Weight classes of Federation starships - re-examined

[psCargile]

Forgoing the military naval designations, the largest starships not cargo transports should be deep space explorers, that are self-sufficient for long periods of time operating outside of Federation space. It's hard to pin down how large that should be because Voyager remained self-sufficient for several years (despite its questionable internal volume). Should the Intrepid class have this capability? If it's an indication of the capability off all or most ships, then size may not be that important.

And is deep exploration better served with one large ship, or a with a fleet of smaller ships? I say a fleet.

 

[Ithekro]

Not exactly. This was pretty common for Great Britain in 1880-1900s, to have some capital ships on colonial stations, to provide additional firepower for trade protection squadrons and means to blockade the opponent's colonial ports.

To be fair, the British were actively building a navy to be as large or larger than the next two largest naval powers combined and could thus afford to station capital ships in their colonies, and even designed some for colonial duty along with their armored cruisers. This eventual changed after the invention of HMS Dreadnought had the unintended side effect of making the Roya Navy's capital ships obsolete and reducing their numerical advantage to just barely keeping capital ship construction over the local Germans and French, but not over the third (at the time) largest power which was the United States, which was actively trying to maintain a navy the size of Germany's because it figured it could manage that instead of the Royal Navy huge goal. By 1920, nearly all the obsolete pre-dreadnoughts that has once made the Royal Navy the largest navy in the world by far, were being retired, even before the Washington Treaty made it mandatory in 1922.

The Washington Treaty's battleship holiday, while it did force the British to be equal to the Americans in numbers, it also save their economy as they knew by 1920 there was no way they could afford to keep up with the two next largest powers...the United States and Japan, who were both building capital ships like crazy, without having been as damaged by the Great War economically nor having their male populations devastated by the four years of war. The Americans could afford the construction efforts, the Japanese realistically could not. Both were doing so at the expense of other ship type construction. The Americans for example hadn't been building cruisers for the past decade and all their older cruisers were outdated predreadnought era armored cruisers or protected cruisers with only one new class of high speed scout cruisers under construction in 1920 as part of a scouting battle fleet centered around the Lexington-class battlecruisers (or battle scouts). The Royal Navy had numerical advantage in 1920, but many ships were rapidly becoming obsolete. HMS Dreadnought herself was obsolete by the start of the Great War less than ten years after being built. The Americans were building 10 very large battleships armed with the new 16 inch guns and a small fleet of battlescouts. The Japanese were attempting to built 16 16 inch gun armed battleships and battlecruiser (8 and 8) with the last few battlecruisers being more or less fast battleships. The British were designing counters to these, but were having issues with them. They had the Admiralty-class battlecruiser HMS Hood being finished, and it was practically a fast battleships. The N3 or G3 capital ships would also likely have been fast battleships once completed as they British were known to be underreporting their design characteristics in order to get the Americans and Japanese to build to those specifications and than trump them with something far superior. But the British economy could not afford to build the rest of the Admiralty-class battlecruisers and then the 8 or so N3 and G3 battleships, nor the needed 16 other ships to stay ahead of the American and Japanese....there was just no possibility of that happening. So the Washington Treaty saved them from having to even try. They finished Hood, which was superior to everyone else's capital ships in terms of speed and mostly firepower. And post-treaty they built Nelson and Rodney as 16 inch gun armed battleships with heavy armor but poor speed relative to what they had wanted out of the G3 and N3 projects. Those two were superior to the other battleships of the world as they were the last two designed at that point and made to counter the American Colorado-class and the Japanese Nagato-class, which were the rest of the "Big Seven" 16 inch armed battleships of the world. These would remain to be the seven best battleships until probably 1941 when Bismarck and North Carolina were finished. Bismarck was not as powerful in terms of firepower to Nelson, but was large. North Carolina was the first of the American fast battleships. But also by the end of 1941 was the completion of the Japanese battleship Yamato, which was superior to all of them in size and firepower.

 

[Tenacity]

because Voyager remained self-sufficient for several years

I don't think Voyager was "self-sufficient," she had to forage for food and stop at various planets to trade.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Considering the "Iowa" vs "Kirov"... The "Iowa" have pretty little chances, frankly, even against missile-armed fast attack crafts. No armor could protect against something like "Granit" cruise missile, which dive upon target ship at Mach 3. And active defenses of "Iowa"s, even after refit, were, frankly, pathetic; their CIWS were the only weapon that could actually stop any missile.

