heheheAssuming the registry indicates late 2350s/early 2360s, this was during the peaceful era, even though there were still wars with the Tzenkethi, Talarians and Cardassians, as well as incidents with the Tholians. Starfleet might have designed a carrier/missile cruiser like this to serve as a one-ship deterrent to small skirmishes rather than having to devote large fleets to putting down small wars.
Or it could also be assumed that the ship was on the drawing boards around the Borg contact in 2365 and was commissioned then with older registries because of the fact that they had been planned for some time, but not put into construction until the Borg situation required it.
Some have pointed out that the escape pods are of a new design, so it must be a new ship. Actually the only ships we saw with square escape pods were the Galaxy and Nebula, which had been designed in the 2350s. Its plausible the angular escape pods couldhave been designed in the late 2350s, after the Galaxy, Nebula, New Orleans, Cheyenne etc. had already been commissioned with the older design.
Or, given that Voyager had square escape pods, that starfleet used two designs of escape pods concurrently, just as they still use type-6 shuttles on new ships even though there are now type-7, 8 and 9 shuttles.
Second, Starfleet has (with the exception of the "Defiant-Class") NO *warships*.
Third, what do you mean -- "carrier?"
Do you think you might be able to work on your grammar? Your question makes no sense. Why was it designed so early? It's not like the engineers at the ASDB (in the fictional ST universe) can look into the future. "Gee, let's not design the Akira-Class until after the Borg attack Earth, m'kay?"
And Starfleet doesnt have warships, but it does have well armed ships that fight in wars. Thats what he meant. With 15 torpedo tubes and three shuttlebays its pretty clear that the mission profile includes 1) lots of torpedoes and 2) lots of shuttles.
And the 'lets wait until we meet the Borg' is why i think the ships were already around, and just proved to be useful in fighting the Borg. Even though Starfleet already knew about the Borg (through Seven's parents) for a while and it was classified.
Oh heres a gem from the Starship Spotter thread posted by Hobbes
quote:
Some fans I talk to refuse to believe their vaunted Akira-class, with it's 50 torpedo launchers, predates the Galaxy-class believing it's heresy to think their favorite ship could be old.
And by "why it was designed so early" I mean: why in relative peace? Of course CaptainMike already told me why, but I wrote it before his post(I'm saying pure gibberish...)
I'm not from Enblish-speaking country,and I'm still learning it.
That's where the arguement comes from.
I have no problem believing that starfleet makes patrol ships, especially during wartime (like with the Tzenkethi and the Cardassians) even though they're not technically "warships".
Which brings up a question: Do we know for sure that the Defiant was the first "warship"? Sisko's description of the Defiant way back in "The Search" said only that it was conceived without any families, or science labs, or holodecks...I don't think he ever said it was the first warship. Just that it had no comforts and that it was designed to pound the Borg.
Uh - with "so early" you don't mean 2151 by any chance?
Kira: blah blah Starfleet doesnt have warships
Sisko: Technically its classified as an escort. Blah blah science labs blah blah bathrooms..
So Starfleet doesnt like using the following terms 'warship' 'battleship' 'gunboat', but for the sake of reality since it is the organization that fights wars must have ships that are fitted to be combatants.. your escorts, patrol cruisers, cutters, perimeter action ships, defensive weapons bases, whatever. Please note that, in times of peace, the Akira appears to have what it takes to be a standard starship too (and the Defiant has been used for non-combatant purposes too [i.e. science missions in 'Meridian', 'Destiny' and 'Rejoined' among others] Just because it is more suitable for war doesnt make it solely a warship. Thats why Starfleet says it doesnt have any warships)
quote:
Do we know for sure that the Defiant was the first "warship"?
Well, a dreadnought was mentioned in TMP which is AFAIK just another word for battleship.
And yes, I'm sure the Akira has some science departments and what not...at least more than the Defiant has.
Mark
No, the Enterprise-B didn't have quantum torpedoes. While the Lakota was an Excelsior-II (as I call them), the upgrade doesn't refer to the physical appearance of the ship, but the capabilities of the ship as far as shields, engines, and weapons goes.
