Why Didn't Starfleet Command Use Starfighters? | The Templin Institute

I am Groot.

 

Why doesn't Starfleet use autonomous drones that have onboard AI? An example would be the combat drones depicted in the PC game Mission Critical from about 25 years ago. (Not Star Trek related but it features Michael Dorn.) The drones can perform high-g manoeuvres without needing inertial dampners as there are no pilots to worry about turning into strawberry jam.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Critical_(video_game)

I sometimes hanker after revisiting the excellent tactical combat simulator in that game but I don't want to have to play the adventure game part again as there would be no surprises, just a slog.

 

seeing the trouble that armed AI's get into in Star Trek, perhaps every sentient species has thought of the idea and backed off it, even the Borg. Anything less than autonomous AI's piloting torpedoes at fantastic velocities (or 50 mph, depending on how you view the visual presentation , would require at least occasional remote control and would be subject to being compromised by the enemy. Easier and effective to just keep firing dumb weapons, often at close range.

 

Obviously AI is being used by the 31st century, so the UFP does eventually figure it out.

 

While we give credit to Star Trek creative thinkers for a lot of technological and social advancements that we take for granted today (i.e. cell phones, women on the bridge), automated robots and drones are technologies that I believe Star Trek creative thinkers did not foresee becoming so abundantly practical.

Actually, the much more prolific use of automated robots and drones in the 2009 movie and sequel is something that I appreciate about those movies. Of course, they were made recently rather than in the 1960’s, and it is easier to see today how practical and prolific such devices are and likely will yet become.

That having been said, in Star Trek Universe—and this may be the subject of another thread—I would suggest that the use of automated robots and drones has already become obsolete by the time of the original series. There would no longer be a need for a robot or drone to physically go and do a task that superior systems can do remotely. Think of all the useful technology that could be put to such practical use: tractor beams, transporter beams, shield emitters, phaser emitters, every kind of field generator, every kind of matter replicator, etc. While these technologies are not always explicitly cited as being used to effect various improvements, repairs, or other functions, we can see that they must be used in concert and in miniature ways to do all the hidden work behind the bulkheads.

This is reflected in use of almost every single device in Star Trek, be it medical, engineering tools, sometimes even weapons when used as tools. We see the operator holding the device and we see its blinking lights, but all the work it does is unseen, behind the wall and beneath the skin.

With such technology and such tremendous power so readily available, it seems that robots and drones that need to physically go somewhere are pretty much obsolete, for the most part.

In fact, so would the need for people be, but of course, we boldly go because we want to. Basic robots and drones do not have such emotional motivation.

 

All fine and dandy if you have magical instantaneous communication via subspace, I guess. Otherwise, you have to deal with the latency caused by the finite speed of light. Of course, the problem is that there is no such thing as communication that can be instantaneous when viewed from all frames of reference. There is no such thing as a universal now.

 

That's why I believe all the drones will have some form of AI and need to be controlled.

And I don't want to worry about enemy jamming or spoofing of control signals or command signals.

Ergo sending a manned fighter along with his drone operator in the back seat to make sure all the drones do what they're supposed to do.

No need to worry about ECM and ECCM when you're physically close enough for Visual ID and for signal validation / overpowering the enemies signal.

 

I see your view.

Maybe the lack of robots and drones has more to do with authors' vision of Star Trek rather than obsolescence.

From your perspective, which I believe might be coming from the point of view of epic and fierce tactical combat, I suppose soldiers would want to make use of every single advantage possible. In that case, there would be no such thing as obsolete. A soldier that does not quit will use whatever weapon he has at his disposal. If he’s out of ammunition, he pulls out his “obsolete” blade. When remote attacks eventually fail, he personally moves in for the kill, or he combines strategies to present the greatest impact.

For the most part, we really haven’t seen such epic, world war, scale marine combat in Star Trek, though it must have existed, (does exist, will exist), considering that some entire races are known to be warriors and soldiers.

We must assume that they are not all dressed up for war simply to look the part.

Ground troops, therefore, would benefit greatly from air support, if not space support, or both.

It would be a sad day, however, in my opinion, if and when it all comes to that in Star Trek.

 

Tight-beam communication using tachyons or subspace "whatever particles it uses" with channels secured by quantum encryption should do the trick, perhaps. Although I guess notionally there might be a way to defeat quantum encryption by using a method similar to the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks being detected.

