Class Name : Defiant

Type : Escort (officially), Warship (unofficially)

Number in Service : 3 (ST-DS9: "A Call to Arms" and ST-VOY: "Message in a Bottle")

Designations : USS DEFIANT NX-74205

Status:Active, stationed at Deep Space Nine

NOTE : No info on other two ships

PHYSICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Length : 163 meters (535 ft)

Beam : 106.7 meters (350 ft)

Draft : 30.5 meters (100 ft)

Weight : 50,000 metric tons

Hull : Ablative armor matrix (does not contain Nuetronium)

Number of decks : 6

COMPLEMENT

Total Crew Complement : 50

Passengers : 0 (Unless carrying less than its max crew capacity)

NOTE : The Defiant can be run at full effectiveness with as few as two (helm and tactical); however, three is better (engineering). One person could run the entire ship, but with a marked loss of combat effectiveness.

VELOCITY

Maximum Impulse Speed : 0.92 C

Maximum Sustained Warp Speed : 9.8

Maximum Warp Speed : 9.9992

The engines have a tendancy to outrun the inertial dampers during extreme manuvers, making the Defiant the only ship in the Federation that can "pull-G's." It has a turn rate of approximately 180 degrees per second (watch "Shattered Mirror" when Sisko is at the helm for an example of this).

SINGLE-FIRE TORPEDO TUBES

Number : 3

Location : Two forward, and one aft (mounted between the impulse engines).

Weapons : Contains both Photon and Quantum Torpedoes. The Defiant also carries four Tri-Cobalt Devices (Conjecture - not verified).

(The following info about the Defiant's triangular packs was provided by Daniel Blackmer, and verified by Paramount.) The triangular packs on the sides of the Defiant hold the torpedoes, but they are not the torpedo tubes. The torpedo tubes are higher up and slightly back. The triangular packs are meant to be able to hold 20 photon or quantum torpedoes (not both). The triangular packs are made so they can be removed at a starbase. The starbase can then just insert two more packs. The Defiant has tractor beams that come out of the sockets where the triangular packs fit and pull the new packs to the ship in under 10 minutes. Thus this can be done during a battle without going inside the starbase and waiting for them to refill the torpedo tubes.

TRI-COBALT DEVICE

(This info on Tri-Cobalt Device was found at Utopia Planitia Fleetyards - Weapon Systems. It is based upon conjecture that the Defiant carries this device.)

The design of the Tri-Cobalt device is highly unique in the Alpha Quadrant. It uses a three tear warhead. One compartment is loaded with Antimatter, one with around 200 Quantum Filaments and an appropriate amount of Tri-Cobalt. Upon impact there is a number of things that happen inside the warhead. Firstly the Quantum Filaments are released into the Tri-Cobalt chamber creating a cascade reaction, mixing the Tri-cobalt into a highly volatile mixture. A millisecond later the magnetic containment field around the Antimatter is released and the active Tri-Cobalt and Antihydrogen mix together creating a lethal explosion. The weapon is capable of disabling starships with one blow, as starfleet unfortunatly found out. Initial testing of the weapon took place just before Wolf 359. Designers were panicked and rushing the project through under Starfleet's hasty gaze. USS Keel, an Excelsior class ship was the test vessel. The first few barrages in the Asteroid field in the Terran system proved to be massively successful. However, in the final day of testing an accident occurred. One of the devices lodged itself in its launching tube and the warhead went critical. The resultant explosion tore the saucer section clean off the Keel and minutes later the warp core in the drive section went critical. A total of 40 lives were lost in the accident and only weeks later Wolf 359 occurred.

Designers eventually figured out what had gone wrong. The Tri-Cobalt device was in theory much heavier than a standard photon torpedo, and although the designers had taken this into account when modifying the launching tubes on the Keel, they had not been sufficient. After the disaster at Wolf 359, Starfleet was still interested in using the Tri-Cobalt device on starships. Quantum Torpedos were now in development; however, the sheer destructive capability of the weapon was seen as a possible defense against the Borg, whose vessels were very large targets. The designers took the launching system back to the drawing board and eventually came up with a highly safe system. From that point on Starfleet ordered all new ships to be fitted with this kind of launching system and a steady retrofitting of the defensive capabilities of the other ships in the fleet (Note the Lakota). The standard ship compliment is for four Tri-Cobalt devices. Any more would pose great danger to the ship. In addition, ships on diplomatic or internal missions have the warheads removed for safety reasons.

QUANTUM TORPEDOES

Type : Mark II Quantum Torpedo capable of pattern and independent firing

Number : 10

Range : 4,200,000 kilometers

Output : The torpedo, upon impact, generates a quantum oscillation which rapidly brings together the antihydrogen and plasma packets, annihilating themselves and igniting the falmerite explosives laden in the torpedo, resulting in an explosion approximately 10-to-the-fifth-power megajoules, roughly equivalent to four photon torpedoes.