As for the Akira, IMHO, I just can not really believe a ship of that size can be made to fit such a large arsenal and such a humongous shuttle bay.
I prefer to think of the Akira as an "older" class ship, since "newer" starships geared up for tactical situations would probably feature "burt fire tubes" or Quantom tubes rather many many photon luanchers.
If i were a crewman on an Akira class ship, i would hate to be in charge of sweeping all those tubes. hehehe
Climbing into the pod through the pylons seem like a bitch!
Akira being a CV- Big problem. Federation "fighters" are huge things, bigger than runabouts. I really doubt the Akira Class's hangers can operate them. Even the huge GCS might have issues with them, they're just too wide (if someone's got the Ent-D blue prints and time, they can tell us just how many of those things can be fitted inside the shuttle bays). Also, because of their size (plus no science equipement or beds or cabin), they've got probably at least as much endourance as a runabout, which means that most of the time they'll be flying over to the battle themselves.
Akira having 15 torpedo tubes- I find it hard to believe that the Federation will invest in something like that during a suppositely peaceful period. None of the conflict at the time could have justified something this powerful. Even the Cardassians are push-overs, as the USS Pheonix shown with her one forward torpedo tube. Even if they were single-firing tubes, they're packed in too close together to justify one being the other's backup in case of battle damage. A well place torpedo could knock several of those tubes out at once.
Beyond that, it doesn't even matter. The probe has a significantly different shape from the PT, while the QT is much closer to the PT's shape. I'd prefer to think of the entire thing like a rail gun with a sled, but in this case the sled is comprised of a magnetic field.
quote:
Originally posted by J:
And let's not forget to mention that the casing for a PT hasn't changed in 70 years... which includes the Excelsior Class and presumably the Miranda Class.
Really? I thought the TMP-era casings looked slightly smaller than the TNG/DS9/VOY era casings. Maybe it was just the lighting.
Also, if you look at Soran's lab on the observatory during Generations, there are several torpedo casings, some of which are labelled TNG style, and some of which are labelled movie style (I forget if it's letters and numbers, or Roman Numberials vs, er, non Roman numbers).
The Defiant: The fwd side launchers have only ever been seen firing qtorps - they've never fired a photorp or launched a probe. Whenever the Defiant has fired a torpedo from another location it has always been a photorp. I believe we saw a probe being launched from the nose once, and all aft fired torps were photorps.
Ent-E: Same thing here - the launcher above the yacht has only been seen firing qtorps yet, in Insurrection, we see a shot from the aft tube and its a photorp.
Conclusion: qtorp and photorp/probe launchers are different.
In regards to the Akira, maybe when they were first introduced it didn't have the pod or had a different pod. Take it away and the vessel looses at least 10 of its fabled 15 torp launchers. Speaking of which, does anyone know for sure how many of the tubes are in the pod? I think there may be as many as 12 (4 per "bank").
quote:
Originally posted by Dax:
In regards to the Akira, maybe when they were first introduced it didn't have the pod or had a different pod. Take it away and the vessel looses at least 10 of its fabled 15 torp launchers. Speaking of which, does anyone know for sure how many of the tubes are in the pod? I think there may be as many as 12 (4 per "bank").
If you wanted a modular, mission variable pod, you've already got the Nebula. Its got a bigger pod than the Akira, and we know there are different pods avaliable.
It makes a lot more sense for launchers to be able to fire both QT and PT. For one thing, it makes the logistic situation easier. A ship with different launchers would have to carry different/non-interchangable torpedoes and spare parts for each launcher. Also, there isn't any thing to indicate that QT is so different from PT that the two can't share launchers.
Actullay, we dont know that Akira has a humongous through-bay or that it carries fighters (and we also dont know if there are smaller fighters than Peregrines, that are easier to fit into standard bays) What we do know is that it has three (labeled) shuttlebay doors. One large one and two smaller ones. The only other ship i can think of that has 3 like that is the Galaxy, and the Akira has a fraction of its internal volume. I think its likely that theres a reason they are there in that case, and that reason would be that the ship is a carrier. (aside from the fact that the designer said 'this ship is a carrier').
