For all those wondering about where the info on the warhead comes from, you can find it in the DS9 technical manual pages 132 to 134. A lot of this info comes from the technical manual, some may say that isn't "cannon" because it hasn't appeared on screen. That may be the case, but this video is just a bit of fun and is about "little known features" so we have dug in to info that doesn't appear on screen.
I've just browsed through all known MSD of the Defiant and warhead thing just doesn't seems possible. There are no bulkheads to close in that area, no torpedoes (as you mention) neither.....
I like it!!! The overall idea, in theory, is that deployment of said "warhead" would end the conflict, then Defiant itself would become an impulse capable lifeboat, a waiting a two or rescue from larger combatants. In theory, a Galaxy/Sovereign class ship could even store the module in its largest cargo bay, partially assembled, to be assembled in space, and then reattached. I like it, make it so DS9 technical manual!!!
No, the defiant does not carry self replicating mines as a normal weapon. Those were just used when they mined the wormhole. It is not a standard included feature on the Defiant class Star Ships.
Guardian Tree I doubt they came built-in. From the way the mines were deployed two at a time, it would make sense if O’Brien disembarked the four shuttlepods and filled their launch bays with mine racks specifically for that mission.
Yeah if they would have been a feature then Rom really wouldn't have had to come up with the idea. It would have been done very early. Possibly well before the war started
its the closest thing they have to a real destroyer concept.. a ship that trades off armour and size for speed and maneovrability while still boating big firepower.. Only that the Defiant also has strong armour for its size
@@sparrowlt armor in star trek is all relative, photon torpedoes are in the 50-100 megaton range out of the box, and phasers are some kind of ultra high energy laser weapon, so at best you dodge their torpedoes and loose a few plates of armor before withdrawing. even future startrek tech isn't gonna withstand 100 megatons worth of bomb in your face and by ds9 and voyager good ol photons were out and quantum bombs were in which were orders of magnitude more potent
Engineer: So we have a stealth design. Even without cloak it is harder to detect than most ships. Starfleet: Paint it fucking white and put lights all over the outside.
Ships were known to get partial modifications or even retrofits to add new features. They might not of been stock, but the Defiant had added those systems to the ship.
Generation Tech the point everyone is making is The mines were not a “Feature” of the Defiant...it merely deployed them. It’s okay to be wrong sometimes, you might just want to accept it.
I loved watching all of the Defiant's battle scenes. She may have been designed to fight the Borg, but seeing her blow away those Jem'Hadar attack ships thrills me every time.
@@keithck3720The Pimp hand that can roast a chicken, blow up a planet, star, or assassinate political figures. 40,000 years later the Adeptus mechanicus is struggling to figure with no success the Sisko Pimp hand slap.
Agreed, I’m sure the acoustics and the sound system on the bridge would be far superior to his bedroom. He claims he liked the more spartan accommodations on the the Defiant, but really the entire ship was basically his private apartment. Between the Klingon Operas and his and Dax’s private affairs, Worf was a very loud individual for how private he is.
@the one you don't see, you might be onto something. Maybe Worf realized that he wouldn't be able to launch the warhead, so he decided that "today IS a good day to die" and gave the orders to set a collision course at RAMMING SPEED!
@Jared HarrisThe Federation was perfectly capable of desiging its own cloaking devices, after having stolen one in TOS and then experimenting with an interphasic one (Pegasus incident). I'm sure some engineers will have worked with Rom on the mines as well. Cloaking torpedoes with a cloak as found on the Pegasus would have been quite lethal (just fly through matter then materialize inside). Never understood why they bothered with the Romulans despite the Treaty of Algernon. Use Klingon cloaking device instead. Or the amazing Pegasus one. Seemed more advanced than either. Then there was the cloak used on the transport ship in the ST Insurection film and the brilliant holographic one used in the video game ST Away Team, so yeah, plenty of options. Looking at this, the Federation was apparently far more capable of designing cloaking devices than the Romulans or the Klingons with the latter in my opinion actually being better than the original Romulan ones as shown in The Undiscovered Country - can fire while cloaked... That begs the question once again, except for Treaty stipulations, why didn't they just use their own or their ally's technology when they needed the cloaking device..
