I wonder what Federation attack fighters do in their off time?

[Robert DeSoto]

By off time, I mean when they're not attached to a task force. (I couldn't fit that in the title)

Obviously starships not attached to a task force is perfectly normal as we see them operate independently all the time. Runabouts are sent on independent missions all the time as well. Even shuttlecraft are sometimes sent on an extended away mission out of sensor range of the mother ship.

What about attack fighters? Do they get used like shuttles and runabouts? Border patrols, reconnaissance, exploration, planetary surveys, plain old transportation?

Or do they just sit in the hangar of some starship or starbase? We've never seen or heard of a Federation attack fighter that wasn't attached to a task force.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I'd propose training, like Top Gun, Red Flag, and so. A responsible Starfleet would want to keep their fighters sharp.

 

[6079SmithW]

Training and planetary border patrol, most likely. They're two seater craft so I doubt they can do much exploration or deep space patrol. They would need a base ship for that.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Scientific research? A science officer might want to use one to go check something out up close, without having to tie up a starship's sensor grid. A fighter might even be able to be outfitted with extra sharp sensors that a normal starship doesn't have.

 

[Kaziarl]

I think I'd got with Smith on that one. System patrols, etc.

Another option would be to get important person A to important place B, like some shows portray present day fighter jets being used. I say shows because I dont know if fighter jets are actually used for that purpose or not.

 

[ngc7293]

Say someone needed to get the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs from Point A to Point B without refueling, they probably wouldn't use Fighters. Will He fit into a G-suit? Will he get there without having a heart attack? There are probably more questions that are better off putting him into a Lear type jet. [just guessing]

Don't know about in Universe. My guess is that a Fighter's warp speed is slower than certain ships.

 

[Kaziarl]

Well, one show I was thinking of for example was JAG. Rabb used jets like a personal sports car. But again, that was in a show. Dont think it'd happen in the real world quite like that, but there were times where he had to get somewhere important and speed was of the essence.

But your right, aside from the maquis peregrine class ships, which I think were supposed to be fighters(Chakotay's being an exception as a small ship rather then a fighter), they probably aren't really that fast.

 

[Subcommander R.]

Personally I've never understood the role of fighters. When you have that much advanced weaponry and targeting power it makes sense to slap all your systems onto a platform as large as possible. That means better endurance, payload, and survivability.

The only role I can see a fighter succeeding at is hit-and-fade attacks on relatively unprotected targets. And even then, thats not beyond the capability of a frigate or escort acting independently. So why require the use of a carrier just for that?

 

[Kaziarl]

Well, while I see your point in regards to trek tech, I think the idea was that the fighters would have a couple of roles.

One, being smaller and theoretically much quicker and more agile, they'd be harder to hit even with all that advanced weaponry and targeting power. So they'd be able to get more shots in before getting hit themselves.

Secondly, with more targets in the field, say... I dunno, one "mothership" might have 5 fighters, that's six targets total. So the enemy ship could have a harder time focusing on the mothership leaving it free to pound the enemy ship.

Of course, phasers seem to not have a problem picking a target in a mess like that(except in the defiant's case on good days), so it might not matter. And while Torpedo's seem to have a seeking ability, they are probably programed on the fly before launch, so they wouldn't get distracted by a fighter whizzing by in front of it.

 

[Timo]

Of course, it may be that the fighters have nothing to do with carrier starships. Their existence may be due to this being the cheapest way to provide austere frontier outposts with some sort of minimal military potential. That is, they'll operate independently in most circumstances, out of dirt fields and the like; they aren't "a weapon category of their own", but merely the smallest and cheapest type of combat starship.

Using fighters for taxi jobs is not a military thing: big militaries can affort special liaison planes and small ones cannot afford to fly their combat jets any extra hours or miles. But NASA hotshots often seem to get the opportunity to use their T-38 trainers for ferry flights and joyrides, as the whole point of having those jets is to give the astronauts some flying hours.

Still, Trek is more of a nautical setting: the attack fighters could be like PT boats, which generally wouldn't burn gasoline on "private" missions, not even in McHale's Navy, but the sailing or rowing equivalents of which in the wilder days of naval history may well have been used that way on distant Royal Navy outposts.

