Defiant -- not staffed 24/7

[Bad Thoughts]

That's long been my assumption: there are people on the station whose battle station in the event of an attack or emergency is the ship itself, as opposed to manning some auxiliary console.

Actually, I'd add the nuance that in the event of an attack, the Defiant is emptied of personnel, as the tiny starship is best protected by leaving her docked to the powerful station.

Whenever the station has actually come under attack in the episodes, the Defiant has remained sidelined. Except in the Mirror Universe, where the laws of combat and balance of power appeared different...

Timo Saloniemi

I think the OP mistakenly believes, based on TV and movie tropes, that people and equipment are always on standby, ready to scramble to an impending threat. The ability to respond to an impending threat today is somewhat limited: the pilots who were charged with intercepting United Flight 93 did not have the time to have ammunition loaded into their fighters: they would have had to ram the airplane. By comparison, the Defiant is less realistically easy to launch in an emergency.

 

[Paradise City]

Defiant probably is to DS9 what saucer separation is the Enterprise.

 

[BK613]

The fact that a Lt. Cmdr. could be made the CO points to the fact that it was primarily considered a support vessel. I don't know that we ever see it operate far from Federation Space, the way the Enterprise did, without being part of a fleet.

Current day ships don't all have Captain's as the CO, our (our in the UK) Type 45 Destroyers have Commanders in the Captains chair (though previous commanding officers have held the rank of Captain) and some US Arleigh Burke Destroyers I have read about have Lt Commanders and neither of those I would consider a support ship.

Ships like the Defiant (and anything of similar size like the Saber and Nova) I could see being given to Commanders or Lt Commanders especially for patrol assignments, short term missions or when operating out of a home base (kind of like the Defiant).

Not all ships require a Captain and neither do all missions, plus some of a lesser rank can step up to the centre seat when the need arrises like Worf and Dax and Riker when he was promoted (and showed he could do the job) in BoBW.

It's not really the type or role of the ship that determines this but the size of the crew. IOW, how many levels of hierarchy are needed to operate the vessel. A small crew means fewer levels. On one ship I served on - crew of 450 commanded by a Captain - the ship was divided into departments (CDR or LtCDR), which were divided into divisions (LT, LTjg,or ENS), and the divisions into smaller teams (E5-E6) based on various criteria (E-Division had a electrical repair shop, tool issue shop, CCTV room, phone repair shop and gyro room.) I also did reserved duty on a minesweeper-type vessel*, commanded by a senior LT, where the entire crew was about a dozen guys. No levels at all. And a lot of cross-training.


*(a converted Academy training boat, using sidescan sonar.)

 

[Bad Thoughts]

The fact that a Lt. Cmdr. could be made the CO points to the fact that it was primarily considered a support vessel. I don't know that we ever see it operate far from Federation Space, the way the Enterprise did, without being part of a fleet.

Current day ships don't all have Captain's as the CO, our (our in the UK) Type 45 Destroyers have Commanders in the Captains chair (though previous commanding officers have held the rank of Captain) and some US Arleigh Burke Destroyers I have read about have Lt Commanders and neither of those I would consider a support ship.

Ships like the Defiant (and anything of similar size like the Saber and Nova) I could see being given to Commanders or Lt Commanders especially for patrol assignments, short term missions or when operating out of a home base (kind of like the Defiant).

Not all ships require a Captain and neither do all missions, plus some of a lesser rank can step up to the centre seat when the need arrises like Worf and Dax and Riker when he was promoted (and showed he could do the job) in BoBW.

It's not really the type or role of the ship that determines this but the size of the crew. IOW, how many levels of hierarchy are needed to operate the vessel. A small crew means fewer levels. On one ship I served on - crew of 450 commanded by a Captain - the ship was divided into departments (CDR or LtCDR), which were divided into divisions (LT, LTjg,or ENS), and the divisions into smaller teams (E5-E6) based on various criteria (E-Division had a electrical repair shop, tool issue shop, CCTV room, phone repair shop and gyro room.) I also did reserved duty on a minesweeper-type vessel*, commanded by a senior LT, where the entire crew was about a dozen guys. No levels at all. And a lot of cross-training.


*(a converted Academy training boat, using sidescan sonar.)

Star Trek is always wonky when it comes to the crew configuration, being heavier with officers and having some integration of science specialists and civilians. Nonetheless, I think that the Defiant was likely the equivalent of a destroyer escort, a "green-water" vessel, usually with a Lt. Cmdr. as CO, that generally stuck to the littoral zone when not part of a fleet.

 

[BK613]

^^ Yea, wonky, but one could argue that, broadly speaking, things have been trending that way. In the age of sail, there were very few officers for the number of crew when compared to today. In the future, automation and other tech could reduce that even further.

 

[Nathan]

I think the Defiant is almost like a US Navy ship that is docked while at port. Even though it is peacetime, the ship is always manned, even with a skeleton crew.

The run-abouts are more like the US Navy Tomcat fighter jets, aren't really manned 24/7 (except for the Alert 5 aircraft -- a Top Gun reference!!!), but the pilots are nearby in case the sh*t hits the fan.

If the Defiant crew isn't on the ship, I wonder how long it would take to get the crew on the board. I mean, say you are dropping a deuce, or in the shower, or on the opposite side of the station, and you still have to get your gear.

I know, I know, I am proably way overthinking it, but I think the defiant has to be manned.

Not to derail the thread, but even in Star Trek III, I think the ENT needed to be manned and when Kirk and Co hijacked it, it appeared no one was on board except for our heroes and the Kirk and Co were the only one who boarded the ship.

 

[DaddlerTheDalek]

The Defaint is a warship. Only needed for military missions & battle situations.

 

[Timo]

And out of those, she only really gets to do armed recce, plus the occasional escort mission. Neither would require much of a "scramble": the launches could be preplanned weeks in advance.

I wonder how long it would take to get the crew on the board.

Star Trek features the ultimate fireman's pole... People could be transported from their random locations in (or near!) DS9 directly to their duty stations within seconds. Whether they would be properly clothed or not is a different question.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[woodstock]

In one of the relaunch novels, there's a part that describes a junior officer 'on watch' on the Defiant, it would be presumed that at least one crew member maintains watch to monitor ship systems and be prepared in the event of an emergency, if there are any others could depend on time and circumstance and a commanding officer's desires. There is always someone manning the brig (even if no one occupying a cell) and the battle bridge in TNG, so it would seem reasonable that at least one person should have been on the bridge when Tom commandeered it.

 

[LeadHead]

Over time, the amount of Starfleet officers assigned to DS9 increased, with that, more crew assigned to the Defiant when she was docked. Back in the 3rd season, there could be no one aboard, in the 4th season, there was a crew aboard, (likely a skeleton crew) this remained through season 5, we see Worf have the bridge all to himself to sing opera twice in that season. Once the war started, I'd imagine it had a near to a full crew on standby more and more.