The Defiant was an important moment in Starfleet vessel design because it was one of the earliest dedicated warships produced by the Federation. It represented the moment when the Federation, and by extension Starfleet, finally faced up to the reality that using essentially civilian type vessels with heavily compromised designs intended to function as exploration and science vessels (and weirdly even floating communities complete with children) as well as combat craft just was not going to cut it in any really serious war. Admittedly, the shipwrights got a bit... over enthusiastic when arming such a small vessel, resulting in serious issues with its power production and distribution and generally over stressing some systems, but in later marks of the vessel's design those issues were ironed out, leaving Starfleet with exactly the kind of dedicated warship it so sorely needed. While it doubtless was an uncomfortable situation for the basically pacifist Federation to find itself in, this little ship probably represents the beginning of a trend in more militarised Starfleet vessel design that went on to guarantee the survival of the Federation, and with it its high ideals, into the future.
One can even say the Sovreign class was also somewhat military. Look at it's design compared to the Galaxy. The Galaxy was bright and cheerful. Plush and comfortable. The Sovvie was muted, drab, and armed to the teeth.
Not to mention uncomfortable for its crew too. instead of luxurious single person/family quarters the Defiant class had bunks with several to a room that was probably smaller than smallest crew's quareters on the Enterprise D.
Hate to bust your bubble dudes. Defiant is not the class of ship, that is only it's name. It is, along with Soa Palo, (for which they renamed Defiant) a VALIANT class ship. I hate it when people don't know what they are talking about it, you are welcome for the info.
I doubt you'd need two people to operate the weapons systems, considering how much automation would be involved, it's more likely that it's SOP to have two up and running during combat so if one is knocked out or the operator suffers from exploding console syndrome the other can continue to operate.
If you have impulse power, odds are pretty much 100%. If you're limited to thrusters, odds are likely 0%. Most ships are not "planetfall capable," and most starships have the ability to "beach" themselves as an emergency crash maneuver. The Intrepid class was designed to be able to land and lift off regularly. Ships with saucer sections could glide in and crash land. Defiant was designed to land as a whole ship, but given it's small size and compact construction, in theory, it could take off again. As it has no saucer section to detach as a lifeboat, giving it this option is just an aid to help the crew should the ship be damaged enough to be at risk of no longer being spaceworthy...an option to complete abandonment with limited supplies.
Kirk," Scotty can we land?" Scotty," it never been done , but it's like could be done." Spock," the odds of landing and taking back off are 45%." Kirk," Great, that better odds then most my plans. Sulo land this sucker!"
The section of this video concerning the stealth functionality of this ship serves (at least for me) to further magnify how appealing it was to the Maquis when the character of Lieutenant Thomas Riker and his cell commandeered it during the actual Defiant episode of DS9.
I would imagine the whole ship with all it's torpedoes and warp core crashing into the Borg would do considerably more damage than that little ramming thing.
Same goes for that massive warhead. To fire that thing would not turn it into such a fast energy ball like the usual torpedos. It could be shot down or tractored away. It certainly is not made for battle use.
I always assumed the "preparation" that Worf was about to order would have meant setting the self-destruct sequence to overload the Warp Core on impact & have everyone but the Captain, helm, & maybe chief engineer hit the escape pods. Then, everything changed when the Enterprise E dropped out of warp. Worf's best line ever, "If you were ANY other man, I would kill you where you stand!"
If they didn't do that then the random characters that die in battles would always survive so the producers would have to pay them more money for being returning characters on the show.
10. Landing and taking off. It *worked perfectly,* it's just the writers _forgot_ about it and kept using shuttles and transporters cause that's what all the standard Trek ships did.
They didn't forget, but the only time the defiant landed planetside was due to a crash caused by a temporal field surrounding a planet that Dax wanted to explore. Runabouts could land too, even if they didn't always.
And since Voyager landed on they probably did not want to look like idea thieves. People are pretty picky over these things so better not do it after Voyager presented this special feature. ;)
Transporters were the best and quickest way from ship to surface and kept the ship in space where it would be able to manauverability in case of hostile action, plus it's sensors would work at optimal efficiency not being affected by a planets atmosphere, shuttles if transporters would be unsafe, the only time I would land a starships on a planet is if it were absolutely necessary, life and death kinda stuff.
The original idea of the Transporter was created to avoid needing to generate visuals of shuttlecraft launching & landing, taking up effects budget & episode time.
@Generation Tech : Sorry British Ben, but it's more accurate to say that the Defiant produces Trilithium Resin as a waste product of her Warp Core. This fact was established in an earlier TNG episode.
I M Ofage it’s not the first time he’s been wrong; he gets things wrong a lot and from being a Star Trek Author and doing in-depth research I’ve noticed it a lot and do a lot of correcting; not just to British Ben but to others here and elsewhere a lot. With all the things Star Trek that I know many people that know me call me a “Walking Star Trek Encyclopedia” because of it.
