Starfighters

[J.T.B.]

I'm still not sure of the pros and cons of them being at least semi-independent (up to RADM or even VADM but still answerable to the Commander, Starfleet and potentially the Chief of Starfleet Operations) rather than them being totally interchangeable with regular Starfleet Exploration Division/Deep Space Exploration Corps personnel?

I don't think there would be a separate high-level organization. Since Starfleet seems to be organized regionally anyway, I would imagine ships for shorter-range missions would be under a squadron (or whatever) commander who reported to the local Starbase commander. A possible model might be USN PT boat squadrons in WW2, which were designated coastal forces under local Sea Frontier commanders. PT boats that went into forward areas without bases were accompanied by a tender. A similar arrangement was used for patrol boats in Vietnam.

I tend to blame things like that on budget more than anything else. Not really any other good reason for most Trek battles to be stuck in three-dimensional World War I naval tactics at best.

Or earlier; even in WW1 battleships normally fought seven to ten miles apart!

 

[Jedi Marso]

The technology of Trek seems to make starfighters more superfluous than in other milieus like SW or BSG. The ships in Trek have phasers with pinpoint targeting and photon torpedoes with the same, both of which can be fired at FTL speeds with apparent almost unerring accuracy. Not only that, the yield of Federation weapons can be modulated as needed, the way we saw shipboard phasers used to 'stun' large numbers of people on the ground in TOS. The ships also have energy shielding. These factors all mean that 'bigger is better' when it comes to combat capability. Bigger = more power generation, better shielding, more/ more powerful weapons, more / more sensitive sensors and ECM capacity, etc. Capital ships in the Trek-verse are capable of the same ( in many cases higher) speeds and accelerations than smaller ships, meaning there is no advantage for a classic fighter there either.

Look at the Borg targeting those small corvettes coming at them from Mars in BOBW. Basically, fighters in the Trek verse are just going to get swatted out of the sky by larger ships with good sensors and phaser collimator rings. I tend to think that fighter-like ships would have been phased out not long after the beginning of the Enterprise era, or the advent of deflector shield technology and FTL targeting at the very latest.

 

[fireproof78]

I think it depends on the situation and the engagement.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

I don't think there would be a separate high-level organization. Since Starfleet seems to be organized regionally anyway, I would imagine ships for shorter-range missions would be under a squadron (or whatever) commander who reported to the local Starbase commander. A possible model might be USN PT boat squadrons in WW2, which were designated coastal forces under local Sea Frontier commanders. PT boats that went into forward areas without bases were accompanied by a tender. A similar arrangement was used for patrol boats in Vietnam.

What rank do you think the squadron leader would be?

My assumption would be the Ju'day-type probably operate in flights (3 to 6 ships, each commanded by a Lieutenant; with Lieutenant Commander as flight commander, total complement 90 to 300), whereas the smaller two-man fighters - while they appear to attack in threes or fours are more likely to be organised into squadrons (1 Officer, 1 NCO per ship; with a senior Lieutenant as squadron leader, total complement 36 to 48 pilots/ops specialists plus carrier/starbase ground crew)?

 

[J.T.B.]

^ Yeah, lietuenant--lieutenant commander seems about right.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Mostly ensigns for the fighter pilots. Maybe a LTJG for 3-4 fighters, with the squadron leader in the lead fighter?

No more than three or four officers on the Ju-day's (CO, XO/TO, back-up pilot, ChEng)? Plus a Chief or two and the rest enlisted?

 

[Tenacity]

The ships in Trek have phasers with pinpoint targeting and photon torpedoes with the same, both of which can be fired at FTL speeds with apparent almost unerring accuracy

Starfleet weapons miss all the time. Against a small target with malnuverability, top tech shields and maybe future versions of stealth, starships should have even a lower ratio of hits.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Starfleet weapons miss all the time. Against a small target with malnuverability, top tech shields and maybe future versions of stealth, starships should have even a lower ratio of hits.