 

But, consider this:

It is not just applied physical science that might make certain technologies obsolete.

Social science can do so.

What nation will march its troops to take over another nation that possesses the atomic bomb? Will the nations not come to a table to talk and try to make an agreement that does not violate one another’s sovereignty rather than blow each other and the whole world to bits? The atomic bomb has, therefore, rendered much conventional warfare obsolete for those lands and allies.

Similarly, in Star Trek, with matter/antimatter being commonplace among spacefaring races, there must be a mutual respect and/or fear that prevents wide scale conventional troop invasion and takeover.

Such conventional warfare; that is, with marines and fighters, would be very limited. It would be limited to sovereignties that do not possess the sci-fi equivalent of the atomic bomb nor have allies that do. Of course, that would not prevent the buildup of such conventional armaments, just their wide scale use.

The problem is, the buildup of such things inevitably leads to their use, as history testifies.

 

Inertial dampers seem to only work with regards to keeping the crew's inertial reference frame locked to the ship's, rather than meaning the ship itself has no inertia. We certainly don't see large starships dancing around like nimble fighter craft might be expected to move, and there's several references to big ships not being as manoeuvrable as smaller ships in Star Trek. Geordi states that despite being almost a century old and not in prime condition the Jenolan would still be able to "fly rings" around the Enterprise-D in "Relics"; the Enterprise has to rely on telemetry from a shuttle to manoeuvre quickly enough to avoid spatial anomalies in "In Theory"; Picard is concerned about the Enterprise's ability to manoeuvre effectively inside the cramped confines of an asteroid in "Pegasus". While the Galaxy class may well have the most powerful engines in Starfleet in absolute terms, she's clearly a lumbering beast at sublight speeds. Meanwhile, one of the Intrepid class's key characteristics is being more manoeuvrable than any other starship its size, which is why Voyager was sent to the Badlands in "Caretaker".

 

True, it seems that engineers and ship builders have constructed monstrosities that are lumbering beasts compared to other, smaller, vessels that they have also constructed. Some scenes, as you have brought out, support that conclusion. That does not mean, however, that they could not construct a monster that outperforms a small fighter-sized vessel even in maneuverability.

Other scenes, such as a DS9 episode where alternate Riker steals the Defiant, show Cardassian Galor class monsters zipping along to outmaneuver the little Defiant, for example.

Since the same laws of physics apply to both large and small vessels in the same medium of space, I submit that the real reason for any comparable slowness to maneuver between large and small vessels has to do with design decisions that hinder some abilities while enhancing other abilities.

The Enterprise maneuvers as it does because they made it that way.

 

Until you make monster small fighter-sized vessel that has the manueverability of your dreams and can twinkle toe and dance around any other star ship.

Imagine what a Babylon 5 StarFury could do with Star Trek level tech.

 

Hmh? Watch DS9 "Emissary" again - no fightercraft in or out of Trek ever maneuvered as nimbly as those massive starships did there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

It would sure be fun to try and fly that thing. For that matter, it would be fun to fly any starship at all!

In space, such a small vessel could have an advantage over a larger vessel because of its smaller size relative to its own acceleration. Its acceleration might be enough to allow it to evade at the last moment some incoming fire, like maybe even guided photon torpedoes. A larger vessel could possess the same acceleration, but, because of its size, could not evade a hit. The hit would just happen in the wrong spot.

A good tactic against evasion, however, might be proximity detonations of ordinance. Or box in a little ship with multiple shots in anticipation of such evasion.

It seems to me that the threat level of such a small vessel, even with Star Trek technology, would be small. Also its own survivability would be small. To counter this you need numbers. Now it becomes a matter of balancing the investment of resources. People are superior to resources.

Since the Trek Fury is going to die anyway, or at least many of them will, better to use phasers and photons.

Of course, against a foe with inferior technology, I could see Trek Furies making an impression.

 

While StarFleet StarShips are nimble for their mass / size, that says more about their inertial mass reducing tech.

Now imagine similar tech applied to smaller StarFighter class sized vessels.

With a talented pilot, you can literally do Space Ballet or Break Dancing around the vessels and be near impossible to hit at "Light Seconds" distance while raining particle beam blasts on your opponent.