I think it's a running joke with the writers that in Star Trek trilithium is never handled or used or explained the same way twice. They are wildly inconsistent about what it is and what it does and where it comes from.
@Z1gguratVert1go : I have to disagree with you. In Alpha canon, trilithium resin was first mentioned in TNG during the heist episode. It was described as/shown to be highly unstable, extremely explosive, highly valuable on the black market, and a waste product of the warp core. In DS9 "trilithium" was described as highly toxic and used similarly to a "dirty bomb". -In VOY, trilithium was used twice, both times as a high yield explosive (in the pilot and the time-displaced planet episode)- And in Generations, trilithium was shown to halt nuclear fusion reactions in a star. Even if you assume that "trilithium" is short for "trilithium resin", none of these properties or attributes are contradictory.
"Great Scott! In the 24th century I'm sure that trilithium is available in every corner drugstore. But in the 23rd century, it's a little hard to come by. We had to make do with mere dilithium crystals."
One thing all starships carried was a tricobalt device, which was an extremely powerful explosive device, it was used as part of the self destruct system, only 1 per ship and the captain had the ability using their codes to use it as a weapon, at least that's what I remember.
a little known fact about the self replicating mines.. is that they werent actually part of the defiant. they were designed by rom, dax, and o'brien to counter the dominion convoys from the gamma quadrant, loaded up on the defiant when deployed and then never used again. also mines dont have any real offensive use as the defiant was a hit first kind of ship. However good video
Absolutely - If I remember correctly, it was Rom who came up with the original idea for cloaked self-replicating mines? Otherwise, why did they make a plot point out of it if it was going to be the default go-to answer? :P
The Defiant is my favourite SF ship. I always pictured a fleet of 100 of them . Would defeat anything out there. Resources from 1 Galaxy class would make 20-25 Defiants, and can crew them too.
@@JeanLucCaptain Yeah, Impressive Weapons, lackluster security personnel typical Starfleet. They create awesome ships, then let them be stolen/sabotaged.
The defiant had trilithium resin onboard because it’s a dangerous byproduct found in all warp cores. The enterprise D had trilithium resin on it too, it just doesn’t come up in conversation in more than one episode.
@sc2umsmaker It also gets shown on a channel called H&I (for Heroes & Icons) 6 nights a week along with all the other Star Trek shows (except for Discovery, of course). They don't show them on Saturday nights. We get that channel over broadcast so I'm not sure how widespread it is or if the schedule is even the same everywhere that does get it.
@sc2umsmaker DVD or Blu-Ray -- no subscriptions or high-speed internet needed, and no total-dependence on corporate cloud services that may or may not be cancelled someday at the whim of some greedy CEO.
I'm experiencing that now. I never gave it a chance back when it was in first run syndication. It is an amazing show. I was too dumb to truly appreciate it back then.
@@KamikazeSteve That's exactly how I got into it. But honestly it's going way too fast - I just got to part 2 of the episode where Rom laid the self replicating mines. After that ending with Dukat, I've decided to slow down and watch it via streaming. If that's possible.
Don't forget that it could expand and contract to be 10 times larger or smaller under different episodes of the show. Sometimes it was the size of a shuttle and other times the size of a Constitution class ship.
Remember when they had a Romulan Officer from the Ro ulan Empire stationed on the Defiant to operate the Cloaking Field for a couple episodes? I miss those days...
My favorite detail about the Defiant is Captain Sisko´s sheer badassery. Technically he commits a war crime, but the planet can still be colonized, just not by humans. And given how his opponent operates he has little choice.
The detachable part of the ship was called the "Captain's Yacht" and was used for the captain to abandon ship at the very end. Also every federation ship could "theoretically" land on a planet if necessary.
MISTAKE - the nav deflector isnt used in warp, its used at impulse speeds. nb- a warp field will natrually deflect debris by its wake motion forward. An its also possible that treks own writers may not know this.
However, according to current warp theory the warp bubble will trap energetic particles which you'll find all over the place as solar wind and cosmic radiation. When the warp field collapses these will immediately disperse. Depending how far you've gone this could well instantly vaporise your ship. That's probably what the navigational deflector is for at warp. Also explains why they work as a defence against lasers- the photons are scattered away from the ship just as it would at warp.