This is actually half right. The high-speed antiship missiles the Soviets developed would pretty much laugh at the US Navy's point defense systems as it came screaming in for the kill. But even the Granit doesn't have a penetrating warhead or enough mass to actually penetrate an Iowa-class's armor. Those ships were designed to take hits from other 16 inch naval rounds that have WAY more kinetic energy than the missile has; Granit, on the other hand, is dangerous because of its ability to deliver an explosive yield to something that doesn't like to be exploded (much the way dive bombers were in WWII).

OTOH, while a Granit would almost certainly fail to SINK an Iowa class battleship, three or four of them hitting the deck or the super structure would be a grisly mission kill. For all the armor around the bridge, CIC and main guns and magazines, a supersonic missile might still push through that and ruin everybody's day.

Overall point: it was never fully appreciated by western planners how truly fucked we would be if we actually came to blows with the Soviet Navy. The United States basically repeated the Supership Fallacy of World War II and fell in love with aircraft carriers as the Main Weapon of the Fleet; meanwhile, the Soviets learned that it wasn't the carriers that had made the battleship obsolete, but the ability of hostile warships to hit them with concentrated firepower before they had a chance to fight back. So they developed guided missile technology down to a scarily effective science and then mounted those missiles on pretty much every ship in their entire navy. So while the USN was basically building an entire fleet specifically designed to protect its aircraft carriers, the Soviets were building a fleet specifically designed to sink other people's navies.

It would have been one hell of a matchup.

 

[Dilandu]

To be fair, the British were actively building a navy to be as large or larger than the next two largest naval powers combined and could thus afford to station capital ships in their colonies, and even designed some for colonial duty along with their armored cruisers.

Yes, but the Britain wasn't only one who placed capital ships in colonies. Until 1890s, France build a second-rate "stationary" ironclad battleships exactly for that role. And, Russian Empire mantained capital ships on Far East (which could be considered overseas colony, due to the troubled land logistic before Transsib) since 1890s (and inronclad frigates since 1860s). The idea was, that those battleships would be able to hold advances of second-rate naval powers (like China & Japan) and in case of war with Britain, would act as "blockade breakers", venturing out of Vladivostok to engage blockading forces and gave raiders opportunity to run the blockade.

The Americans for example hadn't been building cruisers for the past decade and all their older cruisers were outdated predreadnought era armored cruisers or protected cruisers with only one new class of high speed scout cruisers under construction in 1920 as part of a scouting battle fleet centered around the Lexington-class battlecruisers (or battle scouts).

Yes, this was rather actual problems, common not only for USN, but for French & Italian Navy also. The IJN was more or less balanced; the Russian Imperial Navy was supposed to be balanced, but the light cruisers were laid up too late. Actually, one of the most balanced fleet of WWI era was Austria-Hungarian... they have a rather good mix of battleships, turbine cruisers & destroyers.

Bismarck was not as powerful in terms of firepower to Nelson, but was large.

Agreed. Rather faulty design, the "Bismark". Big, but with a lot of deficiences in protection (weak armored decks, poor protection of magazines from frontal & rear hits, the placemen of main fire control room over the main armored deck)...

But also by the end of 1941 was the completion of the Japanese battleship Yamato, which was superior to all of them in size and firepower.

Well... I'm not so sure. Yes, she have really powerfull guns, but her fire control wasn't as modern and sophisticated as American. And the quality of fire control was even more important than the quality of guns for 1930s battleships - the distances and relative velocities of engagement almost doubled since 1919. The USN fire controls were arguably the best in the world in World War II; the USN battleships could mantain fire solution even maneuvering at full speed, and the advent of radar make them able to fight in any visibility conditions. The real engagement between "Yamato" & "North Carolina" or "South Dakota" would be practically an even match; and "Iowa"'s have real advantage over the "Yamato", IMHO.

