I always wanted an episode in DS9 where, for whatever reason, O'Brien and Bashir got into a couple fighters to defend the station while bantering like RAF pilots :D
I can see it... they'd start off all normal and professional, then one would make a comment about how it's like the Battle of Britain, and then it's all... "Squadron Leader we have Balbo coming in over the Drink." "Cardis and Jemmis." "Roger. Two-six. This is gonna be a Dicy-Do lads." "Beware the Hun in the Sun!" "Red Two, follow me through the attack." "Right-o, Skipper...." And so on. Meanwhile on the Defiant Sisko and Dax look at each other in bemusement listening to the chatter.
Five fighters attacked that Galor class, and mission killed it. Even if we assume that all five were destroyed, that's only a loss of five personnel. If a single Miranda class was sent instead, not only would it have been destroyed since a Miranda is outclassed by a Galor class, but it would have been a loss of a crew of 210. Even if dozens of fighters get destroyed, it's not as big of a loss as losing a fully crewed starship.
^This... At this level of conflict it is about cost analysis... The weight of 5 lives vs 500 is considered a very good trade. Additionally you seem to be of the opinion that there are no safety systems on these ships. A group like Starfleet could be expected to have cockpits independently shielded and with it's own (albeit low grade) maneuvering thrusters and life support system. This could allow a pilot to be autoejected from his fighter on a deadman trigger, and immediately flung hard toward the edge of the battle field. This would ensure that a pilot had a survival chance on the loss of his fighter, is totally within the realm of Star Fleet's tech, and would grant around a 45% chance of survival. Which is far more than a WW2 fighter pilot had, (which is what these circumstances are roughly based around).
NOTE please Federation Fighters have escape transporters, used in an episode with Wesley Crusher in the academy. 20 fighters = 20 Pilots and are Seen ON screen seriously damaging a Galor Class Battlecruiser with Hundreds of Crew the Cost in Life and Assets versus the Damage they can do, make them very worth it, and WHY Captain Sisko kept senting wave after ave as long as he could get away with it wanting to break their lines trying to force a move. A real world sound tactic. And photons do a considerable amount of damage, a sqadron sweep could easily launch 10 + at a single cruiser OUCH!!! with safe 50% pilot lose thanks to escape transporters back to the Carrier.
Here is my thought on the role of fighters, inspired by STO. So in STO, capital ships can divert their shield energy towards a specific direction, so that fires coming from that direction is less effective. In a fleet battle this is very useful, as the majority of the enemy fleet would be from one single direction. In this case, small crafts like fighters can use their maneuverbility to "flank" the enemy fleet and exploit the weaker side of the shields.
that's what we do today/yesterday too. Attack capital ships in squads. Fighters in front of the Torpedo/Bombers. ''Midway'' movie covers that really well. When ever the Americans or the Japanese sent in the torpedo bombers they needed fighter cover too. Plus your own ships need an umbrella of fighters to keep the other guy's planes away from your carriers and battleships. Without it, you're fucked.
Also carrier borne aircraft can be used to raid fleet anchorages, the 1940 RN raid on Taranto and the 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor come to mind. Fighters in trek could also be used in similar operations against enemy fleet anchorages
It is also possible that fighters are good at taking out orbital turrets like the ones in Dominion War. Those turrets are bigger than Defiant Class, their shots seem to rip through the shield of Galaxy Class easily, might as well use small crafts so that one shot from those turrets only takes out one fighters, instead of crippling a Galaxy.
Watching Peregrine fighters tear up Cardassian ships in DS9 would suggest that fighters in Trek are indeed a good idea. ;) As far as loss of life goes, if the Federation was willing to send ancient Miranda class ships into combat with 400 crew per ship, then why wouldn't they send in Peregrine fighters? What we see on screen IS canon. If 5 Peregrine fighters can cripple a Galor (which we saw) before they are destroyed then obviously that's a much better use of resources than losing 400 crew in a Miranda.
DocWolph Again, what we see on screen IS canon. So it isn't really a question of whether or not the Federation would use fighters like that -- because they did. I totally agree that it would make sense to use fighters more strategically, just as Trekyards described, but that doesn't seem to be Starfleet's battle doctrine regarding small attack craft.
Sorry, I was just reiterating my point. I didn't mean to make it seem like I was attacking you or anything. Apologies if that's how I came off. But, speaking in canon terms, I think you got it exactly right; indeed, Starfleet probably didn't know what they were doing. Fighters hadn't been a part of the Federation's battle doctrine for many, many decades prior to the Peregrine program. Adding to that is the fact that Starfleet is not a purely military organization -- they're primarily tasked with exploration, diplomacy, humanitarian missions, etc. Starfleet of the late 24th century rarely found itself involved in any large scale conflicts, and certainly nothing drawn out and protracted like the Dominion War. So yes, luck definitely played a major role in that particular episode.
To answer a couple of your questions: Killed in one Hit: Yes but they are very hard to hit. In the clip you used, five fighters engaged a Cardasian Galor, yes one was taken out in one hit but the Galor fired five shots at that squadron and only hit one. If that Galor had been targeting a capital ship (especially at that extreme close range) you would expect that every one of those shots would have hit, ripping though the shields and causing serious damage. Remote control: One word, LAG. Reaction times slow when distance increases.
In 'Sacrifice of Angels' the Dominion effectively cut all inter-communications between Starfleet ships during the fight and shifted the fight to almost be a dominion victory if not for the Klingon intervention. If it jammed communications, it will jam any transmission between control ship and remotely controlled ship to be jammed to and a loss of a portion of your fleet's battle power tied to those RC Fighters and Bombers.
Anytime a fighter goes up against a ship it's dangerous. WW2 fighters had it rough toward the end of the war because all nations realized that warplanes were the most dangerous weapon against ships. At the beginning of the war ships were weakly armed against aircraft, by the end ships bristled with AA guns and systems to keep them safe. Multiple hand aimed auto cannons at short range, larger pom poms became mechanically driven rather than hand aimed and radar directed, large flak secondary guns became radar aimed and tipped with proximity fuses. Fighters are always brittle, one hit from a 40mm pom pom will kill a warplane, being hit by the frag from a 127mm prox round and there is little left. In spite of all of that one hit from a torpedo or a bomb dropped by a warplane can also destroy a ship when it hits the right place and a destroyed (or even crippled) ship is a way bigger payout than the lose of a squadron of fighters. Fighter pilots know the risks and so do the nations that send them. In my opinion fighters in the Trek universe make sense, there are only so many phaser/disruptor/polaron banks or whatever on a ship and a tactical officer can only do so much. He's differently going to get some kills but if there are enough fighters, targeting ships systems, engines, phaser banks, etc that ship will more than likely lose.
when you take into account that the dominion was taking out large ships with 1 hit, I dont think the problem was that the fighters were so very weak as compared to the larger starfleet ships, I think the problem was starfleet was badly overpowered by the dominion on all fronts.
I remember a scene in ds9, where they first encounter the Jem Hadar and i recall that the runabouts were much better against the dominion strike craft than even the galaxy class odyssey, which i think answers some questions about fighter effectiveness. It was purely their manuverability which aided them
In the big space battle from DS9: big capital ships blowing up left and right. Big, expensive capital ships with lots of crew: BOOM! versus small, relatively cheap ships with two crew: BOOM! The cold equations say buy lots of fighters.
The defiant though is expensive as it uses extreme (rare, complicated, prototype/untested) technology and requires (so is the story told in DS9) extensive tweaking before it won't blow itself up when using engines or weapon systems for 100%... Basically you take all the really powerrful bits of technology inside a much larger ship and press them into this too small to fit shell... what is more time consuming and complicated? Building all power generating elements and weaponry in a Galaxy class ship or welding together a few cabines and corridors to fit the skeleton crew in it? You probably will not save too much time for a Defiant compared to an Akira class ship or other capitals that besides fighting can also take over a lot more roles (and have the potential to salvage crew in addition to that, transporting much more than their complement if needs be... the Defiant hardly has space for what they need to fly it) And it is not that the capital ships that we see getting destroyed withstood dozens of hits, most of them also are devastated by a single phaser or torpedo like the Mirandas shown in the Trekyards video... Even Galaxies, where we KNOW (from fights in TNG) that the shields should keep up to a few hits at least, maybe one or two dozen in short time... The Defiant ultimately was destroyed not by massive weapon fire but by this weird anti technology beam the Breen brought into the melee...
Yes but in the battle in sacrifice of angels for example the survival rate among all the crew on the capital ships would be good compared to the fighter craft. Yes they appear very effective but you have to bring up a moral point. They are essentially expendable if not almost kamikaze like craft when thrown against capital ships. I think at least the federation would have the morals to not send people to their deaths like that. I absolutely love the idea of a Typhoon like class having pilots control unmanned fighter craft but from the safety of a well protected ship though.
The Mirandas were just as useless and blew up just as much as any Peregrine in one or two shots... so we have a small fighter with 2 Pilots being able to inflict some damage versus a full sized Ship with 150-200 People doing also just that little damage blowing up instantly. Which is morally more apprehensible?
@@selorkiith4461 Frankly it was a matter of desperation. They needed every available ship for Operation Return. They couldn't leave fighters or Mirandas behind.
There seems to be confusion as to which fighter the "Peregrine Class" is. Some think it's the little fighter seen in Sacrifice of Angels. However, I've also seen Chakotays ship listed as "Peregrine" as well. They're obviously two very different designs...
From what I've seen in the special effect on the shows and movies, there seems to be two kind of shielding on ships: Bubble and a "hull tight" contour. I believe the bubble shield we've all seen are fairly weak against physical object forcing its way under it. Memory Alpha states that physical object would be deflected away by shield, not destroyed. So shield can push away passive physical objects. In the last battle in Nemesis, we can see the Enterprise-E bouncing away debris from the contour shield. In my interpretation, shield in Star Trek can only passively redirect the kinetic energy of physical objects. If the object in question has its own thrust and forces its way into the shield, it can penetrate it. If the object in question has its own shield, then it might protect it self against stronger shield. Also, it is stated in Memory Alpha that shield operates in different frequency to protect the ship from certain energy and matter. It is possible that the frequency required to defend against physical objects differ vastly from normal weapons. In large scale battles of the Dominion War, I think ships had to prioritize their shield against the weapons of large ships and let fighters be intercepted by other means. A bunch of fighters dealing in small amount of survivable damage is way better than getting one shot by an enemy capital ship. So fighters can penetrate shield to inflict damages directly to ships from within the shield bubble. Larger ships have to fire until the shield fails. That's an advantage fighters have. I the shield on the Enterprise-E was upgraded with contour shield after the end or during the Dominion War (After the event of Insurrection), I think, in part was to prevent fighters from attacking the ship directly from with the shield bubble after learning from the war. In Nemesis, Picard ordered the Enterprise-E to ram into the Scimitar while the Scimitar still have 70% shield and it worked. In conclusion, shield in Star Trek is fairly strong in protecting ships from energy weapons and torpedoes (Because they expect them) but fairly weak against physical crafts purposefully flying into the shield.
In the TNG episode "Preemptive Strike" Ro Laren flies a shuttle through the Enterprise's shields to they can beam medical supplies out of the cargo hold.
@@stevenkuski5916 Ro was undercover at the time and Picard allowed her through the shields so she could complete that mission and solidify her cover. Shields in Star Trek operate the same way, bubble and hull tight are just different shape configurations. TNG The Hunted shows a small ship bouncing off the shields just like that Romulan nacelle in Nemesis. The shield frequency is basically the subspace oscillation, just like a radio station. If you can match the frequency you can pass through the shields with anything, energy beam, ships, transporter beam, torpedo it's like the shield isn't there. If you don't have the frequency then everything bounces off or gets 'deflected', hence deflector shields. There aren't different frequencies for matter or energy (that's closer to Star Wars), photon torpedoes, disruptors, plasma beams, and phasers all get stopped by the same barrier. The Borg do the opposite, after you fire on them a few times, they get a read on what frequency your weapons are firing at and shift the perfect frequency to cancel them out with no energy loss. Which is why you have to keep rotating energy frequencies against the Borg. This concept of a smaller ship actually flying into a shield bubble is not supported by what's on screen. DS9 Call to Arms shows a Cardassian fighter ship crash landing into the station's shields and promptly exploding. The Nemesis ramming as cool as it was, shouldn't have actually worked if the Scimitar's shields were still up, unless their forward shields were the 30% that was down (which isn't how shield strength works). Not the only mistake Stuart Baird made in that movie though.
The DS9 style battles kind of seems like would be a case of inexperience with fighter tactics by commanders (as they had been out of service for a long time). In almost all attacks you only initiate an attack when you have the advantage, which the tactics they were using did not give them.
