Fighter Weapon;s load?

[James Wright]

When fighters launch, do they launch straight up or do they use the "rolling" start like fighters of today?
Are the fighters warp capable, what are the dimensions of the fighter seen on DS9

Thanks!

JDW

 

[Timo]

We've never seen a fighter launching or landing, but supposedly both operations are possible. And I'd like to think they operate much like shuttlecraft, i.e. they can hover up from the surface effortlessly, then spread their folding wings, then tilt a bit and accelerate in one direction and perhaps gain aerodynamic lift or stability from the wings. That is, shuttles and these fighters will look much like helicopters when taking off or landing...

The fighters are definitely warp capable, even if none have been seen at warp. They were indicated to be independently crossing from one star system to another in "The Maquis II", and at the end of the episode, one of the two craft was able to escape pursuit by (only temporarily disabled) runabouts, suggesting warp 5 capabilities. Similarly, these craft were able to escape the E-D in "Preemptive Strike", right along with the other Maquis types seen in that episode, again suggesting at least medium warp.

In Starfleet hands, the craft are seen in deployed formations between the big starships, just moments before the fleets are given the order to warp to their target. It's possible that the fighters on such occasions gather aboard various carrier starships for the warp jump, but it's also possible that they remain outside and go independently to warp.

As for fighter dimensions, the scale-establishing feature is the cockpit that uses the TNG shuttlepod for the interiors. Yet this basically allows for any length between 15 and 30 meters, because the shuttlepod match isn't exact. I'd favor something closer to the lower end, though: perhaps length 17 m, beam 16.5 m and height 5.5 m.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[James Wright]

Thanks Timo!
I'm working on a starship design that will be an explorer like all starfleet vessels but will have 32 fighter aboard along with shuttlecraft and shuttlepods,
Sorta like a CVL from World War II!
All the info you and the others who replied will be useful.
Again, Thanks!

JDW

 

[Timo]

Well, the CVLs of WWII were dedicated carriers, with little room for anything else - they also generally dropped the ship-to-ship gun armament that was still present in the bigger carriers. You might have to pare your starship down to a pure carrier if you wished to fit 32 of these craft, plus shuttles, aboard... Even if the fighters are just 17 m long, and can fold their wings.

We have seen some starships that look like giant flying shuttle hangars - say, the Steamrunner which seems to be all nacelle and hangar doors. But even those would have some difficulty fitting 32 fighters in there. And a "wave" (possibly a "wing") of fighters in "Sacrifice of Angels" seemed to consist of just 6-8 craft anyway - your ship would have four of those, making her a rather specialized piece of hardware. So be sure to give her ample hangar facilities, perhaps on two or three unobstructed levels that each have a wide access door.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[James Wright]

Key areas of the ship are going to have to be very spacious for stowing fighters, weapons, repair areas and the like. It's going to take some work to come up with a functional design but I can do it with a little help from all of the folks here at the TREK BBs!

JDW

 

[James Wright]

I've seen pictures of 2 starships, the Curry & Raging Queen on severalStar Trek sites.
I'm thinking these ships could carry a large number of fighters?
You're thoughts please!?

JDW

 

[Timo]

I'd say they are poor choices...

For one thing, if they are scaled up according to their engines, which are familiar from Kirk's ST:TMP ship already, they are really rather small starships. It's unlikely that even one fighter could be squeezed through their hangar doors.

For another, even if they are scaled up according to their saucers, familiar from the Excelsior, the fancy way their hangar doors are mounted atop the secondary hull will make it very awkward to launch or recover fightercraft. You'd want a hull that has doors right in front of the hangar deck, and perhaps right aft of the deck, not raised above the hangar deck and requiring elevators and whatnot.

And you'd want a secondary hull that does not taper down to nothingness in the funny way the Excelsior secondary hull does on those ships. So I recommend designing an all-new ship to your personal liking...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praetor]

On the danger of side-tracking, I've come to think that the Curry/Raging Queen types are just dedicated supply/personnel carriers variant from the basic Excelsior design, rather than fighter or shuttle carriers.