And the proliferation of weapons and warships during time of peace is not unheard of or uncommon.. its a result of a military focusing on preparedness and creating a deterrent to maintain a balance of power. And even though you say the wars of the 2340s-50s were minor, im sure the people in underpowered, undershielded ships that were dying in Talarian suicide bombs and Cardassian 'demonstrations of superiority' didnt think so. The fact that people were dying and that we had the technology to create a deterrent were the factors that led to a warship like that. And, as a deterrent, it may not have even been intended to be used often, but to exist in case we *did* need to use it.
The US has been building aircraft carriers, new bombers, new bombs and a whole lot of stuff id rather not think about during the peaceful periods between wars (or 'police actions').. and even after the end of the cold war, we continue to maintain our military.
quote:
Originally posted by CaptainMike:
And the proliferation of weapons and warships during time of peace is not unheard of or uncommon.. its a result of a military focusing on preparedness and creating a deterrent to maintain a balance of power. And even though you say the wars of the 2340s-50s were minor, im sure the people in underpowered, undershielded ships that were dying in Talarian suicide bombs and Cardassian 'demonstrations of superiority' didnt think so. The fact that people were dying and that we had the technology to create a deterrent were the factors that led to a warship like that. And, as a deterrent, it may not have even been intended to be used often, but to exist in case we *did* need to use it.
The US has been building aircraft carriers, new bombers, new bombs and a whole lot of stuff id rather not think about during the peaceful periods between wars (or 'police actions').. and even after the end of the cold war, we continue to maintain our military.
There's a difference in making war machines, and making crazily powerful war machines. The US could have created giant battleships with missiles up the wazzu, but they didn't. There was no need for one class of god-like ships when a few cheaper, smaller vessels could have filled the same role. The impending introduction of the GCS and NCS, plus the existing Ambassador Class and upgradable Excelsior Class would have been more than enough to handle anything the Cardassians (the biggest threat at the time) had. There was no reason to create something like the 15 tubed, fighter bay-ed Akira Class.
As for varying fighter sizes, it's pretty conclusive that the same type of fighter shows up throughout DS9. Their weaponary varies, but everytime a fighter is mentioned, the Pereguine shows up. And gets prompty cannon-foddered. In general, fighters weren't all that effective throughout the war. Yet they kept using them. Those amazing, courageous men and their flying machines...
[ November 19, 2001: Message edited by: David Templar ]
And as for the fighters, what we see isnt always all there is. The Peregrines didnt ever seem to be embarked from anywhere, but always going along on their own. perhaps they were warp fighters, and there are smaller fighter ships we havent seen (and the reason we didnt see them isnt because they dont exist, but simply because it would have been a really BAD idea to use them either against the Borg or the Dominion fleets, but the Peregrines were more up to the task.
It seems that operational procedures call for some of the fighters to be out between the big ships when a fleet is moving. This doesn't rule out the idea that some of them are being carried inside big starships, or that some are patrolling the outer perimeter well outside camera range, or that when the fleet is ordered to warp speed, all the fighters are recalled to their carriers.
The Akira may not be much of a carrier, making only a halfhearted attempt at accommodating these big fighters. It's obviously closer to the old Russian or Italian model of a carrier (a cruiser with a flight deck scabbed on) than the US one (an airfield placed atop a big freighter). Still, it's one of the ships with a high shuttlebay volume to overall volume ratio, probably only beaten by the Steamrunner. That is, if we assume that a large portion of Akira innards is indeed dedicated to the hangar.
The Steamrunner is a very likely candidate for a carrier: the shuttlebay door is a gigantic one-piece thing, so it would make no sense to have only a short bay behind (or rather in front of) it. It seems obvious that most of the hull is dedicated to one huge boxy bay (the contours of which are obvious from outside), with forward launch tubes in addition to the humungous back door. It's also more like the US aircraft carriers in that it has few and short phaser strips and nothing that would even remotely look like a torpedo launcher.