In the final analysis, the UFP is probably industrially potent enough that the attack fighters simply don't exist in peacetime. When there's war, fifty thousand are replicated within the first few weeks, and when peace comes, these are converted to sausages and curtains.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Personally I've never understood the role of fighters. When you have that much advanced weaponry and targeting power it makes sense to slap all your systems onto a platform as large as possible. That means better endurance, payload, and survivability.

The only role I can see a fighter succeeding at is hit-and-fade attacks on relatively unprotected targets. And even then, thats not beyond the capability of a frigate or escort acting independently. So why require the use of a carrier just for that?

Before running away with imagination, first consider real-life history.

real-life example #1: Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941
real-life example #2: Battle of Midway, June 4, 1942
real-life example #3: Falklands War, HMS Sheffield sunk, May 10, 1982
real-life example #4: USS Stark Incident, May 17, 1987

In all of these examples, the airplane wins over the ship. The WWII examples are noteworthy for being strategically decisive.

The Battle of Midway is particularly interesting. In their attack on the Japanese carriers, the initial waves of American planes suffered all but total annihilation, but their sacrifice opened the way for a later wave of dive bombers to take out three Japanese carriers in about ten minutes. Those carriers never recovered from that blow and were scuttled. There is a strong case to be made that a few American dive bombers in that moment won the war in the Pacific for the Americans. All the other planes and ships participating in the battle contributed to creating that single moment of vulnerability, in which the dive bombers attacked and won. This was not specifically planned to happen this way, but it was implicitly recognized as a possible outcome when the aircraft were launched, one possibility among many worth trying to achieve and together representing a reasonably possible slice of the pie of possibilities, reasonably possible especially considering the surprise factor and the fog of war in effect.

Today, multi-role planes, such as the F/A-18, blend fighter and bomber roles into a single aircraft.

Many fighters attacking together offer more targets, and can attack independently and simultaneously along multiple trajectories and under multiple scenarios by multiple means. Furthermore, a single fighter is all it takes to defeat an unprotected target. In the Battle of Midway, in the way they died, the preceding waves of American planes made the Japanese carriers wide open vulnerable, ripe, and effectively unprotected, to the wave of dive bombers that destroyed them. They did this by pulling the Japanese fighters out of position and using up their ammunition, and causing confusion and false starts which, due to a failure to observe strict discipline, led to mismanaged ordinance on the carriers, resulting in an explosive "tinder box" effect.

Therefore, having one fighter in a critical position is the cheapest way to exploit a vulnerability. This is really the reason why fighters are important, since it maximizes the number of vulnerabilities that can possibly be simultaneously exploited, for a fixed construction cost. The deployment of many fighters at once is also flexible and in principle highly adaptive.

When real vulnerabilities are potentially present, many fighters attacking simultaneously can make effective defense difficult to plan. In and of itself, the opportunity cost, which is inherent in choosing any precise defense posture over some other, creates in theory opportunities for one fighter to succeed when many attack together.

Note the cost ratio in real-world example #3. How big the loss for the British, versus how little for the Argentinians [for that single incident].

 

[Timo]

The main lesson from those engagements is different, really: fighters have a greater range than gunshells.

Had gunshells possessed the superior range (they already had superior speed and firepower), all of the carriers with their planes would have been sunk before they got to launch an attack or a defense, all of the airfields reduced to mudholes.

During the Cold War, there would have been no Midway, because the waves of jets would have been preceded by waves of missiles that did not possess any loitering or distracting or opportunity-exploiting qualities.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Extrapolating by analogy, one kind of reasonably expected Midway-type battle in the missile age of the 20th century might be that enough fighters get their Exocets off simultaneously, because all the carrier group defenses were tied up killing other aircraft and/or were fooled by the electronic countermeasures, such that at least one Exocet makes it past the Phalanx.

While I agree with a lot of what you are saying, I must also point out that to say that [non-nuclear] missiles would have been singly decisive to determine the outcome of battles in WW-III [if fought after Korea and before Desert Storm between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.] is naive.

For, certain beliefs about how air combat would unfold in the missile age between the two superpowers were proven false in Vietnam. Before Vietnam, the Americans believed that missiles would be decisive, and did not include a cannon on their fighters for dogfighting. This proved to be a grave error, as WW-II-style dogfights at close range regularly ensued between fighters, even in the missile age. It was found that missiles were good to take out a percentage of attacking fighters. However, for those planes that defeated or survived the missiles, or for those planes that were [still] in the air after the missiles had been exhausted, combat of course continued, but "at a less technically advanced level" without missiles, even in the missile age.