 

[Ithekro]

In 1942 Yamato was likely equal to the Americans in hitting due to the American radars still not being all they were cracked up to be, and the operators not trusting them or in some cases understanding them. Japan and German at that time had the best optics on the planet, which could compensate for the lack of radars or lower quality radars they might have at the time. This might last through 1943 due to refits and all that. But by 1944? The American radar fire control by then was superior to what the Japanese had access. But by then the Americans also had superior numbers...of just about everything, compared to the Japanese and by the end of that year held both air and naval superiority in the region.

Yamato, in a gunnery duel, would be formidable to any single battleship in the planet. Rader fire control or not, the gunnery of the day was still functionally limited to visual ranges for moving targets. As far as I am aware, American and Japanese gunnery was not able to match the record of HMS Warspite (at around 24 km) from earlier in the war for a moving target until after the war ended, though there is a report of Yamato mission killing an escort carrier (USS White Plains) from around 31500 meters and USS Iowa straddling a destroyer repeatedly at over 32500 meters (but never hitting it)

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

There was an interesting article on the Iowa-class vs. Kirov-class thing, that might be applicable to Trek:

America's Lethal Iowa-Class Battleship vs. Russia's Battlecruiser: Who Wins?

Back to our duel. In our scenario, let’s assume that each ship knows the location of the other at three hundred miles. At this range, the Iowa class is at a disadvantage: its longest range weapons, the thirty-two Tomahawk missiles, are land attack missiles and useless against the Kirov.

Kirov, on the other hand, launches all twenty of its Granit missiles. . . and then retreats. The battlecruiser has used up its entire complement of offensive weapons on a single massive blow and has nothing substantial left to continue the fight with. (While it still has a pair of 130-millimeter dual-purpose guns, it would be suicidal to get in close enough to use them, given Iowa’s overwhelming gun armament.)

Two of the Granit missiles fail to launch, or malfunction and fall into the sea, leaving eighteen streaking towards the American battleship. Iowa’s deficiency in air defense armament means that it has only two Phalanx CIWS guns to shoot down the Granits. Its SLQ-32 active radar jammers and Mark 36 SRBOC chaff launchers attempt to spoof the Granit’s active radar guidance systems.

It’s impossible to say how many of the eighteen remaining missiles would have gotten past Iowa’s Phalanx gatling guns, radar jamming and chaff dispersal. For the sake of the scenario, let’s assume nine missiles breach Iowa’s defenses. The mighty battleship’s armor was formidable, designed to shrug off sixteen-inch armor-piercing rounds, so it’s likely it would fare pretty well against a Mach 1.6 missile with a simple 1.5 ton high explosive warhead. The Iowa’s main guns were also heavily armored, as were the magazines and the engine spaces.

Iowa would sustain damage, but how much? Let’s assume two of the main gun turrets are knocked out of action, but one turret is still functional and the engines are undamaged. Three sixteen inch guns are still good enough to kill the Kirov but even under ideal circumstances, Iowa is only half a knot faster than the Russian battlecruiser, and at three hundred miles doesn’t have a chance of catching up to it.

If the Iowa were to close the distance with Kirov the odds slightly considerably. Iowa would have to get with sixty-seven miles for it to be able to use its sixteen Harpoon missiles—but even then such as small number of missiles would have a difficult time getting through Kirov’s three-layered air defense network.

In fact, the only range at which Iowa can really win a fight with Kirov is within twenty miles, when the ship’s nine sixteen-inch guns can come into play. At that range, the Kirov is indisputably dead meat, sent quickly to the bottom by the battleship’s big guns. Still, as satisfying as such an engagement would be, it’s hard to see how the Soviets would let an Iowa get that close.
​

If we accept non-canon sources, the Cardassian War, Dominion War and Borg made the Federation go down a similar route of piling on torpedoes, and commissioning agile classes like the Akira to deliver them, and retreat before reprisal.

 

[Dilandu]

In 1942 Yamato was likely equal to the Americans in hitting due to the American radars still not being all they were cracked up to be, and the operators not trusting them or in some cases understanding them.

Probably, but the americans gyros & calculators were already the best. Which means that US battleships could mantain fire solution while maneuvering, and Japanese - couldn't. In actual combat, the US battleships could maneuvre rapidly to make Japanese targeting more complicated, and still be able to straddle Japanese with salvoes. The Japanese would be placed in front of dilemma: mantain the more-or-less linear course, and became a target, or start to maneuver - and, basically, abandon any chance to hit the US ships.

