Warp-Capable, Single-Pilot Fighter Craft?

[blssdwlf]

I was wondering if anyone here feels it may be at all possible to develop a warp-capable, single-pilot fighter craft within the bounds of the Star Trek Universe.

Yes, it is possible but you'll get different results depending on the TV series/movies.

What would it take to make the smallest craft possible, but which was also capable of high warp speeds while carrying a modest compliment of weaponry with which to do battle?

For TOS and the TOS movies you're probably looking at a small ship (Bird of Prey-size or like the overloaded Orion ship from "Journey to Babel"). Small shuttlecraft type fighters would likely be picked off before they got close enough to do any serious damage.

In TNG, DS9 and later, power systems have gotten small enough that you could carry enough power for shielding on a small fighter to get close enough to do damage in numbers. A modest-sized ship like the Defiant was able to mount tremendous firepower but its design kept it from having too high a warp speed.

I'm thinking of a craft, roughly the size of a Formula One race car, capable of keeping up with & attacking a massive starship while travelling at high warp. How possible would it be to develop a warp engine system capable of generating the necessary output, while still being compact enough for a one-man fighter?

It's probably more likely for a one-man fighter in TNG/DS9/Voyager series. The main thing is whether the defending ship is able to outrun/maintain distance so it has time to pick off the fighters or if the fighters are able to overwhelm the defending ship.

 

[YARN]

One thing to consider in the Trek realm is that the same reasons that limit the use of human(oid) soldiers in the front lines might eventually also limit the sending of complex AIs. That is, if one bothers to create a computer so good that it outwits humans, one might not be morally justified in sending it to an early grave.

An interesting point.

I have chess program that "outwits" me in the context of the game of chess, but I wouldn't have any qualms about sending it to an early grave (save for my loss of entertainment).

Similarly, a drone wouldn't necessarily have to be sentient or have an inner life (i.e., data with an emotion chip) to perform a task you would need of a drone.

If super AI, on the other hand, gained one a distinct tactical advantage, I don't see how fighting forces would have any choice but to deploy them. If the one who wins the engagement is the one with the AI flying the ship, then survival of the fittest kicks in. Morally unjustified societies would defeat the morally justified ones. It would have to be a very strong rule indeed for the scattered peoples of space to agree to give up a strategic advantage for a scruple about a smart machine - considering that throughout history we have pushed our own children into fighting wars, it's hard to see how we would spare machines for fear of violating the sanctity of machine life. -- It would have to be a very intelligence and compelling AI (something like a Data) to prevent us from treating it as a disposable resource.

Ultimately, it might make strategic and moral sense to leave the hypersmart AIs home,

Why? If you can press out these things like bottle-caps, why agonize over losing a few? Part of the reason why we turn to machines is because they do things better, faster, and cheaper.

allowing them to command the more expendable humanoid soldiers (and/or lesser AIs) from the safety of the rear. If one toys with really advanced AIs, one is bound to run into the problematique of "degrees of sentience" and its implications in the hierarchy of survival or "human worth"...

Timo Saloniemi

Well, if you were worried about losing technology to the enemy I could see holding back your best machine units and send in the meat-sacks to do the fighting.

As you said, a lot has to do with degrees of intelligence.

At the point that our machines our smarter and more morally adept than we are, a real question arise as to who is properly the servant and who is is properly the master.

That is, if we follow your logic, it may very well be the machine that is declaring war, managing the war, and deploying expendable biological units to fight off other biological units.

I don't think we have to fret about this sort of stuff, however, if we are merely considering what a fighter-sized craft needs to do.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I have chess program that "outwits" me in the context of the game of chess, but I wouldn't have any qualms about sending it to an early grave (save for my loss of entertainment).

Similarly, a drone wouldn't necessarily have to be sentient or have an inner life (i.e., data with an emotion chip) to perform a task you would need of a drone.

Actually, depending on your moral sensibilities it might be more efficient to use trained animals for those types of combat purposes. I'm reminded of the "rat thing" from Neil Stephenson's "Snow Crash," what everyone believed to be a sophisticated A.I. was actually the brain of a trained attack dog placed in a nuclear-powered combat chassis. Seemed cruel at first blush, but as one character put it "Do you have any idea how liberating it is for a pitbull terrier to be able to run at four hundred miles per hour?"