Hey Captain Foley and Commander Cockings: I take issue with the idea that someone in a fighter craft in the Star Trek universe is on a suicide mission. Not so, necessarily. Small fighter craft can be EXTREMELY effective, and if written properly, can be extremely useful in the Star Trek universe, just like real world. For example, Star Trek Beyond. A SWARM of fighter craft were more than a match for poor Enterprise! The Dominion war may not be the best example of the use of fighter craft, because you had literally hundreds of capital ships on screen, compared to dozens of fighters. When Capital ships outnumber the fighters, sure the capital ships come out on top. When the reverse is true, it's a far different outcome. Fighter craft may be smaller and more vulnerable when they do get hit, but they are far more maneuverable at impulse speeds, and when fighter craft have superior numbers, they can mob a capital ship en masse, they can easily overwhelm said capital ship, espeically when they are armed in such a way to defeat shields. So it stands to reason that if one side has fighter craft that can take on a capital ship, the other side will need fighter craft to counter the enemy fighters.
Armed in such a way as to defeat shields is exactly the problem with fighters in the Trek universe. Imagine if you could go back to December 6th, 1941 and mount a couple of Phalanx turrets, or a couple of those dutch Goalkeeper point defense turrets on the USS Arizona. December 7th would have been a much different day. That's what fighters in the Trek universe would be like. They can't stand off outside their target's range and launch 1-hit-1-kill shipkiller missiles like modern jet fighters can. As soon as they are in range to attack, they are in range of defensive fire. And a ship like a Sovereign with a dozen or more phaser banks, would start swatting those flies down, quickly. Fighters just don't have a power generation system that can put the gigawatts of power into an energy blast to take down a star ship's shields or power shields that can take hits, especially since most of the power those ships generate is going into the engines to power the only advantage they have, their maneuverability. And star ship targeting systems and light-speed weapons can compensate for any maneuverability advantage a fighter might have. For fighters to work in the Star Trek universe they would need EW/stealth systems to supplement their maneuverability to make them harder to hit, and some kind of gun that would actually be able to burn through shields.
Small craft can actually fly through Star Trek shields. There are numerous episodes that feature ramming, collisions, and intentional piloting right through raised shields. Apparently, shields are primarily designed for protection against super high energy impacts, like weapons fire, torpedoes, micrometeorites, etc. Relatively slow moving objects, like shuttles or space debris or Jem'hadar suicide ships, can penetrate shields with ease. So, that being the case, fighters don't need a weapon to burn through shields. They can basically pop right through your shields and unload micro-torpedoes directly against your unprotected hull. Which is reaaaally bad.
Another good example of a fighter craft taking out a capital ship is the DS9 episode The Jem'Hadar, when the Odyssey was destroyed. At that time, the Galaxy class was about as powerful a ship the Federation had, and it was taken out by a small craft ramming it.
That was just bad writing. A single photon can have an explosive yield over 250 megatons. All it has to do is detonate in a swarm of fighters and every fighter/shuttle within 50 miles is dead.
- Recently in our table top Role playing game, I came up with a maneuver that makes Warp Fighters a force to be feared. - It's similar to the Picard maneuver. But incorporates a classic aviation tactic. The Dive bomber. - In this case, the Warp Dive bomb: The Fighter accelerates to warp speed, like the picard maneuver, But it engages in a dive bombing, while still at warp it breaks away. The Torpedo which is now flying at the target many times faster than light slams into the target. - At warp 3, the Torpedo was moving at 27 times the speed of light. That's enough force for a Solid iron Cannonball to fracture a planet. A Warp fighter using this Maneuver could destroy a planet with a Cannonball. - we've been working on the logistics of what would actually happen. - Against a planet a Micro torp would explode on impact with the planets Thermosphere, The Damage to the planet's Atmosphere would still be quite severe. - A solid, Iron Bullet. Might make it through the Atmosphere, and could hit the planet hard enough to crack a continental mantel. Then again, Even Iron at this insane speed would likely be vaporized in the planets atmosphere. - Against a ship with it's shields up, the impact would of course slam the shields first. - We are still debating just How OP this tactic would be. Imagine a wing of fighters all Warp Dive bombing a group of Domi ships. The look on a founders face would be priceless. === === === === === - I like the ideas of Fighters in Star Trek. When they employ ECM ECCM, and such. They can be allot of fun. I'd like to think a Mark II Valkyrie, or Mark III. Would be more than a match for a Klingon 'Bird of Prey.'
Ok commenting on a rather old video, Something everyone seems to be ignoring as far as I can see is that form follows function, if you suddenly introduce fighters into the Star Trek cannon with weapons that can potentially get through shields then you also have to add vastly increased point defence to the capital ships to balance things out, which would not be hard to do, just needing fast tracking small phasers and a decent targeting system. Therefore as the capital ships don't have insane point defence systems as far as can be seen, fighters by definition do not work in universe.
As far as fighters being hit by capital weapons, I feel as if the frequent hits against them on screen is more a plot device than anything, the fighter would be able to avoid shots far more effectively than as appears (look at shuttles and runabouts and their somewhat effective evasive maneuvers, and that'll be a fraction of the capability of a fighter). Couldn't agree more with the point about the Miranda class also getting picked off very easily. A Peregrine is a much smaller loss per shot than a full sized ship like that especially as the chance of missing would be much, much higher. There's also the point that in fleet battles, as ships become damaged, they drop back behind fresher ships in a leap frog like maneuver giving them time to repair what they can before rejoining the fight. A fighter negates that option as they can navigate through the fleets and hit weakened targets. Just my 2 cents, keep up the good work guys!
I remember in Starfleet Command 2 Orion Pirates the fighters being highly effective, I always liked the carriers in that game. They were a force multiplier especially when it was my carrier vs 1 or 2 other ships. Most ships focused on my carrier and tended to ignore my fighters, to their detriment, in most cases.
I can't imagine any sort of fighter being even remotely effective against a capital ship. People can talk all they like about maneuverability, but with direct beam phasers and good enough targeting computers, it's a moot point. I guess my point of reference here too is "Conundrum" from TNG. The Enterprise enters alien territory and the group they battle sends fighters its way and the Enterprise promptly tears them to shreds. The accuracy that this happens seems to suggest that any capital ship with decent computational power would not miss such a target and therefore the concept of the fighter in this universe is totally bunk.
It could come down to the eternal battle of ECM vs ECCM. Maybe the reason Starfleet *stopped* using fighters for so many decades was because capital ship countermeasures made fighters totally obsolete. But, perhaps, Federation technology had advanced enough by the late 24th century to include advanced ECM systems on the Peregrine that increased their survivability...at least to an "acceptable" level. Fact is, we saw what we saw in 'Sacrifice of Angels.' It's canon, so the only thing to do is figure out a somewhat believable 'Star Trek' explanation for what we saw. In my mind, the only explanation that makes sense is that the Peregrine incorporated some _seriously_ advanced ECM systems. That would also explain why the Federation considered the Peregrine program so important in the first place -- new tech.
The new, more powerful ECM suite make sense as explanation. We saw many times how Federation ships can't "lock on" target in fights and as phasers are point attack weapon they need to be precisely aimed at target.
And if I remember right, those "fighters" were using technology that was a hundred years behind. Of course a Galaxy class ship tore through them. The comparison fails utterly due to the sheer gap in technology.
I don't thinks it's fair to sight that episode as the whole plot was that an alien race, the Satarrans were using the superior technology of the Enterprise to destroy their rivals, the Lysians. As such the fighters sent against the ship would have been much more primitive and in fact, as I recall, they were not even fighters simply unmanned drones protecting the Lysian central command.
I think it is worth pointing out that the squadrons of fighters in "Sacrifice of Angels" were totally ineffective without the support and greater firepower of fleet capital ships. Recall that at least seven waves of Starfleet fighters were destroyed before Sisko received his desired result, which was actually just a trap set by Gul Dukat. In Trek, the canon fact is starships have greater firepower, defensive power, speed, and weapon range compared to fighters. Advanced range and targeting simply takes away any advantage fighters might have as the backbone of an offensive. Fighters may be cheaper to produce, but without capital ships to cover them, will never do much damage to a technological equal. Maquis Peregrines might seem effective, until one remembers that they've only really faced Cardassian starships, which were never the technological equals of the Federation; Galor and Keldon classes had weaker defenses and poor targeting. Dominion starships (which didn't bother with building fighters, I might add), utterly obliterated the Maquis and their Peregrines. And before someone mentions the Dominion Attack Fighter, recall that the smallest version of this ship is nearly 70 meters in length with three decks and a crew of 43; hardly a starfighter in any sense.
Great video. It's fantastic seeing your subscriber numbers grow - I joined when there was just a couple thousand, now there is 7 times more, and it starts really growing exponentially once you get into that 20k range from personal experience. I'll wager you'll see 100k in 2017, especially with the work you've been putting in with recent trips and videos. Love watching you both.
"As I like things like the modern F14 Tomcat" There is no such thing as a "modern" Tomcat.... that bird is almost as old as the ST TV Series (TOS).... first flown in action around 1975 IIRC... and it has not been in Use in the US Navy for ten years or so...! "Fighter pilots must be suicidal" Not really... in a fighter craft a close miss is a complete miss... only really hit crafts get you killed, while being one of 300 or 500 personnel on an Excelsior or Galaxy Class ship can get you killed even with absolutely non lethal hits ("flesh wounds" instead of hitting engines, weapons, bridge or other core systems) or ricochets or whatever... Especially when you think about how in ST the power lines seem to be made from Nitroglycerine... Worst case Scenario for a battle a la DS9 would be almost complete destruction of all ships involved, it does hardly matter if you sit in the smallest and most agile ones or in the fat main battle ships like Galaxies...
A carrier in star trek is practical. Imagine a ship that is devoted to carrying a swarm of 100 single seat craft or drones. Each craft would carry 2 or 3 quantum torpedoes. That could give a formation a really bad day. A drone would probably be preferable. A drone means it can either be smaller or made more survivable.
Hey, for station defense where keeping a capital ship on station would be impractable i would prefer to have a couple of fighter wings for defense since yes the defensive systems on a starbase are good you cant move to intercept an incoming threat, with even twelve fighters you could potentially buy the time you need to get reinforcements. Just look at carrier groups today, yes the fighters will be destroyed but it damages your opponent and can make a pitched capital ship battle shorter even if the shields are just drained
You could consider Braxton's Timeship a fighter because it appears to be designed to participate in temporal hit and runs during the temporal Cold War as its weapons is possibly powerful enough to destroy a Nakuhl raider.
the problem with going by what happens on screen is that it was all done on rule of cool, and best for drama, not what ships were actually capable of doing or surviving ^.^ Also for resources if i can build 500 fighters in the same time it takes to build 1 centaur class, and with even less training per person its not that big a waste of resources.
So fighter pilots die... and we see whole starships coming apart after 2-4 hits in "Sacrifice of Angels" So... which looses more people... really? ;) Just some thoughts. NOM
The role of fighters in naval combat should not be underestimated. Although the fire power is small in relation to the capitol ships, its important to use fighters in SciFi storytelling to create scale and context to more historical battles like Midway and Leyte Gulf in WWII. The loss of hundreds of fighters in Pacific Campaign battles was not unusual. Fighter craft give a battle a human scale, as seen in other franchises like Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars. I wish that Star Trek used smaller craft more often. Great post. Thanks.
I think they are very practical. while Starships might be most effective at establishing supremacy in interstellar space, dominance within a planet's atmosphere and over the land thereof would need fighters.
You guys mentioned if the fighters would be useful, Think how fighters are used to day, air to air interception, air to ground. Naval fighters are always out on patrol out inside the radar coverage of the ships, so I can see fighter being very useful.
the way I see it Federation Fighters would have operated in response to the Cardassian and Jem'hadar using small attack vessels dropping in on them like the luftwaffe did to Mustang Pilots as they escorted bombers to their targets. The goal was to pull these small vessels away from the fight into dog fights where they could be eliminated. Federation ships could drop in two enemy formations followed by Klingon bird-of-prey wings and as the Jem'hadar Fighters gave Chase to the Federation Fighters it would allow the Klingons to move in for the kill wiping large numbers of small cardassian and Jem'Hadar vessels out and keeping them out of the larger capital ship battle
The combination of fighters and shuttles is interesting, with the shuttle hanging out in the background to beam out the pilots of any damaged fighters. Using a runabout would be better in that situation, as you could have a triage unit available, complete with a holographic doctor. You could even have a runabout controlling a squadron of drones, with living pilots inside the runabout controlling them remotely.
One question I always had: Did Starfleet covertly aided the Maquis? Not the conventional personnel such as Captain Picard or Janeway, but from Section 31 or others of the type
Novo Eduardo AC Section 31? Almost definitely. It would be a great way to keep the Cardassians busy if they heard rumours of a threat from the Gamma quadrant...
Given the level of automation seen on the original Enterprise, I can't imagine those Miranda class ships going fully manned into battle. In wartime Starfleet would probably be most interested in getting as many ships to the feild as possible, and most millitary units are usually under strength to begin with. I think fighters would be best a raiders and escorts, personally. Maybe in peacetime they would make good scout ships as well? I like the underwing hard point idea, though.
the six hardpoint mounted torpedos make the paraquine usefull for a single pass if dropping all 6 torpedos aside from planetary attacks and cargo/diplomatic ship defense.
Galaxy class take the heat, I like the galaxy class but absorbing fire were not its strong suit in TNG and DS9. Better to lose a fighter crewed by 1 or 2 people than lose a ship of 1,000.
