... the Defiant's ablative armor in Paradise Lost? Seems there's a story there. Are they Starfleet's most useless department? Or could 31 have been involved in some way (fighting against Leyton?)
Why did Starfleet Operations not know about...
- Thread starter toughlittleship
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I can imagine that a great deal of information passes across an admiral's desk. Maybe he forgot, or was never informed. However, since Sisko was at the shipyards when this particular ship was being designed to combat the Borg, I'd buy the pet project scenario.
I don't recall that ablative armor was a part of the Valiant's configuration. Was it?
I don't recall that ablative armor was a part of the Valiant's configuration. Was it?
I know O'Brien came off as a noob in that Episode where Nog stole Sisko's desk to get the transporter working... But really, from what I've seen of Radar from M*A*S*H* there's a barter market working between outposts that has nothing to do with requisitions and permission from HQ.
I never really thought of engineers having their own organization. I wonder if the guy from "Die is Cast" was in charge of it?
Admirals have spheres or operation and probably aren't regularly made aware of everything they could know about within an organization. Skunk works type inventions probably aren't made known until they are near completion and about to be distributed to a fleet. Besides, if it were as effective as we're making out it to be, every ship in combat against the Dominion would have been retrofitted as they were against the Breen weapons. There was more than enough time to do that.
If anyone remembers, there was an experimental shield technology from TNG, that allowed a ship to penetrate a sun without any real damage. Every ship should have had that technology, but by the time Voyager rolled off the assembly line it didn't have. Technologies are plot devices as well.
It wasn't fitted per se, but had the specifications that they could adapt to existing shields. Geordi had been working on implementing it.
I always got the impression from Paradise Lost that they'd checked the abilities of the Defiant in the technical base and that the armour wasn't mentioned there - so it wouldn't be a case of Leyton not knowing or forgetting.
I think the DS9 crew added it on themselves and didn't mention it.
I always got the impression from Paradise Lost that they'd checked the abilities of the Defiant in the technical base and that the armour wasn't mentioned there - so it wouldn't be a case of Leyton not knowing or forgetting.
I think the DS9 crew added it on themselves and didn't mention it.
It wasn't necessary: the sun-defying shielding could be implemented as a mere software command to standard shields.
We have no evidence that this shield would protect against anything else besides stars. It was never said to be particularly effective against phaser fire, for example. So Starfleet wouldn't be especially interested about it, except for those rare cases when there is a need to dive into a sun for a while. No doubt Janeway's ship had a metaphasic setting to the shields as one of the eleven thousand options - she just never had the need to apply that particular setting.
The armor of the Defiant might really be something that never panned out enough to be entered into Starfleet public record. Sure, it worked; but like with so many military inventions in the real world, its working was not relevant enough to cause a general reaction. Stealth through special radar-absorbent paint is old news (at least three decades old, and conceptually probably as old as radar itself), but that paint is not applied on all aircraft because it's only effective in combination with other special measures. Ablative armor might not make a difference unless applied on a very small starship of a specific shape.
Come to think of it, did ablative armor ever make a difference? It helped the Defiant take a few unshielded hits from a Klingon capital ship in "Way of the Warrior", but other starships have survived unshielded hits like that, too. It supposedly mattered enough for Benteen to yell to Leyton about it, but even Benteen never quoted it as impregnable or anything. And during that battle in "Paradise Lost", the Defiant never was said to have lost shields anyway.
So I have no trouble accepting that ablative armor might be a curiosity that only certain field commanders would originally be familiar with, much like certain makeshift up-armoring measures taken in the real world. Benteen and Worf might be fighting in tanks, for example, and Benteen would be annoyed that nobody told him Worf's tank was equipped with anti-RPG wire mesh. It wouldn't really make any difference in the battle as such, but if Benteen had poor intelligence on one area, she would be wise to suspect that her other intelligence was incomplete as well. And that would be serious. What else was Leyton hiding from her?
