You just know there was some red-shirt in a cockpit during the Dominion War, growling into his com as his squadron winged over and dove on a flotilla of Jemhadar attack ships: "All Red Squadron elements, this is Red Leader! Put your shields on double-front and follow me in!" And every time he did, George Lucas blood-pressure went up a notch. :)
Uh, I think the Borg are the one enemy you wouldn’t want to swarm as they have tons of weapons on every side of their vessels, and a whole species to use as their targeting computer.
That makes them more like Torpedo boats, which Destroyers were initially designed to counter. If a small squadron of comparitively expendable boats carrying very destructive torpedoes can take out a large capital ship, even with the loss of a large percentage of that squadron, it makes economic sense to employ them on some fashion. Their modern successor are the Patrol Missile Boats which carry anti-ship missiles and can swarm a target with dozens of missiles fired at the same time. It's part of why AEGIS and VLS were designed to counter such a swarm threat.
Wasn't Voyager damaged beforehand with its targeting sensors offline? Janeway wanted to get into orbit, perhaps so she could bring the superior speed of Voyager to bear against the Vadwaur. As I recall, Tuvok was targeting the fighters manually and still swatting waves of them out of the sky. They took down 4 fighters in the first attack. The Vadwaur then launched another 39. By the next count, Voyager has whittled that wave down to 9. Presumably, 34 fighters destroyed in total, even with the limitations of manual targeting. Now, Voyager was damaged and there were surely more fighters on the way, but this does not seem to show the effectiveness of fighters against Starfleet capital ships.
@@Acrosurge yeah, any ship would be overwhelmed by constant waves of 20-30+ fighters especially with voyager already being crippled, that’s why she was on the surface in the first place for repairs. Though the fighters were being taken out 5 or 6 at a time with the phasers
Given the number of Capital Ships & Carriers that have been sunk by Fighter Bombers & Diver Bombers, I wouldn't be too dismissive of the threat they pose. Particularly if you were to equip them with a heavy photon torpedo. One big advantage of externally carried ordinance is that your not restricted by launcher dimensions, so equipping them with something that will do significant damage to a Capital Ships shield's shouldn't present any major challenges. Particularly when delivered from multiple axis simultaneously.
A fighter might be able to get in close enough to a larger vessel to get a more precise scan of its shields, look for weak points such as power fluctuations, sensor Windows or gaps from emitter damage and by being much closer be able to precisely match modulation to exploit them causing more damage than a standard more powerful beam weapon at longer range could do.
I'd like to think that Starfleet fighters also received a lot of ECM/ECCM support themselves or from destroyers (Sisko orders destroyer units to close in to provide cover during Sacrifice of Angels, so could be that - also, I loved that mechanic in the Starfleet Command PC game). Whatever classes of Starfleet ships constitute the destroyer-role in the war, they'd probably provide long-range torpedo strikes, like Enterprise at warp in Encounter at Farpoint. That still shot you used from Sacrifice got me thinking - the Jem'Hadar are wasting torpedoes on the fighters but the Cardassians are getting in the shots on target. An unconscious reference to the Dominion NOT being used to fighting Starfleet this way but the Cardassians drawing on that anti-Maquis experience? Which might make sense, the Jem'Hadar are better at bringing down capital ships, and the runabouts didn't perform disgracefully in the last battle of the Odyssey. I doubt that was part of the writing intention (it was stellar writing regardless), but I'll be cheeky and head-cannon it as Starfleet learning lessons from that disaster... As for training, Tom Paris was always referred to by himself and everyone as a "pilot" rather than a helmsman; yes, room for interpretation, but he was pretty good if not exceptional, so scope for him to be a star product of an elite training pipeline?
Exactly. Plus when you consider that 40 fighters are probably cheaper than 1 proper ship. They only expose 40 people to combat and if the battle does not go well they can scatter making survival much more likely it seems the only real downside is range and endurance.
Also remember the episode where the defective clone Wayun contacted Odo to defect, and where chased in their runabout by Jem'Hadar fighters. The clone showed Odo how he could destroy them from behind, as they were poorly defended from the rear. The Peregrine would have been ideal for exploiting that weakness, thus countering one of the Dominions best weapons.
In general, fighters, shuttles, armed shuttles, etc. were under utilized. Case in point, in Nemesis, they fling Data through space to attack the generator. They surely had some kind of shuttles, or shuttle pods on board. Even if they were unarmed, although many types were armed, they could have rammed it. Also, when the Enterprise (NG) hit the anomaly and many of the systems went down, they could have made their way to the shuttle bay, or someone that worked in the area could have gotten to a shuttle or something to use the communication systems, rescued people etc. They always forget about the support vehicles.
I know its been 2 months since your post, but here you go. Data 'Body Bombed' his way over to the "Scimitar" after the cruiser's collision. It looked like both ships were in such disrepair that weapons were inoperable, and the only reason the thaloron weapon was deploying was... it was built redundantly? or it was plot armor. I'm in support of smaller shuttle fighter craft because they seem to be able to take full phaser or polaron beam blasts a few times, and are nimble enough to evade most fighter if supported by a good pilot or pilot assisting system.
I'm late to the party, but I'll throw my two cents in. The comparison to skirmishers is apt, but I think that we can take it even further into a cavalry role. ST fighters can be seen as something similar to Napoleonic cavalry as they are easily seen coming, but would be difficult to hit at any decent range with the weapons then. While useless against dug-in formations, a fluid battle gives them the chance to shine. Sisko's move during "Sacrifice of Angels" was kind of like Ney's repeated charges during Waterloo against Wellington's infantry squares behind the ridge; both desperate moves that will knowingly cost a lot of cavalry/fighters, but desperate commanders short on time breed desperate decisions. Also, Star Trek ship weapons and shields are contingent on power supply and field endurance. We see proof of this often with ships shuffling backup power and rotating their axis to allow shield sectors and weapons arrays to recharge outside of the immediate line of fire. Fighter crafts prevents such maneuvers and ensure constant stress upon one's enemy target, bringing about their defeat by multi-vector attrition. On the bigger scale, fighters can function as a sort of tactical "fleet-in-being", something that inflicts opportunity costs on the enemy as your foes must counter with stronger forces at the expense of other sectors of the battle. Finally, as many here have already noted, fighter survivability is still poor if things are taken at face value. Starfleet could fix this with some innovations and lawyering as a space fighter's main defense is that they are difficult to hit, especially at range. Starfleet engineering could look into producing low observibility shields or some sort of ECM system. This would not be a violation of the Treaty of Algeron as, much the F-35 nowadays, everyone can see a low observibility craft is somewhere in the vicinity; they just can't get a weapons lock until its too late.
very interesting and i would agree. the future of fighters in trek is another interesting question we seem to see in the Excalibur class a trend of increasing size thus allowing increased fighter complements. perhaps future space combat in trek might be like in Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda. in which the Andromeda is part Carrier part Battleship. although that then leads to the issue of overpowered do everything ships. equally with transphasic torpedoes large warships may not be so viable.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I always like the back story of Andromeda (not the way the later seasons turned out though as the writers simply lost their minds). The High Guard and the Commonwealth seemed to me like a saner version of Starfleet and the Federation. Also their blend of reasonable personal scale tech with ridiculously advanced ship tech brought a very unique and positive Sci-Fi flavor. But the relevant thing for me here is that Andromeda fighters were mostly drones with modifiable pilot capability. I always thought that Starfleet needed the massed numbers that drone fighters as it allowed for more specialization. In the rock-paper-scissor game of naval combat, the super-big/super-small combo is one of the best pairs. Moreover, it would work well in a strategic sense as the Federation has great industrial strength but comparatively weak manpower due to its political system. Last note, just imagine if Picard had some fighters at Bassen Rift. Shinzon's cloak would be useless if he's being constantly lit up by swarms of drones that are even more maneuverable than the Scimitar. The Big E would still lose, but Picard probably could have crippled the Scimitar.
yeah i suppose drones being a more modern technology don't really feature in trek. whereas in the expanse a more modern sci-fi drones are ubiquitous. we did see romulan drones in ENT. quite why they didn't further develop the technology i don't know. but with drones you run into the problem we have today which is how far should we go. how far should we remove the human element from military affairs. and thats a ongoing question.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 as much as possible while also developing ways to disable enemies without killing them. Then if you have to fight one, you can win a war and nobody dies : )
Imagine the Borg using fighters in the same way Krall used swarm ships, or a Tholian web like the Nova Core in the MCU. Species 8472 also had a unique way of using smaller ships.
that would be interesting. it would probably be more like the suliban though combining ships together. i could image in the future borg cubes could separate into thousands of smaller ships. or combine to form a even larger ship. like lego.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I can't remember how the Sulliban fought. Will have to rewatch ENT (?) Clips. Oh yes, Borg lego like ships. Of course they would be like this! Genius!
@@venomgeekmedia9886 remember when the Klingons used Cavalry Tactics to get more vulnerable rear areas? this is how i would use fighters. as raiders causing havoc in the rear areas, or you could use them on a trojan horse op... load a fake freighter full of fighters and drop them behind enemy lines. the freighter is just a decoy and is autopiloted. the fighters have warp and can escape.
@@andrewstark34 perhaps but its worth bearing in mind. while small. defiant class attack ships are costly and slow to construct and require a lot of maintenance and supply. im sure by the end of the dominion war both the romulans and klingons would be looking at developing their own rivals to the defiant class.
Chaos Hellstorm fighters and Hellblade bombers from Warhammer 40 and the Cylon Raiders from Battlestar Galatica have pilots hard wired into the control.
Because of the pin point accuracy of phasers and disruptors, only fighters with the shielding equal to a capitol ship is viable. To power that kind of shielding you need a warp core the size of a capitol ship.
We have Gatling cannons on our ships today that can shoot down a incoming missile. And yet we still have fighters in our navy. Point is the fighters can launch their Photon Torpedoes well outside phaser range and never be at risk of taking phaser fire. Photons have double the range of Phasers. Each fighter can carry six. That means one squadron can fire 48 Torpedoes at their target and never be shot at by their target.
@@jimtilley1158 Capitol ships have photon torpedoes, superior sensors, and superior speed compared to fighters, meaning they can control the range of engagement. This really neuters the fighter paradigm and is completely different from our real-world, naval paradigm.
One of the things we in the simming word have added to starships and stations is point defense batteries, which are designed to counter fighter craft, torpedoes, and other munitions. They are not perfect, but if nothing else help to balance things a bit.
interesting. personally i would have thought the best counter would be other similar craft or larger gunboats/attack ships that are too small to fight ships of the line.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 Generally Fighters were in fact commonly used during Earth-Romulan War, with ships such as NC class (Sarajevo) operating as makeshift Carriers. Federation at the time utilized large number of rather small ships. Such as Ganges, Discovery/Conestoga, Dedalus, Freedom/Franklin or Strider. At the time effectives of Fighters base largely on lack of shields and was offset by lack of compact warp drives, forcing them to operate from Carrier. In 23'th century small crafts disappear from service as powerful shield s and precise phasers make swarmer tactic ineffective. Though most ships did operate armed shuttles and scouts in limited number (large scouts like Archer were few and between). Use of those in combat become quite notable in rumored confrontation of Crossfield (what basically was Carrier) with large number of small black scout drones, what make use of fighter tactic quite effective. Fighters become again prominent with successful use of those against Cardassians, who lack widespread use of point defense. With previously designed as curriers crafts like Peregrine, showing to be effective against them. But realistically revolution was related to popularization of compact hyperdrives, making shuttles capable of independent operations on longer ranges and as such capable of effective ambushes. With hit and run tactics. Combination of those elements lead to rising popularity of Fighters and Runabouts, in second half of 24'th century. This for example lead to rising prominence of Caitans who did have expansive tradition in such style of combat.
A starfighter in Star Trek is going to a much more substantial vessel, in the 24th Century at least, that most franchise. In Star Wars, you might consider the Y-wing or the ARC-170 for size comparison. But I am thinking something akin to the Gunstar, a ship that is literally the size of a Danube Class Runabout, seats only two people, and is mostly engines blasters and missile racks. In Star Trek, a Starfighter would be not a bit, but would essentially hewn down a Runabout to seat 1-4 people, and have only what it needs to fight and survive the engagement, weapons, shields, armor, and engines. It is the utterly insistence that Starfighter have no place in Star Trek that prevents people from actually looking at the parts on the bench. It is like taking the Engine and transmission from a pick-up truck and building a much lighter more nimble frame and body, instant Muscle/sports car. When you then sit down and really work on every aspect, you get a super car. Or rather, you take a Runabout, take all the major systems, weapons Shields, Engines and putting that into a much lighter, more nimble platform. Instant Fighter.
The runabout is close to the same length that the Falcon is. Also the A10 wort hog bomber is 60ft/ 18m long, the length of the Xwing is close to 12m. As my old RPG D&D/ Star Wars group use to say, just mount two more anti-mater drives inside a shuttle craft for the shields & weapons. " Full warp engine power to shields ! " just before they get hit by torpedoes.
the Playstation came out with a Carrier vessel and Fighters in Star Trek: Invasion. USS Typhon NX-85808 that has 26 Valkyrie Fighters. I enjoyed the game and would love to have seen it developed into a story arc in the Shows as a follow on from the Dominion War
The Akira Class was supposed to be a carrier. Additionally the Nebula Class has a Fighter POD that can be attached (actually there are several types of PODs...yet another amazing opportunity missed by the writers/producers).
The best tactics for Trek fighters is to release torpedos beyond phaser/ disruptor range then rush in while they are distracted by torpedoes. Then they would also be active jamming and ECM to decrease chances of a sensor lock then they would capitalize on the damage done to shields by torpedoes that got through. On a 1 to 1 basis they are tissue paper but as a squadron they could do serious to fatal damage to capital ships. But the best tactics is to be supported by capital ships to draw attention away from them while they swoop in using their superior manuverability and numbers to hit already damaged shield sections or destroy critical systems once the shields are down. Freeing the capital ships to continue forward to punch down the shields of other ships. The fighters would stay together in packs like wolves attacking from multiple vectors to make harder to hit. By then I am sure the targeting systems can track hundreds if not thousands of targets simultaneously but weapons mounts if mechanical have a maximum traverse speed and also rate of fire that's why rapid fire weapons are better for small targets so small nimble targets are still a threat closer they get. And also how many weapons arrays do they have if have 10 they would be positioned all over the ship or in particular arcs so how many can they aim in any direction and the pilots would know where weak coverage areas are plus sensors would detect if there are damaged weapons mounts to exploit. Losses still would be high but 1 fighter is astronomicaly cheaper in resources to build and only has 1 to 2 crew compared to capital ships even with minimum crew size say 100 that is 50 fighters you could field.