 

[Dilandu]

Two of the Granit missiles fail to launch, or malfunction and fall into the sea,

Er, exactly why? I never heard about much problems with "Granit".

It’s impossible to say how many of the eighteen remaining missiles would have gotten past Iowa’s Phalanx gatling guns, radar jamming and chaff dispersal.

Phalanx aren't very useful against supersonics, and "Granit" missile could communicate with each other & compare the seekers data, to partially overcame jamming.

so it’s likely it would fare pretty well against a Mach 1.6 missile with a simple 1.5 ton high explosive warhead.

What the?...

The "Granit" is Mach 2.5 missile with 0,65 ton semi-AP warhead (1.5 ton is the TOTAL weight of the missile!). In terminal dive, the "Granit" reach Mach 3+, which basically turn him into equivalent of battleship shell, fired point-blank.

This article's author is incompetent.

Iowa would sustain damage, but how much?

From nine Mach 3+ hits with 650-kg warheads? She probably wrecked. All her main armament & machines are jammed simply because of impact shocks. At least, this was the results of 1950s tests.

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

I have no idea personally, just thought it was an interesting article - the author seems to love his Iowas.

 

[Dilandu]

I have no idea personally, just thought it was an interesting article - the author seems to love his Iowas.

Well, not sure how this is comparable to Trek... There is no analogue of guided missile cruisers for long-range attacks in Trek. Probably the closest analogue to the "Granit", is the Cardassian "Dreadnought" missile... considering that the single one of them were able to sucsessfully fight off both the "Intrepid"-class starship & several less advanced units.

It might be quite interesting to see more "Dreadnought"-type weapons, actually, in Trek.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well, not sure how this is comparable to Trek... There is no analogue of guided missile cruisers for long-range attacks in Trek.

Strictly speaking, ALL starships are guided missile cruisers. This is just hard to conceptualize because they all have the same firing ranges and engagement envelopes, but if you use CIWS as a proxy for deflector shields and missiles as photon torpedoes, it's pretty much a perfect analogy: Starships heave firepower at each other while the enemy puts up his shields, tries to survive the onslaught, and then fires back.

In my headcanon, it's pretty much a given that engagement ranges in Star Trek are much bigger than they appear, and also the timeframe of those encounters is much longer. The battle between the Narada and the Kelvin, for example, would have taken place at a distance so great that the Narada was just a spec in the distance, and would have lasted at least half an hour (if not more) from the time Robau got impaled to the time Kirk slammed into it.


This is also a little off topic, but this also seems relevant. From Richard Humble's "Illustrated History of Submarines"

In June 1960 the Americans had some 817 warships and auxiliaries in commission, or almost exactly 300 more than today; while the Royal Navy had 205 ships including four carriers, five cruisers, 34 submarines and 84 destroyers and frigates compared with 144 in 1980, which includes two helicopter carriers but no cruisers. 23 submarines and 50 destroyers and frigates

In other words, the NATO navies, should they decide to abandon the task of supporting the ground forces on the strategic flanks in the event of a Soviet assault, are woefully short of the surface escort and hunter-killer forces needed for keeping control of the North Atlantic. For NATO the biggest menace to the Atlantic sealane would come from the Soviet Navy's Northn Fleet, based at Kola Inlet on the Russian Murmansk coast and at Archangel on the White Sea. In the 1979-80 review of The Military Balance compiled by the London-based Institute for Strategic Studies, the Northern Fleet's strength was assessed at 120 submarines and 70 major surface combatants.

To contain the Northern Fleet, NATO's primary deployment would be drawn from the American, Canadian and British navies, which in the same review were assessed as having 157 major surface combat ships (including 5 American carriers) and 29 British and Canadian submarines. Assuming that 50 out of the 80 nuclear and diesel attack submarines would be deployed in the North Atlantic (no longer a warrantable assumption since the USSR's demonstration of her ability to operate carrier task forces on both sides of the world at once) this would bring the NATO submarine strength up to 79.

