• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Shipboard Federation Fighter

westwords2020

Commander
Red Shirt
Andy Proberts fighter is fine but lacks warp capability and standard size torpedoes in external racks. Having seen combatant small craft in Nemesis and impulse driven fighter in this board I think small squadron of high speed short range fighters should be carried by some Fed ships; those with large shuttlecraft hangars.
For compactness, the warp pylons with tip nacelles fold for storage upwards. Underfuelsalage are carried external racks with standard yield torpedoes equipped with ful capability warp engines and can be fired on impulse or warp or even thruster propulsion by the fighter. I would say that four to six might be carried. Additional, a fore and aft phaser would provide self defense along with a high power short duration shield. Range would be limited and a crew of two carried. Sensor deception and stealth systems would aid survivability by creating one or more false images of where the fighter was to an opponent's sensors or delaying detection until the fighter was at point blank range ala modern a/c stealth. Heck, with full warp torpedoes even shuttlecraft could become dangerous to say nothing of unmanned armed AI conrolled vehicles.
 
Depends on the size of the ship.

The smaller, the better, of course.

If a Constitution-class vessel such as Kirk's 1701 Enterprise only have room for a small compliment of shuttlecraft, they'd have to all be swapped off to make room for what you suggest. Any they'd have to be smaller than the shuttles in order to cram more of them into the hangar.

Does anyone know the exact outer dimensions of the Class F shuttlecraft?
 
Westwords, you have fine speculations there!

Torpedoes have a range long enough so you don't have to close to point blank distances... I blame DS9 ( an otherwise excellent show ) for this need for space combat to take place at rock- throwing distances. I mean, we keep seeing Battle of Jutland scenes whan we should be seeing Battle of Midway ones instead.

I've been thinking about a fanfic about a Federation carrier where the ship is limited in non military missions because all it can do is carry fighters.

Back in TOS, fighters would have been an excellent way to deal with Romulan ships... the big plasma weapon would be of little use against a number of small, nimble, opponents just waiting for the Rom to decloak...
 
westwords2020 said:
to say nothing of unmanned armed AI controlled vehicles.

Rather than AI controlled I would like to think that the fighter could be controlled remotely. It would share the AI advantage of not having a pilot, thus having more room room for weapons emplacements.

The remote control would be a human pilot in a small cockpit located on the mother ship. The fighter's sensors would relay all data to its controller and displayed to him in the "cockpit". If his ship is destroyed or severely disabled he could abandon it (set its self destruct or put it on a suicide run) and switch to a new unused fighter stored in the hangerbay.

AI and remote piloting both have their strengths and weaknesses:

An AI piloted fighter would not be vulnerable to jamming, but once it's gone, it's gone.

A remote pilot would be able to switch to a new ship.

AI ships may not be able to adapt to a quickly moving fight situation or a new enemy tactic it also may not be able take the risks a pilot could.

Pilots taking risks may cause more ships being lost with little or no gain.

AI ships could react more quickly.

Piloted ships could react in a more unexpected way. A pilot could come up with his own "Picard Maneuver".
 
Thanks for the comments. If the AI was sentient, something that has a tendency to strike Fed computer programs and even a ship like Ent D perhaps it would be good but I'm getting into GRA territory if the mothership was sentient. Ah, GRA, so much to offer ruined when RHW was let go!
But Andromeda could download her programs/personality into a fighter or probe and it could then make human level decisions. Sentient AI is something that would be novel to the Feds if proceeded with and in the relationship of a captian to his sentient ship which Trek could better explore than GRA which was rundown to nothing.
 
westwords2020 said:
Thanks for the comments. If the AI was sentient, something that has a tendency to strike Fed computer programs and even a ship like Ent D perhaps it would be good but I'm getting into GRA territory if the mothership was sentient. Ah, GRA, so much to offer ruined when RHW was let go!
But Andromeda could download her programs/personality into a fighter or probe and it could then make human level decisions. Sentient AI is something that would be novel to the Feds if proceeded with and in the relationship of a captian to his sentient ship which Trek could better explore than GRA which was rundown to nothing.

Only problem with sentient fighters, is if they can think for themselves, they can choose not to fight or to fight on the side of the enemy, or for their own goals.
 
Get holographic pilots like the EMH. Holograms. They're a good thing. Until they start acting out, then we use the kill switch.
 
First thing -I- would do as an advanced AI is figure out how to prevent someone ELSE from turning me off.

And, remember, in the real world, robot armaments have killed more innocent civilians by two orders of magnitude than they have actual military targets.
 
I actually like the idea of one- and two-man Starfleet probes. And there is indirect precedent for it in TREK; consider ENT's "First Flight":

http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/First_Flight

Maybe the NX-Alpha, with a rocketship-like, Phoenix-like main hull, a nosecone habitat, and folding wings that can retract the nacelles, could provide a great deep-space probe that could also double as a fighter.

http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=91&pos=139

http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=91&pos=149

http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=91&pos=160

http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=91&pos=254

http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=91&pos=398

http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=91&pos=461

http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=91&pos=479

http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=91&pos=484

http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=91&pos=495

http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=91&pos=496

http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=91&pos=517

Phoenix... my favorite shot:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=140&pos=34

Hey, I can't help myself. I love these pictures!

