What Are 24th Century Aircraft Carriers Like?
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And the Defiant suffered battle damage inside the atmosphere of a Class-J gas giant, which has conditions far harsher than those you'd find on in an M-Class atmosphere and yet, while it struggled to see through the soup, the ship managed to manoeuvre quite well. So it's logical to assume the Defiant would have ZERO problem in an M-Class atmosphere, even in the midst of the most violent hurricane said planet could muster.
Although there has been a major reduction in the number of wars being fought in the last 20 years, peace on Earth as shown by Star Trek is more unrealistic than warp drive and transporters.
I assume it is indeed a problem when main power and only limited impulse power is available, also despite that the ship must have been doing at least mach 2+ when climbing since a F 104 wasn't able to keep up.
In your opinion. In my opinion - and so for the crafters of the show - it's a lot more realistic. There is no reason for war anymore and you've yet to adduce any.
Back to the original question, why? What is wrong with peace?
Societies decay without continuing to prove their strength through conflict.
I've always said that the United States needs to fight at least some kind of war every 5 to 8 years.
Conflicts such as poverty, sickness, and hunger remain without bothering to kill other people. "This man believes in the same thing we believe in - that killing is stupid and useless." - McCoy in "A Private Little War"
I'll keep that in mind if you're ever up for office.
hellsgate
Commodore
There are carriers, such as the Shelley-Class (Excelsior Class variant) that housed/launched the same fighters visible during the Dominion War/DS9. There was also the Federation/Starfleet carrier U.S.S. Typhon ("Star Trek: Invasion") & its' Valkyrie-Class fighters.
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To be sure, the so-called Shelley has never been shown to launch or recover fighters, and isn't especially well equipped for it. From the looks of it, the type has the standard Excelsior shuttlebay, only mounted in front, and that doesn't yet yell "huge internal hangars!" to me...
Also, if we use the warp engines of the type as the scaling factor, rather than the essentially scale-free primary and secondary hulls, the ship is actually rather tiny - about Miranda size in total volume, with a somewhat smaller saucer but with a secondary hull to compensate.
I'd rather think of the Excelsior modification as a cargo tug of some sort: she's organized a bit like Franz Joseph's old Ptolemy tugs, and the undercut of the secondary hull makes for a nice cargo grapple thingamabob.
The best onscreen ships for launching those DS9 fightercraft would have been either the Galaxy and Nebula giants, with their huge saucertop bays, or then perhaps the Steamrunners, which have the second-biggest shuttlebay doors in evidence. The Akira was reputedly intended by her designer to house small craft, but the doors there are more modest than in the above types.
Timo Saloniemi
Hehe, Rev and I have had similar discussions to this over on Flare. (hey Rev, it's Ahkileez).
It seems whenever a discussion comes up about a scenario like this, most people forget that not all the defenses of a facility or unit has to be intrinsic to it.
A few people mentioned countermeasures. I'd toss my support behind that. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And for every weapon, there is a countermeasure. Simply being a ship in space does not guarantee the ship has all the advantages.
If the invading force has any intention of colonizing or even putting a foot on the surface, they can't use any kind of antimatter torpedoes. Everything would be glowing after. Assuming that, then essentially you're dealing with phasers against shields - and that's not a quick job - ever. There's absolutely no reason why an oceangoing carrier couldn't have the same or greater power generation capability than a starship. One of the primary limitations to producing huge amounts of power is the ability to cool the reactor doing it. In addition to the shipboard cooling system, a properly configured ship could have a system for dumping tons of excess heat into the ocean underneath them, allowing them to push their power generation even higher and creating even *stronger* shields.
If carrier formations are anything like today, she'd have escorts. Escorts firing more powerful, surface-based phaser cannons or torpedoes (since they don't have to worry too much about irradiating space).
Add to that her fighters/support craft and whatever active or passive countermeasures / stealthing technology they have and their weapons, you've just had a massive jump in force multiplication.
