USS Defiant Decommissioned

[The Badger]

A running battle with the Borg cube seems odd given that Borg ships are faster at ftl speeds then the Federation's. However, the Borg's attacks haven't really made all that much sense anyway.

Perhaps the nature of the running battle involves a series of interceptions rather than Fed ships keeping up with the cube. This is just speculation, but...

1) Some ships, including the three rofeta mentioned, engage the Borg in the Typhon sector. Eventually the Borg gets past them and continues on it's way to Earth. The Defiant, and maybe some others, pursue.
2) Some more ships, already a bit closer to Earth, intercept the cube. They don't stop it, but they do buy time for Earth's defences to be organised. Perhaps the pursuing ships catch up, perhaps not. Sooner or later, the Borg fight through and continue on their merry way.
3) Repeat step 2 a few times as.
4) The Borg get to Earth, and are met by the defence fleet. During the battle the Defiant, and maybe others, catch up and participate.

As I say, pure speculation.

As to the OP, I consider it unlikely that the Defiant would be decommissioned. Even with Star Fleet returning to it's exploration and diplomacy agenda, it still has a duty to defend the Federation. Having lost so many ships in the war it seems foolish in the extreme to get rid of any more, even if they are of a type you hope you will never need.

 

[Timo]

Sounds good overall.

Early in the movie, Data did say that the place where the Borg were first engaged was mere hours away from the E-E's current position. It would thus have taken the anti-Borg forces and the E-E roughly the same time to reach Earth assuming identical speed, with only a few hours of difference either way. Then again, the Defiant has always been considered a slow ship that has problems with running the engines at high power, whereas the E-E has no such reputation - so it's actually a bit odd that the E-E reaches Earth later than the Defiant does.

As for the composition of the fleet near Earth, one might assume a great deal of it would be ships assembled there to wait for the arriving Borg, rather than ships partaking in the chase. Who knows, perhaps Sol was already being used as an assembly point for ships to be used in the upcoming war? Awfully many of the ships in ST:FC are of those same rarely seen (and never before seen) types that in DS9 suddenly become ubiquitous - thus quite probably types that are only used in wartime. So dusting them off and arranging them in parade rows at Sol would be a plausible maneuver for Starfleet a year or so before the intended start of the war. I guess the Admirals weren't elated when the Borg stomped on those parade rows...

If we believe in the above idea that Starfleet keeps warships in mothballs, then the Defiant could be decommissioned at the end of the war, too. If Starfleet can afford to keep all the Akiras and Steamrunners unseen in peacetime, surely it can afford to mothball the small and almost useless Defiant, too?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

If Starfleet can afford to keep all the Akiras and Steamrunners unseen in peacetime, surely it can afford to mothball the small and almost useless Defiant, too?

Timo Saloniemi

I don't see the logic of Starfleet mothballing *anything* that isn't a proven design. Any ship that can serve as a warship can also have other functions. No ship is *only* a warship...

 

[Timo]

Yet we know there are ready-to-fly starships kept in storage at places like Qualor II, perhaps older and less capable models (we saw Mirandas, for example) but still in sufficient condition to be simply flown away by a suitably audacious thief.

Starfleet isn't mothballing ships because it would have a surplus of them, that's for sure - the argument still holds that our heroes are the only ones around when an emergency happen, that there is no permanent starship presence where it happens, that there are no reinforcements within easy reach. There must be some other scarce resource that forces the temporary idlings. Crew shortage? Fuel shortage? Arms limitation treaties?

If a certain number of ships must be idled at all times, surely limited-value vessels like the Defiant would be the first to go.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Badger]

Given the way the Defiant was used in DS9, I'd say that many ships of that class would spend most of their time docked to stations and Starbases in critical locations. They probably wouldn't have a regular crew, rather they'd be operated by personnel from the home base as and when needed.