In addition to what you guys said about better shields and focusing on incoming ordinance, I'd either dump the warp drive or limit it to a system that can handle no more than 1 to 3 c (I'll others figure what warp factor that is and what scale to use). I'd want to fill that space with ECM to make the thing just harder to hit. Decoys, radar-supresing technology, mirrage effects (using the shields to deflect you own signal so that it looks like you're wavering like you're part of a mirage), etc. The only time you're going to use the warp is if the carrier drops you away from the battle and you warp into it before your light-speed signal reaches the people you're planning to fight or if you've fired your ordinance or not been terribly successful and you need to get out so that can reach your recovery point and let people who can still shoot work. So why go Warp 7? Or 5? 3's a stretch, even. The Rebellian has hyperdrive capable fighters because they don't have enough resources to invest in something to just tote their fighters around. Everyone else does, including the Federation. So they should use those resources.
I doubt that anyone will ever read this but the idea that fighters would ever not be a combat effective resource seems...naive. Lets look at the argument of fighter viability in combat from a manpower standpoint. 1 of the DS9 fighters might have a crew complement of, say, 4 for maximum effectiveness. One pilot, copilot, engineer and a tactical officer. By comparison, the crew of most starships would range in the hundreds, and many of the federation starships had non-military personnel aboard. It makes sense to reduce the size of your crew to avoid excess casualties in combat. Sisko points this out when he described the Defiant on her introduction. Next, for best comparison, lets look at one of the ships that DS9 era fighters would have been designed to fight from the drawing board up to prototype: a Galor class warship. Standard crew size is 300, not including troops and support personnel. But we're not being fair just counting noses. Lets look at the weapons too. Galors had 4 phasers, and some exotic weapons in the form of disruptor wave cannons and spiral wave generators. These exotic weapons would provide a serious threat to larger targets with a big silhouette to hit, but because of the slow maneuverability of the craft, would suffer in targeting a smaller ship. Just like in real combat, the true threat to a fighter squadron would be the faster rate of fire and pinpoint accuracy of phasers. As discussed in this podcast, one good phaser hit will take out--either destroy or incapacitate--a fighter. For parity, we'll pit one wave of fighters (we've seen them attack in groups of 4; we'll call that a wave) against a lone pre-war Galor. Now that the stage is set I want set some ground rules and preface: the Cardassians of the time were no bunch of slouches. They were seen as a threat to the Federation as great as the Klingons and the Romulans. These guys knew their business and they were good at it. But neither is the federation; these fighters aren't going to have the pea shooters installed that a runabout would if they are intended to attack a starship of this size. They'll have comparable power in their phasers to other "ships of the line". The argument that the Federation would send out fighters without ship killer grade munitions is just...wrong. From a logistics standpoint, the fighter becomes useless if it can't actually hurt its intended target. If there is no point in building it, they would have scrapped it. In addition, we know these fighters were highly successful--in their prototype form--against Galor class ships under the care of the Maquis (source TGN: Preemptive Strike). So the weapons had to be shield disruptive and ship killer capable out of the gate. And there is another "tough little ship" that confirms the Federation had made great strides in miniaturizing heavy weapons from TNG to DS9. The Defiant was a paltry 350k ton warship that could stand up to a Galor one on one, plot armor not withstanding. The Danube class runabout was somewhere between 100k to 200k tons but not built for combat. Lets say these fighters--due to similar size in the shows--are around the same weight to the Danube. 4 ship killer phasers on the Defiant means that the fighters--at or below half weight--could have been fitted with 2 phasers of similar strength. Yeah, they're probably cramming them in; yeah they're probably sacrificing a lot of safety equipment that a larger warship will have. But this is not a runabout. This is a ship built from the keel up for war. Lets get to the actual tactics of a fight. The best thing a Galor class captain could do against a wave of fighters would be to divert power from his exotic weapons to his shields, provide enough power per shot to his phasers for kill shots to the fighters, and try to keep them from getting into "knife range" and taking out a shield so they can launch torpedo salvos. Sounds doable...until you remember that Galor class ships are "sluggish" by starship standards of their size. The captain isn't just limited to 4 phasers either; they're limited to whatever phasers can face the target at the time. And fighters are designed to be small and highly maneuverable. This makes them hard to hit. We see in the shows that Galors often miss when they fire at fighters, even when they're flying straight in "suicide run" style. Lets assume they have some electronic warfare equipment installed that makes them harder still to target. EW might not be as effective with a larger target like a Galaxy class, but a tiny fighter would want to make its sensor shadow huge in the hopes of making the enemy fire wide and miss them. The fighters are going to maneuver for the best location to attack from, probably from the dorsal "above and down" or from the bottom and attack upward to avoid those exotics from the Galor. The Cardassians setup as I propose and fire in rapid succession, and since I've rarely seen more than 1 shot per second in the show we'll call that "rapid fire" for a strong enough shot to kill a fighter. In space combat the Cardassians can rotate their ship and try to get more weapons to bare, but for the sake of argument I want to say that they can't shoot more than 2 phasers at their targets on the way in--2 in and another 2 on the way out with a short burst of 3, maybe all 4 as they pass; maybe 12 shots. They disable or destroy at least one of the fighters under focused attack despite the EW screen before it even gets a shot off (if anyone does read this then, yes, I just handed the Cardassians a massive advantage). The Federation fighters return fire with their forward mounted phasers. 6 ship killer capable phasers--also under rapid fire--slam into the shields of the Galor and they're rapid fire too for the 3 to 5 seconds on their first pass. Lets say its just 3 seconds. Thats 18 shots at a larger, slower target. Lets be (very) generous and say half of them miss. 9 shots hit the shields of the Galor. If they don't go down, the Feds won't launch torpedoes. After all, they were fighting to kill the target. Watching the shows, if this was a Galaxy--depending on the episode--the shields would be down. But I'm going to skew the argument again in the Galor's favor and say the shields stay up and the tac officers hold their torpedoes for another pass. The Galor now gets its revenge. As they pass, it has a short chance to fire all 4 (I'm giving them all 4) of its phasers and then has the same amount of time with 2 phasers for "up the kilt" shots on the suicide attack squad as they retreat and re-orient. If the original attack run cost the Feds one ship, the regrouping will cost them a second. They're down to half strength now. They re-orient while the Galor gets its damaged shields back up as high as it can--but I'm not going to just hand them the win. Those shields took 9 hits. There's just no way they're going to be back at full power when the last two ships make their final charge. So when the Feds return, they're going to orient to attack the same side they hit before and the Cardassians know they're going to take a massive hit. I'm going to--potentially cheat here--give the Feds 1 and a half ships for this part of the engagement. So they get the same 3 seconds, one of the ships is again taken out on the way in but this one gets some shots off; 2 seconds worth. 10 more phaser shots on an already heavily strained shield array. I'll again take half away but thats 9+5=14 shots in total to the same side of the Galor. Those shields will go down unless they have plot armor. That leaves a clear path for the remaining fighter's 4 torpedoes to slide in--at knife range if the tac officer has the balls--and hit that sucker with all their antimatter goodness. Even if it survives, somehow, 4 rapid torpedo hits to the same area of the hull--even if the Galor kills the last fighter on its way out, 16 people (with ships ranging from 100k to 200k tons if they weigh near the same as a Danube) will have severely damaged if not crippled a 1.6 million metric ton warship with a crew complement of 300 people. We've seen it in the movies and the shows: when the torpedoes hit the hulls, people start dying. Depending on the cost of the fighters (and I can't think 4 fighters with a total mass less than 800,000 tons would cost more than a Galor to make and maintain) even if the entire squad is destroyed the Cardassians (until repaired) are down one warship and dozens if not hundreds of crew members are injured or dead. From the bean counter standpoint the Federation wins even if it loses this fight catastrophically. Now that we skewed the fight to the warships side, lets even the scales. If we'd sent even tonnage at the Galor, thats 8 fighters--skewed to make the Fed fighters as heavy as possible--which doubles the threat to the Galor's 300 crewmen for a risk of 32 crew on the Federation's side. If this theoretical battle would have crippled the Galor with just 4, 8 will kill it. Lets say thats heavy for these ships and give them 150k tons. Tonnage for tonnage, thats yet another 4 ships on the Fed side, now at 12 ships and 48 crew for that first salvo--again I'll "give" the Cardassians a quarter of the attack force--they don't even get to shoot. So, right back down to 9 ships firing 2 ship killer phasers apiece for 3 seconds: 54 shots. I give them that half missed; nah--I'll give you 2/3 miss. 18 phaser hits. Yes, they launch their torpedoes and that Galor is a fireball in vacuum. Sticking with the DS9 era, its not until the Dominion enters combat (with its smaller, more agile ships) on the Cardassian side that the fighters would start dropping like flies for small gains. But thats because we're now building a screen of ships to protect those big slow warships. And by then we have Defiant sized vessels (Defiant class, Saber, Miranda, etc) to counter those Jem'Hadar and take heat off fighter waves, again balancing the fight and allowing fighters to have a more selective role.
Scott Covington Wow, that's really elaborate and there's a lot of good stuff in there. You are completely right of course - give each craft a tiny crew and a lot of photon torpedoes and they'll obliterate a much larger capital ship. The only things that might pose a problem is the energy needs for an elongated battle, but I'm sure in a shorter engagement they would be enough. Your comment did give me an idea as to how they could be deployed though. one problem with small ships is how short-term they are, as they have to dock at a starbase or in a larger ship. My solution would be to Combine two existing ideas - the Multi vector assault mode and the Saucer Separation of the Enterprise-D. After a battle, a squadron of ships could combine with a large central section to form a larger carrier ship. the central section would have a mess hall, a sick bay, and even a Holodeck. It would also have a powerful warp drive, faster and longer lasting than the ones on the attack craft. It could have a small crew of engineers and doctors, enough to repair the crafts. This way, the ship's could be deployed deeper into space and operate more independently than if they had to be tied down to a large capital ship.
You raise a good argument. But there are still some ships in Star Trek you should never use fighters on under any circumstances. Starfleet vessels like the Galaxy class for one, which are very good at pinpoint slaughter of small craft (watch Conundrum), second big boys like the Jem'Hadar Dreadnaught. You could launch a whole wing against that bad boy and not have a prayer. Borg ships obviously. So there's a ceiling on their effectiveness. But in a battle where you're clearly going to take casualties regardless the firepower of a well armed fighter squadron is an attractive solution.
The ship design you did last week (Archer class) would be an IDEAL fighter design... install built up phaser banks in the dorsal side of the saucer, with a dedicated power source in the shuttle/equipment bay and ejectable torpedo launchers and magazines on the ventral side on the landing struts. on the interior replace the two forward officer quarters with tactical station on one side and a larger transporter room on the other. you now have a very maneuverable torpedo boat and commando transport.
+Peter Clarke true.... that being said... the Star trek Universe is even MORE lacking in crafts that could be conceivably called gunboats than it is "fighter craft" the Starfleet Navy is model after a surface naval system from the 1400s to just before World War Two. And throughout that time having an abundance of smaller easier to maneuver crafts with each vessel only able to sustain itself alone for a small duration of time and having a single main weapon or a small battery of weapons has been a mainstay in both coastal defense AND assualts. even current Marine Expeditionary Force rely heavily on amphibious assault craft and hovercrafts. That is the niche the Archer class should be filling...
I took the role of fighters during the Dominion War was primarily to combat bug ships, either as a screen against them using kamikaze tactics such as the ones used by them during the attack against the Odyssey, or as a way to break up formations during large fleet battles. These broken formations wouldn't be able to fire as effectively at smaller capital ships, or rely on each other to cover weaker shield arcs. I believe that the large discrepancy between the performance of fighters in small engagements vs fleet battles might be explained by what, for a lack of a better word, could be described as sensor clutter. With a larger number of ships around it becomes harder to get a good lock on a single smaller target.
"Realistically", with Federation's tech level, fighters would've been drones and it's hard to imagine that beam targeting systems in Star Trek could ever miss if functioning properly.
Electronic counter measures, basically Electromagnetic static can be used to jam targeting nowadays, I'm certain that they have something similar in ST, their sensors are always getting messed with and blocked. Not to hard to stack a unit on each fighter type craft each pulsing up and down the band with preventing targeting locks and ECCM from being as effective
One reason fighters may not be remote controlled is a threat of someone getting into the connection and disrupting it to either disable the fighters or, even worse, control them and turn them against the mothership.
Suicide shuttles? Think "Drone" would be a more suitable name as there is no crew involved.Loved this video. Ah yes, i do believe there should be more fighters in Star Trek.
During active official war, could the Federation fighters be piloted by criminals, in exchange for pardon (finishing a fraction of remaining sentence as active duty)?
I would have thought by the TNG era (which is where we see the fighter craft being one hit one kill from cruiser ships) Federation fighters would be crewed by holographic pilots similar to the EMH.
The under-wing ship quantum torpedo mounts would be a real game changer for these, ...come down to it, I tend to have to assume the attack planes are better than they seem to appear: they like showing friendly non-hero ships in battle scenes being blown up, but in many cases, I just figure they focus the 'cameras' on the bad stuff to make things look more dangerous, rather than trying to say 'Everything sucks and doesn't make sense.' :)
There’s a bit in the phase II writer’s guide that said that they shouldn’t show squadron manoeuvres because they wanted to differentiate Star Trek from other shows like Buck Rodgers.
