Hello all, Ric here once more with a look into the history of one of the more popular vessels
of Star Trek, the Defiant Class starship, the first Federation vessel to be designed with
only warfare in mind. But still not called a warship, it's an escort vessel, clearly.
When Starfleet encountered the Borg, they began a radical overhaul of their fleet,
suddenly aware how much further they had to go in terms of technology and the level of
some threats out there that they could not cope with, currently. The first design they started
from scratch was the Defiant class escort made entirely to combat the Borg. Concept and the
design phase began in 2366, pretty much as soon as the reports of the Borg encounter made their way
back to Starfleet Headquarters. After The battle of Wolf 359, barely a year later, Benjamin Sisko
was assigned to the Defiant project and according to memory beta, took the lead on its development.
In real life, the Defiant was added for the episode called the Search which was at the
beginning of the tensions of the Dominion and the active conflicts escalating. As such a defensive
vessel for DS9 was required so the station was not on its own and a fleet or runabouts would
just not cut it. Despite this, early plans were for a form of suped-up runabout sized craft by
Jim Martin. Then the decision was made to create a full starship instead. Among original concepts
for the USS Defiant, were the early designs for a standard configuration of nacelles with a more
angled look, but the one that stood out was a Cardassian-style concept for a freighter.
This was further adapted and sleekened into the profile we see today of the Defiant.
From the start, it’s role was to be that of a warship, the first vessel that basically would
drop the focus on exploration and science in favour for battle effectiveness and it
was the first ship to have its nacelles pulled in as part of its hull design.
Originally called the Valiant, that name was switched out for Defiant because Voyager was
going to be airing at the same time and they wanted to avoid using another ”V” for a main ship.
Additionally, when the USS Defiant was destroyed, it was also to be replaced by a completely new
vessel, but time constraints and budget did not permit this. So we got a second Defiant
class USS Defiant, re-registered and all. Switching to the lore of the shows now.
The first of its class was the famous USS Defiant NX-74205 and was ready in 2368 for
trials.. This prototype had a lot of testing to undergo to iron out the numerous design issues.
Among these problems was the innate fact that it was far too powerful for its size. This excessive
power was tied into its weapons systems and drawn from the warp core. However the vessel
would literally begin to shake itself apart when flying at maximum speeds and running on full
power. A more conservative warp core would have depowered the vessel to safer levels,
but so interconnected and specialised was the Defiant that this would have required a radical
redesign and undermined the vessel’s role. The initial prototype was developed and
constructed at Utopia Planitia Fleetyards , while further designs were slated to begin production
at the ASDB integration facility at Antares IV. As more designs came to the fore, like the Akira,
Sabre and Steamrunner classes which were far more balanced, more effort was put into these ships,
developing them faster than the Defiant, overtaking the ship and eventually putting a
halt to the testing of the Defiant. This shelved the project for 3 years until the threat of the
Dominion War required station Deep Space Nine to have a stronger defensive presence. Sisko,
in charge of DS9, reached out to Starfleet Command and convinced them to take the Defiant out of
storage and commission it to service in 2371. The missions that the Defiant was expected to
undertake were all those of patrols and combat, but it bore the brunt of the backlash from those
within Starfleet who felt that the direction Starfleet was heading was too aggressive. This
was understandable as the vessel bore many of the institution’s most powerful developments in
weaponry and battle systems, with little regard given to comfort or the goals of exploration.
For the USS Defiant, space is a commodity and there is probably even less room than
you might suspect on first look. For a start the two wings are the warp assembly so there
is no space in there, the rear of the vessel is mostly reactors and impulse drives, and the nose
is armament storage. So it’s only really a portion of the middle section that is habitable deckspace.
For this reason, everything a Starship would have to operate is there, just minimized,
from the double quarter bunk beds, to the size of Main Engineering. Well… the only Engineering.The
medical bay too only featured 3 beds and one chair with only a desk in the corner for the Doctor’s
office. The main bridge was one of the most spacious rooms but even this was reduced in scale
compared to a regular starship bridge and you can forget the recreational facilities or even a bar;
It had only a rudimentary mess hall. The Defiant class was 170 metres long,
134 meters wide and only 30 metres tall. This made it one of the narrowest profile vessels
produced that was a Starship designation. It was only 3 decks tall however featured
other spaces for its inner workings that were accessible, possibly explaining why it was also
listed as 5 decks. It’s crew complement was only around 45 and an emergency capacity of only 150.