Seventy nine NATO submarines, not all fitted for hunter-killer work, would then be set against 120 Soviet Submarines, which in turn, backed by their own 70 surface warships, would be set against 157 NATO surface warships. NATO's supposed technological superiority would have to be miraculously high to overcome such odds, even allowing for the submarine hunting capacity provided by the 5 American carriers. But in 1980 it is no longer clear how much longer this superiority can be claimed.
​

Granted, this is from an old source, but that makes the next part even more ironic: AFTER the Cold War, we found out we didn't even know the half of it. Turns out those Soviet-era submarines weren't just more numerous than NATO's, they were also a HELL of a lot better, with more advanced engine and reactor technology (which made them faster, if slightly noisier) better safety systems, better sensors, better weapons, and a strong double-hull construction and redundant damage control systems that would have made them hella difficult to sink. The American submarine service has a saying, "There are only two types of warships: submarines, and targets." The Soviet sub force would have proven this a dozen times over if it came to that.

As for this thread: we (collectively) are slow to realize this, but it's been 70 years since "weight class" of naval vessels really mattered to anything. Submarines already demonstrated ample capacity to blast the crap out of battleships and aircraft carriers and the only way to defend against them was to fill the sea with destroyer escorts. Then the submarines got advanced enough to sink the destroyers too, which means that now the only surefire way to defend against an enemy attack submarine is to hunt it down and kill it with one of your own.

So in the submarine world, there are only two types of submarines: hunter killers for stalking other submarines and surface ships, and ICBM-hauling missile boats for depopulating the enemy's homeland. These submarines come in various shapes and sizes and tech levels, but only those two types really exist in military use. This therefore makes a pretty good analogy to the Trek universe where, also, there are only one or two different types of Starfleet vessels. Reliant and Enterprise would be basically in the same "weight class" because they're designed for the same basic function, namely planetary surface and exploration, with the Excelsior eventually replacing the Constitution entirely as the remaining vessels retired. Then you'd have larger ships like the NuEnterprise and the Ambassador, that can also be used for survey and exploration but are optimized for use as colony support vessels and pathfinders.

 

[Arpy]

No, the Enterprise was as big as it got.

They're alternate universes. The JJ-verse is separate from the Original, and the Original is separate from the Novel-verse.

I can't even think of larger cargo vessels from TOS, TAS, or the Remastered TOS that were bigger than the Enterprise. I think the idea was that these ships are our grandest investments in space-travel, period. Maybe an Ambassador Era cargo ship was bigger than a Constitution ship-of-the-line, but that's a hundred years later. That said, I kind of like that the mining-vessel Narada was considerably bigger than any warship. It allows room for larger ships to play with, but not super-duper star-destroyers. You never got the impression during any series that there were bigger super-combat ships off-camera.

I could buy that there were larger cargo ships and some others (colony, tankers, etc), but not on this scale and timeline. How big is a Kelvin colony ship? Pluto with nacelles?

Nothing about the JJ-verse suggests that it fits into the Original.

It doesn't have to, and I really wouldn't want it to, looking at it. It's like saying the next Star Wars movie takes place between ENT and ST '09. Okay, go work it out. Throw in Sesame Street between the TMP and TWoK too. Go work it out. You can. You can work anything out. And I'll appreciate the artfulness of the attempt, but I won't take it seriously.

I consider ENT an alternate universe, and, though I may like it, I may consider Discovery one too. It's the only way for me to take them seriously, and enjoy them.

That said, I'd love to see pics of the Defender Class. I think it had multiple saucers, yeah? And I'm curious to see its setup for larger-sized Federation members.

 

[Ithekro]

No, the Enterprise was as big as it got.

That said, I'd love to see pics of the Defender Class. I think it had multiple saucers, yeah? And I'm curious to see its setup for larger-sized Federation members.

Would the USS Kelvin still count as being larger than the Constitution? Aside from that there are of course the Vulcans and Andorian ships of the 22nd century (in a discussion of this nature one cannot usefully discount Star Trek: Enterprise).

As for the Defender-class, Memory Beta says this about it:

The Defender-class was a type of Federation starship in use in the 23rd century. The class was described as having a primary hull three times as large and four engine nacelles each twice as long as a Constitution-class starship, and the engineering hull was described as being a mile long and a quarter mile in diameter.

