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.

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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.

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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.

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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").

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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.

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').

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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.

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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 ]

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.)

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.

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.