It had a mass of 355,000 metric tons and was equipped with a specialised warp core rated 1500+
cochranes which for comparison is the same sort of reactor you would put in a Nebula class vessel,
a ship over 9.3 times the mass of the Defiant class, for a scale comparison. So when Starfleet
had concerns of the vessel’s suitability, hopefully you can see where they were coming
from. This warp core itself was incredibly compact for its power rating too, leading to it being one
of the most advanced ones for its time. There were several extra safety systems fitted around
this overcharged core, the intercooler systems and the plasma-flow systems which were supposed
to limit the ship’s ability. However these could be disengaged to improve the performance of the
impulse and warp capabilities. At the cost of, you know… safety. Therefore its cruise speed was warp
6, but its full speed was 9.982 with burnout at 12 hours. Provided it did not shake itself apart.
Additionally it had a very powerful impulse drive that took up a large percentage of the vessel’s
rear, giving it the speed and maneuverability level of a far smaller craft. The Defiant was
the first ship to have the newest ablative armour applied that would disperse and prolong the impact
of energy weapons to lessen their damage. It was equipped with 2 torpedo launchers
of variable payload, and two to four phaser arrays. However its primary weapons were the
four Pulse Phaser cannons. I have covered these weapons in a recent video already,
but suffice to say they were very much a specialty for this ship before they passed into wider use,
this was because the USS Defiant, and perhaps later Defiant class ships, tied their pulse phaser
cannons into their eps power grid and drained 15 percent of the ship’s power into the cannon’s
output. This made the Defiant’s armaments some of the heaviest hitting in starfleet.
As part of rising tension with the Dominion, the Romulan Star Empire permitted the Defiant
to operate with a Romulan Cloaking device in addition to its already impressive loadout with
the addendum that it only be used in the Gamma Quadrant and that all intel gathered was shared.
The Type-10 shuttle was specifically designed too for the Defiant class as a compact shuttle
considering the little space available on the escort. One advantage for its size was the fact
that it was capable of planetary landings so its complement of these shuttles was only 2.
While the ship was too small to feature any sort of separation systems it could
separate the front “nose” of the ship, which contained the ship’s complement of torpedoes
and itself be used as a warhead in a last ditch effort to deal catastrophic damage.
Many of the innovations created for the Defiant class went on to be implemented on later ships,
such as the ablative armour and Pulse Phaser Cannons.
So this covers the Defiant Class. It was a radical departure from the Federation norm behind the
scenes, and also in the canon of the shows. It faced a lot of criticism in its development for
being too aggressive and focused on warfare, and if you incorporate the beta content,
then Sisko not only worked on the design team, but was one of the leads there, explaining
perhaps the ship’s ridiculous power level after Sisko suffered a personal loss at Wolf 359.
As can be seen in the shows, with a dedicated crew who can work with its flaws and manage them,
the Defiant class is an excellent warship and I think a great reason for it being shelved
for so long was for this fact. It completely goes against Starfleet’s mantra of ship design in more
than just its layout, its philosophy. No thought was given to enhanced sensors and it had the bare
minimum of labs for scientific surveys. It had no guest accommodation and no recreational suites for
diplomatic ventures, no other purpose except to be Starfleet’s fist, shed of the velvet glove.
Other vessels such as the Akira and Luna served as strong defensive ships too, but they also had
other duties and utility, but were also larger while the Defiant was lean and very mean. It
remains to be seen if Starfleet would ever produce such a single-minded vessel again.
When outfitted with a cloak, as other Defiant class vessels have been shown to have,
it is a very dangerous vessel, probably in more ways than even things like the Sovereign.
Because the Sovereign might be powerful but it has options, while the Captain of a Defiant generally
only has the proverbial hammer in their toolkit. But it is damn cool. Thanks for watching this
breakdown of the Defiant vessels, I’ve been Ric and until the next time, thanks again and goodbye!