 

[Unicron]

I generally tend to think that dedicated carriers would be rare, if it were possible to have other classes carry a small contingent of fighters as regular ships. This also seems to be true in Star Wars, Battletech and a number of other series I'm familiar with. The only advantage a dedicated carrier would have over another class of vessel is sheer numbers, but with futuristic weaponry and other designs using fighter screens, there's less need for them.

 

[JNG]

Yeah, since exceptional numbers of fighters would appear to be needed to pose a threat to another capital ship, the utility of such a carrier would be questionable.

To me, the big argument against ships deploying fighters this way is the fact that Enterprise-D didn't have any. With a huge main shuttlebay, if any ship was going to carry them, you'd think it would have been the D and her sisters.

The only fighters we saw were more like runabout-scale and appeared to operate independently (their being that size makes their necessarily significant warp capability more believable), and Sisko's "modified an old support courier" line or whatever it was, which would seem to apply to the reuse of this same model, suggests to me that they were modified ships used outside of regular Starfleet doctrine.

Ron Moore said in a Q and A that the inclusion of the Starfleet fighters was to suggest their thinking had been influenced by the recent Maquis activity, which would certainly support the idea of it not being a regular part of Starfleet operations.

 

[Praetor]

Yeah, since exceptional numbers of fighters would appear to be needed to pose a threat to another capital ship, the utility of such a carrier would be questionable.

To me, the big argument against ships deploying fighters this way is the fact that Enterprise-D didn't have any. With a huge main shuttlebay, if any ship was going to carry them, you'd think it would have been the D and her sisters.

The only fighters we saw were more like runabout-scale and appeared to operate independently (their being that size makes their necessarily significant warp capability more believable), and Sisko's "modified an old support courier" line or whatever it was, which would seem to apply to the reuse of this same model, suggests to me that they were modified ships used outside of regular Starfleet doctrine.

Ron Moore said in a Q and A that the inclusion of the Starfleet fighters was to suggest their thinking had been influenced by the recent Maquis activity, which would certainly support the idea of it not being a regular part of Starfleet operations.

Good points. I hadn't heard that Ron Moore comment before. That's rather interesting. So maybe in the pre-war period, they are literally fast courier ships, which operate alone, whereas during the war Starfleet built tons more (since they are small and conceivably easily built) and their weapons were upgraded and they were grouped into squads for 'raids' on select enemy targets.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Yeah, since exceptional numbers of fighters would appear to be needed to pose a threat to another capital ship, the utility of such a carrier would be questionable.

To me, the big argument against ships deploying fighters this way is the fact that Enterprise-D didn't have any. With a huge main shuttlebay, if any ship was going to carry them, you'd think it would have been the D and her sisters.

The only fighters we saw were more like runabout-scale and appeared to operate independently (their being that size makes their necessarily significant warp capability more believable), and Sisko's "modified an old support courier" line or whatever it was, which would seem to apply to the reuse of this same model, suggests to me that they were modified ships used outside of regular Starfleet doctrine.

Ron Moore said in a Q and A that the inclusion of the Starfleet fighters was to suggest their thinking had been influenced by the recent Maquis activity, which would certainly support the idea of it not being a regular part of Starfleet operations.

Personally I've always thought of Federation fighters being more analogous to small torpedo boats or fast gunboats than modern aircraft. Not only because they fly at similar speeds and in the same environment as their larger counterparts, but also because they posses the land-anywhere, go anyplace, carry anything characteristic associated with small armed boats that fighter planes explicitly lack (helicopter's not so much, but they have very limited fuel unlike shuttles and fighters).

 

[Unicron]

I kind of like the idea in some fanon Trek sources that designs like the Galaxy could deploy small fighter groups in wartime, but I agree this would not be a common mission profile. As with the other series, it would seem like this small boost in offensive firepower would be sufficient in many cases. A true carrier perhaps might be more useful in a planetary defense role than a fleet action role, having a larger group of fighters that could protect a base or colony. Along with a few other capital ships.