But when they do hit on successive salvoes, the fighter will be immediately disabled/destroyed depending on phaser power. In the meantime, the fighter packs no offensive punch strong enough to penetrate a capital ship's shields. What's more, the fighter cannot outrun the starship in the Trek-verse, making the initial engagement an extremely risky maneuver. A starship could also use tractor beams to limit a fighter from maneuvering or stop it entirely, rendering it completely ineffective. As I said, technology as it's written in Trek so advanced that fighters just don't really work other than as some sort of gimmick. In terms of speed, shielding, maneuverability, and armament, a fighter might as well be a runabout and be able to carry cargo and passengers as well.

 

[Space Coast]

But when they do hit on successive salvoes, the fighter will be immediately disabled/destroyed depending on phaser power. In the meantime, the fighter packs no offensive punch strong enough to penetrate a capital ship's shields. What's more, the fighter cannot outrun the starship in the Trek-verse, making the initial engagement an extremely risky maneuver. A starship could also use tractor beams to limit a fighter from maneuvering or stop it entirely, rendering it completely ineffective. As I said, technology as it's written in Trek so advanced that fighters just don't really work other than as some sort of gimmick. In terms of speed, shielding, maneuverability, and armament, a fighter might as well be a runabout and be able to carry cargo and passengers as well.

Apart from speed and tractor beams, everything you've said describes fighters in World War II as well. Even the Imperial Japanese Navy's sad attempts at anti-air were capable of disintegrating most fighter-sized aircraft they touched when they did hit, and fighters (hell, even torpedo and dive bombers) lacked the power to take on capital ships alone unless they got extremely lucky and hit a magazine. Or the engines. Sure, a fighter's phasers probably won't be enough to do diddly against a capital ship's shielding, but a good-sized fleet carrier can carry dozens of fighters, and that's a whole lot of diddly.

As for engines and tractor beams, I imagine the opposite situation for engines - Fighters, in my mind, would be more than capable of fleeing all but the fastest warships, they'd simply lack the range to do so for very long. And there's always hull poralization to break a tractor beam. If a fighter's engines aren't peppy enough to break the lock, they could just polarize the hull and be on their merry way. Or dump torpedoes at the source of the beam and force the ship to shut it off or risk getting its deflector smashed.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Apart from speed and tractor beams, everything you've said describes fighters in World War II as well.

You've forgotten deflector shields, which makes all the difference. If WWII surface ships had them, fighters couldn't have scratched them before being blown away. As it was, air attacks against surface forces in WWII resulted in terrible attrition among the air assets, and even more so when the proximity fuse for AA shells was introduced. Surface ships in WWII could not 'warp away' from massed aerial attacks, nor did they have deflector shields to absorb the damage of bomb/torpedo hits. So the WWII analogy in no way holds up to the fictional technology of Trek.

EDIT: One other major difference between the capital ships of WWII and Trek is that the latter operate in the same medium and move in 3 dimensions just like the fighters that would be attacking them. Again, a marked difference from ocean-going surface ships in WWII.

 

[Timo]

Starfleet weapons miss all the time.

Hmh? In the entire history of Star Trek, I don't think we have seen a UFP Starfleet starship phaser miss a visible opponent once.

The 100% hit rate applies to UFP Starfleet starships only, though. A runabout missed a shot against a maneuvering opponent in both "Jem'Hadar" and "Maquis II" (but nevertheless connected several times against equally maneuvering targets). Klingons love to spray'n'pray (or probably they leave the praying to the victim, given the bulk of the spray still always finds its target), but even then only with their rapid-fire wingtip cannon. The big solid beams from the bows of the bigger ships have 100% hit rate unless trickery such as in "Way of the Warrior" is implemented. Romulans always hit their target, unless they deliberatelty mis-aim - it's strange that Picard and Jarok both didn't immediately spot something amiss in "The Defector"!