One thing you are forgetting. Torpedo range. Photon Torpedoes have longer ranges than phasers. . A squadron of fighters could easily cripple a capitol ship and never enter phaser range. The fighters could easily out maneuver incoming torpedoes from their target. All while not risking their capitol ships to enemy fire. The only defense against this, Is to launch your own fighters to counter theirs.
Hi Captain Foley and Commander Cockings, thanks for the video but i think you are missing the main point in your analysis. Fighters in Star Trek COULD be immensely powerful if used correctly. For example as smaller attack craft against the smaller dominion and cardassian ships like the Jem'Hadar Fighter or the Cardassian Hideki Class destroyers. They are probably more maneuverable than those ships and could probably take at least some hits, seeing as the weapons of those are probably not as powerful as those found on capital ships like the Galor or Keldon class. Sadly we never get to see them used in these roles. In Fact the clips you show in your video were a tactic that Sisko admitted was only aimed to get the Cardassians so angry that they would leave their assigned locations to pursue the fighters. So he deliberately put those fighters in suicide-attack roles to open up a hole for the rest of the fleet. (A strategy that Garak actually quite easily found out)
I think fighter/Torpedo wings would be very effective. Just like they were in WW2. Yes, it seems suicidal to send in a lot of fighters that get destroyed easily, but if it saves one capital ship with 800 or more crew members, it more than makes up for the loss of those fighters. One comparison would be the cost of a current Nimitz class aircraft carrier versus its primary aircraft the F-18 Super Hornet. The Nimitz class aircraft carrier costs around Nine billion each. The super hornet 29 million. If their was a loss of 20 aircraft with their crew lost the cost would be $580 million and 40 crew members. If the Carrier was lost over 5000 would lose their life and cost Nine billion to replace. That's not including the training costs and time.I know the federation would not encourage their Starfleet members to be suicidal, but how often have we seen captains ordering ships to self destruct or attempts to ram their enemies in a last ditch effort.
you are right when you say fighters against capital ships would be at a disadvantage in ones or twos even in threes. but a squadron would have the fire power of a cruiser. And would be more effective because there are more targets to worry about. The is the doctrine of fighters
Regarding the heavy losses of the Peregrine fighters, the battle to re-take DS9 was a desperate attempt to get to the station before the minefield came down. Since the Federation fleet was outnumbered, the near-suicidal use of the fighters might have been a one-off tactic used by Sisko? Maybe the standard battle order of the Dominion was not meant to give its ships room to manoeuvre against fighters in the early stages, since the Federation usually only sent them in as the battle progressed. Sending them against the tight packed Dominion and Cardassian formations shown in the clips might have given them an initial advantage, until the Hidekis went after them.
Captain Foley: There are no modern F-14 Tomcats. They are retired and are no longer produced. Iran may still have some they got from the US, but they are no longer being produced and it's not on par with the newest genration of fighers. The US Navy repalced them with the F/A-18 E and F models of the Super Horent.
I played a LOT of SFB years ago and one thing you forgot to mention was the Hydrans. Their fighters are radically different than any of the other GP races' fighters.
I can't wait till you guys do either a discussion podcast over the other classes or just do a specific Trekyards over the Terran Imperial fightercraft such as the Wraith, the Spectre, or the Phantom-class fighters. Heck, speaking of Terran Imperial, you guys should do a Trekyards over the Brigand-class Cruiser (if possible) from Shattered Universe.
In the Navy we have a saying. "Fighters Die So that Carriers don't" If a fighter gets shoot down that's 1-2 Dead Airman not a small loss and one that demands Blood and retribution, on the other hand if a carrier gets sunk that's 5,000 of your brothers that will never come back.
Okay, so, here is the best way these could be used. First of all, Quantum Torpedoes are also useful against shields. We have seen the USS Enterprise devastate a Romulan Warbird with a spread of 3-4 torpedoes. So imagine the following: USS Defender (example name) launches 6 fighters, each fighter is armed with 6 full sized quantum torpedoes. Six fighters launch their torpedoes, that is a swarm of 36 quantum torpedoes. I don't care what is it, if 36 quantum torps hit you... Game over... I don't care if you are the biggest ship in the fleet, you aren't surviving 36 direct hits with quantum torps. Now imagine that these can hit almost simultaneously. While you can theoretically shoot them down, but Trek weapons kind of suck on tracking. They are built for taking out big ships, they MISS big ships, we have seen this happen dozens of time. They aren't very good at hitting fast moving small ships.
Sorry to post on an older video, but I didn't see anyone mention this in the comments. One thing I was wondering through this video was the use of the emergency transporters in fighter size craft. Nova Squadron (well most of them) survived the star burst maneuver due to the emergency transporters in their fighters bailing them out. I'm curious if a system like that could make these much less suicidal than the show makes it appear. Also, in many of the scenes shown in this video from Sacrifice of Angels, when the fighters are one-shot killed from the Galor class, they break up into multiple pieces rather than just being outright vaporized. Maybe they were designed with some survivability in mind, the pilot(s) might be sitting in a hardened 'bathtub' (like the A-10) so that when the fighter is destroyed the pilots are still alive in a vacuum suit, their hardened cockpit section or some other such contrivance. It feels like Star Fleet would design these things with redundant surviability mechanics like that so they weren't just suicide ships. That being the case I could see the fighters filling a very useful role in these fleet engagements, as other mentioned in those scenes where they go up against the Galor they do a good bit of damage to it, so they possibly trade one or two fighters (not necessarily even the pilots) for a Galor class, that seems like a pretty nice trade in the scheme of the war. Especially if once those pilots ships are destroyed, they materialize back on their carrier vessel sitting on the outskirts of the battle and they could, theoretically, almost immediately jump into another fighter and get back into the fray. That's far cheaper and more effective than the 200+ crew in a one-shot killed Miranda class that DOESN'T have emergency transporters or other bail out procedures.
While they seemed fragile in the Dominion War, the numbers actually work. You send a squadron in, and you'd need 12 phaser blasts to completely remove 12 pilots. Contrast it with say an older Miranda class that could lose dozens of crew in 3-4 blasts.
One argument against fighters I haven’t seen mentioned yet is the range on capital ships in Star Trek, the Galaxy-class according to the TNG technical manual has an effective range of 3000000 kilometres with torpedoes. Without a cloak of some sorts a fighter cannot get close enough.
Emergency transporters. Which works both ways. Meaning an entire fleet can perform emergency transport of a ship that is being destroyed quickly. And the fighters themselves can have an on-board emergency transporter. This greatly reduces the casualties. Escape pods are for when you don't have a whole Fleet in a battle but also Escape pods can alleviate the demand on emergency Transporters of other ships in the fleet.
Fighters can also increase the complex demands on modifications to Shields another defensive methods. Phaser fire from Fighters can improve the effectiveness of larger Starship phaser fire. Much of this would be automated as is typical when piloting a shuttle as well. Meaning the pilot is performing creative decisions and arguably a measure of telepathic reaction
Peregrine in DS9 was often referred to as a Courier suggesting alternate uses (like carrying intel or a couple of individuals) that you wouldn't want to dedicate a full capital ship to performing. Way I look at it however is onscreen between 6-8 fighters appeared to be more than a match for a heavy cruiser, if you can produce a fighter for a 20th or even a 30th the resources of a capital ship (for example look how many shuttles alone a ship carries) then you have a more flexible (can be in more places at once than a single ship) and more cost effective combat force that requires a fraction of the manpower to operate and only really fails to compare in long range assault missions.
19:08 You should check out Operation: Just Cause - it was a naval exercise used to determine the viability of naval air-power. If the Federation were to develop a warp-missile or other super-long range weaponry, then a fighter could scout the enemy and send back telemetry.
as presented in the shows they make sense, or do they? Because we basically only see capital ships with slow fireing ship to ship armament. It seems also, that you can outmaneuver the targeting systems of bigger ships. Also given that even bigger ships blow up when only hit by one beam shot, armor (including energy shields) seems irrelevant against these types of weapons. These seem to be the conditions of the battle we see on the screen, which would highly favour small fighters. My consensus is, that looking at the battles from DS9 and other TNG shows, the scenario follows no real rules, but is completely stylistic, meaning any real tactical adavantage or disadvantage is thrown overboard in favour of "what looks good". So in other words, you can look at those battles as long as you want, they follow no real rule other than, that looks good in the moment and fits the story they want to tell.
Fighters would be useful for colony defense. Give each federation colony a half dozen of them so that they can defend themselves against raiders, etc. At least a hold over so they can fight back until a star ship(s) arrive.
With enhanced teleporters built into their seats that sends them back to the mothership the body count shouldn't be that high. Heck, if that were the case, they can just teleport the guy straight into another waiting fighter and relaunch immediately. Speaking of teleporters. I've always wondered if they can pack more planes on an aircraft carrier if they were able to remove the wings, fuselage and cockpit, then store them giant racks. With a teleporter you can assemble them into a working plane as needed. With a replicator, you can just bring out the essentials like warp cores and fuel out of storage, and materialize an entire ship around it.
One of the things we're not discussing, or at least I didn't see it, is that even though the fighters aren't as survivable as a larger ship (something even destroyer sized, i.e., Defiant sized) every second a enemy ships has to target them instead of larger fleet ships is a second those larger ships can deliver a safe punch. The firepower they bring may not be as substantial as a larger ship, but size isn't necessarily an indication of power (again, the Defiant comes to mind). They can harass, disable and distract enemy ships. This may endanger the pilots, but in a war, thats an acceptable cost. It's not a waste of lives, it's a decision to spend those lives for a cause.
For a intelligence agency. Ship with Warp drive,sheilds, cloak, transporters that could beam a bite of antimatter on the enemy ships bridge, or trash compacter. Exclusively for spy missions. ,
Think about this...you have a squadron attack a capital ship, each fighter has 6 photon torpedoes. All fighters can get closer than a starship can. All fighters all fire simultaneously at same spot...I would think that a Starship getting hit by 20+ photon torpedoes would overwhelm the shields and hit target. Been a long time since I played Star Fleet Battles but I think they had ECM/ECCM craft that could jam enemy sensors and targeting systems. If you make it harder for enemy to target your fighters then your survivability go up. There was also the one episode where Marquis fighters had been upgraded with state of art torpedoes and phasers and tore up a Galor class Cruiser.
A note on the cost of lives with Trek fighters. If a single capital ship gets destroyed (and they always do) you lose hundreds of lives. Fighters have been shown to be able to inflict actual damage on capital ships (we see it on screen, so it happens) so they economics of tactical effectiveness versus risk to life seems pretty good. While the Federation is very peaceful and respects life, it does have several races that might have little trouble tackling the rationale of being a fighter pilot. Tellarites are stubborn and always have something to prove. Andorians are a warrior people and might respect an opportunity to prove themselves as a warrior. Vulcans might see the logic is the usefulness of fighter tactics (needs of the many and all...).
I always wanted an episode in DS9 where, for whatever reason, O'Brien and Bashir got into a couple fighters to defend the station while bantering like RAF pilots :D
I can see it... they'd start off all normal and professional, then one would make a comment about how it's like the Battle of Britain, and then it's all...
"Squadron Leader we have Balbo coming in over the Drink."
"Cardis and Jemmis."
"Roger. Two-six. This is gonna be a Dicy-Do lads."
"Beware the Hun in the Sun!"
"Red Two, follow me through the attack."
"Right-o, Skipper...."
And so on. Meanwhile on the Defiant Sisko and Dax look at each other in bemusement listening to the chatter.
Could have nicknamed their fighters "Spitfire" and "Hurricane"
Fo sho blood fo sho!
Holy crap! that would have been awesome!
David Sastre love this idea esp cuz of their holosuite program
Five fighters attacked that Galor class, and mission killed it. Even if we assume that all five were destroyed, that's only a loss of five personnel. If a single Miranda class was sent instead, not only would it have been destroyed since a Miranda is outclassed by a Galor class, but it would have been a loss of a crew of 210. Even if dozens of fighters get destroyed, it's not as big of a loss as losing a fully crewed starship.
^This... At this level of conflict it is about cost analysis... The weight of 5 lives vs 500 is considered a very good trade.
Additionally you seem to be of the opinion that there are no safety systems on these ships. A group like Starfleet could be expected to have cockpits independently shielded and with it's own (albeit low grade) maneuvering thrusters and life support system. This could allow a pilot to be autoejected from his fighter on a deadman trigger, and immediately flung hard toward the edge of the battle field. This would ensure that a pilot had a survival chance on the loss of his fighter, is totally within the realm of Star Fleet's tech, and would grant around a 45% chance of survival. Which is far more than a WW2 fighter pilot had, (which is what these circumstances are roughly based around).
NOTE please Federation Fighters have escape transporters, used in an episode with Wesley Crusher in the academy.
20 fighters = 20 Pilots and are Seen ON screen seriously damaging a Galor Class Battlecruiser with Hundreds of Crew
the Cost in Life and Assets versus the Damage they can do, make them very worth it, and WHY Captain Sisko kept senting wave after ave as long as he could get away with it wanting to break their lines trying to force a move. A real world sound tactic.