Slightly off topic, given the number of ships destroyed in the war, I'd speculate that many of the older mothballed vessels are now back in service, at least until new ships are built.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

At the outbreak of the Dominion War, we know there were at least four Defiant class starships in service: Defiant, Valiant, and two more seen in the fleet formation at the end of "A Call to Arms". A further two were seen in "Message In a Bottle", which happens somewhere in the first year of the Dominion War, but there is no evidence for or against them being the same two we saw in ACTA. However, it makes some sense to argue that they are different ships, as they'd be on the opposite end of the Federation from when ATCA took place some time earlier.

Given this supposition, and the fact that Starfleet figured they had enough ships in a pre-war environment to send a bunch of cadets on a one-year training mission aboard the shiny new Valiant, suggests that the Defiant class was in at least limited production by the time the Dominion War broke out. I'm happy thinking that there could be a dozen or more of the li'l turtles flying around doing "escort" missions while all the while being the heavy guns of whatever fleet or sector they were assigned to. Given all the action the Defiant had seen in the three years prior to the war, and knowing that a war was on the horizon, I see no reason why they wouldn't take O'Brien's fixer-upper reports and started the Defiant production line running, next to the "Sternbach Galaxy" integration line.

Mark

 

[Praetor]

We get at least three name drops, Lexington, Bozeman and Defiant as they hear the first minute of the battle.

OT, interestingly the subtitles on the DVD make 'Lexington' into 'Lexicon.'

Yet we know there are ready-to-fly starships kept in storage at places like Qualor II, perhaps older and less capable models (we saw Mirandas, for example) but still in sufficient condition to be simply flown away by a suitably audacious thief.

Starfleet isn't mothballing ships because it would have a surplus of them, that's for sure - the argument still holds that our heroes are the only ones around when an emergency happen, that there is no permanent starship presence where it happens, that there are no reinforcements within easy reach. There must be some other scarce resource that forces the temporary idlings. Crew shortage? Fuel shortage? Arms limitation treaties?

I don't know about calling them 'temporarily idle.' It's a big Federation and it might be a very big fleet for all we know - starships might just be generlaly far flung from one another. How do we know that they don't have too many ships? I could see personnel and treaties playing a big part in it too, though.

If a certain number of ships must be idled at all times, surely limited-value vessels like the Defiant would be the first to go.

I tend to agree. Prometheus probably too. Who knows what bizarre one-off testbeds and prototypes might be found at those surplus depots?

 

[James Wright]

I have 2 questions, Where is Deep Space 5 located and where is the Typhon Sector in relation to Sector 001?
In the novel Data says that at maximum warp the Enterprise could be in the Typhon Sector in 3 hours 25 minutes.

James

 

[Jono]

I have 2 questions, Where is Deep Space 5 located and where is the Typhon Sector in relation to Sector 001?
In the novel Data says that at maximum warp the Enterprise could be in the Typhon Sector in 3 hours 25 minutes.

James

Given the nature of warp travel on Star Trek the Typhon sector could be on the edge of the galaxy for all we know 1,000s of light years away.

I can give a non-canon answer to that. In the book Star Trek: Star Charts, they don't label the sector but they do point out Deep Space 5, which is in a sector adjacent to the Typhon Expanse, so the Typhon sector could in located around there. That's around 80-100 ly from Earth.

Given that this is roughly the same distance from Earth as Bajor that might explain how Ditl.org came up with their four day figure for the battle. We know from Paradise Lost that it took the Defiant 4 days to go from Bajor to Earth, so it should take roughly the same amount of time for the Defiant to go from the area near DS5 to Earth.

 

[James Wright]

Reading the book gives the impression that the Typhon Sector borders Sectur 001.
Is DS9 located in the Bajoran Sector?

James

 

[Jono]

Reading the book gives the impression that the Typhon Sector borders Sectur 001.
Is DS9 located in the Bajoran Sector?

James

Yes

 

[James Wright]

How many sectors have names and how many have numbers?

James

 

[Jono]

Memory Alpha lists 116 sectors as part of their database. It looks like less then half are referred to by a number, (Sector 001, etc) and the rest are named. Some of the numbered sectors may also have names such as Sector 001, which is also called the Sol sector and some are crazy combos likeRhomboid Dronegar sector 006