Defiant class

If you look at the highlighted sections in the image above, there are circular components attached to the exterior hull specifically on the port and starboard section of the dorsal side.

Then if you look at this image of the Sagan class from Star Trek Picard season 2 episode 1 (i think). You notice similar components, on a similar design layout, only much more up close and obviously better CGI/Visual quality. Originally, i thought maybe escape pods for the Defiant but if the ones below are an evolution based on a few decades of advancement then it wouldn't make sense for them to be escape pods.

What are your thoughts, if any?

So I was just looking at the California-class article and apparently, according to the shows creators quote on the page it's 535.5 meters long.

Something is definitely not right here. The California is supposedly the quintessential background ship, doing all the most mundane tasks in Starfleet. It also has only 11 decks, and 3 ships have already been blasted to smithereens in just 1 season with not much consequences. So overall, they are supposed to be small, overall expendable ships right? But 535.5 meters? That's huge! If you remember from my previous post, that's up to half the size of DS9! You could probably clean out the interior and fit multiple Defiants inside of it! Even the gargantuan Galaxy class that true, the California was based on, is still only 641 meters long. And it had both a saucer and a secondary hull!

It's a little hard to see it as a disposable little ship. Hopefully though, the number might change in the future.