And photons do a considerable amount of damage, a sqadron sweep could easily launch 10 + at a single cruiser OUCH!!!
with safe 50% pilot lose thanks to escape transporters back to the Carrier.
Here is my thought on the role of fighters, inspired by STO.
So in STO, capital ships can divert their shield energy towards a specific direction, so that fires coming from that direction is less effective. In a fleet battle this is very useful, as the majority of the enemy fleet would be from one single direction. In this case, small crafts like fighters can use their maneuverbility to "flank" the enemy fleet and exploit the weaker side of the shields.
That is more useful to direct to a full size vessel
That's actually the main use of fighters against capital ships in Star Wars.
that's what we do today/yesterday too. Attack capital ships in squads. Fighters in front of the Torpedo/Bombers. ''Midway'' movie covers that really well. When ever the Americans or the Japanese sent in the torpedo bombers they needed fighter cover too. Plus your own ships need an umbrella of fighters to keep the other guy's planes away from your carriers and battleships. Without it, you're fucked.
Also carrier borne aircraft can be used to raid fleet anchorages, the 1940 RN raid on Taranto and the 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor come to mind.
Fighters in trek could also be used in similar operations against enemy fleet anchorages
It is also possible that fighters are good at taking out orbital turrets like the ones in Dominion War. Those turrets are bigger than Defiant Class, their shots seem to rip through the shield of Galaxy Class easily, might as well use small crafts so that one shot from those turrets only takes out one fighters, instead of crippling a Galaxy.
A single fighter is weak, but they attack in groups, making them effective in battle with larger ships
Watching Peregrine fighters tear up Cardassian ships in DS9 would suggest that fighters in Trek are indeed a good idea. ;)
As far as loss of life goes, if the Federation was willing to send ancient Miranda class ships into combat with 400 crew per ship, then why wouldn't they send in Peregrine fighters? What we see on screen IS canon. If 5 Peregrine fighters can cripple a Galor (which we saw) before they are destroyed then obviously that's a much better use of resources than losing 400 crew in a Miranda.
DocWolph Again, what we see on screen IS canon. So it isn't really a question of whether or not the Federation would use fighters like that -- because they did. I totally agree that it would make sense to use fighters more strategically, just as Trekyards described, but that doesn't seem to be Starfleet's battle doctrine regarding small attack craft.
Sorry, I was just reiterating my point. I didn't mean to make it seem like I was attacking you or anything. Apologies if that's how I came off. But, speaking in canon terms, I think you got it exactly right; indeed, Starfleet probably didn't know what they were doing. Fighters hadn't been a part of the Federation's battle doctrine for many, many decades prior to the Peregrine program. Adding to that is the fact that Starfleet is not a purely military organization -- they're primarily tasked with exploration, diplomacy, humanitarian missions, etc. Starfleet of the late 24th century rarely found itself involved in any large scale conflicts, and certainly nothing drawn out and protracted like the Dominion War.
So yes, luck definitely played a major role in that particular episode.
Wow, I made nearly the exact same comment, before I saw yours. About how the loss of a single Miranda outweighs the loss of a few fighters.
Assuming some form of transporter life saving system it's not necessarily a suicide mission.
It would be a good idea if the pilots control the fighters from the carrier.
There's also the canon Scorpion-class Romulan fighter seen in Nemesis
Reman fighters.
To answer a couple of your questions:
Killed in one Hit: Yes but they are very hard to hit. In the clip you used, five fighters engaged a Cardasian Galor, yes one was taken out in one hit but the Galor fired five shots at that squadron and only hit one. If that Galor had been targeting a capital ship (especially at that extreme close range) you would expect that every one of those shots would have hit, ripping though the shields and causing serious damage.
Remote control: One word, LAG. Reaction times slow when distance increases.
Not with Subspace signals controlling the ships. they'd be instant up to a few light years away.
In 'Sacrifice of Angels' the Dominion effectively cut all inter-communications between Starfleet ships during the fight and shifted the fight to almost be a dominion victory if not for the Klingon intervention.
If it jammed communications, it will jam any transmission between control ship and remotely controlled ship to be jammed to and a loss of a portion of your fleet's battle power tied to those RC Fighters and Bombers.
Anytime a fighter goes up against a ship it's dangerous. WW2 fighters had it rough toward the end of the war because all nations realized that warplanes were the most dangerous weapon against ships. At the beginning of the war ships were weakly armed against aircraft, by the end ships bristled with AA guns and systems to keep them safe. Multiple hand aimed auto cannons at short range, larger pom poms became mechanically driven rather than hand aimed and radar directed, large flak secondary guns became radar aimed and tipped with proximity fuses. Fighters are always brittle, one hit from a 40mm pom pom will kill a warplane, being hit by the frag from a 127mm prox round and there is little left. In spite of all of that one hit from a torpedo or a bomb dropped by a warplane can also destroy a ship when it hits the right place and a destroyed (or even crippled) ship is a way bigger payout than the lose of a squadron of fighters. Fighter pilots know the risks and so do the nations that send them. In my opinion fighters in the Trek universe make sense, there are only so many phaser/disruptor/polaron banks or whatever on a ship and a tactical officer can only do so much. He's differently going to get some kills but if there are enough fighters, targeting ships systems, engines, phaser banks, etc that ship will more than likely lose.
Ted Brunst i dont think fighter pilots make sense though AI guided fighters make sense
when you take into account that the dominion was taking out large ships with 1 hit, I dont think the problem was that the fighters were so very weak as compared to the larger starfleet ships, I think the problem was starfleet was badly overpowered by the dominion on all fronts.
I think the bigger the ships become in the Star Trek universe, the more likely it is to have fighters.
I remember a scene in ds9, where they first encounter the Jem Hadar and i recall that the runabouts were much better against the dominion strike craft than even the galaxy class odyssey, which i think answers some questions about fighter effectiveness. It was purely their manuverability which aided them
"We live in fame or go down in flame!"
"Nothing can beat the Star Fighter Corps!"
In the big space battle from DS9: big capital ships blowing up left and right. Big, expensive capital ships with lots of crew: BOOM! versus small, relatively cheap ships with two crew: BOOM! The cold equations say buy lots of fighters.
The defiant though is expensive as it uses extreme (rare, complicated, prototype/untested) technology and requires (so is the story told in DS9) extensive tweaking before it won't blow itself up when using engines or weapon systems for 100%... Basically you take all the really powerrful bits of technology inside a much larger ship and press them into this too small to fit shell... what is more time consuming and complicated? Building all power generating elements and weaponry in a Galaxy class ship or welding together a few cabines and corridors to fit the skeleton crew in it? You probably will not save too much time for a Defiant compared to an Akira class ship or other capitals that besides fighting can also take over a lot more roles (and have the potential to salvage crew in addition to that, transporting much more than their complement if needs be... the Defiant hardly has space for what they need to fly it)
And it is not that the capital ships that we see getting destroyed withstood dozens of hits, most of them also are devastated by a single phaser or torpedo like the Mirandas shown in the Trekyards video... Even Galaxies, where we KNOW (from fights in TNG) that the shields should keep up to a few hits at least, maybe one or two dozen in short time... The Defiant ultimately was destroyed not by massive weapon fire but by this weird anti technology beam the Breen brought into the melee...
Yes but in the battle in sacrifice of angels for example the survival rate among all the crew on the capital ships would be good compared to the fighter craft. Yes they appear very effective but you have to bring up a moral point. They are essentially expendable if not almost kamikaze like craft when thrown against capital ships. I think at least the federation would have the morals to not send people to their deaths like that.
I absolutely love the idea of a Typhoon like class having pilots control unmanned fighter craft but from the safety of a well protected ship though.
The Mirandas were just as useless and blew up just as much as any Peregrine in one or two shots... so we have a small fighter with 2 Pilots being able to inflict some damage versus a full sized Ship with 150-200 People doing also just that little damage blowing up instantly.
Which is morally more apprehensible?
@@selorkiith4461 Frankly it was a matter of desperation. They needed every available ship for Operation Return. They couldn't leave fighters or Mirandas behind.
There seems to be confusion as to which fighter the "Peregrine Class" is. Some think it's the little fighter seen in Sacrifice of Angels. However, I've also seen Chakotays ship listed as "Peregrine" as well. They're obviously two very different designs...
From what I've seen in the special effect on the shows and movies, there seems to be two kind of shielding on ships: Bubble and a "hull tight" contour.
I believe the bubble shield we've all seen are fairly weak against physical object forcing its way under it.
Memory Alpha states that physical object would be deflected away by shield, not destroyed. So shield can push away passive physical objects. In the last battle in Nemesis, we can see the Enterprise-E bouncing away debris from the contour shield.
In my interpretation, shield in Star Trek can only passively redirect the kinetic energy of physical objects. If the object in question has its own thrust and forces its way into the shield, it can penetrate it. If the object in question has its own shield, then it might protect it self against stronger shield.
Also, it is stated in Memory Alpha that shield operates in different frequency to protect the ship from certain energy and matter. It is possible that the frequency required to defend against physical objects differ vastly from normal weapons. In large scale battles of the Dominion War, I think ships had to prioritize their shield against the weapons of large ships and let fighters be intercepted by other means. A bunch of fighters dealing in small amount of survivable damage is way better than getting one shot by an enemy capital ship.
So fighters can penetrate shield to inflict damages directly to ships from within the shield bubble. Larger ships have to fire until the shield fails. That's an advantage fighters have.
I the shield on the Enterprise-E was upgraded with contour shield after the end or during the Dominion War (After the event of Insurrection), I think, in part was to prevent fighters from attacking the ship directly from with the shield bubble after learning from the war.
In Nemesis, Picard ordered the Enterprise-E to ram into the Scimitar while the Scimitar still have 70% shield and it worked. In conclusion, shield in Star Trek is fairly strong in protecting ships from energy weapons and torpedoes (Because they expect them) but fairly weak against physical crafts purposefully flying into the shield.
In the TNG episode "Preemptive Strike" Ro Laren flies a shuttle through the Enterprise's shields to they can beam medical supplies out of the cargo hold.
@@stevenkuski5916 Ro was undercover at the time and Picard allowed her through the shields so she could complete that mission and solidify her cover.
Shields in Star Trek operate the same way, bubble and hull tight are just different shape configurations. TNG The Hunted shows a small ship bouncing off the shields just like that Romulan nacelle in Nemesis.
The shield frequency is basically the subspace oscillation, just like a radio station. If you can match the frequency you can pass through the shields with anything, energy beam, ships, transporter beam, torpedo it's like the shield isn't there. If you don't have the frequency then everything bounces off or gets 'deflected', hence deflector shields. There aren't different frequencies for matter or energy (that's closer to Star Wars), photon torpedoes, disruptors, plasma beams, and phasers all get stopped by the same barrier. The Borg do the opposite, after you fire on them a few times, they get a read on what frequency your weapons are firing at and shift the perfect frequency to cancel them out with no energy loss. Which is why you have to keep rotating energy frequencies against the Borg.
This concept of a smaller ship actually flying into a shield bubble is not supported by what's on screen. DS9 Call to Arms shows a Cardassian fighter ship crash landing into the station's shields and promptly exploding.
The Nemesis ramming as cool as it was, shouldn't have actually worked if the Scimitar's shields were still up, unless their forward shields were the 30% that was down (which isn't how shield strength works). Not the only mistake Stuart Baird made in that movie though.
Left out the Jackill's Guide Killer Bees
The DS9 style battles kind of seems like would be a case of inexperience with fighter tactics by commanders (as they had been out of service for a long time). In almost all attacks you only initiate an attack when you have the advantage, which the tactics they were using did not give them.
Hey Captain Foley and Commander Cockings: I take issue with the idea that someone in a fighter craft in the Star Trek universe is on a suicide mission. Not so, necessarily. Small fighter craft can be EXTREMELY effective, and if written properly, can be extremely useful in the Star Trek universe, just like real world. For example, Star Trek Beyond. A SWARM of fighter craft were more than a match for poor Enterprise! The Dominion war may not be the best example of the use of fighter craft, because you had literally hundreds of capital ships on screen, compared to dozens of fighters. When Capital ships outnumber the fighters, sure the capital ships come out on top. When the reverse is true, it's a far different outcome. Fighter craft may be smaller and more vulnerable when they do get hit, but they are far more maneuverable at impulse speeds, and when fighter craft have superior numbers, they can mob a capital ship en masse, they can easily overwhelm said capital ship, espeically when they are armed in such a way to defeat shields. So it stands to reason that if one side has fighter craft that can take on a capital ship, the other side will need fighter craft to counter the enemy fighters.
Armed in such a way as to defeat shields is exactly the problem with fighters in the Trek universe.
Imagine if you could go back to December 6th, 1941 and mount a couple of Phalanx turrets, or a couple of those dutch Goalkeeper point defense turrets on the USS Arizona. December 7th would have been a much different day. That's what fighters in the Trek universe would be like. They can't stand off outside their target's range and launch 1-hit-1-kill shipkiller missiles like modern jet fighters can. As soon as they are in range to attack, they are in range of defensive fire. And a ship like a Sovereign with a dozen or more phaser banks, would start swatting those flies down, quickly. Fighters just don't have a power generation system that can put the gigawatts of power into an energy blast to take down a star ship's shields or power shields that can take hits, especially since most of the power those ships generate is going into the engines to power the only advantage they have, their maneuverability. And star ship targeting systems and light-speed weapons can compensate for any maneuverability advantage a fighter might have.
