You know that moment in Voyager where Tom Paris walks onto the bridge and Chakotay gives him schtick for being 20 seconds late for his shift,
then Tom goes to the Helm to find a little box with a single pip inside it sitting on his chair, and he is promoted back to Lieutenant Junior Grade and everyone has a giggle about it? … I didn’t get that moment.
Oh alright fine, there was a whoopee cushion. With a pip in it.
YES, my lords ladies and sovereigns it finally happened; through grit, hard work and *cough*audience peer pressure, thank you all*cough* Captain Jack has finally promoted me from Ensign Adam, to Lieutenant Adam.
Will he and Editor Wizard Troy forgive me for pausing for fanfare?
Dang it i’m making myself look like a Cardassian again… anyway, let’s get into it.
There is an organisation which creeps beneath the surface of Starfleet and the Federation,
and in order to carry out their covert operations, they need ships.
That’s right kids, today we’re looking at the many starships of Section 31!
If this is your first time here, welcome to Trek Central! I’m your host, Lieutenant Adam, and let’s get into a new ship breakdown video!
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Section 31 has been a part of the Star Trek Universe since they were first introduced in Deep Space Nine - in my humble opinion the best of the many Trek series..
Recent projects in the Star Trek Universe, both the Kelvin Movies and Star Trek: Discovery have added to the tapestry of this elusive organisation,
and along with the expanded lore, a bounty of stealthy ships.
In this video we breakdown the many vessels you see in this secret fleet, what they are about, and the battles they served in as well as some behind the scenes info on what went into designing the dark reflection of Starfleet ships!
First off, let's start with the Section 31 ships of the Prime Universe.
During the mid-23rd century Section 31 was considered an important part of Starfleet Intelligence, and was officially sanctioned,
working more akin to the Romulan Tal Shiar or the Cardassian Obsidian Order.
Section 31 ships that were active during the 23rd century were specifically constructed to support its organisations covert operations.
The hulls of Section 31 ships were a darker colour compared to other Federation Starships at the time.
These starship classes also deviated from traditional Federation starship design that was so well known within the 23rd.
The NCIA-93-type starship was one such ship class employed by Section 31.
The Vessel was 274 meters in length and instead of a saucer design attached to nacelles, the primary hull was triangular, which was a theme consistent with Section 31’s fleet of this era.
Not only did the exterior deviate from Starfleet ship design, but the interior did as well with the ship's bridge being two stories
and not featuring the usual Captain’s Chair format consistent with starfleet ships.
The ship was able to mask its warp signature, which aided in its covert operations as well as retract its nacelles when not at warp,
with this mode being referred to as “Dark Mode”, presumably this aided the ship in running dark and avoiding detection during covert operations,
such as when Captain Leland’s NCIA-93 type starship was operating in Klingon Space, following the Federation - Klingon war.
The retractable nacelles of the NCIA-93 type would serve further purpose, with minimising the silhouette of the ship from sensor sweeps, and also so its closed up look would not look Federation
compared to the nacelles out.
So if the ship was found in its “Dark mode” it’s design would not give away that it was a Federation ship.
Section 31 was an advanced organisation technologically compared to the rest of Starfleet and the Federation,
and their ships were an example of this. Ships of this type had the ability to holographically alter their outer appearance by disguising themselves as another object such as an asteroid.
This was similar to the Romulan Drone Ship seen during the 22nd century,
which used multispectral emitters, which could have been recovered from wreckage of these drones ships a century prior.
This theory would actually make sense, as we know Section 31 were operating during the NX-01 Enterprise’s conflict with the Romulan Drone Ships.
Their ships were also equipped with tractor rigs, a piece of technology which enhanced a ship's tractor beam strengths by tethering the tractor beams to probes that could be attached to other objects.
The Ships operating system was also highly advanced for its time, being more consistent with the LCARs design of the 24rd century instead of the typical Starfleet computer design used during the 23rd century.
The Nimrod Class starship was one such ship class employed by Section 31. The Vessel was 872 meters in length and like the NCIA-93 type starship’s primary hull,
was triangular with a cutout in the middle and a much larger secondary hull underneath the saucer.
The ship utilised 4 nacelles. Whether these nacelles could fold like the NCIA-93 type, or whether the ship could go into “Dark Mode” is unknown.
One thing which differentiated the Nimrod class from the NCIA-93 type, other than its size and design, was that the Nimrod class carried hundreds of small drones that could be operated remotely.
During Normal operations, the drones were docked to the saucer section of the ship, and when launched the framework on the primary hull became an open lattice.