Timo Saloniemi
We have no evidence that this shield would protect against anything else besides stars. It was never said to be particularly effective against phaser fire, for example. So Starfleet wouldn't be especially interested about it, except for those rare cases when there is a need to dive into a sun for a while. No doubt Janeway's ship had a metaphasic setting to the shields as one of the eleven thousand options - she just never had the need to apply that particular setting.
The armor of the Defiant might really be something that never panned out enough to be entered into Starfleet public record. Sure, it worked; but like with so many military inventions in the real world, its working was not relevant enough to cause a general reaction. Stealth through special radar-absorbent paint is old news (at least three decades old, and conceptually probably as old as radar itself), but that paint is not applied on all aircraft because it's only effective in combination with other special measures. Ablative armor might not make a difference unless applied on a very small starship of a specific shape.
Come to think of it, did ablative armor ever make a difference? It helped the Defiant take a few unshielded hits from a Klingon capital ship in "Way of the Warrior", but other starships have survived unshielded hits like that, too. It supposedly mattered enough for Benteen to yell to Leyton about it, but even Benteen never quoted it as impregnable or anything. And during that battle in "Paradise Lost", the Defiant never was said to have lost shields anyway.
So I have no trouble accepting that ablative armor might be a curiosity that only certain field commanders would originally be familiar with, much like certain makeshift up-armoring measures taken in the real world. Benteen and Worf might be fighting in tanks, for example, and Benteen would be annoyed that nobody told him Worf's tank was equipped with anti-RPG wire mesh. It wouldn't really make any difference in the battle as such, but if Benteen had poor intelligence on one area, she would be wise to suspect that her other intelligence was incomplete as well. And that would be serious. What else was Leyton hiding from her?
Timo Saloniemi
Miles informed Starfleet of every modification he made to the Defiant. This ship and its weapons and armament were under development to combat the Borg. A very real threat. Why would Sisko develop a new armor in his lab at a shipyard, by himself and not tell his superiors? Sisko would have to be a heck of an engineer, not to mention quite sneaky, to get away with that.
It’s not uncommon in large bureaucracies that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.
Besides in SF I suppose some up and coming engineer is always experimenting with a new armor idea...probably hard to keep up with what's on the back burner... and not all the ideas pan out.
Besides in SF I suppose some up and coming engineer is always experimenting with a new armor idea...probably hard to keep up with what's on the back burner... and not all the ideas pan out.
We shouldn't think that Miles would be developing the ship to fight the Borg, though. At the time Sisko was given command of the Defiant, Starfleet had already given up all hope of making a Borg-fighter out of her. And her de-mothballing was a miserable failure, too: she was fought to submission and boarded, and her crew captured and successfully interrogated by the enemy for strategically crucial information. She'd be a lost cause as far as Starfleet R&D were concerned.
Perhaps O'Brien came up with this up-armoring to make up for the many shortcomings of the design? Starfleet wouldn't have been interested much; why pay attention to some outback mechanic installing hillbilly armor to an inferior vessel when there would be modern warship projects in brewing?
Timo Saloniemi
I don't think Miles developed the armor. I was just making a point about secrecy. What Miles knew, Starfleet would know. Though O'Brien made have had a hand in improving the design, as well as working out the wrinkles to overcome the design flaws that made the ship unstable.
Another thing that speaks to the leverl of communication between he and Starfleet is the fact that when the Sao Paulo is delivered just a couple of months after the Defiant was destroyed, much of what he had done had (apparently) been adopted for the new ship along with the armor. Which, as far as we know was adapted to no other ship.
And, even though Miles was a veritable "shade tree" genius, if he could come up with ablative armor the proper career for him would be in R&D, not teaching officer candidates at SF academy. Wouldn't you think?