 

[Praetor]

Yeah, since exceptional numbers of fighters would appear to be needed to pose a threat to another capital ship, the utility of such a carrier would be questionable.

To me, the big argument against ships deploying fighters this way is the fact that Enterprise-D didn't have any. With a huge main shuttlebay, if any ship was going to carry them, you'd think it would have been the D and her sisters.

The only fighters we saw were more like runabout-scale and appeared to operate independently (their being that size makes their necessarily significant warp capability more believable), and Sisko's "modified an old support courier" line or whatever it was, which would seem to apply to the reuse of this same model, suggests to me that they were modified ships used outside of regular Starfleet doctrine.

Ron Moore said in a Q and A that the inclusion of the Starfleet fighters was to suggest their thinking had been influenced by the recent Maquis activity, which would certainly support the idea of it not being a regular part of Starfleet operations.

Personally I've always thought of Federation fighters being more analogous to small torpedo boats or fast gunboats than modern aircraft. Not only because they fly at similar speeds and in the same environment as their larger counterparts, but also because they posses the land-anywhere, go anyplace, carry anything characteristic associated with small armed boats that fighter planes explicitly lack (helicopter's not so much, but they have very limited fuel unlike shuttles and fighters).

That seems a logical comparison.

 

[Timo]

Let's also remember that our heroes consistently referred to these fightercraft as "attack" craft. That is, their role was not that of interceptor (since they didn't have any peers out there they could intercept), but attack - and we might argue it wasn't anti-ship attack, either. These winged (!) craft could have been dedicated to the ground attack mission, the role in which they were see in "The Maquis pt II", and were pressed to antiship duty in an exceptional counterdoctrinal move in "Sacrifice of Angels".

Sisko's "modified an old support courier" line or whatever it was, which would seem to apply to the reuse of this same mode

In "The Maquis", the "old support courier" or perhaps "old support carrier" was the blip on Sisko's screen, rather than either of the craft seen live - so I'd personally prefer to assign the identity to one of the other two prominent Maquis types. You know, the one flown by Lieutenant Ro, and the one flown by Chakotay and Eddington. They would have a better claim to being "old", at any rate.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I actually looked it up for myself, just to see what the deal was.

To my great lack of surprise it turns out my memory on this one is still intact, as in these frames where we clearly see photo torpedoes launching from the BOW of the Maquis fighter.

Much more visible here, where four torpedoes have already been launched, again from the bow of the ship (precisely where the "launch torpedo" light effect is placed and precisely where the torpedoes fly from). Furthermore, as the fighter passes the runabout, the torpedo launcher is briefly visible by the light of Sisko's phasers. It's there on the bow, a circular greeble above and forward the gun turret.

So either the Peregrine class fighter is equipped with a single photon torpedo tube in the bow (and a magazine of six to eight torpedoes at that) or the Maquis rigged a torpedo launcher to the bow themselves. Either one is just as likely, especially if Starfleet later assimilated the Maquis and their tactics and converted their own support couriers the same way... although in the latter case, it might pose a more efficient way to deploy quantum torpedoes, thus explaining why only a handful of starships have them.

 

[JNG]

Well that is a good catch, and I find a central magazine of six torpedoes launched (or maybe just deployed) from the nose to be plausible. I have always imagined the thing at roughly runabout scale (around 25 meters, a meter or two longer than the runabout itself or Data's scout) and at that size, those could easily be full-scale torpedoes. Of course, without the benefit of a big coilgun launcher to get them rapidly moving towards the target, they might have to use up a lot of their reactants doing it themselves and detonate with a little less punch.

Someone may have left that nose thingy off of the CGI model, and if there are indeed shots of twinned probably-torpedoes being launched from under the wings or something by that version, I'd be certain it represented multiple variants of the "real" ship rather than just writing it off to a mistake. But newtype_alpha has raised the bar by presenting pictures, so now I'd have to go collect and enhance some DVD captures (of "Sacrifice of Angels," I guess it would be) to make further conclusions.