The Defiant vs Phased Polaron Beams

[All Seeing Eye]

I'm rewatching DS9 on Virgin 1 and this time around ive noticed something I never thought about the first time around, I watched the episode where the Odyssey is taken out with a kamakaze run, we are introduced to phased polaron beams which penetrate federation shields. Now ive watched the next one with the introduction of the Defiant, now the Defiant got its ass kicked in its first mission but further missions prove more successful as my memory serves me but what I dont understand is how does the defiant cope so well when its shields dont work, I know the Federation dont produce effective shields until further into the future when they capture that Jem'Hadar warship crashed on that planet so just how does the Defiant manage to survive? surely its ablative armour can sustain only so much damage from phased polaron beams?

 

[Photon]

I would have to say the Odyssey and especially the Defiant's shields were more tuned to keeping out the Borg's disruptor fire. Since the Deifant was taken out of cold storage and flown to DS0, I doubt whether Sisko gotta chance to remod the shields for Dominion beams.
I was surprised the Defiant took such a beating, but I think they were trying to show us how powerful the Dominion ships were.

Notice on the other encounters, especially Chin'toka ( I blv) the Defiant pretty much had its way w/Jem'Hadar ships. Even destroying a Jem battlecruiser.

I see it sorta like a boxer who's not familiar w/a very aggressive opponent, it takes a few rounds to adapt to their tactics.
IMO the Defiant class and the Akira shown the selves very good in the war.
But what will happen in the Dominion War II? Stay tuned.

 

[Tzenkethi]

The Defiant had ablative armor protecting it.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Tzenkethi said:
The Defiant had ablative armor protecting it.

Once shot off, the defiant is defenceless, no way can armour protect against an onslaught without shield protection.

 

[Lindley]

In "Call to Arms" Weyoun comments that Federation shields must have been improved to stand against their weapons.

Granted, that's quite a while after the initial skirmishes.

 

[Tzenkethi]

Rethink the whole scene in 'The Search' the Dominion wanted to capture the Defiant not destroy it maybe their weapons were set low.
I take Dominion transporter tech is also based on polaron because the Jem Hadar in that episode seemed to have the ability to beam through the shields.

 

[starburst]

I the Search Defiant had lost main power so the shield would have been offline

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Yes, the Romulan commented that the shields had failed.

But my point really is not what happened in 'the search' but what happened after that, the Defiant suddenly becomes a super ship that takes little damage from phased polaron beams and they continually raise shields even when they know they're useless, the shield power could be put to better use.

 

[Timo]

I would suspect that the Federation shields were transparent to polaron beams only during the very first engagement, the Odyssey one. Post-combat analysis would tell the Federation engineers what went wrong, and the shields would be modified accordingly, and very quickly at that. Yet none of these mods would yet be in place when the Defiant ventured to combat in "The Search", so the Dominion would not learn of the Federation advances at that point. And after "The Search", there would be no Starfleet/Jem'Hadar combat encounters where the Dominion would be able to verify the potency of Federation shields.

Indeed, when Weouyn is surprised by the new shields in "Call to Arms", this is the first known time a Dominion combat force survives its exchange of fire with Starfleet ships to tell the tale! There could have been improvements to the shields for the past three-four seasons already, and the Dominion spies and analysts would simply have dismissed them as ineffective, out of sheer arrogance and lack of corroborating evidence.

After all, the spies would know about the ablative armor on the Defiant, and the fact that this can withstand prolonged fire from a Klingon attack cruiser (as in "Way of the Warrior"). Yes, the armor is that good. So they wouldn't necessarily draw the conclusion that Federation shields have improved even when they see (or, more exactly, merely hear) the Defiant eliminate some random Jem'Hadar opponents during seasons 3-5.

Yet in fact the victories of the Defiant could well be attributed to improved Starfleet shielding, rather than to the hull armor alone...

Timo Saloniemi