Ultimately, it might make strategic and moral sense to leave the hypersmart AIs home

Of course it would, since there's no reason why a hypersmart AI would have any advantage on a battlefield over a ruthlessly efficient hunter-killer AI. Again, take the Rat Thing example from above. The dogs they put into the machines are teetering on the edge of sentience, barely self-aware, don't really understand anything except what they're supposed to do and how to do it, even if they have no idea WHY.

They are, after all, dogs: single-minded apex predators optimized for a very narrow range of tasks, of which introspection and philosophy are not included. When the Rat Thing detects an enemy, it simply goes to work; if you manage to destroy one, it's not going to shed a tear lamenting its fate, and its buddies are trained to tear you apart anyway.

Except the Rat Thing has one other advantage over simple AIs: living organisms can be dynamic, unpredictable, and can learn new skills and new techniques, and they are better at recognizing patterns than machines are. I think this probably also justifies the cylon raiders from NuBSG: they're pretty much UCAVs with organic brains in them, flying spaceborne organisms in their own right. Partially sentient, definitely intelligent, but not exactly dead ringers for human intelligence.

 

[YARN]

Actually, depending on your moral sensibilities it might be more efficient to use trained animals for those types of combat purposes. I'm reminded of the "rat thing" from Neil Stephenson's "Snow Crash," what everyone believed to be a sophisticated A.I. was actually the brain of a trained attack dog placed in a nuclear-powered combat chassis. Seemed cruel at first blush, but as one character put it "Do you have any idea how liberating it is for a pitbull terrier to be able to run at four hundred miles per hour?"

I would rather sacrifice a non-sentient computer than a sentient animal. At any rate, a pit bull couldn't pilot a jet fighter, whereas a computer could.

What you propose is kind of the worst of both worlds.

A dog lacks the intelligence needed to pilot a space-fighter, and yet still possesses an aspect of mind (sentience) which would make it wrong to simply use it as cannon fodder.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Actually, depending on your moral sensibilities it might be more efficient to use trained animals for those types of combat purposes. I'm reminded of the "rat thing" from Neil Stephenson's "Snow Crash," what everyone believed to be a sophisticated A.I. was actually the brain of a trained attack dog placed in a nuclear-powered combat chassis. Seemed cruel at first blush, but as one character put it "Do you have any idea how liberating it is for a pitbull terrier to be able to run at four hundred miles per hour?"

I would rather sacrifice a non-sentient computer than a sentient animal. At any rate, a pit bull couldn't pilot a jet fighter, whereas a computer could.

A pitbull wouldn't have to: it's a land animal, it already knows really well how to operate--and more importantly, how to hunt and kill--on land. You could use them as an alternative to infantry, or even place their brains in a prosthetic body that that preserves most of their sensitive olfactory sensors that already dominates a huge part of their cognitive functioning (this is, after all, the whole point of police K9 units).

If it's only fighters you're worried about, just pick a different animal. A falcon or an owl has alot of neural hardware optimized for tracking and intercept; that would make a pretty effective control node for a guided missile, IF you could mate it with a powerful enough sensor system.

What you propose is kind of the worst of both worlds.

Possibly, but it may also be the most efficient. A dog already knows how to hunt; the only reason to give it a nuclear-powered armored body is because you're sending it to hunt things that are alot more dangerous than its "normal" prey: the same dog that spends most of its time chasing squirrels around the back yard might, in the body of an armored combat chassis, become a very potent anti-tank weapon.

A dog lacks the intelligence needed to pilot a space-fighter

It doesn't take much intelligence to pilot a SPACE fighter. It just takes a good navigational program and a hell of a lot of patience; simple digital computers will suffice for that.

Space is a target and clutter-poor environment, so it doesn't take much intelligence to do anything up there. In close combat as in boarding actions, furballs, in atmosphere or in ground combat THAT'S when you need something dynamic and flexible that can think on its feet and find a way through. Space combat just isn't complicated enough that anything more sophisticated than a video game AI would have difficulty operating there.

an aspect of mind (sentience) which would make it wrong to simply use it as cannon fodder.