For fighters to work in the Star Trek universe they would need EW/stealth systems to supplement their maneuverability to make them harder to hit, and some kind of gun that would actually be able to burn through shields.
Small craft can actually fly through Star Trek shields. There are numerous episodes that feature ramming, collisions, and intentional piloting right through raised shields. Apparently, shields are primarily designed for protection against super high energy impacts, like weapons fire, torpedoes, micrometeorites, etc. Relatively slow moving objects, like shuttles or space debris or Jem'hadar suicide ships, can penetrate shields with ease. So, that being the case, fighters don't need a weapon to burn through shields. They can basically pop right through your shields and unload micro-torpedoes directly against your unprotected hull. Which is reaaaally bad.
Most of the swarm craft were ran by drones. If you look at the writing on the artifacts. It appears to be from the Borg precursor race.
Another good example of a fighter craft taking out a capital ship is the DS9 episode The Jem'Hadar, when the Odyssey was destroyed. At that time, the Galaxy class was about as powerful a ship the Federation had, and it was taken out by a small craft ramming it.
That was just bad writing. A single photon can have an explosive yield over 250 megatons. All it has to do is detonate in a swarm of fighters and every fighter/shuttle within 50 miles is dead.
>Shows a Federation Venture Class scoutship.
>Calls it a Talon class, a Romulan scoutship.
- Recently in our table top Role playing game, I came up with a maneuver that makes Warp Fighters a force to be feared.
- It's similar to the Picard maneuver. But incorporates a classic aviation tactic. The Dive bomber.
- In this case, the Warp Dive bomb: The Fighter accelerates to warp speed, like the picard maneuver, But it engages in a dive bombing, while still at warp it breaks away. The Torpedo which is now flying at the target many times faster than light slams into the target.
- At warp 3, the Torpedo was moving at 27 times the speed of light. That's enough force for a Solid iron Cannonball to fracture a planet. A Warp fighter using this Maneuver could destroy a planet with a Cannonball.
- we've been working on the logistics of what would actually happen.
- Against a planet a Micro torp would explode on impact with the planets Thermosphere, The Damage to the planet's Atmosphere would still be quite severe.
- A solid, Iron Bullet. Might make it through the Atmosphere, and could hit the planet hard enough to crack a continental mantel. Then again, Even Iron at this insane speed would likely be vaporized in the planets atmosphere.
- Against a ship with it's shields up, the impact would of course slam the shields first.
- We are still debating just How OP this tactic would be. Imagine a wing of fighters all Warp Dive bombing a group of Domi ships. The look on a founders face would be priceless.
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- I like the ideas of Fighters in Star Trek. When they employ ECM ECCM, and such. They can be allot of fun. I'd like to think a Mark II Valkyrie, or Mark III. Would be more than a match for a Klingon 'Bird of Prey.'
Leo Maybe I don't quite understand you, but don't torpedoes already travel at warp speed if shot at warp speed? What advantage does your tactic have?
I loved the two fighters they came up with in Dianne Carey's book Dreadnought.
Ok commenting on a rather old video, Something everyone seems to be ignoring as far as I can see is that form follows function, if you suddenly introduce fighters into the Star Trek cannon with weapons that can potentially get through shields then you also have to add vastly increased point defence to the capital ships to balance things out, which would not be hard to do, just needing fast tracking small phasers and a decent targeting system. Therefore as the capital ships don't have insane point defence systems as far as can be seen, fighters by definition do not work in universe.
16:45, It's a very contentious point because Trekkies enjoy contentious points. ;)
As far as fighters being hit by capital weapons, I feel as if the frequent hits against them on screen is more a plot device than anything, the fighter would be able to avoid shots far more effectively than as appears (look at shuttles and runabouts and their somewhat effective evasive maneuvers, and that'll be a fraction of the capability of a fighter). Couldn't agree more with the point about the Miranda class also getting picked off very easily. A Peregrine is a much smaller loss per shot than a full sized ship like that especially as the chance of missing would be much, much higher. There's also the point that in fleet battles, as ships become damaged, they drop back behind fresher ships in a leap frog like maneuver giving them time to repair what they can before rejoining the fight. A fighter negates that option as they can navigate through the fleets and hit weakened targets. Just my 2 cents, keep up the good work guys!
Three words- remote-controlled fighters. That way you have no fighter crew losses.
the peregrine fighter is one of my favorite small ships on star trek online, its such a good ship
I remember in Starfleet Command 2 Orion Pirates the fighters being highly effective, I always liked the carriers in that game. They were a force multiplier especially when it was my carrier vs 1 or 2 other ships. Most ships focused on my carrier and tended to ignore my fighters, to their detriment, in most cases.
The ships of the line flew like fighters to start with.
I can't imagine any sort of fighter being even remotely effective against a capital ship. People can talk all they like about maneuverability, but with direct beam phasers and good enough targeting computers, it's a moot point. I guess my point of reference here too is "Conundrum" from TNG. The Enterprise enters alien territory and the group they battle sends fighters its way and the Enterprise promptly tears them to shreds. The accuracy that this happens seems to suggest that any capital ship with decent computational power would not miss such a target and therefore the concept of the fighter in this universe is totally bunk.
It could come down to the eternal battle of ECM vs ECCM. Maybe the reason Starfleet *stopped* using fighters for so many decades was because capital ship countermeasures made fighters totally obsolete. But, perhaps, Federation technology had advanced enough by the late 24th century to include advanced ECM systems on the Peregrine that increased their survivability...at least to an "acceptable" level.
Fact is, we saw what we saw in 'Sacrifice of Angels.' It's canon, so the only thing to do is figure out a somewhat believable 'Star Trek' explanation for what we saw. In my mind, the only explanation that makes sense is that the Peregrine incorporated some _seriously_ advanced ECM systems. That would also explain why the Federation considered the Peregrine program so important in the first place -- new tech.
The new, more powerful ECM suite make sense as explanation. We saw many times how Federation ships can't "lock on" target in fights and as phasers are point attack weapon they need to be precisely aimed at target.
And if I remember right, those "fighters" were using technology that was a hundred years behind. Of course a Galaxy class ship tore through them. The comparison fails utterly due to the sheer gap in technology.
I don't thinks it's fair to sight that episode as the whole plot was that an alien race, the Satarrans were using the superior technology of the Enterprise to destroy their rivals, the Lysians. As such the fighters sent against the ship would have been much more primitive and in fact, as I recall, they were not even fighters simply unmanned drones protecting the Lysian central command.
I think it is worth pointing out that the squadrons of fighters in "Sacrifice of Angels" were totally ineffective without the support and greater firepower of fleet capital ships. Recall that at least seven waves of Starfleet fighters were destroyed before Sisko received his desired result, which was actually just a trap set by Gul Dukat.
In Trek, the canon fact is starships have greater firepower, defensive power, speed, and weapon range compared to fighters. Advanced range and targeting simply takes away any advantage fighters might have as the backbone of an offensive. Fighters may be cheaper to produce, but without capital ships to cover them, will never do much damage to a technological equal. Maquis Peregrines might seem effective, until one remembers that they've only really faced Cardassian starships, which were never the technological equals of the Federation; Galor and Keldon classes had weaker defenses and poor targeting. Dominion starships (which didn't bother with building fighters, I might add), utterly obliterated the Maquis and their Peregrines. And before someone mentions the Dominion Attack Fighter, recall that the smallest version of this ship is nearly 70 meters in length with three decks and a crew of 43; hardly a starfighter in any sense.
Great video. It's fantastic seeing your subscriber numbers grow - I joined when there was just a couple thousand, now there is 7 times more, and it starts really growing exponentially once you get into that 20k range from personal experience. I'll wager you'll see 100k in 2017, especially with the work you've been putting in with recent trips and videos.
Love watching you both.
"As I like things like the modern F14 Tomcat"
There is no such thing as a "modern" Tomcat.... that bird is almost as old as the ST TV Series (TOS).... first flown in action around 1975 IIRC... and it has not been in Use in the US Navy for ten years or so...!
"Fighter pilots must be suicidal"
Not really... in a fighter craft a close miss is a complete miss... only really hit crafts get you killed, while being one of 300 or 500 personnel on an Excelsior or Galaxy Class ship can get you killed even with absolutely non lethal hits ("flesh wounds" instead of hitting engines, weapons, bridge or other core systems) or ricochets or whatever... Especially when you think about how in ST the power lines seem to be made from Nitroglycerine... Worst case Scenario for a battle a la DS9 would be almost complete destruction of all ships involved, it does hardly matter if you sit in the smallest and most agile ones or in the fat main battle ships like Galaxies...
A carrier in star trek is practical. Imagine a ship that is devoted to carrying a swarm of 100 single seat craft or drones. Each craft would carry 2 or 3 quantum torpedoes. That could give a formation a really bad day. A drone would probably be preferable. A drone means it can either be smaller or made more survivable.
In DS9 capital ships explode just as easily, killing hundreds and not just one pilot.
What the Peregrines need are at least one minigun type pulse/compression Phaser set up to be viable gunfighters as well as missileships.
Hey, for station defense where keeping a capital ship on station would be impractable i would prefer to have a couple of fighter wings for defense since yes the defensive systems on a starbase are good you cant move to intercept an incoming threat, with even twelve fighters you could potentially buy the time you need to get reinforcements. Just look at carrier groups today, yes the fighters will be destroyed but it damages your opponent and can make a pitched capital ship battle shorter even if the shields are just drained
You could consider Braxton's Timeship a fighter because it appears to be designed to participate in temporal hit and runs during the temporal Cold War as its weapons is possibly powerful enough to destroy a Nakuhl raider.
the problem with going by what happens on screen is that it was all done on rule of cool, and best for drama, not what ships were actually capable of doing or surviving ^.^
Also for resources if i can build 500 fighters in the same time it takes to build 1 centaur class, and with even less training per person its not that big a waste of resources.
I always felt that space battle fleets should be similar to contemporary carrier groups rather then just capital ship to capital ship.
So something small fast, secretive. Possibly looks like a meteorite
So fighter pilots die... and we see whole starships coming apart after 2-4 hits in "Sacrifice of Angels" So... which looses more people... really? ;) Just some thoughts.
NOM
The role of fighters in naval combat should not be underestimated. Although the fire power is small in relation to the capitol ships, its important to use fighters in SciFi storytelling to create scale and context to more historical battles like Midway and Leyte Gulf in WWII. The loss of hundreds of fighters in Pacific Campaign battles was not unusual. Fighter craft give a battle a human scale, as seen in other franchises like Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars. I wish that Star Trek used smaller craft more often. Great post. Thanks.
I think they are very practical. while Starships might be most effective at establishing supremacy in interstellar space, dominance within a planet's atmosphere and over the land thereof would need fighters.
You guys mentioned if the fighters would be useful, Think how fighters are used to day, air to air interception, air to ground. Naval fighters are always out on patrol out inside the radar coverage of the ships, so I can see fighter being very useful.
the way I see it Federation Fighters would have operated in response to the Cardassian and Jem'hadar using small attack vessels dropping in on them like the luftwaffe did to Mustang Pilots as they escorted bombers to their targets. The goal was to pull these small vessels away from the fight into dog fights where they could be eliminated. Federation ships could drop in two enemy formations followed by Klingon bird-of-prey wings and as the Jem'hadar Fighters gave Chase to the Federation Fighters it would allow the Klingons to move in for the kill wiping large numbers of small cardassian and Jem'Hadar vessels out and keeping them out of the larger capital ship battle
My dad's favorite fighter planes are the F-14 Tomcat and the F4U Corsair. Mine are the F-22 Raptor and the F-18 Hornet.
The combination of fighters and shuttles is interesting, with the shuttle hanging out in the background to beam out the pilots of any damaged fighters. Using a runabout would be better in that situation, as you could have a triage unit available, complete with a holographic doctor. You could even have a runabout controlling a squadron of drones, with living pilots inside the runabout controlling them remotely.
I consider Data and Leia Organa to be space fighters ... as they can fly pretty well through space.
If u really think about it they are "annoying fly's with deadly bites" if used correctly!
The anti fighter argument sounds like a WW1 admiral dismissing the viability of aircraft in war. WW2 showed just how wrong that kind of thinking was.
One question I always had: Did Starfleet covertly aided the Maquis? Not the conventional personnel such as Captain Picard or Janeway, but from Section 31 or others of the type
Novo Eduardo AC Section 31? Almost definitely. It would be a great way to keep the Cardassians busy if they heard rumours of a threat from the Gamma quadrant...
Given the level of automation seen on the original Enterprise, I can't imagine those Miranda class ships going fully manned into battle. In wartime Starfleet would probably be most interested in getting as many ships to the feild as possible, and most millitary units are usually under strength to begin with. I think fighters would be best a raiders and escorts, personally. Maybe in peacetime they would make good scout ships as well? I like the underwing hard point idea, though.