The navigational deflector is also part of the long range sensor array, when in warp or impulse use, it is designed to move space debris and such out of the way protecting the ship from damage, it is also part of the warp drive system, without the navigational deflector, according to Treknology, the ship cannot go to warp, since it will have no protection.
@@ChefDansHookah Many of the old TOS-era ships lacked a deflector dish entirely, yet had warp drive. (But the art department probably just didn't care.)
Only the original prototype USS Defiant had a romulan built cloaking device in a deviation of the treaty with the Romulan Empire. This wasn’t a standard design feature on the further constructed defiant class escort ships (read: war ship).
when i first saw First Contact and saw Defiant with its hull damaged, I had thought that was a hull hit, like seeing another starship getting hit, not ablative armor (all ships looked like that, even Defiant, when it was hit a second time as Enterprise passed them by)
Which Sci-Fi faction has the best Starfighters: Galactic Republic(Star Wars), Imperial Navy(40k), Terran Dominion(Starcraft), Systems Alliance(Mass Effect), UNSC(Halo),Helghan Empire(Killzone)
Babylon 5's Starfuries may not be the most powerful, but they are the best designed starfighter for space. If you want a combination of good space design and power though, there's always the Star League Gunstar from _The Last Starfighter._
Other than what people have pointed out about the self replicating mines, I actually had no clue about warheads in the navigational deflector. I've seen schematics with it having separation capabilities but it's actually quite neat and would be a nice "last option" kind of thing. Pile a bunch of quantum torpedoes and tricobalt mines or warheads in there and remotely pilot it to where it could do some serious damage.
Trilithium was a waste product produced by the ships warp engines. That's why they had it. On the TNG episode "Starship Mine", terrorists attempted to steal trilithium resin from the Enterprise while it was undergoing a baryon sweep.
Rom invented the self replicating mines. Trilithium was a by product of the warp engines (see TNG season 6 episode Starship Mine) so effectively all ships carried trilithium.
Wrong, the defiant did not Carry self replicating mines, It only deployed mines in 1 episode and those mines were designed and built specifically for the purpose of mining the wormhole threshold. Mines were a direct violation of the Federation charter, Captain Sisko did a lot of things during the war that were not sanctioned by the Federation, tho the mining of the wormhole was sanctioned it was taken as an emergency action and StarFleet did not design the mines, they were designed by a Ferengi and built in conjunction with Startfleet and only used for a single purpose. The defiant did not carry these mines around at any other point. Otherwise, good video.
Not just that......where’s that nice music at the end of every Generation Tech video? That was always the icing on the cake for me. Bring it back already! Any Sheldon like nerd must be already freaking out at the incompleteness of this video, OCD style....!!
I've been the biggest trek fan in the world (yes, the whole world) since I was 13. Just can't believe I didn't know about the front section being able to operate independently of the main ship!! Thanks, I guess I'm gonna have read more of the tech manuals.
@@ntigdona7487 well as I said it didn't get ablative armor until late season 3 or early season 4 and if memory serves I do believe it was the second ship that replaced the original to have the ablative armor
The part with the warhead where you say Worf could have fired it rather than attempt to ram the Borg Cube, you should remember that the helmsman said that weapons were down. This would most likely include the warhead. Worf may actually have been attempting to fire it from the captain's chair before hitting the panel in frustration.
It's like some starfleet engineer said to himself. "I have idea, lets make the bridge very obvious so everyone will know exactly where they shoot target their weapons."
@@keithrees4755 Super Stealth only as long as they go along with the Romulans well, and we should not forget, that in Generations the Romulans also were working with that stuff (although I am not sure if they weaponized it, but I think they did). So the advantage of Star Fleet is not huge, if there is any - at least compared with the RSE.
GAGGLE MODE ACTIVATE! FORM OF... CHICKEN! and the enemy looked on in horror as their worst nightmare came to life, and the escape pod chicken monster took over the universe.
In a book I read of a defiant class that was painted flat black to increase its stealth. I found the idea so cool, when a got a model kit of the Defiant I painted flat black and it looks cool as well as a more practical color for a war ship. Of course filming would suck as to why white, light grey and light green are the colors used.
Not the Defiant, but the Defiant class Valiant apparently had landed in a crater on a moon during a cat and mouse game with the Dominion. Although not seen on screen it is discussed.
Actually, Opps and Conn were not merged. Conn was left in front while Opps was moved to one of the side stations. It appeared to float a bit but tended to be in the (if facing onto the bridge with the view screen at your back), at the far left console at which Nog often sat. Also, Trilithium and Trilithium Resin are two TOTALLY DIFFERENT THINGS! Trilithium Resin is what the thieves are stealing from the Enterprise-D's warp core in the "I just want my saddle" episode of TNG. It is produced as a bi-product of standard Federation or at least Starfleet warp drives.