Another thing that speaks to the leverl of communication between he and Starfleet is the fact that when the Sao Paulo is delivered just a couple of months after the Defiant was destroyed, much of what he had done had (apparently) been adopted for the new ship along with the armor. Which, as far as we know was adapted to no other ship.
And, even though Miles was a veritable "shade tree" genius, if he could come up with ablative armor the proper career for him would be in R&D, not teaching officer candidates at SF academy. Wouldn't you think?
I'm not sure we should consider the armor an "invention" as much as an "application".
I mean, it doesn't take an engineering genius to install an extra steel plate on a Humvee door - it takes a good welder who knows something about automobiles.
The ablative armor may be a more complex technology than a steel plate, but it doesn't appear to be a novel technology. When Benteen calls home base, she doesn't say "The Defiant has some sort of a strange new protection system I wasn't told about". She says "Someone's equipped her with Ablative Armor (TM) and neglected to inform Starfleet Operations".
Obviously, ablative armor is an established technology any random Starfleet officer would be familiar with. Also obviously, most starships are not equipped with it. Why not? The analogy to hillbilly armor seems apt here: well-built ships usually don't need that stuff to begin with, or at least there are severe penalties from frivorous application (weight and stability penalties usually limit the degree of armoring in the real world).
Timo Saloniemi
I mean, it doesn't take an engineering genius to install an extra steel plate on a Humvee door - it takes a good welder who knows something about automobiles.
The ablative armor may be a more complex technology than a steel plate, but it doesn't appear to be a novel technology. When Benteen calls home base, she doesn't say "The Defiant has some sort of a strange new protection system I wasn't told about". She says "Someone's equipped her with Ablative Armor (TM) and neglected to inform Starfleet Operations".
Obviously, ablative armor is an established technology any random Starfleet officer would be familiar with. Also obviously, most starships are not equipped with it. Why not? The analogy to hillbilly armor seems apt here: well-built ships usually don't need that stuff to begin with, or at least there are severe penalties from frivorous application (weight and stability penalties usually limit the degree of armoring in the real world).
Timo Saloniemi
Interesting. Well, I thought to check with Memory Alpha, and there is a bit of canon regarding ablative armor. Good reading. http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Ablative_armor
. . . and at Wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_armor More real than I thought!
Probably few ships would have to take the kind of pounding the Borg could dish out and survive long enough to do some damage. But that's just what the Enterprise did in First Contact. Makes me wonder just why this ship is equiped with it rather than a more advanced hull like the Sovereign class ships?
. . . and at Wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_armor More real than I thought!
Probably few ships would have to take the kind of pounding the Borg could dish out and survive long enough to do some damage. But that's just what the Enterprise did in First Contact. Makes me wonder just why this ship is equiped with it rather than a more advanced hull like the Sovereign class ships?
For all we know, Sovereign, Galaxy, Excelsior and the rest of the capital ships are indeed equipped with it - it is merely unusual for any of the smaller vessels to carry this gear. This would be quite analogous to the use of armor in past warships. In WWI, Captain Benteen of the 1st rate battleship Lakota would indeed be within her rights to be mightily surprised by an armor belt found protecting the commandeered light destroyer Defiant.
Indeed, the TNG Tech Manual explicitly states that the Galaxy has ablative armor. It is quoted as being used for "meteoroid protection", but then again, the same book tries to pass off photon torpedoes as a derivative of spacelane-clearing demolition charges. Under that smokescreen, the Galaxy (and possibly generations upon generations of capital ships before her) probably is a far more heavily armored vessel than the Defiant ever was.
Timo Saloniemi
Indeed, the TNG Tech Manual explicitly states that the Galaxy has ablative armor. It is quoted as being used for "meteoroid protection", but then again, the same book tries to pass off photon torpedoes as a derivative of spacelane-clearing demolition charges. Under that smokescreen, the Galaxy (and possibly generations upon generations of capital ships before her) probably is a far more heavily armored vessel than the Defiant ever was.
Timo Saloniemi
