Technical Manual Starfleet Command DEFIANT CLASS STARSHIP United Federation of Planets

CHAPTER ONE - General Description 1.1 The U.S.S. Defiant NX-74205 was the prototype vessel for Starfleet's Defiant-class starships. It was Starfleet's first true warship and had no provision for families or diplomatic missions, no science labs, no holodecks, or any of the other comforts of home. It was a heavily armored, stripped-down vessel that was created as a first strike' vehicle for use in war, and incorporated the latest in Starfleet weaponry and defensive technology. Work on the Defiant project began in 2366 after Starfleet was alerted to the threat of a Borg invasion. The ship was developed by Starfleet's Advanced Starship Design Bureau (ASDB) at the Antares Fleet Yards and at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards on Mars. It was still in the design stages when the Borg arrived in 2367. With the great losses suffered at Wolf 359, the DEFIANT development project remained a priority for Starfleet. Early on in its development the Defiant was regarded as a fast torpedo attack ship. Its designers planned to equip it with six torpedo launchers and a large complement of both photon and quantum torpedoes. However, as the Defiant project evolved, the ship was given more ambitious mission objectives. The Defiant's design was something of a departure for Starfleet; the development team took the decision to abandon the traditional Starfleet layout which placed the warp nacelles at the end of twin pylons and moved them in much closer to the main body. This reduced the size of the Defiant's profile, making the ship a much harder target to hit. In another important innovation, the designers gave their new ship multilayer ablative hull armor, which could resist repeated weapons fire. Under the ablative armor, the hull was constructed of a castrodium/neutromium composite. Considerable effort went into making the Defiant faster and more heavily armed than standard Starfleet vessels. It was equipped with both warp and impulse engines; by running a plasma conduit through the primary phaser coupling, the designers almost doubled the phaser power, and boosted the efficiency of the warp drive by 30 percent. With its offensive emphasis the Defiant's weapons systems were designed so that the time between the order being given to fire weapons and the launch was near instantaneous. The Defiant class starship was not designed to operate in a planet's atmosphere but was constructed to withstand the pressures involved in an emergency planetfall. Landing pads were built into the ship's underside, and simulations show that the Defiant-class is capable of achieving liftoff from a planet's surface. The Defiant class starship is equipped with its own auxiliary spacecraft: it carried up to four shuttlepods and one Type-lO shuttlecraft which was located in the shuttlebay on decks 3 and 4 directly below the bridge. In addition, the Defiant carried two types of escape pods, a six-person and an eight-person version; there were 26 of the six-person model and each escape pod could keep the occupants alive for up to eight months. After the Defiant's shakedown cruise, serious design flaws came to light. The starship was deemed "Overgunned and overpowered for a ship its size." During battle drills, it nearly tore itself apart when the engines were tested at full capacity. Given the serious nature of the design problems and the diminished Borg threat, Starfleet took the decision to suspend work on the Defiant. The project was mothballed until 2371, when Starfleet became concerned about the Dominion threat. Because the Defiant was placed on active duty before its operational problems had been resolved, the engineering crew of DS9 were given responsibility for a program of modifications that was needed to perfect the design. On early missions the Defiant's weaknesses almost proved fatal. In particular the sickbay was hopelessly inadequate, and required an enormous amount of work from Deep Space Nine's medical and engineering staff. However, over time, with modifications recommended the DS9 team many of the Defiant's flaws were corrected and it became a potent and reliable ship. Once the Defiant prototype had proved itself, Starfleet took the decision to put the Defiant-class into production. By the end of 2373, there were a significant number of Defiant-class ships in operation, and over the next two years they played a vital role in the Dominion war.