Hello All, Ric here with another video covering a starship from the Borg to Dominion War era,
and the fourth vessel in the collective of ships that made their debut in First Contact
before appearing in Deep Space Nine. This time, the Saber class. Spelt alternatingly
in the English “R E” and American “E R” so… that’s fun. On a personal note,
next to the Akira class, the Sabre has to be a close favourite to come out of this collection,
possibly even beating it out because of one design detail I noticed while writing this
video. So, to begin with, if you have seen the other
companion videos in this playlist, I am sure you can guess where the sabre class originated.
It was one of four designs alongside the Akira, Steamrunner and Norway class to be designed
as a ship to feature in Star Trek First Contact to bolster the Federation fleet. As with the
others, it was one of several ships to emerge from a string of concepts and elements of
its design are identifiable in the drawings of Alex Jaeger before being modelled at Industrial
Light and Magic. The design process included the reuse of the
digital Galaxy class texture for hull elements, giving it a clear lineage and place in the
timeline, something post Galaxy, but designed alongside the newer wave of vessels. As with
the other ships, the design was to be consciously different from the silhouette of the Enterprise
E, so the hero ship would be identifiable in fleet manoeuvres. The vessel, like the
Defiant was also designed to be very compact; so no neck, no pylons. Like the Norway class,
the final model was rougher than the hero ships and led to a less rounded design. Still
looks great in my opinion and the one thing that I noticed, the secondary hull is tapered
to a triangle, which is obvious, but when looking at the rear view, you can see that
its actually tapered and with a rear overhang that reminds me of the stern of an old sailing
Galleon. And that instantly catapulted it up the rungs for my ship tier list because
now I see it as Star Trek take on a fantasy airship and that’s my jam.
In universe, this is pretty much tied into its development too. It was indeed created
alongside the other ships that were being designed to survive the Borg. The Akira was
a patrol and exploratory vessel, the Defiant was an experimental and overpowered escort.
The Norway was a highly specialised crisis response vessel and the Steamrunner a strike
and survey ship. The Sabre, as the name implies, was a combat ship in its entirety. Now not
to say that it could not undertake other duties, but the Saber class was there to support larger
vessels in fleet combat without the extended design time and tuning that was required to
forge a Defiant class. It was to be a Tactical Escort and patrol vessel so expected to see
trouble frequently, either deployed to combat it, or on the hunt for ne’er-do-wells. I
always wanted to use ne’er-do-wells. And miscreants. Vessels produced were often named
after various culture’s bladed weapons, such as the Ushan or Rapier, but less aggressive
names were dedicated to an array of historical and mythological references so this was by
no means a standard. The Advanced Ship Design Bureau began work
on it in 2370, and commissioned the first ship, the USS Saber NX-61900. In the same
year, at least two more were launched, the Yeager NCC-61947 and Argo 61357. The primary
shipyard working on this design was Utopia Planitia while the propulsions systems were
worked on from the Cochrane Complex at Proxima Centauri and other systems at the Andorian
Imperial Shipyards. One feature that might not be initially noticed,
is that it has a forward facing launch bay which plays very well in interception roles.
While chasing down pirates for example, it could launch shuttles ahead of it for boarding
actions if needed. Its sensor systems too were tuned for artificial sources more than
scientific survey, meaning it had better eyes for detecting other ships than the observing
stars, although this is Starfleet we are talking about, so of course it still had above-par
scanners on a galactic average. The Saber class is a very compact and flat
vessel, following the design ethos of ships of the time, reducing its profile for both
subspace warp reasons and combat. It was 160 metres long, 111 meters wide and only 62 meters
tall. Although there are some deviations in the scale from other sources, these are closer
to the onscreen scaled size which was 190 metres and it certainly is almost as wide
as it is long, so I’d say closer to 150 meters wide. It had a very minimal 6 decks
and a crew of only 40 personnel, although it could house up to 200 for emergencies.
Being a smaller vessel, like the Defiant, it was greatly manoeuvrable at impulse speeds.
Later models have even an additional impulse engine across the front, meaning that this
ship seems capable of some crazy turns and breaks, as well as being able to fly backwards
with a degree of effectiveness (although I could only find one reference to this).
Its warp drive was up to date for the time. Eclipsed by the Sovereign class but on par
with its contemporary ships, it could cruise at warp 6 and reach warp 9.7 for 12 hours
before engine shutdown. Considering its scale, this is pretty impressive and calls to mind
the Norway and Defiant style warp cores that were highly advanced but more compact.
In terms of armaments, the Sabre class was very well decked out, considering its required
roll. It had 4 type ten phaser arrays and two photon torpedo launchers. However, most
of its weaponry was forward facing, with only 1 phaser array able to hit rear targets. This
gave it an obvious exploit, however as mentioned, it was very nimble, so the trade-off was mitigated
by its manoeuvrability. Being in this line of sight was a recipe for a very bad day.
Its fore shuttlebay featured 2 type 8 shuttlecraft, but that’s it aside from the workerbees.
Like most other ships expected to see combat, it was decked out in ablative armour after
the Defiant pioneered the way. In fact, that’s a good summary for the Saber class; that the
Defiant tested the waters for a compact, high speed, high power escort, and the Saber was
the followup ship. It was easier to construct, slightly larger meaning that it could be deployed
for other duties and had greater patrol potential and had less chance of spontaneously exploding
if you turned too hard at high speeds. The saber class pretty much rose to be one
of my favourite ships the more I looked into it and honestly, I think it stands a chance
of staying around longer than the Defiant class considering its big enough to be retooled
into other roles if needed. That about covers the Saber class, thanks for watching this
breakdown, I’ve been Ric, until the next one, goodbye!