I have no trouble believing that Starfleet would have had these carriers in pre-TNG days, not when we know how the UFP was constantly fighting somebody back then. Picard's E-D adventures seem to have represented only a brief lull of peace. And if O'Brien went to Setlik III in 2347 aboard a ship with a 57000 rego, then the Steamrunners with their 54000 regos probably date back to the mid-2340s... (In general, registries seem to follow a pattern where the first digit is one higher than the earliest known operating decade: 57XXX in the 2340s, lots of 7XXXX ships in the 2360s, and so forth. But we all know the system is not really systematic.)
Timo Saloniemi
Yeah,I don't think that Akira is heavy carrier,but it obivously can carry fighters. And we're in space,remember?You can stock fighters in several levels,Peregrine isn't tall at all.
15 tubes don't make an warship?If they're really pulse-fire, that is well enough to kill equal-sized Dominion ship in second.So I think it's really crazily powerful.But I agree with "pod" idea,however,I think that Akira's pod is "welded" with it's structure,unlike detachable Nebula's pod.
Really..It's silly that Akiras can't fire quantums.Just imagine:5 Akiras approaching Borg cube.Dropping out of warp, deploying fighters with qtorps on their bellies,and everyone warping again.Fighters and Akiras firing all torps at once...No more Borg!
As for stacking the fighters, I think the nature of Trek artificial gravity would allow for that - shuttlebays were designated as "variable gravity areas" aboard the E-D already. And the fighters probably have folding wings (or else they would need very long "stork-leg" landing gear). Still, a completely hollowed-out Akira probably couldn't carry more than 15 or perhaps 20.
And as for the p-torp vs. q-torp argument, naturally it would be logistically simpler if the two types could use the same tube.Missiles as wildly different as Standard SAM, Harpoon ASM and ASROC ASWM can use the same common launcher. Then again, a Tomahawk or an ATACMS or a RAM cannot... And Trek torp launchers come with an integral warhead loader, which may have to be drastically different for p-torps and q-torps.
Timo Saloniemi
Looking outside of canon for a moment: The 1701 shuttlebay had many unidentifiable shuttle type vehicles in TAS that could have been some type of fighters Kirk could scramble if he needed to. "Dreadnought" depicted rather small one and two person Arco-class and Tycho-class attack sleds. The newer video games feature the Valkyrie fighter. None of these vessels have standing room so they are likely to be about half the height of a shuttle and they lack warp drives, which eliminates the engine size of a shuttle and makes them fairly easy to store i assume. These are the kind of craft i belive a Starfleet carrier would bring.
Kind of the difference between a long range bomber and a small fighter in our current military. Bombing runs can be launched from our territory, do their business and return home. Fighters are carried to the location because they have a shorter range.
[ November 20, 2001: Message edited by: CaptainMike ]
Peregrines are autonomous spacecraft, probably originally light couriers, that when upgraded with assorted modular bits and pieces can be useful for close-quarters fleet engagements. This has been Sternbach's line and I think it makes sense. If they're 35 m long there might even be room below the cockpit for a fairly cramped sailboat style bunkroom and a common space and such. They have a use outside of combat and as shown on DS9 acted as essentially the smallest starships in the fleet, not as some kind of auxilliary secret weapon that popped out of holes here and there and everywhere.
If an Akira carries fighters, they'd have to be be tiny, shuttle-sized POSes. Trek tech, with Defiant being the acknowledged onscreen exception ("Tough little ship") has pretty much always emphasized bigger=more powerful. (I guess you can craft theories of powerplant size and weapons cabability if need them to get your head around it.) Anything shuttle-sized is going to get its ass handed to it by any kind of starship that isn't flown by a bunch of sponge-haired guys from the Delta Quadrant. Much as there may be a cool factor in having little attack shuttles zooming about blowing the hell out of big ships, there's no Trek precendent for it. There's a reason why modern sea-navies don't utilize sea-going fighters in its engagements and those hold true in the Trek context as well.