I played Star trek shattered universe and found ALL the capitals had blind spots to sit in and sink them. The Orion vessels was just above or below her engines. The federation vessels were sadly "all to easy" knock shields down get between the nacelles and have fun. Klingons and romulans were harder yet not by much get in-between the wings of the Klingon ships just below the engine and they are sto'vo'kor bound. Romulan were by far the hardest to find and lol I don't remember her blind spot but she had one. Method of attack hit shields with pulse fire and torpedoes if targeted do what's known as a pirouette at a 180 degree angle to the enemy ship until it targets another thing. Then repeat until shields are toasted. Waltz into said blind spot and beatdown the ship. When ship is going critical mass go polar and punch the throttle asap the can kill you in the breach. I once killed 4 constitutions with one breach it was B E A U T I F U L!
In fact I don't think we've ever actually seen a true fighter in Star Trek there are one man to man job and you're right injuries would be catastrophic but light because like you said man those ships are built for taking out other big ships a little old fighter with a water two-man crew unless your Shields are down you're golden
When armed with even a couple torprdoes each, a squadron of fighters would have quite a bit of sting. Also, in the final battle of the dominion war (The one where Cardassian ships turned sides), the Federation was using fighters to combat the Jem'Hadar fighters directly. After the Romulan flagship was lost, Defiant along with a couple wings of fighters went to bolster that flank. Also, let us not forget how vulnerable to Jem'Hadar fighters were to small craft. In the episode with the defective Wayun, he showed Odo how to destroy one of the fighters from behind using a run-about, as they were poorly defended from behind. The Peregrine was one of the very few ships in the Federation that could get behind a Jen'Hadar fighter like that. So they were likely very effective in countering that threat.
Voyager got harmed by Vodwaur swarm tactics. They shields got pecked at, and the phasers couldn't keep up. PLUS the Vodwaur ships weree a couple centuries older than Voyager. And Voyager still couldn't stop them.
I think that the weapon systems for Federation ships have the best "defense" against Fighters. They can simply sweep their phaser beam thru the swarm with a higher chance of hitting multiple targets.
There was (star/warp)fighters in the STO era just not shown in the original TV series! ( They did not have the budget for the models or the props to have the fighters, remember this is how we got transporters!) They were cannon though, just take a read of "Star Trek: Dreadnought!, The Original Series (#29) Series, Star Trek: Fortunes of War (#1) Series, and Star Trek Classic (#30) Series) by Diane Carey"
I always assume fighters in Star Trek are used for three different roles. 1) To serve as a harasser and increase the overall military strength of a fleet. Mainly to give smaller fleets a bit more firepower as first strike ships, destroy damaged ships as Capital ships moved on to more dangerous targets, or harass enemy ships to keep the enemy fire away from larger ships. After all, losing one or even 12 pilots is preferable to losing 50-10,000 people, assuming the fighters are not automated. 2) To operate in environments that would be dangerous if not suicidal for most larger starships. Primarily in dangerous fields of space like the badlands or a densely populated asteroid field. Where a larger ship would get damage trying to fly through while making sure the respective military has a presence in all corners of the Milkyway Galaxy. That is also not including flying within a planet's atmosphere, specifically in tight areas like canyons or mountains, as well as under the sea. 2) To serve as the role of a tank for ground defense and invasion. As having a standard ground vehicle is probably is good a destroy as I can see a beam weapon near a military base do a sweep against enemy tanks, and boom, no more enemy tanks. Fights are not limited in their maneuverability to avoid enemy fire, can get to more location a tank can't, can disable or destroy weapon placements for shuttles coming in to place jamming transporters, and can perform precise strike against small ground units while having enough power to shields to shrug off attacks. I can see a fighter just fly or blast their way into a small cavern and whipped out a 60+ group before flying out. After all, with the level of technology, we cannot make the assumption the ships will play the same combat roles as we see vessels in current military strategy.
interesting you mention the tank role i've actually done a whole video on star trek tanks. i think a purpose built tank will be much tougher than a fighter although lack that agility. what i think is more likely is specialized roles end up falling under the umbrella of either tanks or fighters. so here's an interesting question what is the Defiant shuttle?tank? fighter? something else?
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I think a big problem with any type of tank is that unless it is flying or a hover tank, it would be useless in Star Trek combat. Given how their energy weapons, especially the beam based versions allow for a sweeping attack across battlefields within a light second, kind of kills any government that is not throwing millions of lives, per battle, away from the ability to fight large mechanized ground battle that tanks excel at. Especially if the opposition decides to fire fast-moving torpedoes that can track targets behind bases and facilities protected by shields. And enough anti-matter to the point it can miss targets by 10km and still probably kill smaller tanks and fighters, along with every other vehicle within its blast radius. So for a heavy ground tank, it would be difficult, if not impossible to win battles and probably just throw away live in siege battles that are probably going have to be handle by Starships in orbit. It is also why I think that in the Star Trek universe, the only type of Ground Combat that remains is mostly infantry. Specifically, the defending, taking and retaking vital military installation, the occupation of a facility/city/planet, and insurgent style fighting. Honestly, if there is a ground vehicle, it should be small light vehicles that are able to cover a lot of ground quickly, and thus able to outrun planetary bombardment or ground to ground bombardment. Or be design to perform patrols in an occupied urban environment. And outside of a parked ground vehicle in a city to occupy, you might as well build a fighter because with enough thrust and anti-gravity technology Starfleet has, you could make a much heavier fighter than a light ground vehicle that is able to bring more firepower and speed. As for the Defiant shuttle, I consider them auxiliary crafts that increase the mission profile of the Defiant in its limited fashion or a long-range escape pods.
I'd say the battle that you pointed out, in Sacrifice of Angels, already says it all. Sisko sent in wave after wave. That means they were 1) either not targeted, or only targeted very casually, and 2) inflicting limited, or very minor damage. The Cardassians only gave into that trap after a while (and Dukat knew fully well that this was Sisko goading him and so he placed a trap himself, but that's another thing). So that means the Cardassians could take that beating for quite a while, and could probably have done so far longer, even though they were inferior with the tech (and Sisko had the fighters target Cardassians exclusively, avoiding the superior Jem'Hadar). You could argue that tt's like the death of a thousand cuts, and eventually, even these minimal damages may cause even the big Galor or Keldon to fold, but it'd take time.
For a resource on fighters in the TOS era find a copy of The Fighters module J from the old StarFleet battles. Tones of data, designs, scenarios and a two cool stories of fighter use.
@@balrighty3523 Yep. He does. But that doesn't mean its matter/anti matter. Its just an engine. They also fix a "warp plasma conduit" and that "plasma injectors are on line". BUT....Plasma is also the central element of fusion reactions. Who knows, maybe these nacelles are different and are the engines themselves. Plasma injectors come online, flooding the nacelles with plasma, which in turn "charges" the "main cells" Laforge mentions for a short warp hop. Cochrane presumably has no anti-matter, nor dilithium to control the reaction even if he had enough anti-matter. I don't know. I've thought about this too much lol Seems like a fusion reactor would be the dilithium-less way to go. *shrug*
Why would he presumably have no antimatter or dilithium, though? He has warp nacelles with warp coils which are still made out of the made up material verterium cortenide. So if anything, if we can presume that he can acquire/manufacture that material, why would also acquiring/manufacturing antimatter and/or dilithium be any different? (Though I will say that I personally don't think dilithium is necessary to the reaction. Canonically, it's there to modulate the matter/antimatter reaction, but since he would also have to have magnets to hold the antimatter, anyway, I don't think it'd be a stretch to say that dilithium is a later upgrade to the technology. Plus, there's a TOS novel (Memory Prime) that claimed that warp speeds of warp 4 or below are manageable without dilithium. I know it's noncanonical, but it also lines up with the NX-01's warp 5 engine being a next-stage advancement to the technology (if we figure that dilithium is the turning point).)
excellent vid, I look forward to see more. there's about 2-3 star trek games that utilizes fighters, which I think is cool. also, the alternate trek universe, calling itself the Starfleet/star battles universe(created by steve cole) has fighters in the 23rd century. would you be interested in reviewing ships from other trek universes? if so, the ships from other games, such as Starfleet command, created by taldren games. in the last unicorn rpg Romulan boxed set 'way of d'era, an assortment of extra Romulan classes are shown. have a great day. :)
As to the Reman fighters in Nemesis, the more I look at them, the more I start to believe they're probably a ground attack fighter. They're really too small for space combat.
I'm surprised they never considered a 360 degree EMP discharge to disable fighters at a certain range. In Star Trek Online, it's my main defense against swarms, aside from Beams At Will.
Given that the Constellation was also a carrier, one would have to assume that Starfleet had some form of fighter as far back as Wrath of Khan. I wonder what it was?
I always thought that an excellent way to explain why Riker wasn't forced into commanding his own ship in the Dominion War was that as the First Officer, he also had a wartime role as the ship's Commander, Air Group (CAG). Galaxy and Soverign class ships could have an auxilliary role as fighter carriers. Riker would stay aboard as the CAG, leading his fighters into combat while Picard commanded the task force.
@@timw483 apparently the enterprise d carries 10 shuttles looking at shuttle bay 2 and 3 they probably hold 2 each so the main shuttle bay. (the one we never see) must hold 6. the enterprise E has 2 large shuttle bays so perhaps carries as many as 12 fighters.
No one on either side has point defense against fighters. I point this out because the Peregrines seem to fly in and out of shield perimeters and skim hulls. That would do a lot more than distract. That kind of damage would build up quickly.
I think having star fighters isn't a bad idea but I just think that they aren't used correctly. They should be used alongside larger ships to help screen them against other fast attack ships.
To really discuss fighters in 24th century Trek, you have to go against the grain and accept them. No Roddenberry acolyte would do so. Otherwise, you'll come to the persistent conclusion they don't belong, or even hate the idea of them. Next, comes the role. Are they scouts, attackers, bombers, escorts, reconnaissance, interceptors, superiority, multi-role, fighter-bombers, or somehow all of those? The way we saw them used in DS9 wasn't especially effective, but with effective carrier methods, they would certainly be proficient within their appropriate roles. The biggest challenge of a light, nimble craft is surviving approach to the target. When that target can shoot back with accuracy greater than your own, you have to take countermeasures, even if you're a drone. Sensors have been rendered virtually ineffective through various means. Just a few include tachyon bursts, photon bursts, ionized radiation, dense alloys, and EM fields. Surely, with appropriate sensor jamming, the 24th century equivalent of chaff and flares, even modestly protected hulls, unaided by stealth, can gain a tactical advantage. Squadrons, even wings of fighters, drones, and bombers will eventually overcome the best defenses. Even proximity blast phasers and torpedoes require a degree of targeting, or they are stroke of luck shots. If a raider, light destroyer, or escort can make an attack run at a heavy warship or defense station, a squadron of attack craft can ride behind it, split off when the threat of incoming torpedoes is low, drop mines, torpedoes, and unload energy weapons at point blank range. Likewise, if allied ships have cloaking technology, fighters can hide within a cloaking barrier, split off with shields up, and attack the most vulnerable points. In pure recon roles, a flight of light fighters can piggyback on a much faster raider, head off into separate star systems, then each launch microprobes to obtain detailed scans, report back valuable information, and maybe return to a carrier vessel, with minimal chance of being detected.
I wonder why we haven't seen more militaristic cultures like the Klingons, Romulans or the Dominion have proper carriers. One very large ship housing up to five hundred or so fighter/strike craft. I'd suspect the same rules of engagement apply by having the carrier itself off at long distance with a screening escort while the fighters and the rest of the fleet comprising of cruisers and destroyers would engage an enemy fleet. The carrier may be built to also directly participate in battle unlike our familiar maritime variants but would have no way to launch or land anymore fighters while in pitched battle though. Makes one think of what space tactics could be in Star Trek.
given how fighters themselves aren't that potent. they would probably rather use carrier/combat hybrids. ships that can carry fighters but do ship to ship fighting. Eg; the scimitar which carries a large number of fighters and is still a battleship.
If you're into deep lore (and I know you are) check out the Starfleet Battles stuff. It ain't cannon Trek but I think it'd be up your alley. And all races had fighters there :)
The trouble isn't torpedoes. The trouble is range. The capital ship will be able to acquire the fighters first due to superior sensors and superior speed. Without support, fighters wouldn't last long enough to do any real damage. And don't forget, most capital ships have torpedoes too!
Fighters being death traps in the STU I think is a misconception. If you look at the numerous engagements the Defiant was in, their erratic maneuvers avoided a lot of enemy fire and sometimes even puts them in an advantageous position. Coupled with its small silhouette and profile, those "precision" targeting systems seems to lose a lot of it's accuracy. Now miniaturize that even more to Peregrine fighters...you see how effective they can be at harassing a target. Starfleet's new swarm tactics they employed on the Borg Cube at the Battle of Sector 001 is what fighters are pretty much made for. Losses would still be high but they would be a fraction of the cost vs an all cruiser compliment fleet.
thats interesting i didn't consider that fighters might have come as a reaction to the borg threat. but it does make sense. and true if you lose a squadron of fighters that 4 pilots. you lose a capital ship you lose 400+ officers. particularly with how weak some federation capital ships are.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I don't think Federation fighters came about because of the Borg threat, I'm sure they existed prior to that. But if they had been deployed in large enough numbers using the same tactic, I don't think Starfleet losses would have been so high. Same goes for certain engagements during the Dominion War. Even having a few squads stationed on DS9 would have made sense if ships couldn't be spared as it seems they could never care to keep a contingent close enough to the station to respond.
@@HeadlessChickenTO i agree the federation fleet at wolf 359 is an overweight un-specialized fleet of cruisers. if you watch my documentary on the Romulan D'deridex you'll know that the federation was over reliant on cruisers and their enemies knew it. also why didn't ds9 replace its Danube runabouts with fighters to be deployed from the launchpad. those combined with the defiant and the stations firepower would be very formidable.
Also keep in mind. Fighters extend a ships sensor net with patrols, Draw fire away from the capitol ships that are damaged, can launch their wing mounted full size torpedoes well outside of phaser range, Also as a capitol ship disables an enemy's shields. thy can move on to the next target and the fighters can finish off enemy ships with damaged shields.
To the Galaxy class struggled going against the Dominion fighters because they were more maneuverable at sublight well you load your main shuttle Bay with fighters and you launch those and that helps a lot because then you know you can have six fighters go after each Dominion bug ship and the Galaxy class is also blasting it with a heavy phaser and torpedoes
Erm, the Dominion Attack Fighters, of course, aren't fighters at all, but 90ish meter starships. And their weapons were able to ignore Starfleet shields.