@10:40 what is that really (relatively) big ship there... I can't read it's name...
the six hardpoint mounted torpedos make the paraquine usefull for a single pass if dropping all 6 torpedos aside from planetary attacks and cargo/diplomatic ship defense.
Galaxy class take the heat, I like the galaxy class but absorbing fire were not its strong suit in TNG and DS9. Better to lose a fighter crewed by 1 or 2 people than lose a ship of 1,000.
In addition to what you guys said about better shields and focusing on incoming ordinance, I'd either dump the warp drive or limit it to a system that can handle no more than 1 to 3 c (I'll others figure what warp factor that is and what scale to use). I'd want to fill that space with ECM to make the thing just harder to hit. Decoys, radar-supresing technology, mirrage effects (using the shields to deflect you own signal so that it looks like you're wavering like you're part of a mirage), etc.
The only time you're going to use the warp is if the carrier drops you away from the battle and you warp into it before your light-speed signal reaches the people you're planning to fight or if you've fired your ordinance or not been terribly successful and you need to get out so that can reach your recovery point and let people who can still shoot work. So why go Warp 7? Or 5? 3's a stretch, even. The Rebellian has hyperdrive capable fighters because they don't have enough resources to invest in something to just tote their fighters around. Everyone else does, including the Federation. So they should use those resources.
I doubt that anyone will ever read this but the idea that fighters would ever not be a combat effective resource seems...naive. Lets look at the argument of fighter viability in combat from a manpower standpoint. 1 of the DS9 fighters might have a crew complement of, say, 4 for maximum effectiveness. One pilot, copilot, engineer and a tactical officer. By comparison, the crew of most starships would range in the hundreds, and many of the federation starships had non-military personnel aboard. It makes sense to reduce the size of your crew to avoid excess casualties in combat. Sisko points this out when he described the Defiant on her introduction.
Next, for best comparison, lets look at one of the ships that DS9 era fighters would have been designed to fight from the drawing board up to prototype: a Galor class warship. Standard crew size is 300, not including troops and support personnel. But we're not being fair just counting noses. Lets look at the weapons too. Galors had 4 phasers, and some exotic weapons in the form of disruptor wave cannons and spiral wave generators. These exotic weapons would provide a serious threat to larger targets with a big silhouette to hit, but because of the slow maneuverability of the craft, would suffer in targeting a smaller ship. Just like in real combat, the true threat to a fighter squadron would be the faster rate of fire and pinpoint accuracy of phasers. As discussed in this podcast, one good phaser hit will take out--either destroy or incapacitate--a fighter. For parity, we'll pit one wave of fighters (we've seen them attack in groups of 4; we'll call that a wave) against a lone pre-war Galor.
Now that the stage is set I want set some ground rules and preface: the Cardassians of the time were no bunch of slouches. They were seen as a threat to the Federation as great as the Klingons and the Romulans. These guys knew their business and they were good at it. But neither is the federation; these fighters aren't going to have the pea shooters installed that a runabout would if they are intended to attack a starship of this size. They'll have comparable power in their phasers to other "ships of the line". The argument that the Federation would send out fighters without ship killer grade munitions is just...wrong. From a logistics standpoint, the fighter becomes useless if it can't actually hurt its intended target. If there is no point in building it, they would have scrapped it. In addition, we know these fighters were highly successful--in their prototype form--against Galor class ships under the care of the Maquis (source TGN: Preemptive Strike). So the weapons had to be shield disruptive and ship killer capable out of the gate. And there is another "tough little ship" that confirms the Federation had made great strides in miniaturizing heavy weapons from TNG to DS9. The Defiant was a paltry 350k ton warship that could stand up to a Galor one on one, plot armor not withstanding. The Danube class runabout was somewhere between 100k to 200k tons but not built for combat. Lets say these fighters--due to similar size in the shows--are around the same weight to the Danube. 4 ship killer phasers on the Defiant means that the fighters--at or below half weight--could have been fitted with 2 phasers of similar strength. Yeah, they're probably cramming them in; yeah they're probably sacrificing a lot of safety equipment that a larger warship will have. But this is not a runabout. This is a ship built from the keel up for war.
Lets get to the actual tactics of a fight.
The best thing a Galor class captain could do against a wave of fighters would be to divert power from his exotic weapons to his shields, provide enough power per shot to his phasers for kill shots to the fighters, and try to keep them from getting into "knife range" and taking out a shield so they can launch torpedo salvos. Sounds doable...until you remember that Galor class ships are "sluggish" by starship standards of their size. The captain isn't just limited to 4 phasers either; they're limited to whatever phasers can face the target at the time. And fighters are designed to be small and highly maneuverable. This makes them hard to hit. We see in the shows that Galors often miss when they fire at fighters, even when they're flying straight in "suicide run" style. Lets assume they have some electronic warfare equipment installed that makes them harder still to target. EW might not be as effective with a larger target like a Galaxy class, but a tiny fighter would want to make its sensor shadow huge in the hopes of making the enemy fire wide and miss them.
The fighters are going to maneuver for the best location to attack from, probably from the dorsal "above and down" or from the bottom and attack upward to avoid those exotics from the Galor. The Cardassians setup as I propose and fire in rapid succession, and since I've rarely seen more than 1 shot per second in the show we'll call that "rapid fire" for a strong enough shot to kill a fighter. In space combat the Cardassians can rotate their ship and try to get more weapons to bare, but for the sake of argument I want to say that they can't shoot more than 2 phasers at their targets on the way in--2 in and another 2 on the way out with a short burst of 3, maybe all 4 as they pass; maybe 12 shots. They disable or destroy at least one of the fighters under focused attack despite the EW screen before it even gets a shot off (if anyone does read this then, yes, I just handed the Cardassians a massive advantage).
The Federation fighters return fire with their forward mounted phasers. 6 ship killer capable phasers--also under rapid fire--slam into the shields of the Galor and they're rapid fire too for the 3 to 5 seconds on their first pass. Lets say its just 3 seconds. Thats 18 shots at a larger, slower target. Lets be (very) generous and say half of them miss. 9 shots hit the shields of the Galor. If they don't go down, the Feds won't launch torpedoes. After all, they were fighting to kill the target. Watching the shows, if this was a Galaxy--depending on the episode--the shields would be down. But I'm going to skew the argument again in the Galor's favor and say the shields stay up and the tac officers hold their torpedoes for another pass.
The Galor now gets its revenge. As they pass, it has a short chance to fire all 4 (I'm giving them all 4) of its phasers and then has the same amount of time with 2 phasers for "up the kilt" shots on the suicide attack squad as they retreat and re-orient. If the original attack run cost the Feds one ship, the regrouping will cost them a second. They're down to half strength now. They re-orient while the Galor gets its damaged shields back up as high as it can--but I'm not going to just hand them the win. Those shields took 9 hits. There's just no way they're going to be back at full power when the last two ships make their final charge.
So when the Feds return, they're going to orient to attack the same side they hit before and the Cardassians know they're going to take a massive hit. I'm going to--potentially cheat here--give the Feds 1 and a half ships for this part of the engagement. So they get the same 3 seconds, one of the ships is again taken out on the way in but this one gets some shots off; 2 seconds worth. 10 more phaser shots on an already heavily strained shield array. I'll again take half away but thats 9+5=14 shots in total to the same side of the Galor. Those shields will go down unless they have plot armor. That leaves a clear path for the remaining fighter's 4 torpedoes to slide in--at knife range if the tac officer has the balls--and hit that sucker with all their antimatter goodness.
Even if it survives, somehow, 4 rapid torpedo hits to the same area of the hull--even if the Galor kills the last fighter on its way out, 16 people (with ships ranging from 100k to 200k tons if they weigh near the same as a Danube) will have severely damaged if not crippled a 1.6 million metric ton warship with a crew complement of 300 people. We've seen it in the movies and the shows: when the torpedoes hit the hulls, people start dying.
Depending on the cost of the fighters (and I can't think 4 fighters with a total mass less than 800,000 tons would cost more than a Galor to make and maintain) even if the entire squad is destroyed the Cardassians (until repaired) are down one warship and dozens if not hundreds of crew members are injured or dead.
From the bean counter standpoint the Federation wins even if it loses this fight catastrophically.
Now that we skewed the fight to the warships side, lets even the scales. If we'd sent even tonnage at the Galor, thats 8 fighters--skewed to make the Fed fighters as heavy as possible--which doubles the threat to the Galor's 300 crewmen for a risk of 32 crew on the Federation's side. If this theoretical battle would have crippled the Galor with just 4, 8 will kill it. Lets say thats heavy for these ships and give them 150k tons. Tonnage for tonnage, thats yet another 4 ships on the Fed side, now at 12 ships and 48 crew for that first salvo--again I'll "give" the Cardassians a quarter of the attack force--they don't even get to shoot. So, right back down to 9 ships firing 2 ship killer phasers apiece for 3 seconds: 54 shots. I give them that half missed; nah--I'll give you 2/3 miss. 18 phaser hits. Yes, they launch their torpedoes and that Galor is a fireball in vacuum.
Sticking with the DS9 era, its not until the Dominion enters combat (with its smaller, more agile ships) on the Cardassian side that the fighters would start dropping like flies for small gains. But thats because we're now building a screen of ships to protect those big slow warships. And by then we have Defiant sized vessels (Defiant class, Saber, Miranda, etc) to counter those Jem'Hadar and take heat off fighter waves, again balancing the fight and allowing fighters to have a more selective role.
Scott Covington Wow, that's really elaborate and there's a lot of good stuff in there. You are completely right of course - give each craft a tiny crew and a lot of photon torpedoes and they'll obliterate a much larger capital ship. The only things that might pose a problem is the energy needs for an elongated battle, but I'm sure in a shorter engagement they would be enough.
Your comment did give me an idea as to how they could be deployed though. one problem with small ships is how short-term they are, as they have to dock at a starbase or in a larger ship. My solution would be to Combine two existing ideas - the Multi vector assault mode and the Saucer Separation of the Enterprise-D. After a battle, a squadron of ships could combine with a large central section to form a larger carrier ship. the central section would have a mess hall, a sick bay, and even a Holodeck. It would also have a powerful warp drive, faster and longer lasting than the ones on the attack craft. It could have a small crew of engineers and doctors, enough to repair the crafts. This way, the ship's could be deployed deeper into space and operate more independently than if they had to be tied down to a large capital ship.
You're right -- nobody would read something like that. I tried for the first few minutes...
I think part of the problem is their not 'fighters' as people think about them, their much more like modern PT boats then F-16s.
You raise a good argument.
But there are still some ships in Star Trek you should never use fighters on under any circumstances. Starfleet vessels like the Galaxy class for one, which are very good at pinpoint slaughter of small craft (watch Conundrum), second big boys like the Jem'Hadar Dreadnaught. You could launch a whole wing against that bad boy and not have a prayer. Borg ships obviously.
So there's a ceiling on their effectiveness. But in a battle where you're clearly going to take casualties regardless the firepower of a well armed fighter squadron is an attractive solution.
The ship design you did last week (Archer class) would be an IDEAL fighter design... install built up phaser banks in the dorsal side of the saucer, with a dedicated power source in the shuttle/equipment bay and ejectable torpedo launchers and magazines on the ventral side on the landing struts. on the interior replace the two forward officer quarters with tactical station on one side and a larger transporter room on the other. you now have a very maneuverable torpedo boat and commando transport.
Something that size I wouldn't call a fighter, it's far large I my view.
It would be more accurately classed as a Gunboat
+Peter Clarke true....
that being said... the Star trek Universe is even MORE lacking in crafts that could be conceivably called gunboats than it is "fighter craft" the Starfleet Navy is model after a surface naval system from the 1400s to just before World War Two. And throughout that time having an abundance of smaller easier to maneuver crafts with each vessel only able to sustain itself alone for a small duration of time and having a single main weapon or a small battery of weapons has been a mainstay in both coastal defense AND assualts. even current Marine Expeditionary Force rely heavily on amphibious assault craft and hovercrafts. That is the niche the Archer class should be filling...
I took the role of fighters during the Dominion War was primarily to combat bug ships, either as a screen against them using kamikaze tactics such as the ones used by them during the attack against the Odyssey, or as a way to break up formations during large fleet battles. These broken formations wouldn't be able to fire as effectively at smaller capital ships, or rely on each other to cover weaker shield arcs. I believe that the large discrepancy between the performance of fighters in small engagements vs fleet battles might be explained by what, for a lack of a better word, could be described as sensor clutter. With a larger number of ships around it becomes harder to get a good lock on a single smaller target.
"Realistically", with Federation's tech level, fighters would've been drones and it's hard to imagine that beam targeting systems in Star Trek could ever miss if functioning properly.
Electronic counter measures, basically Electromagnetic static can be used to jam targeting nowadays, I'm certain that they have something similar in ST, their sensors are always getting messed with and blocked. Not to hard to stack a unit on each fighter type craft each pulsing up and down the band with preventing targeting locks and ECCM from being as effective
Derek Logan meh..we'll just come up with counter measures for the counter measures
One reason fighters may not be remote controlled is a threat of someone getting into the connection and disrupting it to either disable the fighters or, even worse, control them and turn them against the mothership.
