how did the Defiant survive?

[Satyrquaze]

Then again, only the original Defiant and the Valiant of the above lot would have been built to be Borg-fighters. The others would in all probability be later keels, built for a wholly different job. And perhaps to very different specs, too - they might lack ablative armor (as its presence on the Defiant came as a surprise to Leyton's people in "Paradise Lost") and probably would lack cloaks, and perhaps quantum torpedoes as well (since no torpedo action took place in "Message in a Bottle").

Six of the ships might have sufficed against the Borg if they had worked as planned. Sixty might be a good counter to the Dominion as matters turned out, and not even six hundred might make a difference against the Borg in final analysis.


Timo Saloniemi

Well, the fact that the Defiant had ablative armor at all was unknown on the whole to Starfleet Operations. Given that the Defiant was the pathfinder vessel of its class why wouldn't later vessels in the same class have that advancement? It was never prooven to be wasteful.

The Cloaking Device I'll grant you, as the Romulan government only offered one to Starfleet to use on the Defiant and then only within the Gamma quadrant for purposes of gaining intel on the Dominion. But, then nothing in that says Starfleet had to construct the Cloaking device itself. Quite the contrary.

 

[cwl]

the Defiant was a prototype and so the Ablative Armour was pretty new so its not a surprise that the Lakota's crew were surprised by it. They probably hadn't seen the Defiant before.

if we look at the Valiant and other defiant class ships seen onscreen there appears to be no visible difference when looking at the hulls. thus we can conclude they all have ablative armour.

back to the Borg engagement. if you look at the footage it's clear there parts of the hull has scorch marks which suggests the AA has held but if you look at the starboard area surrounding the hull there is major damage which strongly suggests the AA has been penetrated and the hull compromised to some extent. I would highly doubt that area could have survived another hit from the Borg.

 

[Anwar]

The Defiant lasted as long as it did while other ships got blasted apart in single shots for the same reason the Enterprise-D was able to take several shots from the Cube in BOBW without the shields failing even though we saw an Excelsior class get destroyed in seconds in "Emissary" against the same Cube.

 

[The Wormhole]

the Defiant was a prototype and so the Ablative Armour was pretty new so its not a surprise that the Lakota's crew were surprised by it. They probably hadn't seen the Defiant before.

Except it isn't just a matter of ignorance on the part of the Lakota's crew. Captain Benteen makes a sarcastic comment that someone added the ablative armour to the Defiant and "neglected to inform Starfleet Operations" implying that ablative armour isn't listed on the ship's official schematics. And given she was the right-hand woman of a high ranking admiral, it's likely she had access to the schematics, possibly even giving them to the tactical officer.

 

[cwl]

well if you were to choose one ship to survive an encounter with the Borg and the options were an Excelsior or a Galaxy class then as the Galaxy is considerably newer and considerably larger than the Excelsior then the Galaxy is much more likely to survive.

that said you make a good point Anwar.

 

[cwl]

the Defiant was a prototype and so the Ablative Armour was pretty new so its not a surprise that the Lakota's crew were surprised by it. They probably hadn't seen the Defiant before.

Except it isn't just a matter of ignorance on the part of the Lakota's crew. Captain Benteen makes a sarcastic comment that someone added the ablative armour to the Defiant and "neglected to inform Starfleet Operations" implying that ablative armour isn't listed on the ship's official schematics. And given she was the right-hand woman of a high ranking admiral, it's likely she had access to the schematics, possibly even giving them to the tactical officer.

true but the Defiant was a prototype, prototype's designs are always subject to change. also it was probably a secret project so the data file may not have been fully accurate. besides Sisko didn't just invent Ablative Armour and add it to the Defiant. Most likely ablative armour was invented by starfleet beforehand and at some point it was decided that it would be incorpporated into the Defiant's hull but nobody made a big song and dance about which is why Starfleet Operations were seemingly unaware. and as I said before since every other Defiant class ship looks identical then their hull must incorporate Ablative Armour too.

 

[The Badger]

^I think we've seen far too many Defiant-class vessels for there to only be six in all of Starfleet, even double that number.

As I say, the initial plan was for a squadron of six to be used in a Borg suppression role. Those plans were shelved, the Defiant project dropped, because of various problems with the prototype and the ---apparent--- lack of further Borg activity.

Construction of further ships did not apparently take place until after the Defiant was assigned to DS9. With most of the problems sorted out, and increased hostilities with the Klingons and Dominion, they were constructed as fast as possible. Given the aforementioned difficulties with fabricating components, I can't believe the Defiant class was ever mass produced, but with the resources of Star Fleet a lot more than the initially planned six could enter service.

 

[cwl]

The Defiant is also the perfect ship to replace the losses incurred by the Federation in the Dominion War.

 

[The Badger]

^I'm not so sure about that. Given the high-cost/slow construction time of of Defiants, it'd take forever to build up a sizeable fleet. In addition, they have exceptionally limited science and exploration capabilities.

A few squadrons would be a good idea for tactical purposes, but the fleet would need a lot more variety to carry out all it's missions.

 

[Satyrquaze]

^ I'm not convinced that the Defiant had an abnormally slow construction time.