Wondering why fighters would even need "human" pilots. TNG-era computers can autonomously fly starships and shuttles, can run AI holograms which autonomously fly starships and shuttles. Even without fancy positronics or neural bio-processors. They could be replicated disposable kamikaze weapons, cheap, relentless, easily able to swarm and overwhelm. They can't be hacked if they aren't networked and aren't remotely commanded - just program their target/objective then fire and forget.
I remember an episode of TNG where the Enterprise crew got mind wiped and sent to attack some random alien HQ . As I remember they didn't have much problem dealing with six attack drones so why would six fighters be any different ?
If i remember the episode properly, the base they were going to attack was that of a race that was barely at 23rd century equivalent technology. Worf even commented that the ships were shooting Lasers at the Enterprise where someone remarks that those wont even breach the navigation shields. And if I am remembering correctly they only sent like four small ships at the Enterprise as opposed to entire squadron.
@ Jared My point was that the Enterprise D tracked multiple targets and destroyed them all . So why would they have an issue tracking and destroying fighters ? Who attacked them or what their tech level happens to be is irrelevant , it was the tracking abilities of the Enterprise I was trying to point out . As fast as they smoked the first wave I do not see 5 , 10 or 50 going much differently .
Seemor Disillusioned just as a more advanced civilization would have much more advanced tracking/targeting systems, a more advance civilization would also have more advanced counter measures. Look how today’s fighters use stealth and jamming technology to avoid being shot down, the same could/would be done in the future. Fighters could use cloaking devices and some sort of system that interferes with the targeting sensors. You have to remember, this is all made up, so if you can make up a targeting system that can engage multiple targets in just a fraction of a second, then you can also make up jamming technology to blind said targeting system. When it comes down to it, the reason that small fighters were never used in ST was because of budget constraints. It cost a lot more to build several more models and then have to shoot a much more complex scene with fighters attacking.
@@mopar_dude9227 Agreed but also keep in mind that those ships you mention were drones NOT fighters , closest thing ST had . Also remember how many times the Enterprise had to figure out a way past the cloaking device but by the next episode they had forgotten it .
drones are predicable and you can use their programming to your advantage also star trek fighters are so primitive and trash that a star wars freighter would be more powerful agile .
I remember the Cardassian dreadnought firing some kind of energy pulse that destroyed a number of attack fighters; I would think that would be standard equipment on any capital ship.
@@venomgeekmedia9886sorry I just saw your response; I refer to the weapon itself, not the dreadnought. I would think it would be possible to put that weapon on starship to at least deter fighters from getting in too close. Perhaps its potential to damage other nearby ally ships is why?
The Enterprise D was swarmed by fighters and it wiped them out in a few seconds. Peregrine fighters were used as bombers but they have dismal survival rates. Might as well use drones. In fact as seen in Picard Starfleet resorted to drones as part of Mars defenses.
yeah drones is one of those things which in retrospect would be in nearly every ships inventory. but wasn't something people were thinking about in sci-fi until relatively recently.
What you’re reviewing are -not- fighters. They are currently known as a gunboat (15+ meters), This IS a ship, and similar to gunboats operating form minimal land-based facilities or carried by capital ships in WWII (Japanese in particular). Fighters, which we are all familiar with, are something entirely different. Fighters (or combat shuttles) in Star Trek are small 2-4 man crew vessels limited to only tactical warp (less than a few hundred parsec range) possessing minimal life support (no gravity and requiring a space suit) and limited operations to operation times of no more than 20 hours. Given their short range/endurance, poor survivability (no shields), and limited offensive capabilities (cannot recharge offensive weapons), these combat shuttle platform were often used as attrition units. As such, fighters -DID- suffer very high casualty rates. Fighters were extensively used during and prior to the original series, primarily but by species on the opposite side of the Klingon Empire from the Federation. When the Klingon and Romulan Empires jointly invaded Federation Space about 35 years after TOS (see the legally licensed timeline of Star Fleet Battles), all major galactic powers made extensive use of “fighters”, but switched to “gunboats” about a decade later as the requirements for independence and survivability increased. What you see in DS9 is just a copy of these “gunboats” that were developed in Star Fleet Battles over 15 years earlier.
you have micro torpedoes and a bunch of fighters swarming a single ship can take heat off of their mothership as well as rapidly drain their shields, target critical systems etc... KINDA LIKE A MORE realistic version of the Multi-Vector Assault Ship.
There was an episode of TNG with a crew of lost their memory and I was using the Enterprise to intervene in some War and the Enterprise destroyed a bunch of small attack craft Ray easily with spacers I was moving at high impulse it was warm in it and it was just I am bam
I thought that was explained as the sheer difference in technological levels in terms of defensive shielding. The Enterprise was able to fire off extremely low power-rapid fire shots from the individual banks within it’s phaser array, opposed to using fully charged shots, depicted by the twin glows traveling around the array and converging into a beam. It’s been years since I’ve seen that episode, so I might be remembering things wrong.
Large starships (mostly Enterprise-D) are shown casually swatting little interceptors many episodes. Big belligerent ship bristles with phasers, high-power, long-range, omnidirectional, no blind spots, never miss anything at puny "dogfighting" ranges, the beams lance out in all directions and stay on each moving target precisely as long as needed for kill. The big ship doesn't even bother to slow down while the little wreckages bounce off its shields, unless it wants to collect a prize. Fighters and shuttles are only hard to hit when piloted by Immortal Names and only hard to kill when protected by plot armor.
I figured that once you could scale the warpcores down enough, the fighters would zip in to close range in a swarm, unleash a bunch of short-range, high-yield torpedoes, and then warp back to their carriers for rearmament, their energy weapons not being powerful enough to penetrate cap-ship shields. To this end, they could also be used to screen similar attacks from the enemy as, for the same reason, their energy weapons would be enough to discourage/destroy/damage enemy fighters. It would be cool if they added that while their warp engines couldn't sustain high warp factors for long, they could basically warp-jump in a way a larger, more complex ship can't. This allows their motherships to sit hundreds of millions, if not billions of km from the battleline, away from enemy cap-ship fire. Also, more exploration into scanner-fouling and EMC would go a long way towards making fighters viable in Trek, since we do see Trek ships miss a _lot._
Another reason to have a quick and nimble "fighter" type of ships in some numbers is fast attack force, for finishing off the dammaged enemies (or enemies with drained shields). If we ale talking tactics, you can disrupt the shields on bigger ship and than pointblank torpedoe it into its engine room (and) oblivion. But that would probably do the drone-fighters too, and probably with much less problems with the percentage of destroyed fighters per mission.
It makes sense that there would be fighters when in cannon sources there are carriers. I mean a carrier cant just carry basic shuttles can it? Tactically force projection should reasonably be a thing even if fighters aren't FTL capable having a swarm of them attack a single target would be effective especially if their weapons have some enhanced shield penetration effect.
Space combat will be done over vast distances. Battleships of last century fired shots on ships they could not see. With warp or jump drives beam weapons fire in ships moving close to the speed of light will have changed positions by the time it reaches them. So shoot and scoot is in play. Fighters with torpedos that can be fired in mass or just shot gun type ball shot in mass could over come a shield.
We may not see fighters much, because most of what we see, is the federation at relative peace. So most of the time even if there, would not be needed for the plot and other times might not make enough of a difference. I don't want to know how many fighters a borg cube could chew up for example. Do we know what kind of speed they can get to on warp?
During the Dominion War they also turn the Galaxy class into sort of a carrier with a loaded it's giant main shuttlebay for Paragon Fighters and it would launch these Fighters at a distant truck before winning the battle or if it got attacked by some smaller jem'hadar Fighters it would launch a squadron or to a beach Fighters because the jem'hadar fighter was far more maneuver than the Galaxy class but if the kid wants a 12 Fighters that should be able to take out that jem'hadar ship as well as the Galaxy class can bring its weapons to bear
From what I saw in TNG DS9 and Voyager, yeah, I can see them in the skirmish role or as part of the defences for a planet or station. But unsupported they'd be sitting ducks for a destroyer or cruiser that had nothing else to worry about.
Star Trek Voyager showed us that Fighters can swarm ships, and overload targeting sensors. Voyager missed and couldn't hit all the fighters. Then Voyager slowly got picked apart by the fighters.
Are you talking about the Swarm or Dragon's Teeth? The Swarm were highly specialized. And in Dragon's Teeth, Voyager was already damaged yet destroyed the first wave of four ships almost right away. The Vadwaur then launched 39 more fighters, which were able to knock out Voyager's targeting sensors. Even still, Tuvok with manual targeting was able to destroy thirty of those thirty nine. I don't think those fighters would have been effective had Voyager been fully functional, especially if she was in orbit and able to dictate the range of combat.
Yes venom I’m a civil war living historian my company does a light infantry impression . We use skirmish order and line strategy. Skirmish to smoke the enemy out and reveal his strength And weaknesses Etc . Though I would say star fleet fighters are more in line with Cavalry
I think we need to scale up our thinking. The Jem'hadar attack ship was often referred to as a fighter. When the USS Odyssey was destroyed, it was by a Jem'hadar fighter's kamikaze attack. This, as we know, is exactly what the Japanese fighters did at the tail end of WWII. In the Raptor's revenge video, we saw how the V-7 White wind protected the gargantuan Warbirds in a "fleet defense" role. This isn't unlike what the large F-14 fighter was designed to do. Now if you could pack a number of V-7 type "fighters" in a very large carrier, this would give you an extremely long range capability. Just my 2 cents. Great conversations!
Recall that the Jem'Hadar polaron beams could pass through the Odyssey's shields. The ramming business didn't occur until the captain dumped his shield power to weapons and dropped his own shields. Conventionally, starfighters would not usually have this advantage over a Star Trek capital ship, though I agree with you that Jem'Hadar are not actually starfighters, but attack ships more akin to the Defiant. They have much bigger power generation to put into shields, weapons, and sensors.
I think that Pilots, more on the Federation and Romulan side, after all, would either use Remote Controlled Fighters while in the safety of the carriers or have automated emergency transport in case of catastrophic damage is done to the fighter frame.
the defiant being 120m long is an attack SHIP. not a fighter. fighters are smaller than 60-50m and are not commissioned ships. fighters are more on the size of a shuttle and operated by only 1-2 pilots.
@@igncom1 true it really is an arbitrary distinction. you see it particularly in things like the x wing miniatures game. where you have corvettes engaging fighters.
Simple, to expensive (cost per episode) to make lots of individual craft. Remember the transporter was birthed out of a need not to run a shuttle (a small ship) to the planet every episode they needed to and ships. Seriously tho in the Star Trek game i played on the Ps1 had you play as a fighter pilot fighting the borg on a Fed carrier named the Typhon under the command of Worf. The tactics and battles in that made sense for fighters. It was a good game.
I think that at the time of TNG with a squadron or flight of shuttle fighters that were designed for fighter combat they could have a decent survival ratio. The warp core power potential of the defiant class was comparable to a galaxy class[which is astounding for tech development when Starfleet engineers are given that task] and runabouts in groups where pretty capable. If your fighters can survive a max killzone blast from a ships torpedo then they're viable. Another tactic you can put your fighters to work on is attacking an shielddmiiter damaged section. When the big ships run around they either dedicate shields towards the opponent or sacrifice power from one end another. Order your fighters to pounce on that section and it would be debilitating. Especially if you can outfit them fighters with a one time torpedo launcher on top of the usual ordinance of shuttle torpedoes and beam weaponry. Also the possibility of using your fighters to screen and attack incoming torpedo munitions would be helpful if YOUR shields were shown in quadrants on your cruiser.
Just my 2 cents. The difference between Star Trek (TNG/DS9 era) and Star Wars/Battlestar Galactica and so on in terms of Fighter use is, in Star Trek Energy/Particle Weapons are by FAR more accurate and powerful than comparable weapons in those other Sci Fi universes. Starfleet targeting computers are lightyears ahead of what's shown in Star Wars for example, where turbolasers where seriously struggeling to hit a fast moving Targets. In TNG we have seen the Big -D obliterating a squadron of fighers within seconds (doesn't matter if they where technogical inferior, i'm just talking about the ability to hit fast moving targets with high precision.) The only reason this suddenly didn't work in DS9 was just lazy writing imo. That combination of high firepower (per shot) and high accuracy makes fighters in Star Trek just a target practice for capital ships. You NEED to have strong shielding and/or armor to withstand an energy blast from a Phaser array for example. If you can't, the fighter is history.
always kind of thought of the b'rel as a sort of heavy fighter... yes the crew is slightly bigger but in terms of maneuvering etc.... it's tactics basically remind me of something like a Cobra.
Really it's to do with the setting from a narrative/writing perspective. Star Wars is based on World War 2 air combat, especially naval aviation, whereas Star Trek is based on naval ship combat of the 19th or early 20th century where fighters, bombers, and aircraft in general weren't as relevant. Look at the inspirations for space combat in each: For Star Wars it's Dambusters, 604 Squadron, The Battle of Britain, etc. For Star Trek it's Hornblower, Das Boot, hunt for Red October
Fighters have there place in the line of battle. While Sisko's use of them was not great during operation return they do some good. The ide was to piss off the cardis to break off and give chase. Unfortunately dukat saw through it and set a trap.
>close in cant hit As the angular velocity of the target becomes closer to the traverse speed of the weapon, fine adjustments on firing solutions become more difficult. The more maneuverable the target, the more difficult it becomes for predictive gunnery to attain a firing solution. The smaller the target is, the more precise a firing solution is required for a severe hit to be attained. Even though the distances on screen are dramatically exaggerated, these laws of gunnery hold true. As a consequence of this... well... "close in, can't hit."
Cracking numbers, Galaxy class ship is 600m length .. to circle a ship of that size will be 1,200 around scrapping the paint if the shields are down. So flying a 1,600m/ 1mi. circle around the ship is timed in seconds, given the speed of the fighter. Result, auto targeting and computer firing without human aid. I have been in a D&D/ Star Wars game shop with a dozen other nerds arguing the math for over an hour trying to figure out how it works. Federation shuttle trying to dodge a D7, end result the Klingons just full power their shield and did a pilot check, and smack the shuttle like a tennis racket.
There will always be a need for fighters and small attack aircraft. I’m waiting for the sci-fi starfighter video that borrows heavily from the “Discovery Wings” format, particularly episodes like “The Falkland Surprise” or “The Last of the Gunfighters”.
I liked your point about the Federation not using conscription. I would guess the Federation has enough volunteers plus Starfleet may already have been large enough to fight a prolonged conflict. Similarly Britain didn’t introduce conscription till 1916 due to having enough volunteers. Only when attrition was bad enough that it couldn’t replace losses with volunteers did it bring in conscription.
Venom Geek Media 98 I’d guess conscription would go against the Federation’s principles. In the non canon Destiny trilogy where the Borg try to wipe out the Federation, there doesn’t seem to be any thought of conscription.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 i think they would lose far more men by spamming mirandas than using fighters. people forget when they say"fighters are suicide" that mirandas have to be manned with at least 50 people and you can make squadrons out of these numbers.
