacks or function more effectively as ambush predators.

In any case, unless there's reason to think a starship's phasers have the average hit rate similar to a hand-aimed .50 Caliber machinegun, the logic of "small single-seat fighters" just doesn't fit.

 

[The Badger]

The only advantage to having a smaller single-seat/single-engine craft is maneuverability to avoid other people's fighters; if nobody else has them, or if nobody else is using fighters defensively, then this requirement vanishes altogether.

That's kind of the point I was trying to make above. The Dominion had it's small Attack Craft, which turned out to be a much more potent threat than anyone anticipated (partly because of it's shield piercing weapons, and partly because it's crew had no compunctions about kamikaze runs). The Klingons could counter these ships with Birds of Prey, but the Federation had no comparable design. The Defiant class, whilst ideal for that role, was far too scarce.

So the Federation Fighter was developed from existing designs to fill that gap in the defences.

Again, this is pure speculation, but it does I think fit the facts.

 

[Bosch571]

So the Federation Fighter was developed from existing designs to fill that gap in the defences.

Again, this is pure speculation, but it does I think fit the facts.

Just the fact that we see so little of them (do we see them again in a big battle after sacrifice of angles?) do seem to suggest there just not worth it. There maneuverability may be an asset but phasers never miss and the moders federations strip phasers can attack from almost every angle and nothing the size of the Jem’hadar ships and smaller seem able to withstand even a single hit.

The Dominion had it's small Attack Craft, which turned out to be a much more potent threat than anyone anticipated

After the Odyssey we never see one surviving an attack of a capital ship (I’m excluding Rocks and Shoals). They didn't seem scary at all. The Rotarran won a battle against 4 of them, surviving multiple hits while only needing one pass to blow up a Jem'hadar attack fighter.

Of course the writers never decided on the relative strengths of the ships in Star Trek so there the strength of plot, I'm sure that if Sisko piloted one these fighters, it would survive plenty of hits with no trouble.

 

[Vance]

Several points here:

1) The first 'fighter' we see is way back in TOS itself, with 'Journey to Babel'. That thing is doing exactly what a fighter should, and it was pretty damn effective.

2) We've seen shuttlecraft with shields strong enough to stop a capital ship's phasers (TNG, DS9), so there's no reason to assume a fighter couldn't have a similar shield on it.

3) Again, fighters are not meant to stand toe to toe with battleships or super-battleships, they're there to go in fast, drop their payload, and get out. There's no reason, given what we see in trek, that a fighter couldn't carry a half-dozen full-fledged torpedoes and launch them (particularly if they're armed by the mother ship and just HELD on the shuttle) when the need arises.

4) Lastly, the main reason there's a debate on this is that Trek just isn't ABOUT the fighters.. it's been about the big ships. It's a different kind of show and focus, but it doesn't naturally flow that fighters don't exist any more than a show about a PT boat means that the Army doesn't exist.

 

[JNG]

The Jem'Hadar attack ship is a full-fledged starship of roughly similar size to a Klingon Bird of Prey and really should not be compared to the fighters used by the Maquis and Starfleet (which were not much bigger than a large modern fighter jet) just because the word "fighter" was occasionally tossed around for both.

It appears the primary role of the fighter squadrons in the big Dominion War engagements was to distract:

Attack-fighters, tactical pattern
Theta. Concentrate your fire on
the Cardassian ships, then split
off into squadrons and run like
hell.

3 OMITTED

4 ANOTHER ANGLE

NOG
(to Garak, sotto)
Why is he only targeting the
Cardassian ships?

GARAK
He's hoping to get them to break
formation and go after the
Federation fighters. He knows the
Jem'Hadar will stand their ground,
but the Cardassians just might get
angry enough to take the bait.

NOG
(on board)
Which would open a hole we can
punch through.

So they were not even really expected to do tons of damage, just to draw some attention.

Launching shuttles for combat occasions or carrying purpose-built fighters does not appear to be SOP for any of the many starships we have seen on screen doing their thing, so while runabout-scale fighter-like vehicles clearly do exist, their utility is limited. The uses to which the Maquis put them showed where they can be a major factor, but the various Trek powers appear, by and large, to believe they aren't going to be a big factor in starship-on-starship and fleet battles.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Several points here:

1) The first 'fighter' we see is way back in TOS itself, with 'Journey to Babel'. That thing is doing exactly what a fighter should, and it was pretty damn effective.

The ship we saw in TOS was described as a "scout ship," which implies runabout size at minimum and possibly approaching the size of a Maquis Raider.

Spock notes that their "power utilization curve is abnormal" which means they were running their engines at a rare far higher than any ship could realistically sustain for any period of time; this means the ship is effective as a fighter only because it's on a suicide mission.

With 24th century technology, you could probably rig a Maquis raider to do the same (and equip it with "standard phasers" as the Orion vessel was) but convincing a crew to go on a suicide mission would take some doing. The much more efficient weapon system would be, simply, a very agile remote weapon system powered by some kind of transporter beam, like the EP-607 from Minos.

2) We've seen shuttlecraft with shields strong enough to stop a capital ship's phasers (TNG, DS9), so there's no reason to assume a fighter couldn't have a similar shield on it.

It is cost prohibitive to keep manning fighters with people named "Sisko" and "Picard" to produce the necessary shield strength. Hero shields cannot be mass produced.

3) Again, fighters are not meant to stand toe to toe with battleships or super-battleships, they're there to go in fast, drop their payload, and get out. There's no reason, given what we see in trek, that a fighter couldn't carry a half-dozen full-fledged torpedoes and launch them (particularly if they're armed by the mother ship and just HELD on the shuttle) when the need arises.

When in the entire history of Trek has a half dozen photon torpedoes EVER been effective in destroying an enemy capital ship? Starships have been seen shrugging off volleys of them with their shields up and still remaining in the fight. A fighter fast enough to avoid a starship's weapons, on the other hand, would require one hell of an engine; by the time you scale up the starship to contain that engine, suddenly your fighter has transformed into a Starfleet Bird of Prey.

4) Lastly, the main reason there's a debate on this is that Trek just isn't ABOUT the fighters.. it's been about the big ships. It's a different kind of show and focus, but it doesn't naturally flow that fighters don't exist any more than a show about a PT boat means that the Army doesn't exist.

Sure, but Star Trek has its equivalent of PT boats already. They're called "runabouts." The inclusion of fighters just doesn't make logical sense except as some kind of desperation tactic, like strapping torpedo tubes on the side of a speedboat.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The uses to which the Maquis put them showed where they can be a major factor, but the various Trek powers appear, by and large, to believe they aren't going to be a big factor in starship-on-starship and fleet battles.

And for the most part they're correct: in Sacrifice of Angels, the Cardassians didn't fall for the trick, they only responded because Dukat ordered them to take the bait so he could lure Starfleet into committing itself to the fight. And it would have worked, too, if only the Klingons hadn't shown up.

 

[Omega_Glory]

I'm not sure that the term "scout ship" really implies any minimum size.