Suicide shuttles? Think "Drone" would be a more suitable name as there is no crew involved.Loved this video. Ah yes, i do believe there should be more fighters in Star Trek.
During active official war, could the Federation fighters be piloted by criminals, in exchange for pardon (finishing a fraction of remaining sentence as active duty)?
I would have thought by the TNG era (which is where we see the fighter craft being one hit one kill from cruiser ships) Federation fighters would be crewed by holographic pilots similar to the EMH.
The Gryphon class looks nothing like a Romulan fighter. But it does look exactly like the Defiant.
The under-wing ship quantum torpedo mounts would be a real game changer for these, ...come down to it, I tend to have to assume the attack planes are better than they seem to appear: they like showing friendly non-hero ships in battle scenes being blown up, but in many cases, I just figure they focus the 'cameras' on the bad stuff to make things look more dangerous, rather than trying to say 'Everything sucks and doesn't make sense.' :)
There’s a bit in the phase II writer’s guide that said that they shouldn’t show squadron manoeuvres because they wanted to differentiate Star Trek from other shows like Buck Rodgers.
Rogue Class you say? Does a collection of them make a Rogue Squadron? :)
Where does that footage of the B'Rel's attacking a ground outpost come from?
DS9: Once More Unto the Breach most likely.
Where was the Venture class? While not a pure fighter, it could be piloted by one operator and be used in much the same way.
One thing you are forgetting. Torpedo range. Photon Torpedoes have longer ranges than phasers. . A squadron of fighters could easily cripple a capitol ship and never enter phaser range. The fighters could easily out maneuver incoming torpedoes from their target. All while not risking their capitol ships to enemy fire. The only defense against this, Is to launch your own fighters to counter theirs.
Hi Captain Foley and Commander Cockings, thanks for the video but i think you are missing the main point in your analysis.
Fighters in Star Trek COULD be immensely powerful if used correctly. For example as smaller attack craft against the smaller dominion and cardassian ships like the Jem'Hadar Fighter or the Cardassian Hideki Class destroyers. They are probably more maneuverable than those ships and could probably take at least some hits, seeing as the weapons of those are probably not as powerful as those found on capital ships like the Galor or Keldon class.
Sadly we never get to see them used in these roles. In Fact the clips you show in your video were a tactic that Sisko admitted was only aimed to get the Cardassians so angry that they would leave their assigned locations to pursue the fighters. So he deliberately put those fighters in suicide-attack roles to open up a hole for the rest of the fleet. (A strategy that Garak actually quite easily found out)
Fighters should be equipped with sensor scramblers so capital ships can’t target them so easy
I think fighter/Torpedo wings would be very effective. Just like they were in WW2. Yes, it seems suicidal to send in a lot of fighters that get destroyed easily, but if it saves one capital ship with 800 or more crew members, it more than makes up for the loss of those fighters. One comparison would be the cost of a current Nimitz class aircraft carrier versus its primary aircraft the F-18 Super Hornet. The Nimitz class aircraft carrier costs around Nine billion each. The super hornet 29 million. If their was a loss of 20 aircraft with their crew lost the cost would be $580 million and 40 crew members. If the Carrier was lost over 5000 would lose their life and cost Nine billion to replace. That's not including the training costs and time.I know the federation would not encourage their Starfleet members to be suicidal, but how often have we seen captains ordering ships to self destruct or attempts to ram their enemies in a last ditch effort.
Nailed it. Going to war requires a certain amount of pragmatism, even for the Federation.
you are right when you say fighters against capital ships would be at a disadvantage in ones or twos even in threes. but a squadron would have the fire power of a cruiser. And would be more effective because there are more targets to worry about. The is the doctrine of fighters
Regarding the heavy losses of the Peregrine fighters, the battle to re-take DS9 was a desperate attempt to get to the station before the minefield came down. Since the Federation fleet was outnumbered, the near-suicidal use of the fighters might have been a one-off tactic used by Sisko? Maybe the standard battle order of the Dominion was not meant to give its ships room to manoeuvre against fighters in the early stages, since the Federation usually only sent them in as the battle progressed. Sending them against the tight packed Dominion and Cardassian formations shown in the clips might have given them an initial advantage, until the Hidekis went after them.
Yes, finally, the video I have been waiting for!!!!!
Captain Foley: There are no modern F-14 Tomcats. They are retired and are no longer produced. Iran may still have some they got from the US, but they are no longer being produced and it's not on par with the newest genration of fighers. The US Navy repalced them with the F/A-18 E and F models of the Super Horent.
I played a LOT of SFB years ago and one thing you forgot to mention was the Hydrans. Their fighters are radically different than any of the other GP races' fighters.
I can't wait till you guys do either a discussion podcast over the other classes or just do a specific Trekyards over the Terran Imperial fightercraft such as the Wraith, the Spectre, or the Phantom-class fighters. Heck, speaking of Terran Imperial, you guys should do a Trekyards over the Brigand-class Cruiser (if possible) from Shattered Universe.
In the Navy we have a saying.
"Fighters Die So that Carriers don't"
If a fighter gets shoot down that's 1-2 Dead Airman not a small loss and one that demands Blood and retribution, on the other hand if a carrier gets sunk that's 5,000 of your brothers that will never come back.
The Breen… Now THAT'S a ship I want to see an episode on!
If you've already done one, can you or someone link it, please? 🙂❤️
Okay, so, here is the best way these could be used.
First of all, Quantum Torpedoes are also useful against shields. We have seen the USS Enterprise devastate a Romulan Warbird with a spread of 3-4 torpedoes. So imagine the following:
USS Defender (example name) launches 6 fighters, each fighter is armed with 6 full sized quantum torpedoes. Six fighters launch their torpedoes, that is a swarm of 36 quantum torpedoes. I don't care what is it, if 36 quantum torps hit you... Game over... I don't care if you are the biggest ship in the fleet, you aren't surviving 36 direct hits with quantum torps. Now imagine that these can hit almost simultaneously. While you can theoretically shoot them down, but Trek weapons kind of suck on tracking. They are built for taking out big ships, they MISS big ships, we have seen this happen dozens of time. They aren't very good at hitting fast moving small ships.
Sorry to post on an older video, but I didn't see anyone mention this in the comments. One thing I was wondering through this video was the use of the emergency transporters in fighter size craft. Nova Squadron (well most of them) survived the star burst maneuver due to the emergency transporters in their fighters bailing them out. I'm curious if a system like that could make these much less suicidal than the show makes it appear. Also, in many of the scenes shown in this video from Sacrifice of Angels, when the fighters are one-shot killed from the Galor class, they break up into multiple pieces rather than just being outright vaporized. Maybe they were designed with some survivability in mind, the pilot(s) might be sitting in a hardened 'bathtub' (like the A-10) so that when the fighter is destroyed the pilots are still alive in a vacuum suit, their hardened cockpit section or some other such contrivance. It feels like Star Fleet would design these things with redundant surviability mechanics like that so they weren't just suicide ships.
That being the case I could see the fighters filling a very useful role in these fleet engagements, as other mentioned in those scenes where they go up against the Galor they do a good bit of damage to it, so they possibly trade one or two fighters (not necessarily even the pilots) for a Galor class, that seems like a pretty nice trade in the scheme of the war. Especially if once those pilots ships are destroyed, they materialize back on their carrier vessel sitting on the outskirts of the battle and they could, theoretically, almost immediately jump into another fighter and get back into the fray. That's far cheaper and more effective than the 200+ crew in a one-shot killed Miranda class that DOESN'T have emergency transporters or other bail out procedures.
While they seemed fragile in the Dominion War, the numbers actually work. You send a squadron in, and you'd need 12 phaser blasts to completely remove 12 pilots. Contrast it with say an older Miranda class that could lose dozens of crew in 3-4 blasts.
One argument against fighters I haven’t seen mentioned yet is the range on capital ships in Star Trek, the Galaxy-class according to the TNG technical manual has an effective range of 3000000 kilometres with torpedoes. Without a cloak of some sorts a fighter cannot get close enough.
Emergency transporters. Which works both ways. Meaning an entire fleet can perform emergency transport of a ship that is being destroyed quickly. And the fighters themselves can have an on-board emergency transporter. This greatly reduces the casualties. Escape pods are for when you don't have a whole Fleet in a battle but also Escape pods can alleviate the demand on emergency Transporters of other ships in the fleet.
Fighters can also increase the complex demands on modifications to Shields another defensive methods. Phaser fire from Fighters can improve the effectiveness of larger Starship phaser fire. Much of this would be automated as is typical when piloting a shuttle as well. Meaning the pilot is performing creative decisions and arguably a measure of telepathic reaction
Peregrine in DS9 was often referred to as a Courier suggesting alternate uses (like carrying intel or a couple of individuals) that you wouldn't want to dedicate a full capital ship to performing. Way I look at it however is onscreen between 6-8 fighters appeared to be more than a match for a heavy cruiser, if you can produce a fighter for a 20th or even a 30th the resources of a capital ship (for example look how many shuttles alone a ship carries) then you have a more flexible (can be in more places at once than a single ship) and more cost effective combat force that requires a fraction of the manpower to operate and only really fails to compare in long range assault missions.
Is the speeds warp factors or just warp speeds?
19:08 You should check out Operation: Just Cause - it was a naval exercise used to determine the viability of naval air-power. If the Federation were to develop a warp-missile or other super-long range weaponry, then a fighter could scout the enemy and send back telemetry.
They have shields in Star Wars. They may not be as powerful of Star Trek's but they're certainly better than the JJVerse ones.
Star Wars shields = thin layer of air
No that's the JJVerse.
+Robert Hayes *Kelvin
That's the in (prime) name for it. I call it the JJVerse.
The Star Wars shields are much more powerful, way more then those from Star Trek.
🖖😎👍Very nicely done and very informative indeed as always guys 👌.
as presented in the shows they make sense, or do they? Because we basically only see capital ships with slow fireing ship to ship armament. It seems also, that you can outmaneuver the targeting systems of bigger ships. Also given that even bigger ships blow up when only hit by one beam shot, armor (including energy shields) seems irrelevant against these types of weapons.
These seem to be the conditions of the battle we see on the screen, which would highly favour small fighters.
My consensus is, that looking at the battles from DS9 and other TNG shows, the scenario follows no real rules, but is completely stylistic, meaning any real tactical adavantage or disadvantage is thrown overboard in favour of "what looks good".
So in other words, you can look at those battles as long as you want, they follow no real rule other than, that looks good in the moment and fits the story they want to tell.
Fighters would be useful for colony defense. Give each federation colony a half dozen of them so that they can defend themselves against raiders, etc. At least a hold over so they can fight back until a star ship(s) arrive.
The first one looks like a personal phaser. Ima big fan of compactness.
With enhanced teleporters built into their seats that sends them back to the mothership the body count shouldn't be that high. Heck, if that were the case, they can just teleport the guy straight into another waiting fighter and relaunch immediately.
Speaking of teleporters. I've always wondered if they can pack more planes on an aircraft carrier if they were able to remove the wings, fuselage and cockpit, then store them giant racks. With a teleporter you can assemble them into a working plane as needed. With a replicator, you can just bring out the essentials like warp cores and fuel out of storage, and materialize an entire ship around it.
One of the things we're not discussing, or at least I didn't see it, is that even though the fighters aren't as survivable as a larger ship (something even destroyer sized, i.e., Defiant sized) every second a enemy ships has to target them instead of larger fleet ships is a second those larger ships can deliver a safe punch. The firepower they bring may not be as substantial as a larger ship, but size isn't necessarily an indication of power (again, the Defiant comes to mind). They can harass, disable and distract enemy ships. This may endanger the pilots, but in a war, thats an acceptable cost. It's not a waste of lives, it's a decision to spend those lives for a cause.
Don't forget, if a fighter takes heavy damage but isn't fully destroyed, the pilot can be beamed out by a larger capital ship.
For a intelligence agency. Ship with Warp drive,sheilds, cloak, transporters that could beam a bite of antimatter on the enemy ships bridge, or trash compacter. Exclusively for spy missions.
,
Think about this...you have a squadron attack a capital ship, each fighter has 6 photon torpedoes. All fighters can get closer than a starship can. All fighters all fire simultaneously at same spot...I would think that a Starship getting hit by 20+ photon torpedoes would overwhelm the shields and hit target.
Been a long time since I played Star Fleet Battles but I think they had ECM/ECCM craft that could jam enemy sensors and targeting systems. If you make it harder for enemy to target your fighters then your survivability go up.
There was also the one episode where Marquis fighters had been upgraded with state of art torpedoes and phasers and tore up a Galor class Cruiser.
A note on the cost of lives with Trek fighters. If a single capital ship gets destroyed (and they always do) you lose hundreds of lives. Fighters have been shown to be able to inflict actual damage on capital ships (we see it on screen, so it happens) so they economics of tactical effectiveness versus risk to life seems pretty good. While the Federation is very peaceful and respects life, it does have several races that might have little trouble tackling the rationale of being a fighter pilot.
Tellarites are stubborn and always have something to prove. Andorians are a warrior people and might respect an opportunity to prove themselves as a warrior. Vulcans might see the logic is the usefulness of fighter tactics (needs of the many and all...).