With Starfleet ships, its quite obvious where the deflector dishes are. With Klingon and Romulan ships, not so much. Where exactly are they when is comes to their ships?
Where are the deflectors located on Klingon and Romulan ships?
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I'm pretty sure the Klingon battlecruiser's deflector dish was meant to be the circular depression in the front of the forward "bulb," complete with a protruding spike in the middle like on the Enterprise dish. But TAS and TMP reinterpreted it as a weapon port, and that's what it's been assumed to be ever since.
There are also Starfleet designs that don't have deflector dishes, notably the Miranda class. I think the handwave is that their shield systems are configured to do the job in place of a forward deflector beam.
You are correct sir! I literally have the Haynes Klingon BoP manual in my hand.
Double checked it, the ring is a "Navigational Deflector Ring" ONLY.
It's not a full powered Multi-Function Deflector Dish that StarFleet likes to use.
So it's far more limited in functionality.
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I think that Klingon ships have more integrated deflector designs compared to SF.
On BoP, its supposed to be a glowing 'ring' around the torpedo tube... and on the Vor'Cha class, there is something akin to a deflector on the front.
For other designs, its possible they are more integrated.
Plus, Klingons have been interstellar for longer than Humans (thoug that wouldn't have remained the case for very long because the UFP blends technology and science from its member planets - so UFP technology would similarly be WAY more advanced)... and its possible that their deflector capabilities are not exactly on par with SF's... still capable, but with reduced functionality in terms of versatility.
Some SF starships don't have visible deflector dishes... which is odd at best, but its possible they just don't need them and use other means to do the same thing - plus, their mission profiles wouldn't require of them to have deflector dishes perhaps.
On BoP, its supposed to be a glowing 'ring' around the torpedo tube... and on the Vor'Cha class, there is something akin to a deflector on the front.
For other designs, its possible they are more integrated.
Plus, Klingons have been interstellar for longer than Humans (thoug that wouldn't have remained the case for very long because the UFP blends technology and science from its member planets - so UFP technology would similarly be WAY more advanced)... and its possible that their deflector capabilities are not exactly on par with SF's... still capable, but with reduced functionality in terms of versatility.
Some SF starships don't have visible deflector dishes... which is odd at best, but its possible they just don't need them and use other means to do the same thing - plus, their mission profiles wouldn't require of them to have deflector dishes perhaps.
The (Borg / Voth / Numerous Advanced Alien Species) don't have visible Deflector Dishes.
Yet they all have the ability to emit shields, create navigational deflector fields of some form and go FTL, scan at long range.
Deflector Dishes aren't a required tech when it comes to operating in Space, there are other ways to do the same thing.
Other species literally prove it.
Hell Species 8472 have biological ships along with other FTL capable space life forms, no visible "Deflector Dish" or equivalent biological apendage. Yet they manage to go FTL.
So the Deflector Dish is what StarFleet chooses to use for various reasons.
Klingons optimize their ship for pure combat, so having "Just enough Sensor capabilities" is probably their design mentality, everything else is put towards Offense/Defense/Stealth.
StarFleet ships usually have some form of Teeny Tiny "Navigational Deflector Dish" at minimum
The saucer section of the Enterpridse D has 4 small little slits in the front that houses the Navigational Deflector for when it seperates at warp and is warp coasting.
The Miranda class manages to only have a tiny Navigational Deflector Dish on the underside of the saucer facing forward.
No primary large Deflector Dish, so it probably uses another method for long range scanning.
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What it boils down to is the different design philosophies of different ship designers. Matt Jefferies was big on plausible, practical designs, and TOS's science consultants advised that a starship would need some kind of asteroid deflection beam, so Jefferies made sure to put a forward deflector dish on his designs, at least the main ones, the Enterprise and Klingon battlecruiser. Since Wah Chang designed the Romulan Bird of Prey, it didn't have a dish. And when you got to TWOK, the ILM designers didn't give the Reliant a dish. And so on.
Really, I realized some years back that a deflector beam would only really work at sublight. Whatever energy it projects forward would not be able to travel faster than light outside the warp bubble, so it couldn't precede the ship when it was at warp. The warp field itself would have to be shaped to deflect particles. So I guess it sort of stands to reason that if it could do that, some similar kind of deflection field could be generated at sublight.