If the Maqui Raider was 60 meters and the Peregrine fighter was considerably smaller. I tend to think of the Raider as a gunship. Something equally capable of engaging capital ships as well as fighters even leading groups of fighters in attack runs. Like the Millenium Falcon in Return of the Jedi
thats actually a good way to put it. the maquis raider is really a first attempt and has to cover all bases. its only after that the concept is perhaps further refined.
I like to use an allegory when it comes to "starfighters" in Star Trek vs in other franchises. If the X-Wing for example from Star Wars is akin to a LaGG-3, the Peregrine from Star Trek is more like an IL-2. It would be more accurate to call them fast attack ships or gunships. A cockpit strapped to a large frame crammed with as much firepower and defenses as they could fit. Like they took the runabouts and couriers, and generally stripped out everything not related to destroying stuff, then replacing the resulting spaces with more power, bigger shields, etc.
The only thing that could really be a match for the jem'hadar bug ship was the Klingon brel class bird of prey wasn't for the bird of prey in particular the Braille class I don't think the federation-klingon Romulan Alliance would have won the war because the Federation had to fight but they didn't have very many of them and the romulans didn't have no fast attack ships they just had a shit ton of deidara Texas
Romulans was suppose to have star fighters. The d'deridex was a carrier. That was why they had a hole in the middle of the ship. It was to protect the ships leaving the landing bay.
The whole "Why didn't Starfleet do conscription?" throwaway remark there is pretty glaring to me. Starfleet does not pay people. (post scarcity post currency galactic society remember) that's why their selection criteria for Starfleet is so difficult. There are references in the books to the entrance and passing criteria being lowered and field promotions happenning but conscription in the Federation would be defacto slave labour, I mean it's basically slave labour under a capitalist society but at least there the slaves are getting compensated somewhat for their time. It's also worth pointing out that we see many times how the war forces people to maker compromises but we also see that there are some compromises too great (for example with Admiral Layton's plan) conscription is considered a divisive and messed up thing today, brought it when Picard is Captain of ther flagship and you'd be considered a villain up there with Kai Winn, Admiral Layton and and Admiral Satee. As to your points about fighter combat I think that's fair. Each gnat in a swarm of gnats is quite safe, particularly if while the gnats are swarming you a large beast like a miranda or galaxy is pounding away at you.
I have played 3 startrek non Canon fighter games 2 set in the original one voiced by George takei and Walter keoning. The other was TNG/ds 9 era with Michael Dorn. So there are indeed fighters even Orion,Klingon,and romulan ship types (they suck compared to bombers with mirv torpedoes) They weren't warp capable but had shields, energy guns 2 types and an equivalent to or actual torpedoes with cloaking devices removing one gun for Klingon and romulan. Shattered universe the one with Takei and Keoning I played 200+ plus hours so I am something of a fan. In summary YES they do exist yet aren't built for grand capital to capital combat as a capital doesn't have the space but for 4-8 unless a carrier.
The TNG episode where the crew loses its memory and think they are at war they manage to wipe out a squadron of drone fighters in short order. Attacking a Galaxy-class ship is a suicide mission. Properly employed they could be effective. They would be fantastic for close air support on planets against troop formations and lightly shielded targets. In space they could form a close in interceptor for incoming torpedoes on capital ships and clean up duty assaulting damaged ships that are trying to retire from battle.
We'll also always remember Best of Both Worlds part 2 and the Mars Defense Perimeter where a wing of fighters charge right at the Borg Cube and are just vaporized instantly. On the part about how to use them properly, you could use non-warp capable fighters for planetary defense, a squadron of fully armed fighters between them having firepower comparable to a full size starship, at a fraction the cost and you could just station them at a surface base on a colony world you want to protect. There are also the potential for Torpedo Bombers, where you take a full size capitol grade photon or quantum torpedo and you sling a couple of them under your fighters, so they can get close to an enemy's heavy capitol ships and then just barrage them with heavy warheads.
true although the aliens of that episode are of a significantly lower tech level anyway. but 'modern' fighters could absolutely threaten a large capital ship. particularly when supported by a capital ship of their own.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I'm Also going to further advocate fighters as an option for colonial defense, since the biggest threats to frontier colonies are not going to be full scale military warships, but pirates and raiders making use of obsolete vessels they bought or stole second hand or converted freighters
@@weldonwin very true. most 'civillian' vessels that could be used by pirates are not going to be much larger than 200-300m. equally though you could see pirates turning fighters to their advantage. particularly against big slow cargo ships. given that that's how pirates operate today in small speed boats operating from a mother ship and evading military craft.
Calling these fighters is WRONG; the nearest equivalent would be WorldWar II torpedo boats, or Medium/Attack Bombers like the A26 Invader; or todays missile class Patrol boats.
a very good point since they operate in the same medium as ships. although one might argue that they are fighters as they are capable of atmospheric flight which certain 'Gunboats' might not. although given shuttles can fly....
IDK it might be hard to target a fighter. After all, if one could easily target a small fast moving fighter we'd probably see a lot more shots taken at small, slow moving bridges.
If shield strength = power/area covered then it might be more efficient to shield smaller ships than larger ones. Why the Federation decided to make the Defiant small but overpowered. Why the Dominion made their primary craft a corvette.
true but then you can only fit a smaller engine, mount less weapons ect. bear in mind the defiant uses a lot of new tech like its reactor which wasn't available before.
In the original series the Enterprise was in combat with with a craft the was about 1m by 0.25m and it scored several direct hits and that was like I said in the original series so I don't think accuracy is a major issue at all
don't know the particular episode. but bear in mind trying to target a swarm of them. and at closer range that might be harder. remember starship targeting sensors are zeroed for 10s of kilometers.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 admittedly in a swarm and at close range they would probably be effective in some ways but they wouldn't be starting at close range And in the original series there guns were more orientated for big ship engagement That being said I did see in another video that ship's like the Romulan derderidex did struggle with targeting the fast moving Dominion fighter that would attack up close and in numbers so I suppose it would depend on the faction there being used against But with Starfleet's targeting being so on point I don't see fighters being to much of an issue for them at all and you have to bear in mind Starfleet had a very pacifistic mindset before the Dominion war so just wouldn't develop much in the way of fighters themselves and what with the size Federation that would have had major impact on fighter development throughout the alpha quadrant as a hole
@@venomgeekmedia9886 Wouldn't an experienced captain use proximity detonation photon torpedoes/phasers for a swarm of small craft in formation at distance? Recall photon torpedoes have a blast effect of at least 100km or more depending upon the yield. The capital ship is going to have a range advantage due to more powerful sensors, so they will be able to strike first. If the fighters close on the ship, the phasers should be able to pick them off as we've seen done in "Conundrum", "Dragon's Teeth", and "Sacrifice of Angels". Perhaps the episode Richard Stone was thinking of was "The Changeling" in which the Enterprise strikes the 1m+ Nomad with one photon torpedo at a range of 90,000 km?
Fighters did probe effective in numbers. Another example is when the Vaad’waur attacked voyager and nearly prevented it from leaving their planet’s atmosphere. Voyager was able to swat down many of the fighters but not all at once. It was destroying perhaps 2 or 3 at a time with Phasers which was not enough against the dozens of fighters attacking.
The Vaad'waur isn't a great example of fighter effectiveness. Voyager was crippled before the battle with the fighters even started, underpowered, and unable to maneuver as she normally would. She could barely get into orbit. And her targeting sensors were damaged, meaning Tuvok had to shoot the next 39 fighters down manually, and apparently disabled 30 of them. Imagine how many waves would have gone down if he'd had full targeting sensor support. Swarm tactics won't work when a starship can outpower, outrange, and outrun fighter-sized ships.
A big part of starfighters not being a thing in Star Trek is the writing style. In Star Wars the space battles are very much based on WW2, specifically the Pacific theater where you have swarms of fighters attacking capital ships, weaving through flack and getting into dogfights. It's all very fast paced and adrenaline pumping. In Trek the battles are much more calculated and methodical. Typically you'll be at a stalemate and have to think outside of the box to achieve victory. Very much Hunt For Red October -esk. (That is until later in DS9 where they shifted more towards a 19th century style line of battle with two massive fleets smashing into each other).
Who said a fighter needs a warp core. Starships could carry at least 24. A great force multiplier. I played star fleet battles growing up and fighters played a pivotal role.
The Dominion war variant of the Galaxy class was more heavily armed and they left space stock with 60% of their interior and complete empty and their giant shuttle Bay they could load it with Paragon fighters but they could use this empty storage to store torpedoes and repair facilities for these spiders parts formed spare parts maybe they can even turn it into a couple of maintenance facilities to repair these fighters maybe even open up a couple more smaller shuttle base
What Starfleet needed was a low warp or impulse version of Chipotle's Marquis raider maybe it could be 80 m long with three decks maybe it could get to work four or three even it mainly operates in the solar system that's it say some backwater calling he's got maybe two of those and some of them are impulse fighters that Wesley was flying with the starburst him and Tom Paris got in trouble
Just a note on your tank comparison. Modern shells use depleted uranium. Also, modern tanks are much faster, maneuverable, have computer tracking, reactive armor, etc.
A note about fighters both in real life and in Star Trek, a fighter has 1-3 crew and carries a little ordinance that can kill an unprotected warship in ideal circumstances. A wing of 36 fighters that attacks a warship will suffer 20% losses and the remainder will return to the mothership for rearming. They will hit with 18% of their ordinance, and cripple or kill a warship per strike, at a cost of 7 or 8 strike craft. Doing the same with a fleet warship will leave 3 or more warship with expensive repair time at the yard and dozens of dead and wounded crew. It is cheaper to use the fighters.
Doesn't this assume that the fighters can outrun a warship? In Star Trek, this is generally not the case. Larger ships have bigger power generation, which means superior speed. In this paradigm, fighters cannot dictate the range of engagement and therefore, would be swatted by the bigger, stronger, faster, and better defended capital ship.
Starfleet should just build drone mother ship that carries droves of impulse-only automated drones with sensors, shields and phasers. These drones would be easy and cheap to replenish and maintain, and could avoid loss of lives of trained crew.
How automated? The Dominion showed an ability to put up heavy communication jamming. If the drone is programmed to seek out Dominion ships, do they use image recognition, warp signatures, transponder codes, heat-seeking tracking, or some combination? Any and all of these can be countered, possibly making them a threat to the firing ship, or worse, a civilian vessel.
@@Euripides_Panz The federation makes use of extremly sophisticated artifical intelligence that does specialized jobs better than the human counter parts, they will always make better decisions regardless of jamming, which affacts human crew as well.
@@suzumiyaharuhi3438 "...they will always make better decisions." Like M5? The premise is unsound. AI weapons in trek are invariably rife with problems. Even Data, with an ethical program, attacked his own crew members. Those occasions were marked by a malfunction, which is something a drone is even more prone.
@@Euripides_Panz The M5 was TOS tech, which was 100yr prior to TNG when advanced AI was first employed regularly by the federation, mostly in the forms of starship central computer and hologram. The incident with Data was another issue, as he was never designed to undertake such specialized task as starship officer, unlike the Doctor who was specifically designed for short-term medical duties. In fact, the success of the Doctor functioning far beyond his initial perimeter should be a testiment to how good the AI tech was.
most 23rd century ships had a point defense mode capable of killing missiles with many lower power shots per phaser so an upgrade to a third mid power mid shot number would be logical. I reference the old game Starfleet command and it successors Canon or not I could hit a button and go 100% point defense with those phasers and hit a large number of missiles (BB could fire 9-12 and I could swat the whole run in "fortress" mode.) With 7 type one frontal phasers (Gatling not firing). So again starships had phasers quite lethal to fighters that's why no fighters in the early-mid 23rd. With new tech in the 24th it became a fighters dream. High end shields taking direct capital hits, high end engines and structural engineering to make high energy maneuvers with ease and little to no chance of breakdowns mid fight, ECM suites of near cloaking power. So with survivability came new fighters and attack craft. A Marquis raider is a modified attack craft, a fighter/bomber for hit and run tactics. Fighters are at biggest Delta flier sized. 4 man team max. Maxed manuverability, fast, light defenses, heavily armed strike craft.
You just know there was some red-shirt in a cockpit during the Dominion War, growling into his com as his squadron winged over and dove on a flotilla of Jemhadar attack ships: "All Red Squadron elements, this is Red Leader! Put your shields on double-front and follow me in!"
And every time he did, George Lucas blood-pressure went up a notch. :)
Red leader, lol.
Probably yellow shirt
@@aiosquadron
Swarm tactics can be useful if they're automated. Gnats for distracting a big target like the Borg.
Huh. The Borg would hate the Protoss...
Bad me. Not cross-universeing.
Uh, I think the Borg are the one enemy you wouldn’t want to swarm as they have tons of weapons on every side of their vessels, and a whole species to use as their targeting computer.
@@OneNidim The idea is to swarm the Cube with smaller ships to set up for a main attack.
The Peregrine could also mount 6 quantum torpedos on it's wings. If they worked in squadons of 10. That's a lot of fire power.
Or it could be a big explosion.
That makes them more like Torpedo boats, which Destroyers were initially designed to counter.
If a small squadron of comparitively expendable boats carrying very destructive torpedoes can take out a large capital ship, even with the loss of a large percentage of that squadron, it makes economic sense to employ them on some fashion. Their modern successor are the Patrol Missile Boats which carry anti-ship missiles and can swarm a target with dozens of missiles fired at the same time. It's part of why AEGIS and VLS were designed to counter such a swarm threat.
What was the fighter at the end of the video
@@caseywick961 redemption class
@@ace1gl Actually quantums? Not photon torps?
There was an episode of STV where the Vaadwaur, using fighters centuries behind the times, were giving Voyager all it could handle.
I thought they were outdated by Starfleet standards
Wasn't Voyager damaged beforehand with its targeting sensors offline? Janeway wanted to get into orbit, perhaps so she could bring the superior speed of Voyager to bear against the Vadwaur. As I recall, Tuvok was targeting the fighters manually and still swatting waves of them out of the sky. They took down 4 fighters in the first attack. The Vadwaur then launched another 39. By the next count, Voyager has whittled that wave down to 9. Presumably, 34 fighters destroyed in total, even with the limitations of manual targeting. Now, Voyager was damaged and there were surely more fighters on the way, but this does not seem to show the effectiveness of fighters against Starfleet capital ships.
@@Acrosurge yeah, any ship would be overwhelmed by constant waves of 20-30+ fighters especially with voyager already being crippled, that’s why she was on the surface in the first place for repairs. Though the fighters were being taken out 5 or 6 at a time with the phasers
The Kazon could do the same, and a lot of their ships were glorified shuttles too.