There's also no end to the numbers and types of countermeasures able to be deployed in a planetary scenario. Everything from systems interlinked with orbital satellites, dusting the atmosphere with sensor occluding/scattering particles, sympathetic or interference waves, stealth materials, cloaking systems, plain old camouflage and huge numbers of overlapping craft muddying the picture. It would be nowhere near as easy as assumed.
On top of that is the fact that, assuming the carrier or its assets have sensors comparable to starships, if the starship is anywhere overhead of it, then they are essentially on equally open fields, and while the starship can move in three dimensions and the carrier only in two, both may have a clear view of eachother. Perhaps clearer on the carrier's side if they have access to orbital assets.
I would expect 24th century oceangoing carriers to be submersible, because that's a huge tactical advantage. I could be wrong, but as far as I know, star trek hasnt' shown a huge amount of success scanning accurately through water - who knows why. There's no reason for her to need runways per se, but for the sake of being clear in mind, there would probably be some kind of a recovery runway aboard. I would expect it to be loaded to the gills with countermeasures, anti-aircraft/missile defenses, weapons of its own, escorts with their own, and - as a huge field asset - connected to global defense systems it can use to protect whatever territory is assigned to it.
It seems whenever a discussion comes up about a scenario like this, most people forget that not all the defenses of a facility or unit has to be intrinsic to it.
A few people mentioned countermeasures. I'd toss my support behind that. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And for every weapon, there is a countermeasure. Simply being a ship in space does not guarantee the ship has all the advantages.
If the invading force has any intention of colonizing or even putting a foot on the surface, they can't use any kind of antimatter torpedoes. Everything would be glowing after. Assuming that, then essentially you're dealing with phasers against shields - and that's not a quick job - ever. There's absolutely no reason why an oceangoing carrier couldn't have the same or greater power generation capability than a starship. One of the primary limitations to producing huge amounts of power is the ability to cool the reactor doing it. In addition to the shipboard cooling system, a properly configured ship could have a system for dumping tons of excess heat into the ocean underneath them, allowing them to push their power generation even higher and creating even *stronger* shields.
If carrier formations are anything like today, she'd have escorts. Escorts firing more powerful, surface-based phaser cannons or torpedoes (since they don't have to worry too much about irradiating space).
Add to that her fighters/support craft and whatever active or passive countermeasures / stealthing technology they have and their weapons, you've just had a massive jump in force multiplication.
There's also no end to the numbers and types of countermeasures able to be deployed in a planetary scenario. Everything from systems interlinked with orbital satellites, dusting the atmosphere with sensor occluding/scattering particles, sympathetic or interference waves, stealth materials, cloaking systems, plain old camouflage and huge numbers of overlapping craft muddying the picture. It would be nowhere near as easy as assumed.
On top of that is the fact that, assuming the carrier or its assets have sensors comparable to starships, if the starship is anywhere overhead of it, then they are essentially on equally open fields, and while the starship can move in three dimensions and the carrier only in two, both may have a clear view of eachother. Perhaps clearer on the carrier's side if they have access to orbital assets.
I would expect 24th century oceangoing carriers to be submersible, because that's a huge tactical advantage. I could be wrong, but as far as I know, star trek hasnt' shown a huge amount of success scanning accurately through water - who knows why. There's no reason for her to need runways per se, but for the sake of being clear in mind, there would probably be some kind of a recovery runway aboard. I would expect it to be loaded to the gills with countermeasures, anti-aircraft/missile defenses, weapons of its own, escorts with their own, and - as a huge field asset - connected to global defense systems it can use to protect whatever territory is assigned to it.
Well, certainly at the time of Enterprise there seemed to have been national navies (didn't Malcolm upset his parents by joining Starfleet rather than the Royal Navy?).
But, this is probably more traditional rather than intended for warfare.
I still can't see a surface-based carrier group being able to "spoof" orbital starships. Starships can target enemy vessels moving at close to light speed, at ranges of hundreds of thousands of kilometers. A surface-based carrier, even if capable of moving at mach-speeds, should be no problem from orbit.
