Dreadnought

Multiple realities

(covers information from several alternate timelines)

A Federation Dreadnought-class starship

A Breen dreadnaught

For additional meanings of "Dreadnought", please see Dreadnought.

In starship classification, a dreadnought was a type of heavily-armed starship.

Dreadnoughts

The Federation-class USS Entente was an example of this type of vessel. (Star Trek: The Motion Picture)

In 2370, the Maquis captured a defective Cardassian ATR-4107 missile. B'Elanna Torres spent nearly a month reprogramming its computer and upgrading its systems, and eventually named it Dreadnought owing to its formidable nature. (VOY: "Dreadnought")

The Dreadnought-class USS Vengeance was an example of this type of vessel in the alternate reality. (Star Trek Into Darkness)

The Breen Imperium operated a type of dreadnought in the 32nd century; as of 3191 it was the largest warship class in their fleet. (DIS: "Erigah")

Appendices

Background information

There are only four known direct on-screen references to a dreadnought; one comes from the radio chatter in the first Epsilon IX scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The dreadnought named Entente, was derived from Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual, which also states that it is a Federation-class dreadnought. The outline of a three nacelled Federation-class ship is briefly glimpsed in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock computer screens on the USS Enterprise. Another is Dreadnought, the name B'Elanna Torres chose for the captured ATR-4107 missile in VOY: "Dreadnought". The third comes from Star Trek Into Darkness, where the USS Vengeance was identified as a Dreadnought-class warship. The fourth is the Breen dreadnaught featured in DIS: "Erigah".

Starfleet dreadnought type ships in general were known not only for their heavy firepower, armor and shielding, but also for having a more extensive & comprehensive Electronic Warfare capability than other Starfleet warships, for example Federation-class vessels were known to be equipped with a holographic decoy system that could fox even sophisticated sensor systems, while the Star Empire-class had a holographic camouflage system that could disguise the ship as another ship altogether, among other things. The increased EW capability that UFP dreadnoughts demonstrated was apparently not only a function of more space available to fit in various systems but also a power budget that left even Federation heavy cruisers in the shade. ^{(citation needed • edit)}

Apocrypha

Dreadnought-class is briefly mentioned by William T. Riker in the novel Dark Mirror as a starship class that is the closest analog Starfleet has to the heavily-armed and armored version of the Galaxy-class from the mirror universe.

The game Star Trek Online uses the term "Dreadnought" as a distinct type of ship, usually combining the durability and movement characteristics of Cruisers with the tactical focus of Escorts. Starfleet's Dreadnought Cruiser is represented by the Galaxy X-class (β) from the TNG episode "All Good Things...". Other playable ships belonging to different factions in the game are also classified as "Dreadnought", including the Scimitar-class warbird, the Jem'Hadar battleship (though the game calls it a "dreadnought carrier"), the Xindi-Aquatic cruiser (also reclassified as a dreadnought carrier), the non-playable Voth city ship, and other game-exclusive designs. Dreadnought ships are also equipped with combat-capable hangar bays and can launch fighter ships in battle.

External links

• Dreadnought at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• Dreadnought at Wikipedia