I think I would take issue to the extent to which dogs could be considered "sentient," but in this case it's ALREADY a non-issue. Humans have been using dogs for various tasks for centuries already; cyberneticly enhancing them and sending them into combat would be only slightly less humane than drafting a bunch of poor people and sending THEM into combat: dogs, generally, don't really care why they're doing whatever it is they're doing, just as long as they're allowed to do it.

 

[glock27]

I want to thank all of you for your responses. My original question came from a sentimental desire to see a sort of "aircraft carrier in space", the next step up from the space-borne destroyers and battleships that we have seen in vessels like the Enterprise. It seems like the only way a small one-man fighter could exist is if it offered a decision combat advantage, such as unmatched speed or the ability to deliver strikes in-close and on-target. Speed in theatre is the key. It would seem to me that when capital ships typically engage in combat, they slow down to impulse speed in order to better engage targets. Perhaps THERE is where a close-in fighter could be useful? If there was a small fighter capable of outrunning & outmaneuvering targets at sublight speeds, maybe they would be useful then?

 

[Wingsley]

For me, the crucial piece of the jigsaw would be the "fighter"-type spacecraft's non-military applications. What use would the Federation have for such a class of small craft during peacetime/exploration? In the TNG ep "The Emissary", K'Ehleyr was shot into space inside a torpedo/probe to intercept the Enterprise-D. That shows me that the whole one-man-ship idea can be done, and at warp speeds to boot.

So the questions remain: what would such a one-man or two-man ship look like, what kind of nomenclature would Starfleet give it, and what would its applications be for both military and non-military (exploration, transportation, etc.) purposes?

 

[Timo]

A small and fast vessel with moderate range and endurance could easily be a "courier", as some Maquis vessels were described in DS9 - provided that the stuff worth couriering in the 24th century is compact enough to fit aboard the Maquis ships we saw.

OTOH, the more military end of the Maquis small craft arsenal was justly dismissed by Keogh as "armed shuttlecraft". Starfleet can afford to burn shuttlecraft, and frequently does, so there should not be undue concern for their peacetime viability or operating economy. A thousand could be manufactured for an operation, and dismantled the next day, or left to rot - the way Starfleet handles its shuttlecraft all through TNG.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I want to thank all of you for your responses. My original question came from a sentimental desire to see a sort of "aircraft carrier in space", the next step up from the space-borne destroyers and battleships that we have seen in vessels like the Enterprise.

That's a sci-fi cliche, and space opera conceits notwithstanding, there's not alot of actual utility for such a thing in space. The fact of the matter is if you have weapons powerful enough to destroy an enemy ship and still be small enough to mount on a fighter, you might as well just fire them from your ship; if speed and range are a problem, add boosters to your weapon, and if enemy defenses are a problem, launch an ASSLOAD of weapons.

It seems like the only way a small one-man fighter could exist is if it offered a decision combat advantage, such as unmatched speed or the ability to deliver strikes in-close and on-target. Speed in theatre is the key.

Not always. In certain theatres stealth is a hell of a lot more important. In space, it's likely to be range and accuracy: everyone can see you, and you can see everyone, so you'd better make damn sure you're able to score a kill shot on your target before he can score one on you.

A manned fighter has an inherent disadvantage because it has exactly half the range of an unmanned one: it has to have enough fuel to get to the target and enough fuel to get back. It is also, by definition, far less than half as fast since the unmanned fighter can accelerate or decelerate exactly as quickly as its structural limits while the manned fighter is limited to the tolerances of his crew.

In Star Trek terms, it's as simple as photon torpedoes being easier to target, easier to fire, quicker to intercept a target and more lethal when they get there; this by definition removes any possible utility of manned fighters, which will always be slower, less efficient and less lethal than torpedoes. If the object is quickly put MANY torpedoes on target, this is sufficiently accomplished by firing more torpedoes: Enterprise-D's MIRV-style launcher, or just adding an assload of tubes.

If there was a small fighter capable of outrunning & outmaneuvering targets at sublight speeds, maybe they would be useful then?