Dedicated carriers and dedicated fighters would be all-but-useless during peacetime. This makes them warships. Starfleet didn't make those until the Defiant came along.
It's all about how we translate this into the Star Trek universe. The simplest explanation would be that they were built after the Defiant, but they could've also been in preparation for earlier wars. I imagine them sharing the shipyards with the Wolf 359 ships. No reason Sisko should know about them, or be authorized to tell Kira.
[ November 20, 2001: Message edited by: Phelps ]
[ November 20, 2001: Message edited by: Phelps ]
Specifically... The E-D fired a probe from the forward launcher on many occasions. The probe seemed to be a Class 1 or 2 from the VFX. It is extremely different from the photon torpedo--- there are drawings of the probes in the TNG TM... the last two Classes 8 and 9 are modified torp casings. Comparing them the all have the same overall diameter. But the Class 1 and 2 are rings, Class 8 & 9 are ellipsoids. The DS9 TM indicates that the P-torp and Q-torp have basically the same maximum dimensions. It says the Defiant is capable of depensing a mixed load out.
Case closed. If you can fire a modern P-Torp [which every ship in the fleet should be able to] then you can fire a Q-Torp. This doesn't mean that every ship in the fleet has Q-Torps on board [again DS9 TM says that they're limited to only a few vessels that have a legit reason].
As for tactics, who says a carrier ought to hold back? If the fighters are simple force multipliers, and you can deploy them from a Main Battle Ship without having to build a special wimpy US-style carrier for them, why not go for it? Especially in the case of the Borg battle, little could have been won by keeping the carriers safely in the rear echelons. Ditto, really, for the mad sallies into Dominion planetary defences or blockade fleets, where the goal apparently was to fire as many shots as possible and cull the rows of the enemy as rapidly as possible.
Naval tactics in general did not favor the use of reserves back in the days when guns were the main armament. The side that brought the largest number of guns to the battle won the battle: the one with more guns has the faster *rate* of inflicting losses on the enemy, so the enemy loses his guns at a faster rate as well, and the threat against you decreases progressively. Play "Command & Conquer" with big armor formations and see what I mean.
Carriers and missiles changed that fact by giving different ships dissimilar engagement ranges. But in Trek, there are no dissimilar ranges - the difference made by the fighters is necessarily minor, due to their limited speed versus the capital ships. So naturally, a carrier has a perfect excuse to pull double duty as a gun cruiser.
Timo Saloniemi
In space, there's no such limitation, which is why I believe that the big battleships theory has come back into play in Trek. Thus, a carrier's traditional role to stay out of the fighting and simply stick to fighter ops is a whole lot less valid. I submit that a carrier's role in Trek would depend on the op; what that is is up to debate, as we've simply not seen that happen yet in any capacity.
Mark
Carriers are typically so valuable that they're never placed in reach of the enemy guns. When the odd occasion that a carrier does run into a battleship, the carrier gets off very badly... Not to mention that if a carrier buys it, its fighters would be left stranded. I really don't think the Federation would use carriers against the Borg. Capital ships are already pretty vulnerable against Borgs, the fighters wouldn't even last a second. At least the capital ships can pack enough weaponary to make a difference.
Still, we never see the Akira act remotely like a carrier or even a fire support ship, and that's enough evidence for me. She could have launched all her fighters, and emptied her forward tubes at the Prometheus or the Romulan Warbirds, but she didn't. She really should have, because there was no reason not to under the circumstances, unless those things didn't exist. No one goes up against three Warbirds with a hand tied behind their back, even with two Defiants on your side.
Of course, leaving the Harriers ashore, or swapping them for ASW or assault or SAR choppers, would not diminish the destroyer in a major way. So depending on the availability of the planes, and on the mission, the destroyer could launch fighters prior to entering the fray, or then not. Loss of the carrier-combatant would be no big deal, since there would be plenty of other, empty carrier-combatants available to recover the fighters.