Trying to use escort ships to confuse the targeting will not be very effective, as you simply bombard the entire group with photons or quantum torps. Even if radiation was a problem, do you really think that an attacker will balk at vaping 20 square miles of ocean? Or, just surgically use phasers.
But, this is probably more traditional rather than intended for warfare.
I still can't see a surface-based carrier group being able to "spoof" orbital starships. Starships can target enemy vessels moving at close to light speed, at ranges of hundreds of thousands of kilometers. A surface-based carrier, even if capable of moving at mach-speeds, should be no problem from orbit.
Trying to use escort ships to confuse the targeting will not be very effective, as you simply bombard the entire group with photons or quantum torps. Even if radiation was a problem, do you really think that an attacker will balk at vaping 20 square miles of ocean? Or, just surgically use phasers.
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I think I addressed all those topics in my response.
Speed is not usually a major component of avoiding those types of weapons so it doesn't much matter how fast the ship can go in space. The weapon would be as fast or faster, therefore evening the odds.
An antimatter weapon is thousands -if not millions- of times more powerful than any nuclear weapon on Earth. The effects of even a single Trek-style torpedo going off at full yield inside atmosphere would be catastrophic. A pinhead's worth of antimatter would be more than enough to utterly atomize any-sized city on Earth. A trek warhead weighing many pounds would do considerably more damage. If you intend to set foot on that planet without a bulky radiation suit, you can't use antimatter weapons.
As for Phasers, I addressed that also. Pounding someone down by phasers appears to be the least effective way of doing it, especially if the craft appear to be relative equals. It would take forever, and the surface vessel would not have the same restriction on using antimatter weapons.
Speed is not usually a major component of avoiding those types of weapons so it doesn't much matter how fast the ship can go in space. The weapon would be as fast or faster, therefore evening the odds.
An antimatter weapon is thousands -if not millions- of times more powerful than any nuclear weapon on Earth. The effects of even a single Trek-style torpedo going off at full yield inside atmosphere would be catastrophic. A pinhead's worth of antimatter would be more than enough to utterly atomize any-sized city on Earth. A trek warhead weighing many pounds would do considerably more damage. If you intend to set foot on that planet without a bulky radiation suit, you can't use antimatter weapons.
As for Phasers, I addressed that also. Pounding someone down by phasers appears to be the least effective way of doing it, especially if the craft appear to be relative equals. It would take forever, and the surface vessel would not have the same restriction on using antimatter weapons.
That's assuming of course that the enemy is interested in invasion rather than removing a tactical obstacle or removing the ability to make war. In such a case they wouldn't give two hoots about environmental impact.
While I'm sure in the 24th century we saw is Star Trek it is technically feasible to build a mobile aircraft carrier, I'm afraid I just don't see the advantage. Perhaps on certain worlds where the surface is mostly covered in oceans (not necessarily water ones) or uninhabitable a fair amount of dwellings may exist as high altitude, semi-mobile platforms, in which case sure, the defensive platforms would essentially be skycarriers, but on Earth (as the OP suggested) or on most M-Class planets for that matter, they wouldn't provide any tactical advantage over the existing options.
In the real world, navy carriers are all about delivering aircraft to a theatre of combat, far away from the home base. In short, attacking other landmasses. They're not suited to defend land on anything more than a temporary basis, even in modern warfare they're not supposed to be in the thick of it, they're suppose to stand off and support the aircraft. Getting attack craft and personnel to a specific location on Earth to counter an invasion attempt is more likely to be done by one or several of what I imagine are hundreds, if not thousands of Starfleet facilities across the globe, plus numerous orbital platforms. We know the Starfleet Attack Fighter is impulse capable (to say nothing of warp) so speed is not an issue, they can be anywhere on the planet in minutes at most. So defence is covered.