@@cmj0929those fighters were also hundreds of years old
Given the number of Capital Ships & Carriers that have been sunk by Fighter Bombers & Diver Bombers, I wouldn't be too dismissive of the threat they pose. Particularly if you were to equip them with a heavy photon torpedo. One big advantage of externally carried ordinance is that your not restricted by launcher dimensions, so equipping them with something that will do significant damage to a Capital Ships shield's shouldn't present any major challenges. Particularly when delivered from multiple axis simultaneously.
A fighter might be able to get in close enough to a larger vessel to get a more precise scan of its shields, look for weak points such as power fluctuations, sensor Windows or gaps from emitter damage and by being much closer be able to precisely match modulation to exploit them causing more damage than a standard more powerful beam weapon at longer range could do.
I'd like to think that Starfleet fighters also received a lot of ECM/ECCM support themselves or from destroyers (Sisko orders destroyer units to close in to provide cover during Sacrifice of Angels, so could be that - also, I loved that mechanic in the Starfleet Command PC game). Whatever classes of Starfleet ships constitute the destroyer-role in the war, they'd probably provide long-range torpedo strikes, like Enterprise at warp in Encounter at Farpoint.
That still shot you used from Sacrifice got me thinking - the Jem'Hadar are wasting torpedoes on the fighters but the Cardassians are getting in the shots on target. An unconscious reference to the Dominion NOT being used to fighting Starfleet this way but the Cardassians drawing on that anti-Maquis experience? Which might make sense, the Jem'Hadar are better at bringing down capital ships, and the runabouts didn't perform disgracefully in the last battle of the Odyssey. I doubt that was part of the writing intention (it was stellar writing regardless), but I'll be cheeky and head-cannon it as Starfleet learning lessons from that disaster...
As for training, Tom Paris was always referred to by himself and everyone as a "pilot" rather than a helmsman; yes, room for interpretation, but he was pretty good if not exceptional, so scope for him to be a star product of an elite training pipeline?
let me explain the fighter concept in star trek, 1 or 2 might not do much damage but 40 blasting 1 ship is going to do damage period
Exactly. Plus when you consider that 40 fighters are probably cheaper than 1 proper ship. They only expose 40 people to combat and if the battle does not go well they can scatter making survival much more likely it seems the only real downside is range and endurance.
Also remember the episode where the defective clone Wayun contacted Odo to defect, and where chased in their runabout by Jem'Hadar fighters. The clone showed Odo how he could destroy them from behind, as they were poorly defended from the rear. The Peregrine would have been ideal for exploiting that weakness, thus countering one of the Dominions best weapons.
In general, fighters, shuttles, armed shuttles, etc. were under utilized. Case in point, in Nemesis, they fling Data through space to attack the generator. They surely had some kind of shuttles, or shuttle pods on board. Even if they were unarmed, although many types were armed, they could have rammed it. Also, when the Enterprise (NG) hit the anomaly and many of the systems went down, they could have made their way to the shuttle bay, or someone that worked in the area could have gotten to a shuttle or something to use the communication systems, rescued people etc. They always forget about the support vehicles.
I know its been 2 months since your post, but here you go. Data 'Body Bombed' his way over to the "Scimitar" after the cruiser's collision. It looked like both ships were in such disrepair that weapons were inoperable, and the only reason the thaloron weapon was deploying was... it was built redundantly? or it was plot armor. I'm in support of smaller shuttle fighter craft because they seem to be able to take full phaser or polaron beam blasts a few times, and are nimble enough to evade most fighter if supported by a good pilot or pilot assisting system.
Happened in Best of Both Worlds where Data and Worf retrieve Locutus via Shuttle.
@@Nala15-Artist there were a couple of episodes where the small vessels were used.
I'm late to the party, but I'll throw my two cents in. The comparison to skirmishers is apt, but I think that we can take it even further into a cavalry role. ST fighters can be seen as something similar to Napoleonic cavalry as they are easily seen coming, but would be difficult to hit at any decent range with the weapons then. While useless against dug-in formations, a fluid battle gives them the chance to shine. Sisko's move during "Sacrifice of Angels" was kind of like Ney's repeated charges during Waterloo against Wellington's infantry squares behind the ridge; both desperate moves that will knowingly cost a lot of cavalry/fighters, but desperate commanders short on time breed desperate decisions.
Also, Star Trek ship weapons and shields are contingent on power supply and field endurance. We see proof of this often with ships shuffling backup power and rotating their axis to allow shield sectors and weapons arrays to recharge outside of the immediate line of fire. Fighter crafts prevents such maneuvers and ensure constant stress upon one's enemy target, bringing about their defeat by multi-vector attrition. On the bigger scale, fighters can function as a sort of tactical "fleet-in-being", something that inflicts opportunity costs on the enemy as your foes must counter with stronger forces at the expense of other sectors of the battle.
Finally, as many here have already noted, fighter survivability is still poor if things are taken at face value. Starfleet could fix this with some innovations and lawyering as a space fighter's main defense is that they are difficult to hit, especially at range. Starfleet engineering could look into producing low observibility shields or some sort of ECM system. This would not be a violation of the Treaty of Algeron as, much the F-35 nowadays, everyone can see a low observibility craft is somewhere in the vicinity; they just can't get a weapons lock until its too late.
very interesting and i would agree. the future of fighters in trek is another interesting question we seem to see in the Excalibur class a trend of increasing size thus allowing increased fighter complements. perhaps future space combat in trek might be like in Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda. in which the Andromeda is part Carrier part Battleship. although that then leads to the issue of overpowered do everything ships. equally with transphasic torpedoes large warships may not be so viable.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I always like the back story of Andromeda (not the way the later seasons turned out though as the writers simply lost their minds). The High Guard and the Commonwealth seemed to me like a saner version of Starfleet and the Federation. Also their blend of reasonable personal scale tech with ridiculously advanced ship tech brought a very unique and positive Sci-Fi flavor.
But the relevant thing for me here is that Andromeda fighters were mostly drones with modifiable pilot capability. I always thought that Starfleet needed the massed numbers that drone fighters as it allowed for more specialization. In the rock-paper-scissor game of naval combat, the super-big/super-small combo is one of the best pairs. Moreover, it would work well in a strategic sense as the Federation has great industrial strength but comparatively weak manpower due to its political system.
Last note, just imagine if Picard had some fighters at Bassen Rift. Shinzon's cloak would be useless if he's being constantly lit up by swarms of drones that are even more maneuverable than the Scimitar. The Big E would still lose, but Picard probably could have crippled the Scimitar.
yeah i suppose drones being a more modern technology don't really feature in trek. whereas in the expanse a more modern sci-fi drones are ubiquitous. we did see romulan drones in ENT. quite why they didn't further develop the technology i don't know. but with drones you run into the problem we have today which is how far should we go. how far should we remove the human element from military affairs. and thats a ongoing question.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 as much as possible while also developing ways to disable enemies without killing them. Then if you have to fight one, you can win a war and nobody dies : )
Add a scattering or disruption field to interfere with sensors, and they would be VERY difficult to hit.
Based on the tactics used they sound a lot more like torpedo boats than fighters
Imagine the Borg using fighters in the same way Krall used swarm ships, or a Tholian web like the Nova Core in the MCU. Species 8472 also had a unique way of using smaller ships.
that would be interesting. it would probably be more like the suliban though combining ships together. i could image in the future borg cubes could separate into thousands of smaller ships. or combine to form a even larger ship. like lego.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I can't remember how the Sulliban fought. Will have to rewatch ENT (?) Clips.
Oh yes, Borg lego like ships. Of course they would be like this! Genius!
The game star trek Invasion.
LITERALLY SWARMED BY NANOPROPE SHIPS?
@@venomgeekmedia9886 remember when the Klingons used Cavalry Tactics to get more vulnerable rear areas? this is how i would use fighters. as raiders causing havoc in the rear areas, or you could use them on a trojan horse op... load a fake freighter full of fighters and drop them behind enemy lines. the freighter is just a decoy and is autopiloted. the fighters have warp and can escape.
If the borg created fighters using a single person as a built in control pilot they would be even scarier I think.
aye they could maybe even combine to form a even larger cube?
All I need was at least a thousand defiant war ships if Starfleet can beat anybody !
@@andrewstark34 perhaps but its worth bearing in mind. while small. defiant class attack ships are costly and slow to construct and require a lot of maintenance and supply. im sure by the end of the dominion war both the romulans and klingons would be looking at developing their own rivals to the defiant class.
Chaos Hellstorm fighters and Hellblade bombers from Warhammer 40 and the Cylon Raiders from Battlestar Galatica have pilots hard wired into the control.
Like the Chaos Hellblade from Warhammer 40K and the Cylon Raider from updated version of Battlestar Galatica
That last federation fighter is gorgeous
Because of the pin point accuracy of phasers and disruptors, only fighters with the shielding equal to a capitol ship is viable. To power that kind of shielding you need a warp core the size of a capitol ship.
Also TNG show the Enterprise D can target multiple ships.
I'm wondering if they also had ECM to block targeting of themselves and the Capitol Ships they are with, close up jamming can be handy
We have Gatling cannons on our ships today that can shoot down a incoming missile. And yet we still have fighters in our navy.
Point is the fighters can launch their Photon Torpedoes well outside phaser range and never be at risk of taking phaser fire. Photons have double the range of Phasers. Each fighter can carry six. That means one squadron can fire 48 Torpedoes at their target and never be shot at by their target.
@@jimtilley1158 Capitol ships have photon torpedoes, superior sensors, and superior speed compared to fighters, meaning they can control the range of engagement. This really neuters the fighter paradigm and is completely different from our real-world, naval paradigm.
One of the things we in the simming word have added to starships and stations is point defense batteries, which are designed to counter fighter craft, torpedoes, and other munitions. They are not perfect, but if nothing else help to balance things a bit.
interesting. personally i would have thought the best counter would be other similar craft or larger gunboats/attack ships that are too small to fight ships of the line.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 Generally Fighters were in fact commonly used during Earth-Romulan War, with ships such as NC class (Sarajevo) operating as makeshift Carriers. Federation at the time utilized large number of rather small ships. Such as Ganges, Discovery/Conestoga, Dedalus, Freedom/Franklin or Strider. At the time effectives of Fighters base largely on lack of shields and was offset by lack of compact warp drives, forcing them to operate from Carrier. In 23'th century small crafts disappear from service as powerful shield s and precise phasers make swarmer tactic ineffective. Though most ships did operate armed shuttles and scouts in limited number (large scouts like Archer were few and between). Use of those in combat become quite notable in rumored confrontation of Crossfield (what basically was Carrier) with large number of small black scout drones, what make use of fighter tactic quite effective. Fighters become again prominent with successful use of those against Cardassians, who lack widespread use of point defense. With previously designed as curriers crafts like Peregrine, showing to be effective against them. But realistically revolution was related to popularization of compact hyperdrives, making shuttles capable of independent operations on longer ranges and as such capable of effective ambushes. With hit and run tactics. Combination of those elements lead to rising popularity of Fighters and Runabouts, in second half of 24'th century. This for example lead to rising prominence of Caitans who did have expansive tradition in such style of combat.
Fighters were greatly employed and successful in the stargate series
A starfighter in Star Trek is going to a much more substantial vessel, in the 24th Century at least, that most franchise. In Star Wars, you might consider the Y-wing or the ARC-170 for size comparison. But I am thinking something akin to the Gunstar, a ship that is literally the size of a Danube Class Runabout, seats only two people, and is mostly engines blasters and missile racks.
In Star Trek, a Starfighter would be not a bit, but would essentially hewn down a Runabout to seat 1-4 people, and have only what it needs to fight and survive the engagement, weapons, shields, armor, and engines. It is the utterly insistence that Starfighter have no place in Star Trek that prevents people from actually looking at the parts on the bench.
It is like taking the Engine and transmission from a pick-up truck and building a much lighter more nimble frame and body, instant Muscle/sports car. When you then sit down and really work on every aspect, you get a super car. Or rather, you take a Runabout, take all the major systems, weapons Shields, Engines and putting that into a much lighter, more nimble platform. Instant Fighter.
The runabout is close to the same length that the Falcon is.
Also the A10 wort hog bomber is 60ft/ 18m long, the length of the Xwing is close to 12m.
As my old RPG D&D/ Star Wars group use to say, just mount two more anti-mater drives inside a shuttle craft for the shields & weapons.
" Full warp engine power to shields ! " just before they get hit by torpedoes.
the Playstation came out with a Carrier vessel and Fighters in Star Trek: Invasion. USS Typhon NX-85808 that has 26 Valkyrie Fighters. I enjoyed the game and would love to have seen it developed into a story arc in the Shows as a follow on from the Dominion War
The Akira Class was supposed to be a carrier. Additionally the Nebula Class has a Fighter POD that can be attached (actually there are several types of PODs...yet another amazing opportunity missed by the writers/producers).
ALL OF the above. ☝️💯👍🙏🖖
The best tactics for Trek fighters is to release torpedos beyond phaser/ disruptor range then rush in while they are distracted by torpedoes. Then they would also be active jamming and ECM to decrease chances of a sensor lock then they would capitalize on the damage done to shields by torpedoes that got through. On a 1 to 1 basis they are tissue paper but as a squadron they could do serious to fatal damage to capital ships. But the best tactics is to be supported by capital ships to draw attention away from them while they swoop in using their superior manuverability and numbers to hit already damaged shield sections or destroy critical systems once the shields are down. Freeing the capital ships to continue forward to punch down the shields of other ships. The fighters would stay together in packs like wolves attacking from multiple vectors to make harder to hit. By then I am sure the targeting systems can track hundreds if not thousands of targets simultaneously but weapons mounts if mechanical have a maximum traverse speed and also rate of fire that's why rapid fire weapons are better for small targets so small nimble targets are still a threat closer they get. And also how many weapons arrays do they have if have 10 they would be positioned all over the ship or in particular arcs so how many can they aim in any direction and the pilots would know where weak coverage areas are plus sensors would detect if there are damaged weapons mounts to exploit. Losses still would be high but 1 fighter is astronomicaly cheaper in resources to build and only has 1 to 2 crew compared to capital ships even with minimum crew size say 100 that is 50 fighters you could field.
I played Star trek shattered universe and found ALL the capitals had blind spots to sit in and sink them. The Orion vessels was just above or below her engines. The federation vessels were sadly "all to easy" knock shields down get between the nacelles and have fun. Klingons and romulans were harder yet not by much get in-between the wings of the Klingon ships just below the engine and they are sto'vo'kor bound. Romulan were by far the hardest to find and lol I don't remember her blind spot but she had one. Method of attack hit shields with pulse fire and torpedoes if targeted do what's known as a pirouette at a 180 degree angle to the enemy ship until it targets another thing. Then repeat until shields are toasted. Waltz into said blind spot and beatdown the ship. When ship is going critical mass go polar and punch the throttle asap the can kill you in the breach. I once killed 4 constitutions with one breach it was B E A U T I F U L!