Another 4 nacelle ship class in Section 31’s fleet of ships, was known as the ‘Hou-Yi-Class’ [Hoe E],
possibly named after the mythological Chinese archer. Instead of the 4 nacelles being behind the primary hull, like in the Nimrod class,
the Nacelles strutted off the ventral and dorsal side of Primary hull of the ship, and above the primary hull was a rollbar like structure, similar to the Miranda class of starship.
Also with a similar structure to the Miranda class, were two nacelle ships used by Section 31, with a larger version known as the “Deimos class”,
and a smaller version known as the “Shiva-Class”.
All these other ships also had drones docked into the framework of their primary hull, with only the small NCIA-93 type scout ship not having this technology.
The Drones docked onto the Section 31 vessels came equipped with an armament of phasers comparable to the phasers used by class c shuttles as well as utilising refracted lattice shields for defense,
which were strong shields, but left them vulnerable when targeted from the port and starboard directions simultaneously.
The Drones were the size of one man fighters, and as they were unmanned, could be used in kamikaze style combat.
All Section 31 vessels previously described were present during the Red Angel incident of 2257.
With the main ship being the NCIA-93, under the command of Captain Leland, who initially helped the USS Discovery in finding Spock and the Red Angel.
Unfortunately Leland and his ship fell under the control of a rogue AI known as “Control”.
And that is far worse than any crappy sunglasses...
Not only Leland, but the entire Section 31 fleet would fall under the influence of “Control”,
with this fleet fighting a major battle near the planet of Xahea. Control and it’s new fleet fought against the combined forces of Starfleet, The Klingon Empire and the newly liberated Kelpians.
Control was completely defeated during this battle, with section 31 being officially shut down following the incident,
though was unofficially kept alive through its new head, Ash Tyler. What happened to the NCIA-93 type starship, or any other Section 31 vessel after this point is unknown,
whether it was used by the new Section 31 or not is also unknown.
Look it's best for you to presume whenever we're dealing with Section 31,
the phrase "That is unknown", features prominetly.
Perhaps the lore-explanation reason for these Section 31 ships being absent by the time of Deep Space Nine is that Section 31 as an organisation moved further back into the shadows,
given it was officially shut down after all.
This would make logical sense in the grand scheme of things.
The section 31 ships were designed by Star Trek: Discovery Season Two lead ship designer Ryan Dening, who had taken over from renowned Trek ship designer John Eaves who worked on Season One and who had moved over to Star Trek: Picard.
The Intention of the NCIA-93 type ship was for a stealth ship that operates in the shadows and could practically look like it can hide from other ships.
An inspiration for this stealth design also came from F-117A stealth aircraft in the real world, with its angular design which you can see in the design of the NCIA-93 and other ships in the fleet.
The angular design of this new fleet of ships was also meant to set them apart from other Federation ship designs, but still retain something that lets you know it's a Federation ship, with its nacelle configuration.
From the very beginning, the intention of the battle of Xahea was to include drones in the battle, so the design of the other Section 31 ships was to be motherships for these drone fighters.
Now let’s look at the Kelvin Timeline’s version of Section 31 and the ships that they employ. Section 31 existed in this timeline as well, given the timeline split did not occur until the 23rd century, so naturally we can explore what starships fit into the timeline even more.
The only section 31 ship we see in the Kelvin Timeline is the dreadnought USS Vengeance.
The USS Vengeance was a dreadnought class ship constructed at the IO facility around the Jovian moon of Io, a secret Section 31 ship building facility, and was launched in the year 2259.
The Dreadnought class was described as two times the size of the Kelvin USS Enterprise, three times its speed.
Making the vessel around 1300 metres long and able to reach warp 12 with its advanced warp capabilities known as “Mark IV Capabilities”.
The ship utilised a darker hull than that used by the Starfleet of the Kelvin timeline, but still had similar elements in its design, with a primary saucer section, attached to a secondary hull and two nacelles.
The Vengeance was equipped with an array of advanced phasers that arced towards a target, seemingly with a tracking system and phaser hits could penetrate through the shields and cause major hull breaches to even the flagship of the Federation at the time,
the USS Enterprise.
The vessel also had type VII phaser drones and swivel mounted Photon Torpedos launchers that could be deployed from the dorsal side of the saucer section from beneath the hull, which could rotate and launch torpedoes at various firing arcs of the ship.
The ship was heavily armed and used several experimental technologies, which included stealth technology, which may not have been as good as a romulan cloaking device, but still made the ship incredibly hard to detect.
The Dreadnaught class utilised highly advanced AI systems to reduce the amount of crew needed to operate the vessel,
with the vessel theoretically allowing a single officer to operate the ship. Engineering was designed so that it could be run automatically, with only crew needed on the bridge of the vessel.
The transporter system of the vengeance was advanced allowing site-to-site transport of multiple entities at the same time, allowing the transport of 72 objects at one time.