Offensively speaking, it makes much more sense to have an orbital satellite system, supplemented by a network of fixed land based weapons installations with heavy shields that can cover a wide area and have power sources buried deep underground (where you can't shoot at it.) Just in terms of fire power and survivability, imagine how much punishment a city sized defence network can take, to say nothing of the offensive capabilities of a heavy duty phaser bank, drawing power from a series of underground M/AM reactors. then there's the fact that a city easily be equipped with several hundred thousand photon torpedoes. Now imagine that applied to every city on Earth. Adding hover carriers into the mix would be like setting up a semaphore tower next to the phone lines. Totally redundant.
The evidence to support this is (believe it or not) in the Breen raid on San Francisco.
Although I don't think any information was given in terms of numbers of attacking ships, it was stated that most of them were destroyed in the attempt, which when you consider that they had the energy dampening weapon (a major tactical advantage) at their disposal and consider that the damage done, was - let's be honest - superficial. You said yourself that a gram of antimatter would be enough to level a city. I imagine they used quite a bit more than that and look what happened; most of them were wiped out and they managed to break the golden gate bridge. This speaks to just how lethal and well protected Earth really is against this kind of threat. Martok even said the Klingons never even attempted a direct assault on Earth, with good reason.
Ok, enough ranting.
While I'm sure in the 24th century we saw is Star Trek it is technically feasible to build a mobile aircraft carrier, I'm afraid I just don't see the advantage. Perhaps on certain worlds where the surface is mostly covered in oceans (not necessarily water ones) or uninhabitable a fair amount of dwellings may exist as high altitude, semi-mobile platforms, in which case sure, the defensive platforms would essentially be skycarriers, but on Earth (as the OP suggested) or on most M-Class planets for that matter, they wouldn't provide any tactical advantage over the existing options.
In the real world, navy carriers are all about delivering aircraft to a theatre of combat, far away from the home base. In short, attacking other landmasses. They're not suited to defend land on anything more than a temporary basis, even in modern warfare they're not supposed to be in the thick of it, they're suppose to stand off and support the aircraft. Getting attack craft and personnel to a specific location on Earth to counter an invasion attempt is more likely to be done by one or several of what I imagine are hundreds, if not thousands of Starfleet facilities across the globe, plus numerous orbital platforms. We know the Starfleet Attack Fighter is impulse capable (to say nothing of warp) so speed is not an issue, they can be anywhere on the planet in minutes at most. So defence is covered.
Offensively speaking, it makes much more sense to have an orbital satellite system, supplemented by a network of fixed land based weapons installations with heavy shields that can cover a wide area and have power sources buried deep underground (where you can't shoot at it.) Just in terms of fire power and survivability, imagine how much punishment a city sized defence network can take, to say nothing of the offensive capabilities of a heavy duty phaser bank, drawing power from a series of underground M/AM reactors. then there's the fact that a city easily be equipped with several hundred thousand photon torpedoes. Now imagine that applied to every city on Earth. Adding hover carriers into the mix would be like setting up a semaphore tower next to the phone lines. Totally redundant.
The evidence to support this is (believe it or not) in the Breen raid on San Francisco.
Although I don't think any information was given in terms of numbers of attacking ships, it was stated that most of them were destroyed in the attempt, which when you consider that they had the energy dampening weapon (a major tactical advantage) at their disposal and consider that the damage done, was - let's be honest - superficial. You said yourself that a gram of antimatter would be enough to level a city. I imagine they used quite a bit more than that and look what happened; most of them were wiped out and they managed to break the golden gate bridge. This speaks to just how lethal and well protected Earth really is against this kind of threat. Martok even said the Klingons never even attempted a direct assault on Earth, with good reason.
Ok, enough ranting.
I enjoy our debates, Rev. Whether I agree with them or not, your points are always well-reasoned. 
I'll stay first off that I've never seen the breen raid episode of DS9. I never even remember what the name of it is to try to watch it - so I can't speak to the the events that took place there.
However, I don't think we can afford to handicap our thinking by relying on the ridiculous sequence of events and twisting of realistic logic that is usually required to put together a typical star trek script.