More primitive cultures have lower hit rates, and Cardassians don't quite manage 100%, although even they get very close. Gul Evek's ship in "Preemptive Strike" is a good example of the Cardassians sometimes managing to miss - but a much better example of their hits being non-decisive even against small craft! I guess shields in Trek work the exact opposite way to that proposed above: they can provide battleship-level armor to fightercraft at no weight penalty, equalizing matters.

Now, we can argue that the 100% hit rate is because the guns remain silent unless a hit is guaranteed. Maneuvering might make a difference in the frequency of hits, then. But we see the Defiant maneuver as violently as she possibly can in "Paradise Lost", and this is to zero effect: every single hit from the Lakota connects, and there are plenty of hits for each pass the ship makes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tenacity]

the fighter packs no offensive punch strong enough to penetrate a capital ship's shields

Not a given, although fighters probably lack the ability for repeat hits. Maybe a good solid dozen, or so.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Another way to look at battles in the Trek-verse is that all battles are exercises in energy management / employment. All vessels, from runabouts to the Enterprise-E, can move in three dimensions, operate at all speeds up to and through FTL, and employ equivalent weaponry. Given two commanders of equal ability, that only leaves size and power generating capacity as the big differentials.

What this means is that in all cases, fighters in the Trek-verse are left out in the cold. The size of the superstructure (how much damage can be absorbed, as well as how many emitters / collimators / hard points can be placed) and the amount of energy generated basically determine what you could call a 'combat rating'. Even then, power generation is the biggest factor. It determines the strength of shielding available, the amount of power that can be channeled to weapons, and what's left over for sensors, maneuvering, etc. The smaller the hull, the smaller the reactor and the lower the amount of power generation. Over time, the march of technology suggests that you can pack more and more into a smaller hull, but that doesn't alter the underlying premise: you can still stuff MORE of the same into a larger hull.

In order for fighters to be effective combatants in the Trek-verse, you would have to alter the physics of it considerably. For starters, fighters would have to have a serious speed advantage over capital ships. Second, combat at FTL speeds would have to be impossible. Thirdly, you would also have to get rid of deflector shield technology to even really consider it. Take away deflectors, however, and you completely change the paradigm and fighters immediately become viable again. Lastly, targeting capabilities would have to be seriously reduced in order for fighter swarms to stand a chance to engage capital ships with or without deflector shields. Even then, attrition among fighters attacking groups of larger ships would be catastrophic. Imagine in WWII if every flak burst was a guaranteed kill. The aircraft carrier air wing would have been useless as a military weapon except as they were originally conceived: as reconnaissance and gunnery spotters for battleships.

 

[Voth commando1]

They can be used for ground assaults.

 

[Timo]

And indeed of the two Starfleet fighter uses described or discussed onscreen, one involved an attack against a ground target ("The Maquis II") and went without comment, and the other involved an attack against starships ("Sacrifice of Angels") and was declared misuse and suicide.

Apart from these two, the fighters remained a presence in most of the Dominion War starship battles - they simply were not acknowledged in dialogue or other plot elements, and for all practical purposes served as decorative elements, failing to help us along in our analysis of their true role.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Voth commando1]

In Living Witness they mention using fighter shuttles.

 

[Space Coast]

In Living Witness they mention using fighter shuttles.

Unless it was during the Doctor's story, that's far from reliable.

 

[Voth commando1]

In my head canon I always say it's a mirror universe permutation.

 

[Tenacity]

Given two commanders of equal ability, that only leaves size and power generating capacity as the big differentials.

Don't forget the skills and daring of the commander's subordinates. battles are won and lost by soldiers not generals.

. The smaller the hull, the smaller the reactor and the lower the amount of power generation

Capacitors.

In my head canon I always say it's a mirror universe permutation.

Agree, the Doctor was from the prime, but the bulk of the episode occurred in the Mirror.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Capacitors.

You can put more/bigger capacitors in a larger hull. Same principle.