In fact I don't think we've ever actually seen a true fighter in Star Trek there are one man to man job and you're right injuries would be catastrophic but light because like you said man those ships are built for taking out other big ships a little old fighter with a water two-man crew unless your Shields are down you're golden
When armed with even a couple torprdoes each, a squadron of fighters would have quite a bit of sting.
Also, in the final battle of the dominion war (The one where Cardassian ships turned sides), the Federation was using fighters to combat the Jem'Hadar fighters directly. After the Romulan flagship was lost, Defiant along with a couple wings of fighters went to bolster that flank.
Also, let us not forget how vulnerable to Jem'Hadar fighters were to small craft. In the episode with the defective Wayun, he showed Odo how to destroy one of the fighters from behind using a run-about, as they were poorly defended from behind. The Peregrine was one of the very few ships in the Federation that could get behind a Jen'Hadar fighter like that. So they were likely very effective in countering that threat.
Voyager got harmed by Vodwaur swarm tactics. They shields got pecked at, and the phasers couldn't keep up. PLUS the Vodwaur ships weree a couple centuries older than Voyager. And Voyager still couldn't stop them.
I think that the weapon systems for Federation ships have the best "defense" against Fighters. They can simply sweep their phaser beam thru the swarm with a higher chance of hitting multiple targets.
Also, a torpedo volley with proximity detonators would help with dispersing them to prevent a concentrated assault.
Two key things allowed for fighters in the 24th century: the Danube class and the Maquis.
There was (star/warp)fighters in the STO era just not shown in the original TV series! ( They did not have the budget for the models or the props to have the fighters, remember this is how we got transporters!) They were cannon though, just take a read of "Star Trek: Dreadnought!, The Original Series (#29) Series, Star Trek: Fortunes of War (#1) Series, and Star Trek Classic (#30) Series) by Diane Carey"
I always assume fighters in Star Trek are used for three different roles.
1) To serve as a harasser and increase the overall military strength of a fleet. Mainly to give smaller fleets a bit more firepower as first strike ships, destroy damaged ships as Capital ships moved on to more dangerous targets, or harass enemy ships to keep the enemy fire away from larger ships. After all, losing one or even 12 pilots is preferable to losing 50-10,000 people, assuming the fighters are not automated.
2) To operate in environments that would be dangerous if not suicidal for most larger starships. Primarily in dangerous fields of space like the badlands or a densely populated asteroid field. Where a larger ship would get damage trying to fly through while making sure the respective military has a presence in all corners of the Milkyway Galaxy. That is also not including flying within a planet's atmosphere, specifically in tight areas like canyons or mountains, as well as under the sea.
2) To serve as the role of a tank for ground defense and invasion. As having a standard ground vehicle is probably is good a destroy as I can see a beam weapon near a military base do a sweep against enemy tanks, and boom, no more enemy tanks. Fights are not limited in their maneuverability to avoid enemy fire, can get to more location a tank can't, can disable or destroy weapon placements for shuttles coming in to place jamming transporters, and can perform precise strike against small ground units while having enough power to shields to shrug off attacks. I can see a fighter just fly or blast their way into a small cavern and whipped out a 60+ group before flying out.
After all, with the level of technology, we cannot make the assumption the ships will play the same combat roles as we see vessels in current military strategy.
interesting you mention the tank role i've actually done a whole video on star trek tanks. i think a purpose built tank will be much tougher than a fighter although lack that agility. what i think is more likely is specialized roles end up falling under the umbrella of either tanks or fighters. so here's an interesting question what is the Defiant shuttle?tank? fighter? something else?
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I think a big problem with any type of tank is that unless it is flying or a hover tank, it would be useless in Star Trek combat. Given how their energy weapons, especially the beam based versions allow for a sweeping attack across battlefields within a light second, kind of kills any government that is not throwing millions of lives, per battle, away from the ability to fight large mechanized ground battle that tanks excel at. Especially if the opposition decides to fire fast-moving torpedoes that can track targets behind bases and facilities protected by shields. And enough anti-matter to the point it can miss targets by 10km and still probably kill smaller tanks and fighters, along with every other vehicle within its blast radius. So for a heavy ground tank, it would be difficult, if not impossible to win battles and probably just throw away live in siege battles that are probably going have to be handle by Starships in orbit. It is also why I think that in the Star Trek universe, the only type of Ground Combat that remains is mostly infantry. Specifically, the defending, taking and retaking vital military installation, the occupation of a facility/city/planet, and insurgent style fighting.
Honestly, if there is a ground vehicle, it should be small light vehicles that are able to cover a lot of ground quickly, and thus able to outrun planetary bombardment or ground to ground bombardment. Or be design to perform patrols in an occupied urban environment. And outside of a parked ground vehicle in a city to occupy, you might as well build a fighter because with enough thrust and anti-gravity technology Starfleet has, you could make a much heavier fighter than a light ground vehicle that is able to bring more firepower and speed.
As for the Defiant shuttle, I consider them auxiliary crafts that increase the mission profile of the Defiant in its limited fashion or a long-range escape pods.
I'd say the battle that you pointed out, in Sacrifice of Angels, already says it all.
Sisko sent in wave after wave. That means they were 1) either not targeted, or only targeted very casually, and 2) inflicting limited, or very minor damage.
The Cardassians only gave into that trap after a while (and Dukat knew fully well that this was Sisko goading him and so he placed a trap himself, but that's another thing). So that means the Cardassians could take that beating for quite a while, and could probably have done so far longer, even though they were inferior with the tech (and Sisko had the fighters target Cardassians exclusively, avoiding the superior Jem'Hadar). You could argue that tt's like the death of a thousand cuts, and eventually, even these minimal damages may cause even the big Galor or Keldon to fold, but it'd take time.
For a resource on fighters in the TOS era find a copy of The Fighters module J from the old StarFleet battles. Tones of data, designs, scenarios and a two cool stories of fighter use.
Also, did you miss that NX-01 had a warpcore?
Not to mention Zefram Cochrane's Phoenix
@@balrighty3523 are you sure about that? I've always been under the impression that it was powered by a tokamak fusion reactor or two of some kind.
I think Riker specifically says he's "bringing the warp core online" during the Phoenix's maiden voyage in First Contact, so I'm reasonably sure.
@@balrighty3523 Yep. He does. But that doesn't mean its matter/anti matter. Its just an engine. They also fix a "warp plasma conduit" and that "plasma injectors are on line". BUT....Plasma is also the central element of fusion reactions. Who knows, maybe these nacelles are different and are the engines themselves. Plasma injectors come online, flooding the nacelles with plasma, which in turn "charges" the "main cells" Laforge mentions for a short warp hop. Cochrane presumably has no anti-matter, nor dilithium to control the reaction even if he had enough anti-matter. I don't know. I've thought about this too much lol Seems like a fusion reactor would be the dilithium-less way to go. *shrug*
Why would he presumably have no antimatter or dilithium, though? He has warp nacelles with warp coils which are still made out of the made up material verterium cortenide. So if anything, if we can presume that he can acquire/manufacture that material, why would also acquiring/manufacturing antimatter and/or dilithium be any different?
(Though I will say that I personally don't think dilithium is necessary to the reaction. Canonically, it's there to modulate the matter/antimatter reaction, but since he would also have to have magnets to hold the antimatter, anyway, I don't think it'd be a stretch to say that dilithium is a later upgrade to the technology. Plus, there's a TOS novel (Memory Prime) that claimed that warp speeds of warp 4 or below are manageable without dilithium. I know it's noncanonical, but it also lines up with the NX-01's warp 5 engine being a next-stage advancement to the technology (if we figure that dilithium is the turning point).)
excellent vid, I look forward to see more. there's about 2-3 star trek games that utilizes fighters, which I think is cool. also, the alternate trek universe, calling itself the Starfleet/star battles universe(created by steve cole) has fighters in the 23rd century. would you be interested in reviewing ships from other trek universes? if so, the ships from other games, such as Starfleet command, created by taldren games. in the last unicorn rpg Romulan boxed set 'way of d'era, an assortment of extra Romulan classes are shown. have a great day. :)
As to the Reman fighters in Nemesis, the more I look at them, the more I start to believe they're probably a ground attack fighter. They're really too small for space combat.
Definitely agree
I'm surprised they never considered a 360 degree EMP discharge to disable fighters at a certain range. In Star Trek Online, it's my main defense against swarms, aside from Beams At Will.
an intresting idea although it would likely be more of a danger to your allies than your enemies.
fighters would also actively scatter targeting scanners of enemy ships otherwise using it as kamikaze would be better use for them
that would only work on unsheilded ships. otherwise it would only do the damage of a couple photon torpedoes.
Given that the Constellation was also a carrier, one would have to assume that Starfleet had some form of fighter as far back as Wrath of Khan. I wonder what it was?
I always thought that an excellent way to explain why Riker wasn't forced into commanding his own ship in the Dominion War was that as the First Officer, he also had a wartime role as the ship's Commander, Air Group (CAG). Galaxy and Soverign class ships could have an auxilliary role as fighter carriers. Riker would stay aboard as the CAG, leading his fighters into combat while Picard commanded the task force.
didn't know that. makes sense though. How many fighters can the sovereign class carry?
@@venomgeekmedia9886 No idea but it's gotta be a lot when you look at the size of the ships.
@@timw483 apparently the enterprise d carries 10 shuttles looking at shuttle bay 2 and 3 they probably hold 2 each so the main shuttle bay. (the one we never see) must hold 6. the enterprise E has 2 large shuttle bays so perhaps carries as many as 12 fighters.
have you seen the starfleet museum ?
No one on either side has point defense against fighters. I point this out because the Peregrines seem to fly in and out of shield perimeters and skim hulls. That would do a lot more than distract. That kind of damage would build up quickly.
Sacrifice of Angels that particular battle was the battle of Chin'Toka 1 & 2
I think having star fighters isn't a bad idea but I just think that they aren't used correctly. They should be used alongside larger ships to help screen them against other fast attack ships.
To really discuss fighters in 24th century Trek, you have to go against the grain and accept them. No Roddenberry acolyte would do so. Otherwise, you'll come to the persistent conclusion they don't belong, or even hate the idea of them.
Next, comes the role. Are they scouts, attackers, bombers, escorts, reconnaissance, interceptors, superiority, multi-role, fighter-bombers, or somehow all of those?
The way we saw them used in DS9 wasn't especially effective, but with effective carrier methods, they would certainly be proficient within their appropriate roles.
The biggest challenge of a light, nimble craft is surviving approach to the target. When that target can shoot back with accuracy greater than your own, you have to take countermeasures, even if you're a drone.
Sensors have been rendered virtually ineffective through various means. Just a few include tachyon bursts, photon bursts, ionized radiation, dense alloys, and EM fields. Surely, with appropriate sensor jamming, the 24th century equivalent of chaff and flares, even modestly protected hulls, unaided by stealth, can gain a tactical advantage. Squadrons, even wings of fighters, drones, and bombers will eventually overcome the best defenses. Even proximity blast phasers and torpedoes require a degree of targeting, or they are stroke of luck shots.
If a raider, light destroyer, or escort can make an attack run at a heavy warship or defense station, a squadron of attack craft can ride behind it, split off when the threat of incoming torpedoes is low, drop mines, torpedoes, and unload energy weapons at point blank range.
Likewise, if allied ships have cloaking technology, fighters can hide within a cloaking barrier, split off with shields up, and attack the most vulnerable points.
In pure recon roles, a flight of light fighters can piggyback on a much faster raider, head off into separate star systems, then each launch microprobes to obtain detailed scans, report back valuable information, and maybe return to a carrier vessel, with minimal chance of being detected.
I wonder why we haven't seen more militaristic cultures like the Klingons, Romulans or the Dominion have proper carriers. One very large ship housing up to five hundred or so fighter/strike craft.
I'd suspect the same rules of engagement apply by having the carrier itself off at long distance with a screening escort while the fighters and the rest of the fleet comprising of cruisers and destroyers would engage an enemy fleet. The carrier may be built to also directly participate in battle unlike our familiar maritime variants but would have no way to launch or land anymore fighters while in pitched battle though.
Makes one think of what space tactics could be in Star Trek.
given how fighters themselves aren't that potent. they would probably rather use carrier/combat hybrids. ships that can carry fighters but do ship to ship fighting. Eg; the scimitar which carries a large number of fighters and is still a battleship.
The Archer Class from the Vanguard novels would be Starfleet's fighter type ship in the TOS era
If you're into deep lore (and I know you are) check out the Starfleet Battles stuff. It ain't cannon Trek but I think it'd be up your alley.
And all races had fighters there :)
Also they carry Torpedoes which are very effective against Capital ships so not a nuisance anymore
The trouble isn't torpedoes. The trouble is range. The capital ship will be able to acquire the fighters first due to superior sensors and superior speed. Without support, fighters wouldn't last long enough to do any real damage.
And don't forget, most capital ships have torpedoes too!
Fighters being death traps in the STU I think is a misconception. If you look at the numerous engagements the Defiant was in, their erratic maneuvers avoided a lot of enemy fire and sometimes even puts them in an advantageous position. Coupled with its small silhouette and profile, those "precision" targeting systems seems to lose a lot of it's accuracy. Now miniaturize that even more to Peregrine fighters...you see how effective they can be at harassing a target. Starfleet's new swarm tactics they employed on the Borg Cube at the Battle of Sector 001 is what fighters are pretty much made for. Losses would still be high but they would be a fraction of the cost vs an all cruiser compliment fleet.
thats interesting i didn't consider that fighters might have come as a reaction to the borg threat. but it does make sense. and true if you lose a squadron of fighters that 4 pilots. you lose a capital ship you lose 400+ officers. particularly with how weak some federation capital ships are.
@@venomgeekmedia9886
I don't think Federation fighters came about because of the Borg threat, I'm sure they existed prior to that. But if they had been deployed in large enough numbers using the same tactic, I don't think Starfleet losses would have been so high. Same goes for certain engagements during the Dominion War. Even having a few squads stationed on DS9 would have made sense if ships couldn't be spared as it seems they could never care to keep a contingent close enough to the station to respond.
@@HeadlessChickenTO i agree the federation fleet at wolf 359 is an overweight un-specialized fleet of cruisers. if you watch my documentary on the Romulan D'deridex you'll know that the federation was over reliant on cruisers and their enemies knew it. also why didn't ds9 replace its Danube runabouts with fighters to be deployed from the launchpad. those combined with the defiant and the stations firepower would be very formidable.