Useful in the sense that someone who can't afford capital ships would be able to get some mileage out of them. Useful as a combatant in and of themselves, not so much. Even the "Federation fighters" were probably fielded in the first place in an attempt to offset the Dominion's overwhelming numerical advantage.

 

[Captain Robert April]

The last time this subject came up, I cooked up a version of the "Killer Bee" idea, essentially a Work Bee with weapons pods and a small warp drive.

 

[cobrien]

I want to thank all of you for your responses. My original question came from a sentimental desire to see a sort of "aircraft carrier in space", the next step up from the space-borne destroyers and battleships that we have seen in vessels like the Enterprise. It seems like the only way a small one-man fighter could exist is if it offered a decision combat advantage, such as unmatched speed or the ability to deliver strikes in-close and on-target. Speed in theatre is the key. It would seem to me that when capital ships typically engage in combat, they slow down to impulse speed in order to better engage targets. Perhaps THERE is where a close-in fighter could be useful? If there was a small fighter capable of outrunning & outmaneuvering targets at sublight speeds, maybe they would be useful then?

Ok, here's an idea, fighters don't have any advantage over starships, they're even a little worse. They can go to warp, scan things with their sensors, shoot phasers and torpedoes, but a big starship has much stronger shields, damage control, and will always be a little stronger than the equivalent tonnage in fighters.

So why would anybody build 50 fighters instead of a starship? Because they're cheap, easier to build and repair, and the 50 fighters can be in 50 places at once. They give a quick, easy way to put a officer with set of sensors and a phaser in space.

They would be a kind of militia\garrison\police force, either attached to starbases and colonies, or running out of "carrier" which is used to help colonies and outposts in occasions in which which need more craft than what they usually have.

That could answer the question of why they didn't show up before, because Treak was focused on dashing captains and glamorous starships, maybe they were always there, doing boring routine patrols and traffic control while we where watching Kirk's adventures.

The only question left is why they showed up against the Dominion? I think that it was because a torpedo always hurts coming from a fighter or a starship and every extra one helps, the Federation could have procedures and plans to call up the fighter "militias" if a big battle happens near the territories in which they are based and they have time to prepare.

Also remember that fighters may be not just small craft, there might be a whole range of small to big craft that are meant to operate from bases to do short missions (hours or days long) instead of long starship missions (months or years long).

 

[Timo]

Also, let's remember that these fighters were shown attacking a planet in "The Maquis", and were consistently referred to as "attack fighters" or "attack craft", which to somebody familiar with today's aviation parlance would suggest a ground attack role. Perhaps these things are dusted off whenever there are planets in need of conquest, and this we virtually never see elsewhere in Trek even if we get to see big fights in deep space, up to and including full-blown wars?

The fact that the "attack fighters" have wings, however rudimentary, might also point towards planetary ops. The equally winged and sized craft that Lieutenant Ro flew in "Preemptive Strike" might represent the preceding generation of these things, then. (Or at least ships from the same designer had Starfleet computer panels of an older design aboard in later episodes, most notably "Caretaker".)

On the issue of carriers, it should be noted that in DS9 the craft were indicated to be capable of at least warp five on their own - and whenever we saw a big fleet of starships, including a fleet just before it was supposed to go to warp, these things were deployed in apparent "CAP" formations. Do we assume they were recovered aboard a carrier at the last minute? Or that they flew free for the duration of the warp cruise to the destination? It would be a bit odd doctrinally to limit fleet speed by forcing it down to the levels these fighters could maintain, but then again, Starfleet seems to accept mixed fleets that include very old starships, supposedly already impacting on fleet speed...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

Let's assume, for sake of argument, that such a "fighter" class of spacecraft existed during the pre-TOS, TOS/TAS, and TMP eras.

What capabilities would such a craft have? Shuttlecraft appeared to be low-warp. Would that mean that these one-man and/or two-man ships would also be low-warp? Or would there be a special class or sub-class of these little ships that could be much greater in terms of power and capability? And would TOS-era ships use any of the components (such as nacelles) seen on other close-range vehicles such as the shuttlecraft?