It's best to work within the established 'laws' of the Trek world, but applied in a more realistic fashion to arrive at a reasonable theory.
A 24th Century Carrier would have far more in common with Galactica or a Star Destroyer than it would with the USS Reagan or the HMS Illustrious. Deck space is the premium around which contemporary carriers are built. If the limitations of present day construction are not a hindrance, then one can construct a far more capable vessel and modify its normal purpose and mode of operation from simply being a plane taxi - as modern day carriers are. To attempt to create a Shield or "Valiant"-style helicarrier would be pointless since their value is only in adding additional maneuverability and tactical hight on top of the capabilities of a modern carrier. There would definitely be a different design purpose involved in creating what we're talking about here.
As stated, this ship and its escorts would have numerous offensive and defensive capabilities. And while impulse-driven fighters can move very quickly across a planet's surface, they will eventually need to rearm, refuel, or possibly even retreat. Any enemy with a modicum of sense would eliminate those air bases/stations/whatever to cripple that capability and leave them mostly stranded. A carrier, especially one that can submerge, would have additional options available to it.
Ultimately, if you're only interested in destroying a planet, the smartest thing to do would be to siege it from a distance. If you bother coming to their doorstep to fight them, that means you want to come in. The radiation becomes a problem again.
I'll stay first off that I've never seen the breen raid episode of DS9. I never even remember what the name of it is to try to watch it - so I can't speak to the the events that took place there.
However, I don't think we can afford to handicap our thinking by relying on the ridiculous sequence of events and twisting of realistic logic that is usually required to put together a typical star trek script.
It's best to work within the established 'laws' of the Trek world, but applied in a more realistic fashion to arrive at a reasonable theory.
A 24th Century Carrier would have far more in common with Galactica or a Star Destroyer than it would with the USS Reagan or the HMS Illustrious. Deck space is the premium around which contemporary carriers are built. If the limitations of present day construction are not a hindrance, then one can construct a far more capable vessel and modify its normal purpose and mode of operation from simply being a plane taxi - as modern day carriers are. To attempt to create a Shield or "Valiant"-style helicarrier would be pointless since their value is only in adding additional maneuverability and tactical hight on top of the capabilities of a modern carrier. There would definitely be a different design purpose involved in creating what we're talking about here.
As stated, this ship and its escorts would have numerous offensive and defensive capabilities. And while impulse-driven fighters can move very quickly across a planet's surface, they will eventually need to rearm, refuel, or possibly even retreat. Any enemy with a modicum of sense would eliminate those air bases/stations/whatever to cripple that capability and leave them mostly stranded. A carrier, especially one that can submerge, would have additional options available to it.
Ultimately, if you're only interested in destroying a planet, the smartest thing to do would be to siege it from a distance. If you bother coming to their doorstep to fight them, that means you want to come in. The radiation becomes a problem again.
...unless of course you're a Tholian.
As far as the Breen raid on SF goes, it only occurred to me during the writing of my little rant, so I wasn't basing anything on that particular event, I just realised they happened to support my supposition.
When it comes to the range and refuelling cycle of an Attack Fighter, given that it's most likely capable of crossing several light years at warp, I think it's safe to say it's range at impulse without refuelling can be measured in months. So the likelihood of one needing a mid combat recharge is exceedingly slim.
If as you say the enemy would first take out the ground bases then again, an aircarrier would be useless as I stated before a base would be much more heavily shielded and far more entrenched than a mobile unit could ever hope to be. Coupled with the fact that if most major cities have such a base then there would be hundreds of them all over the globe and to take out hundreds of heavily shielded ground installations, while dealing with orbital weapons platforms, a home fleet AND defensive fire coming from said surface bases would require a bloody awful lot of fire-power and a sustained barrage from a fleet of near invincible ships.
So if they can handle all that, what bloody good would a bunch of "helicarriers" be, even if they are tricky to target?
Also there's the small point that said barrage would probably devastate everywhere between the cities that aren't shielded and you have yourself a poisoned well scenario again. Which of course may be the point since the best defence is to make attacking at all too costly for the enemy to bother.