Also keep in mind. Fighters extend a ships sensor net with patrols, Draw fire away from the capitol ships that are damaged, can launch their wing mounted full size torpedoes well outside of phaser range, Also as a capitol ship disables an enemy's shields. thy can move on to the next target and the fighters can finish off enemy ships with damaged shields.
To the Galaxy class struggled going against the Dominion fighters because they were more maneuverable at sublight well you load your main shuttle Bay with fighters and you launch those and that helps a lot because then you know you can have six fighters go after each Dominion bug ship and the Galaxy class is also blasting it with a heavy phaser and torpedoes
Erm, the Dominion Attack Fighters, of course, aren't fighters at all, but 90ish meter starships. And their weapons were able to ignore Starfleet shields.
I've been wondering about the use of fighters and the lack thereof in star trek for some time now.
Wondering why fighters would even need "human" pilots. TNG-era computers can autonomously fly starships and shuttles, can run AI holograms which autonomously fly starships and shuttles. Even without fancy positronics or neural bio-processors. They could be replicated disposable kamikaze weapons, cheap, relentless, easily able to swarm and overwhelm. They can't be hacked if they aren't networked and aren't remotely commanded - just program their target/objective then fire and forget.
I remember an episode of TNG where the Enterprise crew got mind wiped and sent to attack some random alien HQ . As I remember they didn't have much problem dealing with six attack drones so why would six fighters be any different ?
If i remember the episode properly, the base they were going to attack was that of a race that was barely at 23rd century equivalent technology. Worf even commented that the ships were shooting Lasers at the Enterprise where someone remarks that those wont even breach the navigation shields. And if I am remembering correctly they only sent like four small ships at the Enterprise as opposed to entire squadron.
@ Jared My point was that the Enterprise D tracked multiple targets and destroyed them all . So why would they have an issue tracking and destroying fighters ? Who attacked them or what their tech level happens to be is irrelevant , it was the tracking abilities of the Enterprise I was trying to point out . As fast as they smoked the first wave I do not see 5 , 10 or 50 going much differently .
Seemor Disillusioned just as a more advanced civilization would have much more advanced tracking/targeting systems, a more advance civilization would also have more advanced counter measures. Look how today’s fighters use stealth and jamming technology to avoid being shot down, the same could/would be done in the future. Fighters could use cloaking devices and some sort of system that interferes with the targeting sensors. You have to remember, this is all made up, so if you can make up a targeting system that can engage multiple targets in just a fraction of a second, then you can also make up jamming technology to blind said targeting system. When it comes down to it, the reason that small fighters were never used in ST was because of budget constraints. It cost a lot more to build several more models and then have to shoot a much more complex scene with fighters attacking.
@@mopar_dude9227 Agreed but also keep in mind that those ships you mention were drones NOT fighters , closest thing ST had . Also remember how many times the Enterprise had to figure out a way past the cloaking device but by the next episode they had forgotten it .
drones are predicable and you can use their programming to your advantage also star trek fighters are so primitive and trash that a star wars freighter would be more powerful agile .
I remember the Cardassian dreadnought firing some kind of energy pulse that destroyed a number of attack fighters; I would think that would be standard equipment on any capital ship.
the cardassian dreadnought is not a good example. its far too overpowered, i tend to disregard VOY.
@@venomgeekmedia9886sorry I just saw your response; I refer to the weapon itself, not the dreadnought. I would think it would be possible to put that weapon on starship to at least deter fighters from getting in too close. Perhaps its potential to damage other nearby ally ships is why?
The Enterprise D was swarmed by fighters and it wiped them out in a few seconds. Peregrine fighters were used as bombers but they have dismal survival rates. Might as well use drones. In fact as seen in Picard Starfleet resorted to drones as part of Mars defenses.
yeah drones is one of those things which in retrospect would be in nearly every ships inventory. but wasn't something people were thinking about in sci-fi until relatively recently.
What you’re reviewing are -not- fighters. They are currently known as a gunboat (15+ meters), This IS a ship, and similar to gunboats operating form minimal land-based facilities or carried by capital ships in WWII (Japanese in particular). Fighters, which we are all familiar with, are something entirely different.
Fighters (or combat shuttles) in Star Trek are small 2-4 man crew vessels limited to only tactical warp (less than a few hundred parsec range) possessing minimal life support (no gravity and requiring a space suit) and limited operations to operation times of no more than 20 hours. Given their short range/endurance, poor survivability (no shields), and limited offensive capabilities (cannot recharge offensive weapons), these combat shuttle platform were often used as attrition units. As such, fighters -DID- suffer very high casualty rates.
Fighters were extensively used during and prior to the original series, primarily but by species on the opposite side of the Klingon Empire from the Federation. When the Klingon and Romulan Empires jointly invaded Federation Space about 35 years after TOS (see the legally licensed timeline of Star Fleet Battles), all major galactic powers made extensive use of “fighters”, but switched to “gunboats” about a decade later as the requirements for independence and survivability increased.
What you see in DS9 is just a copy of these “gunboats” that were developed in Star Fleet Battles over 15 years earlier.
you have micro torpedoes and a bunch of fighters swarming a single ship can take heat off of their mothership as well as rapidly drain their shields, target critical systems etc... KINDA LIKE A MORE realistic version of the Multi-Vector Assault Ship.
Fighters in Star Trek aren't really used like fighters in modern day naval warfare. I would consider them more like torpedo boats
There was an episode of TNG with a crew of lost their memory and I was using the Enterprise to intervene in some War and the Enterprise destroyed a bunch of small attack craft Ray easily with spacers I was moving at high impulse it was warm in it and it was just I am bam
I thought that was explained as the sheer difference in technological levels in terms of defensive shielding. The Enterprise was able to fire off extremely low power-rapid fire shots from the individual banks within it’s phaser array, opposed to using fully charged shots, depicted by the twin glows traveling around the array and converging into a beam.
It’s been years since I’ve seen that episode, so I might be remembering things wrong.
Large starships (mostly Enterprise-D) are shown casually swatting little interceptors many episodes. Big belligerent ship bristles with phasers, high-power, long-range, omnidirectional, no blind spots, never miss anything at puny "dogfighting" ranges, the beams lance out in all directions and stay on each moving target precisely as long as needed for kill. The big ship doesn't even bother to slow down while the little wreckages bounce off its shields, unless it wants to collect a prize.
Fighters and shuttles are only hard to hit when piloted by Immortal Names and only hard to kill when protected by plot armor.
I figured that once you could scale the warpcores down enough, the fighters would zip in to close range in a swarm, unleash a bunch of short-range, high-yield torpedoes, and then warp back to their carriers for rearmament, their energy weapons not being powerful enough to penetrate cap-ship shields. To this end, they could also be used to screen similar attacks from the enemy as, for the same reason, their energy weapons would be enough to discourage/destroy/damage enemy fighters.
It would be cool if they added that while their warp engines couldn't sustain high warp factors for long, they could basically warp-jump in a way a larger, more complex ship can't. This allows their motherships to sit hundreds of millions, if not billions of km from the battleline, away from enemy cap-ship fire. Also, more exploration into scanner-fouling and EMC would go a long way towards making fighters viable in Trek, since we do see Trek ships miss a _lot._
Another reason to have a quick and nimble "fighter" type of ships in some numbers is fast attack force, for finishing off the dammaged enemies (or enemies with drained shields). If we ale talking tactics, you can disrupt the shields on bigger ship and than pointblank torpedoe it into its engine room (and) oblivion.
But that would probably do the drone-fighters too, and probably with much less problems with the percentage of destroyed fighters per mission.
It makes sense that there would be fighters when in cannon sources there are carriers. I mean a carrier cant just carry basic shuttles can it? Tactically force projection should reasonably be a thing even if fighters aren't FTL capable having a swarm of them attack a single target would be effective especially if their weapons have some enhanced shield penetration effect.
Space combat will be done over vast distances. Battleships of last century fired shots on ships they could not see. With warp or jump drives beam weapons fire in ships moving close to the speed of light will have changed positions by the time it reaches them. So shoot and scoot is in play.
Fighters with torpedos that can be fired in mass or just shot gun type ball shot in mass could over come a shield.
We may not see fighters much, because most of what we see, is the federation at relative peace. So most of the time even if there, would not be needed for the plot and other times might not make enough of a difference. I don't want to know how many fighters a borg cube could chew up for example. Do we know what kind of speed they can get to on warp?
During the Dominion War they also turn the Galaxy class into sort of a carrier with a loaded it's giant main shuttlebay for Paragon Fighters and it would launch these Fighters at a distant truck before winning the battle or if it got attacked by some smaller jem'hadar Fighters it would launch a squadron or to a beach Fighters because the jem'hadar fighter was far more maneuver than the Galaxy class but if the kid wants a 12 Fighters that should be able to take out that jem'hadar ship as well as the Galaxy class can bring its weapons to bear
Discovered another video I missed!!!
From what I saw in TNG DS9 and Voyager, yeah, I can see them in the skirmish role or as part of the defences for a planet or station. But unsupported they'd be sitting ducks for a destroyer or cruiser that had nothing else to worry about.
Star Trek Voyager showed us that Fighters can swarm ships, and overload targeting sensors. Voyager missed and couldn't hit all the fighters. Then Voyager slowly got picked apart by the fighters.
Are you talking about the Swarm or Dragon's Teeth? The Swarm were highly specialized. And in Dragon's Teeth, Voyager was already damaged yet destroyed the first wave of four ships almost right away. The Vadwaur then launched 39 more fighters, which were able to knock out Voyager's targeting sensors. Even still, Tuvok with manual targeting was able to destroy thirty of those thirty nine.
I don't think those fighters would have been effective had Voyager been fully functional, especially if she was in orbit and able to dictate the range of combat.
Yes venom I’m a civil war living historian my company does a light infantry impression . We use skirmish order and line strategy. Skirmish to smoke the enemy out and reveal his strength And weaknesses Etc . Though I would say star fleet fighters are more in line with Cavalry
perhaps civil war cavalry. in the example of the Napoleonic wars though cavalry was far more dangerous in direct action.
Why wouldn't I put a bunch of these fighters on Backwater planets for defense maybe with a couple squadrons of runabouts with Quantum torpedoes
I think we need to scale up our thinking. The Jem'hadar attack ship was often referred to as a fighter. When the USS Odyssey was destroyed, it was by a Jem'hadar fighter's kamikaze attack. This, as we know, is exactly what the Japanese fighters did at the tail end of WWII. In the Raptor's revenge video, we saw how the V-7 White wind protected the gargantuan Warbirds in a "fleet defense" role. This isn't unlike what the large F-14 fighter was designed to do. Now if you could pack a number of V-7 type "fighters" in a very large carrier, this would give you an extremely long range capability. Just my 2 cents. Great conversations!
Recall that the Jem'Hadar polaron beams could pass through the Odyssey's shields. The ramming business didn't occur until the captain dumped his shield power to weapons and dropped his own shields.
Conventionally, starfighters would not usually have this advantage over a Star Trek capital ship, though I agree with you that Jem'Hadar are not actually starfighters, but attack ships more akin to the Defiant. They have much bigger power generation to put into shields, weapons, and sensors.
I think that Pilots, more on the Federation and Romulan side, after all, would either use Remote Controlled Fighters while in the safety of the carriers or have automated emergency transport in case of catastrophic damage is done to the fighter frame.
The defiant is the federation's fighter it was designed to be a fighter to stay in the fight it has armor it is a fighter ship
the defiant being 120m long is an attack SHIP. not a fighter. fighters are smaller than 60-50m and are not commissioned ships. fighters are more on the size of a shuttle and operated by only 1-2 pilots.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I mean they are all craft that operate within space, so the line of difference between a boat and a plane is really blurred.
@@igncom1 true it really is an arbitrary distinction. you see it particularly in things like the x wing miniatures game. where you have corvettes engaging fighters.
Starfighters might be used for planetary system patrol and in carrier use ground attack and support mission.
Fed ships could look for exaust port to end dooms day weapons
Simple, to expensive (cost per episode) to make lots of individual craft. Remember the transporter was birthed out of a need not to run a shuttle (a small ship) to the planet every episode they needed to and ships. Seriously tho in the Star Trek game i played on the Ps1 had you play as a fighter pilot fighting the borg on a Fed carrier named the Typhon under the command of Worf. The tactics and battles in that made sense for fighters. It was a good game.
I think that at the time of TNG with a squadron or flight of shuttle fighters that were designed for fighter combat they could have a decent survival ratio. The warp core power potential of the defiant class was comparable to a galaxy class[which is astounding for tech development when Starfleet engineers are given that task] and runabouts in groups where pretty capable. If your fighters can survive a max killzone blast from a ships torpedo then they're viable. Another tactic you can put your fighters to work on is attacking an shielddmiiter damaged section. When the big ships run around they either dedicate shields towards the opponent or sacrifice power from one end another. Order your fighters to pounce on that section and it would be debilitating. Especially if you can outfit them fighters with a one time torpedo launcher on top of the usual ordinance of shuttle torpedoes and beam weaponry. Also the possibility of using your fighters to screen and attack incoming torpedo munitions would be helpful if YOUR shields were shown in quadrants on your cruiser.
Just my 2 cents.
The difference between Star Trek (TNG/DS9 era) and Star Wars/Battlestar Galactica and so on in terms of Fighter use is, in Star Trek Energy/Particle Weapons are by FAR more accurate and powerful than comparable weapons in those other Sci Fi universes.
Starfleet targeting computers are lightyears ahead of what's shown in Star Wars for example, where turbolasers where seriously struggeling to hit a fast moving Targets.
In TNG we have seen the Big -D obliterating a squadron of fighers within seconds (doesn't matter if they where technogical inferior, i'm just talking about the ability to hit fast moving targets with high precision.) The only reason this suddenly didn't work in DS9 was just lazy writing imo.
That combination of high firepower (per shot) and high accuracy makes fighters in Star Trek just a target practice for capital ships.
You NEED to have strong shielding and/or armor to withstand an energy blast from a Phaser array for example. If you can't, the fighter is history.
always kind of thought of the b'rel as a sort of heavy fighter... yes the crew is slightly bigger but in terms of maneuvering etc.... it's tactics basically remind me of something like a Cobra.
Really it's to do with the setting from a narrative/writing perspective. Star Wars is based on World War 2 air combat, especially naval aviation, whereas Star Trek is based on naval ship combat of the 19th or early 20th century where fighters, bombers, and aircraft in general weren't as relevant.
Look at the inspirations for space combat in each: For Star Wars it's Dambusters, 604 Squadron, The Battle of Britain, etc. For Star Trek it's Hornblower, Das Boot, hunt for Red October
Fighters have there place in the line of battle. While Sisko's use of them was not great during operation return they do some good. The ide was to piss off the cardis to break off and give chase. Unfortunately dukat saw through it and set a trap.