PHOTON TORPEDOES

Number : 2500

PHASER EMITTERS

(This info on the Defiant's Phaser Emitters was provided by Aaron Barnes. It was compiled from both keen observation of the DS9 episodes, and by close examination of the Defiant model, which is manufactured by AMT/Ertl. This info is intended to replace my original info about the Phaser Arrays & Phaser Turrets. However, I have left that info in so you can draw your own conclusions as to which is more accurate.)

Number : 22 (4 forward, 4 aft, 8 dorsal, 6 ventral)

Forward Emitter Location : Inner sides of the warp nacelles.

Aft Emitter Location : Just behind the impulse engines in two rows of 2.

Dorsal Emitter Location : Two rows of 4 next to warp nacelles.

Ventral Emitter Location : Total of 6 emitters arranged on underside of Defiant.

TRIPLE-INTERLOCKED FIRE REDUNDANT PHASER ARRAYS

Number : 4 (2 forward, 2 aft)

Location : The forward arrays are located at the inner sides of the warp nacelles, and the aft arrays are located just behind the impulse engines.

Range : Unknown

Output : The Defiant's phasers are the most powerful in Starfleet. They are 500 MW (total output 2000 MW). The powerful phasers on the Defiant are achieved by channeling power direcly from the warp core.

PHASER TURRETS

Number : 2

Location : The bridge-like construction on the top and bottom of the Defiant are actually phaser turrets, while the bridge itself is deeper down and better protected.

Range : Unknown

Output : 500 MW each

CLOAKING DEVICE

Type : Romulan (specific model unknown)

Number : 1

Range : The cloaking field envelops the hull of the ship itself to minimize subspace distortion. During warp flight, the cloak is extended to mask the warp field.

Output : When active, all defensive system power is transferred to the cloak, which gives it enough power to fully cloak the strong signature that Defiant puts out. The total amount of power used is classified, but goes into the gigawatt range. The cloak masks all energy put out by Defiant, making it virtually invisible to everything except the most powerful subspace scanner (and if a threat vessel puts that much power into scanning instead of weapons, it deserves to be destroyed).

NOTE: The Treaty of Algeron

METAPHASIC SHIELDS

The Defiant's shields are likely to be equal to those of the Galaxy class. If that is the case then it carries 12 shield generators each with an output of 384 MW. Up to 7 can be used at one time (the remaining 5 are backups) for a total shield output of 2688 MW. The shields have the (now-apparently standard) metaphasic modification which allows them to enter the corona of a star.

ABLATIVE ARMOR

The ablative armor matrix on the Defiant is capable of protecting the ship from heavy attack for periods of up to 1 minute with the shields down. The Defiant's nacelles are also armored.

When the Enterprise-D first encountered the Borg, and Starfleet realized the Borg's power, Starfleet asked for a new line of defense. Thus, the Defiant was born in 2366. Also built were the Soverign (Enterprise-E) and Bradbury classes. The Defiant is, officially, an experimental escort-class starship. Unofficially, the Defiant is a warship. It has no families onboard, no science labs, no holodecks, or any other comforts of home. The Defiant was intended to replace the Galaxy, Ambassador, and Nebula class ships as the Federation's primary instrument of defense. However, when the Borg threat subsided, and design flaws turned up, the Defiant was put into drydock. In 2371, the Defiant was assigned to Deep Space Nine, under the command of Captain Benjamin Sisko, to guard against the Dominion in the Gamma Quadrant.

According to a provision in The Treaty of Algeron, The Federation must abstain from developing or possessing cloaking technology. However, this provision was set aside through a mutual agreement between The Romulan Star Empire and the Federation. The Defiant is equipped with a Romulan cloaking device, which is licensed to The Federation. However, the cloaking device is only to be used in the Gamma quadrant in exchange for all information Starfleet gathers about the Dominion. The cloaking device is to be used to allow the Defiant to move undetected through the Gamma quadrant, and it is not to be used in the Alpha quadrant. The Romulans allowed the Federation to have the cloaking device because they do not have access to the wormhole directly.

There is nothing revolutionary about the technology used in the Defiant (it does not use bio-neural gel-packs for example). Instead it relies upon proven and sturdy equipment that won't have any unforeseen technical glitches. This makes it a solid reliable piece of equipment which is exactly what you want in a warship. Even the ablative armor is nothing new. It's an old design which is built to vaporize and break off as it's hit, thus protecting the ship itself from damage. We use something very similar now on the Space Shuttle for re-entry. The real revolutions in the Defiant's design are in the way it is all put together (i.e. compact as opposed to the flowing look) and in what is left out of the ship (the lavish crew, science, and cargo accommodations of the Enterprise-D take up more space than 50 Defiants).