Really, I realized some years back that a deflector beam would only really work at sublight. Whatever energy it projects forward would not be able to travel faster than light outside the warp bubble, so it couldn't precede the ship when it was at warp. The warp field itself would have to be shaped to deflect particles. So I guess it sort of stands to reason that if it could do that, some similar kind of deflection field could be generated at sublight.
As for the Romulan BoP, I couldn't find any on that design. So yeah, it didn't have one.
The Borg / Voth / Numerous Alien Species don't have obvious Navigational Deflector Dishes.
So there is more than likely one way to go at FTL and Sweep away small μ-Meteroids.
That's not what the Memory Alpha states when it comes to the matter, but hey there's different Head Canon's =D.
Here's what the Haynes Klingon BoP manual states about the issue, I think you'll find it interesting.
That's a fan rationalization after the fact. I'm talking about the original design concepts, and how ILM's designers weren't following the same logic as Matt Jefferies. (Which is part of why I never much liked ILM's Trek starship designs.)
That's basically my point -- that Trek's fictional assertions about how the system works don't really make sense if you think about the realistic physics of it.
Here's what the Haynes Klingon BoP manual states about the issue, I think you'll find it interesting.
Meh, it's just the usual handwaves and technobabble, enough to create the surface illusion of making sense but not actually holding up to analysis. It's a clumsy attempt to reconcile the very contradiction I pointed out between an FTL warp field and a deflection effect projected ahead of it, and it doesn't actually explain anything so much as simply assert that it works the way it claims.
Anyway, the real-life theoretical physics analysis of warp metrics shows that a deflection effect could be built into the field itself, or that the field would automatically "catch" any particulates within its leading edge (and then blast them forward in a lethally intense particle beam once the field collapsed, so that's a drawback). So Trek's idea from the 1960s that you'd need both a warp field and a deflector beam has been superseded by modern theory. The beam would really only be needed at sublight.
Then you might find this interesting.
How a more ACCURATE depiction of how Warp Drive would look like given modern theory.
My favorite warp drive effect in Trek is the one in Star Trek Beyond, because it actually looks like the ship is in a warp bubble. I wish they'd kept that one for the modern shows.
I kind of like the new interpretation based on Physicist Erik Lentz updated papers.
It looks good, blends in with existing ST pretty well IMO.
It would be easy enough to copy.
And we can merge that with the new knowledge that small particles would get trapped at the edge of the Warp Bubble.
That could actually be used as a weapon to some degree, have the ship warp out, and direct the small particles at a enemy like a shotgun bird shot blast.
For what it's worth, that is where the Klingon (and Klingon-built Romulan) ships over in the Star Fleet Universe place their deflector dishes.
The SFU has the Eagle-series Romulan ships (those based on the original "warbird") use a much smaller deflector dish; it and the primary sensor dish are installed to either side of the prow plasma torpedo launcher.
By and large, certain SFU empires have ships with prominent deflector dishes, while other empires make do with much less distinguishable ones. They do tend to be consistent across the fleet of a given empire - or in the case of the Romulans, across a given "series" of ship design within said empire.
The deflector array isn't just needed at warp speed, it's also just generally used at full stop and impulse speeds as seen on the Voyager episode "Year of Hell, Part II". https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Navigational_deflector#USS_Voyager_(NCC-74656)
"During the same year in an alternate timeline, a heavily damaged Voyager lost the capabilities of its navigational deflector array along with many other systems during the Year of Hell. Encountering a moving micrometeoroid field, they were unprotected without their deflector and the ship began suffering even more damage. Captain Janeway restored the navigational deflector field, although she was burned due to a massive fire in Deflector Control."
The deflector array could also be used to disperse the harmful particle wave that builds up during warp travel, negating the undesired effect of obliterating anything near your destination.
"During the same year in an alternate timeline, a heavily damaged Voyager lost the capabilities of its navigational deflector array along with many other systems during the Year of Hell. Encountering a moving micrometeoroid field, they were unprotected without their deflector and the ship began suffering even more damage. Captain Janeway restored the navigational deflector field, although she was burned due to a massive fire in Deflector Control."
The deflector array could also be used to disperse the harmful particle wave that builds up during warp travel, negating the undesired effect of obliterating anything near your destination.
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Your Navigational Deflector is a FTL Snow Plow
...which directs the concentrated flow of particles into the bussard collector fields.
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