Likewise, the sensors of the vessel were advanced, with multidimensional radar and space region observer systems.
The deflector of the ship could be covered while the ship was not at warp, to presumably protect the deflector from damage during combat.
The ship's hull was extremely durable, and stayed intact even after the detonation of 72 photon torpedoes inside the vessel.
With the ship largely automated and requiring minimal crew, the ship had several hangers, with hanger 7 of the ship being located on Deck 13. So the vessel had at least 7 hangers.
The USS Vengeance was launched in the year 2259 in the Kelvin timeline and was captained by Admiral Alexander Marcus, the then head of starfleet and head of Section 31.
The ship was designed by the Kelvin-Version of Khan Noonien Singh, a eugenically augmented superhuman from Earth’s Eugenic period in the late 20th century.
Interestingly enough, Admiral Marcus had a model of the super secret ship in his office. I wonder how he explained that to people who asked…”what, oh that? That’s just a thing I got off Wish.com. The listing said it was a Constitution class. I’m just glad it wasn’t a hot dog van.”
Anyway, Marcus used the Vengeance to catch up to the USS Enterprise, who had captured Khan, and was going to expose Marcus’ plans to start a war with the Klingon Empire.
Khan would take command of the vengeance after killing Admiral Marcus, and attempted to destroy the Enterprise, but was ultimately disabled upon beaming an arsenal of 72 torpedos’ believing them to store his fellow augmented brothers and sisters.
The diabled Vengeance would crash into San Francisco on Earth, leveling the city in its path. Khan would be defeated by Commander Spock of the Enterprise, and put back into stasis.
The intention of the Vengeance was also to look like a dark reflection of the Enterprise, and went through numerous designs, being conceptualised as an angular black-hulled leviathan.
In some designs the saucer had way more cutouts in it, almost being a crescent shape instead of a saucer.
The design went through numerous iterations over many months, but other than the main hull changing design a lot, one of the biggest changes was the Bridge of the USS Vengeance.
Some of the original designs for the bridge were very different from the conventional bridge layouts of Starfleet Vessels.
With multi-leveled bridges, similar to that seen in Star Trek Discovery’s Section 31 ship bridges. But with more central elevation to elevate the captain of the vessel.
The USS Vengeance also had a lot of unseen weaponry, with the team at ILM going a little too far for what was needed for the film.
There were eight to twelve different kinds of weapon systems. One such weapon system were Phaser drones, which can be seen on the USS Vengeance model, next to the deflector dish, but were intended to detach from the vessel like drones, and fire phaser beams in a 360 degree arc.
The USS Vengeance was the first ship seen in the employ of section 31. The USS Vengeance was looked at for inspiration when designing the Section 31 ships for Discovery, with the main takeaway being its darker hull colour, which helped to sell that these were ships for a more morally grey organisation than that of Starfleet.
Before we round off this video, we should also mention the Section 31 ships in the Kelvin timeline from the Comics.
The first we will get out of the way is the USS Vanguard, which was simply a miranda style Kelvin ship, utilised by Section 31, so we won’t really talk about it. However the other vessels are very interesting.
First off we have a USS Kelvin-Style Section 31 ship, seen in the Star Trek ongoing comic series. These vessels, as said, bear a resemblance to the Kelvin-type starship, with a saucer section,
which in this case is more like a crescent section, and a dorsal and ventral nacelle. Whether these two sections are both nacelles, or one is a secondary hull like the USS Kelvin is unknown.
These ships employed some form of stealth technology, which allowed the ships to move undetected by a fleet of romulan ships. Whether this was a dark mode similar to the darkmode used by the NCIA-93 type starship from discovery, or a form of cloaking is unknown.
And finally, we see a Section 31 ship which actually has stealth technology. This four nacelle ship is hardly seen in other than a few panels, but it's saucer section has even more cutouts than previous ships we have seen.
This vessel appeared to a fleet of Romulan ships, and was able to destroy the entire fleet, thanks to code embedded in the Romulan systems thanks to sharing of the Dorsal Mounted weaponry seen on the USS Vengeance, that Section 31 had shared with the Romulans to help them wipe out the Klingon Empire.
And that was all the vessels seen in employment by Section 31, the mysterious organisation hiding beneath the pristine Federation, from its Kelvin Variant to its Prime Variant.
Let us know what you think of the video in the comments below, because if you’re talking about Star Trek, then we want to hear about it!
If you want to keep up to date on all the latest Star Trek news, lore and more, then make sure to hit that subscribe button to never miss a video from the team here at Trek Central! You can also follow us on social media, or join our Community Discord Server!
For now, I’ve been Lt Adam, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time! Live Long and prosper my friends!