I would envision a manned probecraft being signicantly larger than a torpedo, but smaller than a Class F Shuttlecraft. A poor example might be the scoutship seen in TAS:

http://tas.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=10&pos=67

See the oval-shaped one with the nacelles on top, at far-right?

Maybe a "real" scoutship would be smaller than what that one appears. (TAS seems to distort size; there's definitely not room in TOS Enterprise's hangar deck for a fleet of ships to sit in launch position like that:

http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=62&pos=11
 
Oh, a trek FIGHTER would be easy, really. You need something the size of a shuttle that can go high warp for brief periods, carry four torpedoes (racked), a single phaser, and minimal shielding. Even in TOS's time, a fighter is certainly possible and easy to make.

The problem isn't that it's possible, though, and more that a lot of Trek fans RESENT the idea of fighters because of a certain OTHER science-fantasy franchise out there...
 
Trek fighters would not behave like fighters in that other universe. Attacks would be torpedo not laser and in fighter/fighter combat the phasers would be sited to fire in a spherical bubble around ship instead of relying on aerodynamic like manuever as Jesco Von Puttkamer posited decades ago"...the best way to answer that fire is a rearwards pointed phaser."
 
I agree that the Federation could deploy small craft that would serve as fighters, and would likely perform very well in this function.

But they would not call them fighters, because of the Federation's multi-purpose philiosophy toward spacecraft. These are ships that would have to be useful for other applications, such as deep space exploration.

The NX-Alpha prototype in "First Flight" made perfect sense, and I could easily see a smaller, 23rd century version launching from the hangar deck on Kirk's Enterprise. But Kirk and company would call it something other than a "fighter" because it would have multiple uses.
 
Actually, I see an NX-Alpha type of ship more as a reconnaissance ship rather than a fighter.

More of a SR71/U2 type of thing.
 
I'm not thinking in exact terms of something that is the specifc size and shape of the NX-Alpha. I'm thinking along the lines of something about the length of a Class F shuttlecraft, perhaps considerably shorter, perhaps narrower, shaped a little like Carter Winston's scoutship in TAS:

http://tas.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=10&pos=67

(Look at the ship sitting at the background-right)


Such a ship may have folding wings and a cockpit like the NX-Alpha, but its size and shape might be different.
 
A thought occurred to me:

Let's assume (based on partial canonical evidence from "The Omega Glory") that Constitution-class starships have a typical compliment of 4 class F shuttlecraft. Just for a moment, let's assume there isn't any room in the starship's hangar deck storage bay for any more than that.

Now let's assume that Starfleet in the 23rd century also, somewhat less commonly, deploys other EVA ships from time to time. Let's call my Carter Winston / NX-Alpha idea a "probecraft" (for lack of a better term), and assume its total volume in storage is one-half that of a class F shuttlecraft. If these probecrafts can be stacked in storage with their wings double-folded and/or the wing-nacelle assembly detached and stored separately, then a single class F shuttlecraft could be swapped off at starbase for two probecraft. Thus, if all four shuttlecraft were swapped off, a Constitution-class starship could hold eight probecraft.

Each probecraft would have to be highly modular for both storage and maintenance purposes. It should be possible for, say, supplementary fuel tanks and science/sensor packages to be swapped out for weapon packages. So a probecraft could be a recon vehicle for one mission, a manned science probe for another, and a "fighter" for yet another. All from the same ship using different adaptations.

Now let's assume, for sake of argument, that in addition to the 4 class F shuttles, there's a little room left over for other ships and/or modules. Say, two, three or four probecraft. Now, if you swapped out only one or two class F shuttles, you could still have room for the remaining shuttles, plus a light squadron of probecraft.

It all depends on how much room there is aboard a Constitution-class starship.
 
I think this is where the "Killer Bee" concept would come into play.

Take your standard Work Bee cockpit, and instead of attaching manipulator arms or a towing package, you snap on weapons and warp engines.
 
I have sketched versions of both a TOS bee and a TOS killer bee assault pod, for the Surya. I've just never finished them in a presentable form. But in short, the bee is more streamlined and more "early Syd Mead/retro" looking, and the KB is smaller overall with much shorter nacelles, but the overall composition is noticably antecedent to what I came up with for the Reliant/Avenger.
 
You could convert secondary hull space to spacecraft hangars at a cost in crew amenities or some supplies. FJD showed a maintaince hangar under flight deck of shuttlecraft hangar.
Remember too the writer's not taking this possibility into account.
For a future Trek project, you would have officer on the bridge/in the cockpit in charge of these auxillary craft like a CAG or commander air group of today which would be a new and important character on the bridge.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top