>close in cant hit
As the angular velocity of the target becomes closer to the traverse speed of the weapon, fine adjustments on firing solutions become more difficult. The more maneuverable the target, the more difficult it becomes for predictive gunnery to attain a firing solution. The smaller the target is, the more precise a firing solution is required for a severe hit to be attained. Even though the distances on screen are dramatically exaggerated, these laws of gunnery hold true. As a consequence of this... well... "close in, can't hit."
Cracking numbers, Galaxy class ship is 600m length ..
to circle a ship of that size will be 1,200 around scrapping the paint if the shields are down.
So flying a 1,600m/ 1mi. circle around the ship is timed in seconds, given the speed of the fighter.
Result, auto targeting and computer firing without human aid.
I have been in a D&D/ Star Wars game shop with a dozen other nerds arguing the math for over an hour trying to figure out how it works.
Federation shuttle trying to dodge a D7, end result the Klingons just full power their shield and did a pilot check, and smack the shuttle like a tennis racket.
There will always be a need for fighters and small attack aircraft. I’m waiting for the sci-fi starfighter video that borrows heavily from the “Discovery Wings” format, particularly episodes like “The Falkland Surprise” or “The Last of the Gunfighters”.
I liked your point about the Federation not using conscription. I would guess the Federation has enough volunteers plus Starfleet may already have been large enough to fight a prolonged conflict. Similarly Britain didn’t introduce conscription till 1916 due to having enough volunteers. Only when attrition was bad enough that it couldn’t replace losses with volunteers did it bring in conscription.
true but equally we get dialogue in ds9 that says starfleet is suffering a manpower shortage later in the war.
Venom Geek Media 98 I’d guess conscription would go against the Federation’s principles. In the non canon Destiny trilogy where the Borg try to wipe out the Federation, there doesn’t seem to be any thought of conscription.
i suppose in the ideal future people would volunteer out of patriotism and to an extent that does seem to hold true. but not always.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 i think they would lose far more men by spamming mirandas than using fighters. people forget when they say"fighters are suicide" that mirandas have to be manned with at least 50 people and you can make squadrons out of these numbers.
If the Maqui Raider was 60 meters and the Peregrine fighter was considerably smaller. I tend to think of the Raider as a gunship. Something equally capable of engaging capital ships as well as fighters even leading groups of fighters in attack runs. Like the Millenium Falcon in Return of the Jedi
thats actually a good way to put it. the maquis raider is really a first attempt and has to cover all bases. its only after that the concept is perhaps further refined.
I like to use an allegory when it comes to "starfighters" in Star Trek vs in other franchises. If the X-Wing for example from Star Wars is akin to a LaGG-3, the Peregrine from Star Trek is more like an IL-2. It would be more accurate to call them fast attack ships or gunships. A cockpit strapped to a large frame crammed with as much firepower and defenses as they could fit. Like they took the runabouts and couriers, and generally stripped out everything not related to destroying stuff, then replacing the resulting spaces with more power, bigger shields, etc.
The only thing that could really be a match for the jem'hadar bug ship was the Klingon brel class bird of prey wasn't for the bird of prey in particular the Braille class I don't think the federation-klingon Romulan Alliance would have won the war because the Federation had to fight but they didn't have very many of them and the romulans didn't have no fast attack ships they just had a shit ton of deidara Texas
Romulans was suppose to have star fighters. The d'deridex was a carrier. That was why they had a hole in the middle of the ship. It was to protect the ships leaving the landing bay.
The whole "Why didn't Starfleet do conscription?" throwaway remark there is pretty glaring to me. Starfleet does not pay people. (post scarcity post currency galactic society remember) that's why their selection criteria for Starfleet is so difficult. There are references in the books to the entrance and passing criteria being lowered and field promotions happenning but conscription in the Federation would be defacto slave labour, I mean it's basically slave labour under a capitalist society but at least there the slaves are getting compensated somewhat for their time.
It's also worth pointing out that we see many times how the war forces people to maker compromises but we also see that there are some compromises too great (for example with Admiral Layton's plan) conscription is considered a divisive and messed up thing today, brought it when Picard is Captain of ther flagship and you'd be considered a villain up there with Kai Winn, Admiral Layton and and Admiral Satee.
As to your points about fighter combat I think that's fair. Each gnat in a swarm of gnats is quite safe, particularly if while the gnats are swarming you a large beast like a miranda or galaxy is pounding away at you.
I have played 3 startrek non Canon fighter games 2 set in the original one voiced by George takei and Walter keoning. The other was TNG/ds 9 era with Michael Dorn. So there are indeed fighters even Orion,Klingon,and romulan ship types (they suck compared to bombers with mirv torpedoes) They weren't warp capable but had shields, energy guns 2 types and an equivalent to or actual torpedoes with cloaking devices removing one gun for Klingon and romulan. Shattered universe the one with Takei and Keoning I played 200+ plus hours so I am something of a fan. In summary YES they do exist yet aren't built for grand capital to capital combat as a capital doesn't have the space but for 4-8 unless a carrier.
The TNG episode where the crew loses its memory and think they are at war they manage to wipe out a squadron of drone fighters in short order. Attacking a Galaxy-class ship is a suicide mission.
Properly employed they could be effective. They would be fantastic for close air support on planets against troop formations and lightly shielded targets. In space they could form a close in interceptor for incoming torpedoes on capital ships and clean up duty assaulting damaged ships that are trying to retire from battle.
We'll also always remember Best of Both Worlds part 2 and the Mars Defense Perimeter where a wing of fighters charge right at the Borg Cube and are just vaporized instantly.
On the part about how to use them properly, you could use non-warp capable fighters for planetary defense, a squadron of fully armed fighters between them having firepower comparable to a full size starship, at a fraction the cost and you could just station them at a surface base on a colony world you want to protect. There are also the potential for Torpedo Bombers, where you take a full size capitol grade photon or quantum torpedo and you sling a couple of them under your fighters, so they can get close to an enemy's heavy capitol ships and then just barrage them with heavy warheads.
true although the aliens of that episode are of a significantly lower tech level anyway. but 'modern' fighters could absolutely threaten a large capital ship. particularly when supported by a capital ship of their own.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I'm Also going to further advocate fighters as an option for colonial defense, since the biggest threats to frontier colonies are not going to be full scale military warships, but pirates and raiders making use of obsolete vessels they bought or stole second hand or converted freighters
@@weldonwin very true. most 'civillian' vessels that could be used by pirates are not going to be much larger than 200-300m. equally though you could see pirates turning fighters to their advantage. particularly against big slow cargo ships. given that that's how pirates operate today in small speed boats operating from a mother ship and evading military craft.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 Certainly worked for the Marquis and the Bajoran Resistance before them
Calling these fighters is WRONG; the nearest equivalent would be WorldWar II torpedo boats, or Medium/Attack Bombers like the A26 Invader; or todays missile class Patrol boats.
a very good point since they operate in the same medium as ships. although one might argue that they are fighters as they are capable of atmospheric flight which certain 'Gunboats' might not. although given shuttles can fly....
IDK it might be hard to target a fighter. After all, if one could easily target a small fast moving fighter we'd probably see a lot more shots taken at small, slow moving bridges.
If shield strength = power/area covered then it might be more efficient to shield smaller ships than larger ones. Why the Federation decided to make the Defiant small but overpowered. Why the Dominion made their primary craft a corvette.
true but then you can only fit a smaller engine, mount less weapons ect. bear in mind the defiant uses a lot of new tech like its reactor which wasn't available before.
Venom Geek Media 98 sure. I’m just talking about one scaling factor that might encourage smaller ships.
In the original series the Enterprise was in combat with with a craft the was about 1m by 0.25m and it scored several direct hits and that was like I said in the original series so I don't think accuracy is a major issue at all
don't know the particular episode. but bear in mind trying to target a swarm of them. and at closer range that might be harder. remember starship targeting sensors are zeroed for 10s of kilometers.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 admittedly in a swarm and at close range they would probably be effective in some ways but they wouldn't be starting at close range
And in the original series there guns were more orientated for big ship engagement
That being said I did see in another video that ship's like the Romulan derderidex did struggle with targeting the fast moving Dominion fighter that would attack up close and in numbers so I suppose it would depend on the faction there being used against
But with Starfleet's targeting being so on point I don't see fighters being to much of an issue for them at all and you have to bear in mind Starfleet had a very pacifistic mindset before the Dominion war so just wouldn't develop much in the way of fighters themselves and what with the size Federation that would have had major impact on fighter development throughout the alpha quadrant as a hole
@@venomgeekmedia9886 Wouldn't an experienced captain use proximity detonation photon torpedoes/phasers for a swarm of small craft in formation at distance? Recall photon torpedoes have a blast effect of at least 100km or more depending upon the yield. The capital ship is going to have a range advantage due to more powerful sensors, so they will be able to strike first. If the fighters close on the ship, the phasers should be able to pick them off as we've seen done in "Conundrum", "Dragon's Teeth", and "Sacrifice of Angels".
Perhaps the episode Richard Stone was thinking of was "The Changeling" in which the Enterprise strikes the 1m+ Nomad with one photon torpedo at a range of 90,000 km?
Fighters did probe effective in numbers. Another example is when the Vaad’waur attacked voyager and nearly prevented it from leaving their planet’s atmosphere. Voyager was able to swat down many of the fighters but not all at once. It was destroying perhaps 2 or 3 at a time with Phasers which was not enough against the dozens of fighters attacking.
The Vaad'waur isn't a great example of fighter effectiveness. Voyager was crippled before the battle with the fighters even started, underpowered, and unable to maneuver as she normally would. She could barely get into orbit. And her targeting sensors were damaged, meaning Tuvok had to shoot the next 39 fighters down manually, and apparently disabled 30 of them. Imagine how many waves would have gone down if he'd had full targeting sensor support.
Swarm tactics won't work when a starship can outpower, outrange, and outrun fighter-sized ships.
A big part of starfighters not being a thing in Star Trek is the writing style. In Star Wars the space battles are very much based on WW2, specifically the Pacific theater where you have swarms of fighters attacking capital ships, weaving through flack and getting into dogfights. It's all very fast paced and adrenaline pumping. In Trek the battles are much more calculated and methodical. Typically you'll be at a stalemate and have to think outside of the box to achieve victory. Very much Hunt For Red October -esk. (That is until later in DS9 where they shifted more towards a 19th century style line of battle with two massive fleets smashing into each other).
Who said a fighter needs a warp core. Starships could carry at least 24. A great force multiplier. I played star fleet battles growing up and fighters played a pivotal role.
depending on the size of the fighters, but most starfleet ships especially in the SFB era can not carry many fighters at all.
What about using runabouts Delta Flyers and that ship that data flew in Star Trek insurrection I think that would have made a great looking fighter
The Dominion war variant of the Galaxy class was more heavily armed and they left space stock with 60% of their interior and complete empty and their giant shuttle Bay they could load it with Paragon fighters but they could use this empty storage to store torpedoes and repair facilities for these spiders parts formed spare parts maybe they can even turn it into a couple of maintenance facilities to repair these fighters maybe even open up a couple more smaller shuttle base
What Starfleet needed was a low warp or impulse version of Chipotle's Marquis raider maybe it could be 80 m long with three decks maybe it could get to work four or three even it mainly operates in the solar system that's it say some backwater calling he's got maybe two of those and some of them are impulse fighters that Wesley was flying with the starburst him and Tom Paris got in trouble
Just a note on your tank comparison. Modern shells use depleted uranium. Also, modern tanks are much faster, maneuverable, have computer tracking, reactive armor, etc.
A note about fighters both in real life and in Star Trek, a fighter has 1-3 crew and carries a little ordinance that can kill an unprotected warship in ideal circumstances. A wing of 36 fighters that attacks a warship will suffer 20% losses and the remainder will return to the mothership for rearming. They will hit with 18% of their ordinance, and cripple or kill a warship per strike, at a cost of 7 or 8 strike craft. Doing the same with a fleet warship will leave 3 or more warship with expensive repair time at the yard and dozens of dead and wounded crew. It is cheaper to use the fighters.
Doesn't this assume that the fighters can outrun a warship? In Star Trek, this is generally not the case. Larger ships have bigger power generation, which means superior speed. In this paradigm, fighters cannot dictate the range of engagement and therefore, would be swatted by the bigger, stronger, faster, and better defended capital ship.
Starfleet should just build drone mother ship that carries droves of impulse-only automated drones with sensors, shields and phasers. These drones would be easy and cheap to replenish and maintain, and could avoid loss of lives of trained crew.
How automated? The Dominion showed an ability to put up heavy communication jamming. If the drone is programmed to seek out Dominion ships, do they use image recognition, warp signatures, transponder codes, heat-seeking tracking, or some combination? Any and all of these can be countered, possibly making them a threat to the firing ship, or worse, a civilian vessel.
@@Euripides_Panz The federation makes use of extremly sophisticated artifical intelligence that does specialized jobs better than the human counter parts, they will always make better decisions regardless of jamming, which affacts human crew as well.
@@suzumiyaharuhi3438 "...they will always make better decisions."
Like M5? The premise is unsound. AI weapons in trek are invariably rife with problems. Even Data, with an ethical program, attacked his own crew members. Those occasions were marked by a malfunction, which is something a drone is even more prone.
@@Euripides_Panz The M5 was TOS tech, which was 100yr prior to TNG when advanced AI was first employed regularly by the federation, mostly in the forms of starship central computer and hologram.
The incident with Data was another issue, as he was never designed to undertake such specialized task as starship officer, unlike the Doctor who was specifically designed for short-term medical duties. In fact, the success of the Doctor functioning far beyond his initial perimeter should be a testiment to how good the AI tech was.
most 23rd century ships had a point defense mode capable of killing missiles with many lower power shots per phaser so an upgrade to a third mid power mid shot number would be logical. I reference the old game Starfleet command and it successors Canon or not I could hit a button and go 100% point defense with those phasers and hit a large number of missiles (BB could fire 9-12 and I could swat the whole run in "fortress" mode.) With 7 type one frontal phasers (Gatling not firing). So again starships had phasers quite lethal to fighters that's why no fighters in the early-mid 23rd. With new tech in the 24th it became a fighters dream. High end shields taking direct capital hits, high end engines and structural engineering to make high energy maneuvers with ease and little to no chance of breakdowns mid fight, ECM suites of near cloaking power. So with survivability came new fighters and attack craft. A Marquis raider is a modified attack craft, a fighter/bomber for hit and run tactics. Fighters are at biggest Delta flier sized. 4 man team max. Maxed manuverability, fast, light defenses, heavily armed strike craft.