You haven't heard REAL music until you have heard, and sung, Klingon kareoke, Ben. Being able to land on a planet's surface could possibly prevent any Betazeds from crashing the damned thing. Twice.
@@maryellencook9528 Who knows. Both instances were pretty much out of her control anyway. Crash landing a battle battered and partially disabled saucer section and Picard's ramming gambit.
@@andrewbarnett84 K'pla! If you can do THAT, you are a true Klingon warrior. I am only the lowly human chief medical officer and surgeon general to the Intergalactic Klingon Empire, now retired after many years of service. I cannot even bring myself to drink the true Warriors drink ,prune juice, because I find it too caustic for my system.
I love all your videos and I think you guys are doing an awesome job. Would you consider doing a comparison video on the different weapons like turbo lasers or phasers, something like that. Live long and prosper.
I heard about the 2 smaller ones on another video talking about the abilities of that class and that they were to small for a shuttle. This makes since with the built in stealth tech(not counting aftermarket cloak) and landing ability though. Fill them with small ground vehicles and land an assault team which then uses the ground/super low altitude vehicles to attack a base on the planet by going in under the radar.
The self-replicating mines were not standard issue for the ship. They were designed on DS9 in order to stop Dominion reinforcements from coming thru the wormhole. They did not exist until Dax and O'Brien invented them in the weeks leading up to there deployment.
They didn't carry Trilithium for its own sake. Trilithium Resin is a byproduct of Dilithium-Mediated Antimatter Reactions. Whatever trilithium they had on hand was probably waste scraped out of their own warp core.
In the “Starship Mine” episode of TNG, a group of thieves try to steal trilithium resin from the ship, Picard has a line where he states that it is a waste product from the engines. So it’s not surprising the Defiant would have a supply of it as well.
ah the DS9 technical manual, i havent seen that in 20 years. Great video, im glad someone finally discussed the Defiants super weapon, the detachable warhead.
In First Contact, the model they used for the Defiant was a lot smaller than it's actual size. That's why she Enterprise-E looked so huge flying past it. Granted, the Enterprise-E is a big ship, but the Defiant is actually bigger than most people think
I know this is old but a few tidbits: The mines were not standard. Those were a custom design made specifically to be used in blocking the wormhole. Trilithium seems to be a normal by product of Starfleet warp cores. The Enterprise D had it on-board as well. The episode where the crew stops at a starbase to have a baryon sweep performed (and Picard goes Rambo) features the bad guys trying to steal trilithium from the warp core. Just wanted to point that stuff out in case viewers before me missed it! Thanks! Love the videos!
... ablative armor does not help with kinetic weapons, it helps with energy weapons!!!! most of star treks weapons are energy based anyhow. Why did you say kinetic!
It does help protect against energy and kinetic weapon damage, it is designed to break, melt, burn, or vaporize away leaving what's underneath it protected. Think of Kevlar, or a knight's armor, it will protect, however eventually it will weaken and break apart, damaging what's underneath from repeated attack.
@@ChefDansHookah Armor does, not ablative. Ablative armor is meant to be struck by a energy weapon and dissipate the energy by creating a cloud of dust or smoke that disperses the beam. An ablative armor might also double as kinetic armor but ablative does not mean its meant to adsorb kinetic. wanna know the secret to stopping any military laser in modern world? smoke launchers :D it disperses light so it no longer is a focus beam.
Trilithium is a by product of a starfleet warp drive. There was a whole episode based around someone stealing it from the Enterprise D in TNG so not a Defiant thing, you can find it in any warp core. Self Replicating mines aren't a Defiant thing they were something built that the defiant carried and deployed on a single mission.
You sir lost all credibility when you stated self replicating mines were standard to the Defiant. Actually watch DS9 you'll see where they actually come from.
Little known fact - Defiant class wasn’t specifically designed with the Ablative hull armor built in. That was a modification that the Defiant had added to it. (DS9 Paradise lost the captain points out how it was equipped with the armor and someone neglected to inform Starfleet command). It might have been added from then on ect... but, in the very least, initial designs didn’t have it. So many people have said about the mines so there’s no point mentioning it. The front part can act as a single shot passer array too. The pulse phasers were designed to fire in pluses as it’s harder for the Borg to adapt.