You can literally surround your opponent in a large spherical envelopement and have every drone / vessel move in it's own awkwards & random way to avoid counter fire while the human piloted vessel could do more choreographed / crazy movements that only a human would bother to think up.

Look at the Ghost V9 AI Drone Fighters from Macross Frontier.

They vector thrust almost randomly like crazy while in space to avoid incoming beam fire or to prevent enemies from gaining a firm targeting sensor lock-on.

 

OK. Cool. I love your idea, though I'm more of Gundam meister myself.


But, I'll counter with an equal but opposite thought...


Let's take your starfighter, and now imagine similar tech applied to larger starship class-sized vessels. There is no reason why a large starship cannot have the same technology, except that you wouldn’t want it because you would want superior technology! More power, more speed, etc. Granted, in Star Trek, we see that capital ships have mostly traded some tactial advantages for more toilets, more comfort, more cargo, etc. It seems unlikely, though, that they would have done so to such an extent so as to make the capital ship unnecessarily vulnerable to fighter and drone attack.


As a countermeasure—besides simply warping away before the fight—to a swarm of surrounding vessels creating a large spherical envelopment by maneuvering almost randomly like crazy, anitmatter spreads should be used to create a flak canopy, which will reduce the volume of space where fighters and drones want to be. In addition phasers and photons should fire rapidly and use proximity charges in the now more concentrated volume of space where fighters and drones have been forced to operate in.


Any small fighters or drones vector-thrusting almost randomly like crazy might just as well run right into ordinance rather than avoid it, because if we believe a fighter is faster than a capital ship, we have to believe that explosive ordinance is faster even than a fighter.


All of this supposes, though, that the small weapons used by fighters would even affect the hull and shields of a much larger and vastly more powerful vessel at all. It might just be that their maximum firepower is simply not enough to penetrate hulls and shields of larger more powerful vessels with massive power generation and seemingly limitless power, even when added up all together. And, of course, capital ships would be engineered and constructed exactly that way because they could be! In Star Trek maybe they have been.


To damage hulls and shields, fighters would need to bring to the fight ordinance capable of doing so, which brings us back to the photon torpedo. This changes the role of the fighter completely. It seems that a starfighter’s primary purpose would be to counter defenseless targets and other starfighters, not capital ships. Secondarily, to counter capital ships, a starfighter must attempt to deliver its ordinance (or itself if a suicide attack) before it is lost and then resume its primary purpose, if possible.


So, it becomes a battle of attrition where the wisest use of resources on an empire level may not win every battle but ultimately wins the war. In a war of attrition, the photon torpedo reigns supreme because you do not have to send people with it, you can afford its expendability, you do not have to teach it, you do not have to retrieve it, and you do not mourn when you lose it.

 

you just have to blink the right way at it

 

The problem with basing an argument around relativity (frames of reference, universal nows, etc) is that it mandates no FTL travel, which we know definitely exists in the Star Trek universe! We could argue that subspace just "increases the speed limit" and there's still some sort of FTL "maximum possible speed", but of course warp 10 being infinitely fast shows that's not true; in theory Star Trek supports the concept of a universal now, because it canonically has a state of warp travel in which you exist in every point in the universe simultaneously.

We might also expect that by the 32nd century Starfleet might have telepathic technology – which based on what we've seen elsewhere in Star Trek would certainly add a whole new level of "immediacy" to communication and avoid problems of range, shielding, etc.

 

In Star Trek's universe where the standard model most certainly does not apply (why doesn't hair float upwards towards the gravity plating on the deck up. Those ceilings aren't that tall. talk about light headed. I digress. ) subspace itself could be some kind of universal constant that provides frame reference. Relativity in that concept is only relative in the universe to the universe itself, and subspace exists outside of that frame or at least while it can be interacted with, it does not behave by the same rules or is subject to them (except when writers got bored and played with subspace too).

For instance if you somehow found a way to magically (since I have no idea how, and I don't actually think you could do it) manipulate quantum vacuum in such a modus that you could manipulate the Casimr effect at extremely precise points, you could make yourself a truly instantaneous telegraph. You haven't violated the universe's laws but found a way to pull the fibers of the carpet.

Ok this is getting into a different subject and I will back away.