The fact is, a battle such as Midway was never fought in the missile age, but only thankfully because WW-III never happened. We can only guess, although in an educated way, what might have happened. However, to be realistic, we know from history that entering a war with even a roughly equal opponent always leads to significant surprises.

In light of the Vietnam lesson about cannon on fighters, I submit that to say that you would never see an enemy fighter within gun range over your aircraft carrier is irresponsible. Even in the missile age, but especially in a World War consisting of all-or-nothing attacks launched by superpowers and capable of overwhelming defenses, you're going to have to fight to make sure that never happens. Diligently. That's one reason such a war would be awful, even short of the use of nuclear weapons.

And of course, the losses that would result would tempt the loser to use nuclear weapons.

 

[J.T.B.]

Before running away with imagination, first consider real-life history.

real-life example #1: Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941
real-life example #2: Battle of Midway, June 4, 1942
real-life example #3: Falklands War, HMS Sheffield sunk, May 10, 1982
real-life example #4: USS Stark Incident, May 17, 1987

In all of these examples, the airplane wins over the ship. The WWII examples are noteworthy for being strategically decisive.

That's not really comparable, though. Even in WW2, aircraft had something like ten times the speed of surface warships and substantial "sensor" advantages. Nothing in Trek indicates that small "fighter" craft have similar huge advantages over large vessels. In addition, aircraft didn't replace naval gunnery until they could carry an effective ship-killing weapon, a torpedo or bomb. What we've seen of Trek combat indicates that vessels can be quite resistant to ship-killing weapons, even when delivered by the largest warships.

IOW, there isn't much to indicate that small "fighter" craft would be game-changers in Trek the way carrier aircraft were. The r/w analogy is more like battleship vs. torpedo boat than ship vs. aircraft.

--Justin

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Even in WW2, aircraft had something like ten times the speed of surface warships and substantial "sensor" advantages. Nothing in Trek indicates that small "fighter" craft have similar huge advantages over large vessels. In addition, aircraft didn't replace naval gunnery until they could carry an effective ship-killing weapon, a torpedo or bomb. What we've seen of Trek combat indicates that vessels can be quite resistant to ship-killing weapons, even when delivered by the largest warships.

Clearly this seems to be true. Attacking a starship with fighters would certainly be suicidal, at least for the individual fighter. However, let's see what can be done to give a squadron of fighters the best odds.

First of all, in Journey to Babel, the Orion ship sacrificed safety to outmaneuver the Enterprise. Thus, there are two safety factors to balance. On the one hand, the question is how safe is the fighter against counterattacks from its starship prey. For this issue, the faster, the better. On the other hand, the question is how safe is the fighter from blowing up due to, say, a breach in its own warp core. For this issue, the slower, the better. Mathematically, there is a minimum safety level on the fighter's own warp engine that maximizes overall survivability, against both being hit by a phaser or torpedo from the starship, and also against melting down/blowing up on its own. At this minimum safety level, at least in TOS, a fighter can outrun and outmaneuver a starship at warp speeds. In a group of such ultrafast fighters, some should blow up on their own, but on the other hand some should otherwise be hit by the starship anyway. The idea in choosing the safety setting for the fighter engine is to minimize the rate at which fighters die by all means.

Second of all, it's been established that finding shield frequencies allows phasers to penetrate shields, and for shuttle craft to otherwise move through shields as if they were down. With multiple fighters each trying different rotating frequency settings, the chances of at least one breaking through the shields of the prey are increased accordingly. If any one fighter gets through the shields, maybe it can even just beam a bomb into the engine room of the starship. That little bomb in TNG: The High Ground would have done the trick had it gone off.

Maybe scenarios like these, or others, could be workable in the Star Trek universe. The Federation might not be this crazy, but the Orions might. So Federation tactics would have to take such strategies into account.

 

[Subcommander R.]

Personally I've never understood the role of fighters. When you have that much advanced weaponry and targeting power it makes sense to slap all your systems onto a platform as large as possible. That means better endurance, payload, and survivability.

The only role I can see a fighter succeeding at is hit-and-fade attacks on relatively unprotected targets. And even then, thats not beyond the capability of a frigate or escort acting independently. So why require the use of a carrier just for that?