 

[Timo]

I'd argue that the fighters of TOS should enjoy a very slight edge over the utility shuttles in terms of warp propulsion - much like the fighters of DS9 seemed to slightly outperform the runabouts. Since both shuttles and fighters in TOS would be too slow for independent interstellar operations, we'd have carriers such as those postulated by the fans. And when we have carriers, we can also have sublight fighters that take the extra power away from the warp drive and into the guns instead.

The sublight fighters and the dedicated carriers would disappear by the time of TNG, but in TOS they would be part of assault fleets. They'd still play very little role in starship combat, which is why we never saw them in TOS.

I'd love to see pairings that, even more closely than the DS9 runabouts and fighters, resemble the classic Vietnam war "odd couple" of UH-1 and AH-1 helicopters, essentially the same machine with a different hull so that one is a lumbering utility transport with some weapons capacity while the other is a sleek and fast weapons platform without troop or cargo capacity.

Thus, there would be some sharing of components, but subtle differences in them as well: very similar nacelles for the two craft, but with something to artistically suggest the speed edge of the killer, or the additional muscle of the troop hauler.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

I'd imagine that the starfighter would have higher energy stores than a shuttle to power her faster warp engines and more importantly for using phasers and perhaps micro-photon torpedoes. Unlike modern day fighters where the bullets have their own propellant, starfighters drain their power each time a phaser or photon is fired or even when the shields are used to block an attack.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Why would photon torpedoes cause any sort of drain on the ship's power systems? For that matter, why would phasers, since even phaser rifles can be powered from internal storage cells?

OTOH, plenty of combat aircraft derive their weapons power from their engines anyway; the M60 cannons on most modern fighters are powered electrically, and the guidance system for most air-to-air missiles require an operational radar.

 

[T'Girl]

the M60 cannons on most modern fighters

M61 Vulcan?

 

[blssdwlf]

Why would photon torpedoes cause any sort of drain on the ship's power systems? For that matter, why would phasers, since even phaser rifles can be powered from internal storage cells?

Phasers and photon torpedoes need power to be used. Torpedoes need far less power but still need power nevertheless. To have enough power to be useful against shielded vehicles or large ships, I don't think rifle-sized power packs will be enough and the fighter's main power would be needed. Or if a self-contained weapon was used, it would be a little larger or bulkier than one that was powered by the ship itself.

But that brings up an interesting tangent. For weapons against ground targets a bunch of self-contained phaser-3s on a turret would be rather interesting with a photon cannon/grenade launcher.

OTOH, plenty of combat aircraft derive their weapons power from their engines anyway; the M60 cannons on most modern fighters are powered electrically, and the guidance system for most air-to-air missiles require an operational radar.

Sure there is a small energy cost for operating a M61 but the energy that is needed for getting the bullet out of the barrel is in the ammunition itself. It is not like an F-15 needs to divert 30% of it's total power system over to charge up and fire it's Vulcan

 

[Crazy Eddie]

the M60 cannons on most modern fighters

M61 Vulcan?

Herp durrrr... yeah.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

To have enough power to be useful against shielded vehicles or large ships, I don't think rifle-sized power packs will be enough

How about a cannon-sized power pack?

Or if a self-contained weapon was used, it would be a little larger or bulkier than one that was powered by the ship itself.

Exactly. Internally powered phaser banks of the type we see mounted on shuttles look like simple phaser strips bolted to the hull. A self-contained unit would probably be the size of a compact car while at the same time channeling--in short but effective bursts--phaser output far greater than the ship could expect to sustain from its own power plant.

OTOH, plenty of combat aircraft derive their weapons power from their engines anyway; the M60 cannons on most modern fighters are powered electrically, and the guidance system for most air-to-air missiles require an operational radar.

Sure there is a small energy cost for operating a M61 but the energy that is needed for getting the bullet out of the barrel is in the ammunition itself.

No, rotary cannons and gatling guns like the Vulcan require a substantial amount of horsepower to get the barrel spun up to the right speed and get the ammunition moving into the gun fast enough to be fired. Vietnam-era gunpods used ram air from the aircraft's flight to power the cannon, modern fighters either do it electrically or use compressed air from the engine compressor.

It is not like an F-15 needs to divert 30% of it's total power system over to charge up and fire it's Vulcan

No, it's more like 5%. Although it IS closer to 30% for the A-10 Warthog.