As far as the Breen raid on SF goes, it only occurred to me during the writing of my little rant, so I wasn't basing anything on that particular event, I just realised they happened to support my supposition.
When it comes to the range and refuelling cycle of an Attack Fighter, given that it's most likely capable of crossing several light years at warp, I think it's safe to say it's range at impulse without refuelling can be measured in months. So the likelihood of one needing a mid combat recharge is exceedingly slim.
If as you say the enemy would first take out the ground bases then again, an aircarrier would be useless as I stated before a base would be much more heavily shielded and far more entrenched than a mobile unit could ever hope to be. Coupled with the fact that if most major cities have such a base then there would be hundreds of them all over the globe and to take out hundreds of heavily shielded ground installations, while dealing with orbital weapons platforms, a home fleet AND defensive fire coming from said surface bases would require a bloody awful lot of fire-power and a sustained barrage from a fleet of near invincible ships.
So if they can handle all that, what bloody good would a bunch of "helicarriers" be, even if they are tricky to target?
Also there's the small point that said barrage would probably devastate everywhere between the cities that aren't shielded and you have yourself a poisoned well scenario again. Which of course may be the point since the best defence is to make attacking at all too costly for the enemy to bother.
...unless of course you're a Tholian.
As far as the Breen raid on SF goes, it only occurred to me during the writing of my little rant, so I wasn't basing anything on that particular event, I just realised they happened to support my supposition.
Okee doke. I didn't want to put my foot in my mouth trying to debate something I never even saw
Well for our benefit here we're going to have to assume the fighters are not warp-capable, otherwise there'd be absolutely no point to putting them on a carrier that isn't.
So you gotta gimme a caveat on that one. Actually, there's several problems with that. One of the most immediate ones is that assuming the society in question (and it's probably easiest for us to pretend we're talking about Earth here), then you don't want shield and weaponized fortresses in cities because it makes them valid military targets in an environment populated by civilians. We see it in the modern age with missile platforms next to hospitals.
Secondly, all fortresses can be breached. If we use the Breen example, the easiest thing to do would be to not target the city but the faultline instead. You could undermine a facility with phasers or torpedoes if your'e so-inclined, even if the shields could take the impacts directly. Really, there's no end to the options.
The problem with a stationary target is that it's stationary. It can't adapt. Once a half decent plan to breach it is developed, it's like a drunken teen on prom night. Thousands of years of warfare have taught us that once they're inside your walls, you're borked.
A moving target is harder to hit. And I'm not talking about from the weapons-tracking standpoint. It's harder to plan for, it's harder to reach and it can adapt to changing conditions.
The problem is that on the galactic scale, the poisoned well defence is not that much of a plus. If they intend to occupy you, then it can be. If they merely intend conquest, it's not - because if they wipe out your planet, you're going to lose a lot more than they will. Lots more fish in the sea.
If they do intend to occupy the planet and antimatter weapons aren't an option, then you've radically multiplied the capabilities of the local defence structure.
That rambles a bit, but I hope it makes sense.
Of course, the other major factor is, do they use aircraft carriers??
From all of Trek it seems they don't use "modern" military vehicles at all, with no sign of tanks, APC, IFVs, etc. (Thus far of course!). Even when Earth was under martial-law, the only troops we saw on the streets were Starfleet Security, so do they even have a standing army any more?
And as a previous poster said, a carrier is used to project power across the globe. Would such a ship be useful, when aerospace fighters will be capable of reaching anywhere on the planet within minutes?
From all of Trek it seems they don't use "modern" military vehicles at all, with no sign of tanks, APC, IFVs, etc. (Thus far of course!). Even when Earth was under martial-law, the only troops we saw on the streets were Starfleet Security, so do they even have a standing army any more?
And as a previous poster said, a carrier is used to project power across the globe. Would such a ship be useful, when aerospace fighters will be capable of reaching anywhere on the planet within minutes?
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