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February 17, 2009 – Sabre Class

The Saber Class of starship was born out of the need for a scout ship, as well as to counter smaller ships of other powers, such as the Cardassian warship known as the Hideki. These ships were small, maneuverable and well armed. The Federation projected that if war with the Cardassians occurred, they would suffer heavy ship losses and massive causalities due to the large numbers of these ships the Cardassians had.

One thing was obvious at that point though. The Federation needed to go back to basics with their starship designs. By 2340, the launch of the massive Galaxy, Cheyenne, and Nebula Classes were well over ten years away, Starfleet was becoming desperate for a new long range, heavily armed scout ship. This posed some interesting problems for the design teams. All previous Scout ships had been small and Fast, but never well armed. Work was already underway on the Peregrine Class Courier/Raider, however it was a small modular ship which either had firepower or speed. The designers faced an interesting premise.

The basic mission brief for what became the Saber Class was well documented. This class had to be small, under 200 meters in length. Armaments were to heavy, at minimum two aft and two forward torpedo tubes with multiple phaser banks. The design had to be sleek and fast - at minimum a sustainable warp factor of 9.8. To top everything off it shield capacity had to be nearly double that of the Excelsior.

The reaction for Federation Design agencies was a complete negative. The Vulcan Design agency stated 'to sustain such a high warp factor while keeping the shields running at such a high level of performance would be an illogical premise' Even the famed San Francisco Fleet Yard design team returned the project with the statement 'a ship with this brief would be theoretically impossible with current technologies'.(read more...)

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