This is how I'd see the Akira, and most other starship classes as well. They are all carriers AND cruisers to some degree - Akira and Steamrunner simply have a different balance of "carrierhood-vs-cruiserhood" from that of Intrepid (which, as we all know, is a pure carrier with a nominal 120-shuttle capacity) or Defiant. Starfleet is not all that interested in going to the extremes of all-carrier or all-cruiser vessels, however.
The one thing that remains is that Akira and Steamrunner are the only known canonical "through-deck" vessels in Starfleet, as long as we accept the bow doors as doors and not just fancy deflectors or reverse impulse engines or something. That should tell us something about the balance of equipment aboard them. And we should be thankful that at least these two ships *have* a balance of equipment, instead of the dull homogeneity of most starships.
Timo Saloniemi
quote:
Originally posted by Timo:
Carriers can't be risked? That's just because some idiots build expensive carriers. If they built destroyers with two Harriers and plenty of SSMs apiece, things would be vastly different...
Carriers are expensive for a reason. You can't build destroyers with enough room for two or even one Harrier at reasonable operating cost or even for them to remain destroyer-sized. It'd be stupid to put support personnel, spares, munition, fuel, etc for the aircraft on every destroyer. That's not what destroyers are for. You'd just be wasting resources by spreading assets so thinly in the name of redundancy, and cutting into the space avaliable on a destroyer at the same time. More SSM? Try less. Plus, Harriers weren't build for carrier warfare anyways, they can't protect the CVBG like the Tomcats or have the legs of a A-6 (I hesistate to use F/A-18 as an example of good range). Using them in a purely VTOL capacity (no ramp for STOL) is going to cut into their payload and loiter time. Also, full size carriers are faster, more stable platforms which can conduct air operations in sea states which would make VTOL on and off something like a destroyer impossible. Carriers can also stay on station much long due to their spare, fuel and munition stores, and their superior ability to maintain and repair aircraft. Not to mention operate a whole collection of support aircraft, like AWACs and tankers.
quote:
Originally posted by Timo:
Of course, leaving the Harriers ashore, or swapping them for ASW or assault or SAR choppers, would not diminish the destroyer in a major way.
Right, because destroyers were designed to work with rotary aircraft which supports the destroyer's role of supporting larger ships.
quote:
Originally posted by Timo:
So depending on the availability of the planes, and on the mission, the destroyer could launch fighters prior to entering the fray, or then not. Loss of the carrier-combatant would be no big deal, since there would be plenty of other, empty carrier-combatants available to recover the fighters.
If you try your penny-carrier strategy against a full-sized carrier and co, you're going to be partially right. You won't be short on hanger space because you will not have any aircraft left. Even if some were to return, they would have nothing but patches of oil and floating debri and bodies to return to. Redundancy is no match for sheer superiority in every other catagory.
quote:
Originally posted by Timo:
And we should be thankful that at least these two ships *have* a balance of equipment, instead of the dull homogeneity of most starships.
I beg to differ. I see the homogeneity of ships in Star Trek as one of its trademarks. If I wanted more specialized units, I would look at real life, or pick up a novel, or maaaaybe watch Star Wars.
the 15 launchers can be seen on screen, most on the weapons pod.
the end
Assuming for a moment that Trek is not about fine storytelling, yes, you are right. However, it doesn't take 15 tubes to fire 'than more photons'. Remember the Ent-D which could simultanuously fire something like five or six from one tube. (and I will not believe there is ANY logic in having a ship fire 15*5=75 torps at once!)
And second:Almost every ship in ST have shuttlebays which can be used to carry fighters.And do not forget about antigravs,they saves alot of space.
Anti-grav does not make doors bigger or fighters smaller. And how you do you get out of your fighter in zero-g? Or service them?
...therefore, I think it is more plausible to say that the launchers on the Akira cannot fire as many torps in one volley, and that is why she has the largest number of launchers in the fleet.
Speaking of fire rates, does anyone know how many the Ent-E can fire in one volley?
Ant-gravs just allow for more effective use of space.And why not in zero-g?