And what does "high cost" mean to a society without money?

 

[The Badger]

The slow construction time idea comes from the DS9 Technical Manual. Not, I'll be the first to admit, a canon source, but in the absence of any on screen evidence probably the most authoritative.

As to what 'high cost' means, in this context the use of limited or rare resources that can not be replicated.

 

[Kemaiku]

What does "high cost" mean to a society without money?

The ship with the largest amount of non-replicatible components and with the highest amount of physical labour, perhaps the components cannot be tractored or beamed either, and have to be manually connected.

The most extensive amount of compiling and coding for its LCARS, the amount of time and nurtients needed to properly develop neuron pathways in the bioneural circuitry.

The most complicated Dilithium articulation matrix to "grow" or fabricate for the warp reactor.

A ship that needs an enormous amount of manhours to calibrate and test all of its systems, needing a skeleton crew of some of your best engineers, who cannot be in two places at once, to ween the ship onto its own automated control as the systems are completed and checked.

And so on.

 

[Satyrquaze]

I keep wanting to compare the Defiant-class to one of it's peers, to which I default to the Galaxy-class as it's other ship the most about from the same period, which is loads more complex and many times larger than the Defiant.

The Galaxy-class also apparently started out with six vessels including the prototype. Over the course of the seven years of TNG and the last four of DS9 we saw each of the six Galaxys (Galaxies?) plus several more yet unnamed Galaxy-class starships. And according to the TNG tech manual (also not a canon source) the Enterprise-D (apparently second ship off the line) iirc took a couple years to produce not counting design time.

Now, I know that the Galaxy and the Defiant are apples and orang... and well, grapes given the scale... but I simply can't think of another roughly 120m ship from around the same period. Well, I can, but I think the Klingon Bird of Prey is a worse comparison.

But, by comparison we saw five seperate new Defiants before the end of DS9. I think theres a screenshot from DS9 that shows no less than four Defiants during one of the big-fleet scenes. That's a minimum five new ships in four years.

Now assuming that only the prototype existed until they re-started production of the Defiant-class at about the time that Sisko arrived at DS9 with the Defiant, How many Defiant-class vessels would you estimate were produced per year given the frequency in which saw each different vessel of this class over the course of the Dominion War, taking into account the probable size of Starfleet and how much space they were spread out across.

 

[Kemaiku]

To begin with, the Defiant was a mess really, she barely worked and seemed determined to fly apart. It was only after the prototype worked that Starfleet bothered manufacturing them in greater numbers beyond the intial batch, probably of around 6 including Defiant and Valiant.

But laying down the keels, building new frames, kitting out their unique frame with very custom parts, coating the hull in the Ablative armour (no idea how hard that is to make but its implied by the Defiant and Prometheus classes to be hard) then giving them their trials, finally entering service, possibly in pairs, would take time.

We only see more of them towards 2375, and Voyagers return in 2377. As of Nemesis in 2379 I'd say there would be around 18 to 24 in service overall.

 

[Satyrquaze]

^ That averages out to be about three ships produced a year, which doesn't strike me as being a ridiculously slow construction process.

Course, I'm sure the Defiants were produced at multiple shipyards across the Federation.

 

[Kemaiku]

Its four months a ship from a dedicated shipyard at the Planitia or elsewhere, or two or three yards working flatout for around a year.

 

[Satyrquaze]

^Compared to the eighteen months it took to just refit the original Enterprise.

 

[Kemaiku]

Well that was deconstructing one ship to the bone and building a new one around the skeleton, without replicators and with both Dekker and Scotty butting in at every oppertunity.

The Defiant program had a lot of resources thrown at it after Wolf 359 and a much larger, more advanced, scared Federation working on it day and night, it had a greater priority and a century of progress.

But still, at a conservative estimate the Defiant class could have seen an output of 3 ships of the class per year, about equal to the Defiant only without her cloaking device.

 

[Saquist]

Then again, only the original Defiant and the Valiant of the above lot would have been built to be Borg-fighters. The others would in all probability be later keels, built for a wholly different job. And perhaps to very different specs, too - they might lack ablative armor (as its presence on the Defiant came as a surprise to Leyton's people in "Paradise Lost") and probably would lack cloaks, and perhaps quantum torpedoes as well (since no torpedo action took place in "Message in a Bottle").

Six of the ships might have sufficed against the Borg if they had worked as planned. Sixty might be a good counter to the Dominion as matters turned out, and not even six hundred might make a difference against the Borg in final analysis.

Timo Saloniemi

Doubtful.
The class is task specific.

 

[cwl]

^ That averages out to be about three ships produced a year, which doesn't strike me as being a ridiculously slow construction process.

Course, I'm sure the Defiants were produced at multiple shipyards across the Federation.

you've also gotta factor in one of the most of important things in a ship... well THE most important thing. THE CREW!!

what's the crew compliment of a Defiant class starship compared to an Akira class, Galaxy class or Nebula class etc?

I'm pretty sure the Defiant requires a lot smaller crew compliment. that's important because training crew takes a lot of time and costs a lot of resources.