Before running away with imagination, first consider real-life history.

real-life example #1: Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941
real-life example #2: Battle of Midway, June 4, 1942
real-life example #3: Falklands War, HMS Sheffield sunk, May 10, 1982
real-life example #4: USS Stark Incident, May 17, 1987

In all of these examples, the airplane wins over the ship. The WWII examples are noteworthy for being strategically decisive.

The Battle of Midway is particularly interesting. In their attack on the Japanese carriers, the initial waves of American planes suffered all but total annihilation, but their sacrifice opened the way for a later wave of dive bombers to take out three Japanese carriers in about ten minutes. Those carriers never recovered from that blow and were scuttled. There is a strong case to be made that a few American dive bombers in that moment won the war in the Pacific for the Americans. All the other planes and ships participating in the battle contributed to creating that single moment of vulnerability, in which the dive bombers attacked and won. This was not specifically planned to happen this way, but it was implicitly recognized as a possible outcome when the aircraft were launched, one possibility among many worth trying to achieve and together representing a reasonably possible slice of the pie of possibilities, reasonably possible especially considering the surprise factor and the fog of war in effect.

Today, multi-role planes, such as the F/A-18, blend fighter and bomber roles into a single aircraft.

Many fighters attacking together offer more targets, and can attack independently and simultaneously along multiple trajectories and under multiple scenarios by multiple means. Furthermore, a single fighter is all it takes to defeat an unprotected target. In the Battle of Midway, in the way they died, the preceding waves of American planes made the Japanese carriers wide open vulnerable, ripe, and effectively unprotected, to the wave of dive bombers that destroyed them. They did this by pulling the Japanese fighters out of position and using up their ammunition, and causing confusion and false starts which, due to a failure to observe strict discipline, led to mismanaged ordinance on the carriers, resulting in an explosive "tinder box" effect.

Therefore, having one fighter in a critical position is the cheapest way to exploit a vulnerability. This is really the reason why fighters are important, since it maximizes the number of vulnerabilities that can possibly be simultaneously exploited, for a fixed construction cost. The deployment of many fighters at once is also flexible and in principle highly adaptive.

When real vulnerabilities are potentially present, many fighters attacking simultaneously can make effective defense difficult to plan. In and of itself, the opportunity cost, which is inherent in choosing any precise defense posture over some other, creates in theory opportunities for one fighter to succeed when many attack together.

Note the cost ratio in real-world example #3. How big the loss for the British, versus how little for the Argentinians [for that single incident].

I was talking about space combat in Star Trek. Just when I think something is obvious everyone goes off as if it weren't.

Why the devil would I make such a comment about modern air combat?

 

[Kaziarl]

It's an example Subcommander. Since we have no real world trektech, we have to guess. Best way to do that is to consider what's in use now, and how it might change.

And to someone else (can't find it now for some reason) who said fighters wouldn't have an advantage over speed. Why not? Trek tech or no trek tech they are still bound to certain rules. Big ships can't get up and go, or turn on a dime, like smaller ones can I would think.

 

[Subcommander R.]

The physics are completely different as there is a total lack of resistance. Drag doesn't exist. That means the kinds of motion are extremely different. So why have smaller craft without much going for them rather than larger craft with more weapons systems?

Its efficiency.

Also, keep in mind that due to pilot comfort you need to either upsize fighters to the point where they're basically patrol craft or you need a carrier for them. The closest comparison to our own warfare today is undersea warfare. And that does make sense since in terms of design conventions and practicality space is more like water than sky.

 

[Kaziarl]

It's not really that different at all. If you have a big ship going one direction, it's going to take a lot of force to get it to turn. Where as a small ship will take much less force and be able to turn much faster.

If anything, it's easier to turn in an atmosphere because you can use the drag to your advantage.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The physics are completely different as there is a total lack of resistance. Drag doesn't exist. That means the kinds of motion are extremely different. So why have smaller craft without much going for them rather than larger craft with more weapons systems?

Its efficiency.

I was trying to say that sometimes simply have more craft is better than having fewer. You can try more things at once. To have more craft at a fixed construction cost necessarily means they will be smaller. For the point about a smaller craft outmaneuvering a larger in Star Trek, see my post above, after the one you quoted, about Journey to Babel.