The class was also said to carry more power and armament than any three starships combined, and had been built large to carry a lot of people on very long hauls.

That would be a very big ship. For very big crewmen. Which also stands to reason about McCoy talking about V'Ger possibly having huge crew people rather than a huge crew while they were observing the vessel prior to the probe invading the Enterprise.

 

[Spot261]

No, the Enterprise was as big as it got.

They're alternate universes. The JJ-verse is separate from the Original, and the Original is separate from the Novel-verse.

Excepting of course the Kelvin, which theoretically should exist prior to the branching of the timelines.

 

[Arpy]

Excepting of course the Kelvin, which theoretically should exist prior to the branching of the timelines.

The Kelvin is larger than the D. It's an alternate universe.

 

[Ithekro]

Scaling wise, she shouldn't be quite that large, but still have a larger saucer than the NCC-1701.

But then she could be a colony mover and need to be that big to move potentially thousands of colonist.

My theory is that whatever warp drive the USS Kelvin has was some divergent technology that while good, resulted in ships that were too big for Starfleet's needs. The Federation decide to me more economical with recourses and manpower eventually commissions ships like the Constitution-class (which breaks the time-barrier, or whatever) to achieve the speeds of USS Kelvin's era or better. These new starships (or heavy cruisers if you like) are much better at their assigned tasks without seeming wasteful to the Federation Council like the larger ships of the 2220s. The main resource problem is dilithium crystals as seen during TOS. The smaller but powerful Constitution-class does what the larger ships could do using less crystals and at least half the manpower, with more people being able to be assigned to science labs rather than ship maintenance or weapons systems.

The reason why they keep it in the Kelvinverse is because of Nero's huge ship and the Klingons capturing it. After that Starfleet feels that they need the larger ships to keep up with the Romulans and potentially the Klingons. So they eventually refine the Kelvin's technology into the new USS Enterprise and that version of the Constitution-class starship. Refinements they would not have made normally because they didn't need ships that big until after the Great Experiment (USS Excelsior) and the coming of the large explorer type ships on the 24th century (also possibly the Cardassian Galor style ships were also big and needed countering by more than just Excelsiors).

 

[Dilandu]

Granted, this is from an old source, but that makes the next part even more ironic: AFTER the Cold War, we found out we didn't even know the half of it. Turns out those Soviet-era submarines weren't just more numerous than NATO's, they were also a HELL of a lot better, with more advanced engine and reactor technology (which made them faster, if slightly noisier) better safety systems, better sensors, better weapons, and a strong double-hull construction and redundant damage control systems that would have made them hella difficult to sink. The American submarine service has a saying, "There are only two types of warships: submarines, and targets." The Soviet sub force would have proven this a dozen times over if it came to that.

Sigh. And then I say magical worlds: "operation readiness".

The USSR have a lot of subs, yes. Problem was, we never were actually able to field them all at once. We simply don't have enough supporting infrastructure and trained crews, and, frankly, reliability of USSR nuclear subs were much lower than USN's.

Simply speaking, the North Fleet could not sortie the 120 submarines. In general, it was assumed that, perhaps, 50-60 could be really fielded. The rest would be in repair, or awaiting repair (the maintenance capabilities never were able to deal with such numbers of subs in time), or wouldn't have enough trained crews.

In other words - our submarine navy was bigger, but poorly supported. And there were noise issues and reliability issues. The soviet reactors never have USN reliability level; they were moch more prone to malfunction. The double-hull composition, while provided additional survivability, made subs more noisy (and our owerpowered reactors required much more coolant). In general, our subs were faster, more durable and better armed than USN's - but were noisier, less reliable, and have a lot of acoustic problems.

 

[Ithekro]

From what I remember from my youth, Soviet stuff was always considered durable, but not reliable. You could run any of their planes or tanks in any weather, by they might be broken down anyway.

We got some cheap ex-Soviet .22 cal LR bullets in the 1990s. It seems like the stuff was designed to be used in cold weather cause it has some kind of film on it that just gummed up the regular guns in typical California summer weather. But I found I could go through a box of them with a Remington Nylon 66 and then fire some reasonable copper coated bullets to clear it out of whatever it is they used on the lead bullets.

 

[SPCTRE]

there have always been larger vessels present during TOS