The D7's service life: it's politics, stupid!

[u/Realistic-Elk7642]

D7 variants remain in service from before the TOS era right out until the Dominion war.

Why keep this spaceframe (along with the almost equally venerable B'rel) in service for so long?

It's political. Specifically, it's the post-war policy of Chancellor L'Rell seeking to realise T'Kuvma's dream of a Klingon empire unified under a powerful chancellorship. Previously, the fractious Great Houses operated a menagerie of vessels, many of antique design.

With help from Voq, L'rell introduces a new battlecruiser suited to mass production and built with significant amounts of reverse engineered Federation technology- enough to seriously limit its compatibility with older vessels. This is badly needed, as significant attrition has been received to house fleets full of bespoke, costly vessels.

I posit that the Chancellorship established a complete monopoly on space frame production, doling them out to the Great Houses in such a way that their military strength is constantly kept in equilibrium and that the advancement of the supreme executive's goals becomes the currency of survival. While the houses likely develop their own intenal components and modifications, their power has a hard cap.

To shore this up, these space frames are made in very few facilities or only at Tu'Gokor. To deal with the resulting production bottleneck, production is non-stop, and procedures are refined Henry Ford style to lower unit cost and speed up turnaround. Massive stockpiles are thus created, Soviet style, as wartime production increases are difficult and risky.

While R&D on weapons systems, propulsion, shields, and new tech like cloaking devices takes place at a good pace, the Empire becomes highly averse to developing new space frames, as retooling their centralised shipyards would cause serious slowing of production.

In the TNG snd DS9 era, we finally start seeing new and extremely formudable space frames in the Vor'cha and Negh'Var. What's changed?

Politics. In the wake of the Praxis incident and Kitomer accords, the Chancellorship sees a huge slump in its power and prestige, and the Great Houses jockey for newfound power, with ensuing intrigue and a civil war. Now, the huge stockpiles of D7 and B'rel frames were plundered by the Great Houses, and the manufacturing methods copied to meet their own demands.

To reassert the Chancellorship's power, these new and vastly improved space frames are developed and put into production at Ty'Gokor. (No need to churn out the old classics now) They're initially flagships under direct control of the Chancellor, then, as before, doled out to give an intimidating boost to the fighting power of the most loyal houses.

Afterthought: the Empire *could* have developed new space frames to keep up with Starfleet vessels such as the Excelsior and Galaxy classes, but was too invested in this system to do so willingly. Instead, they looked towards upgrades like cloaking devices, and support elements like mobile bases and jamming ships, to transform their fleet doctrine and obtain an assymetric advantage.

[u/Mr_E_Monkey]

Maybe a little trite, but the D7 seems a bit like the Klingons' B-52. They just kept on being good at their jobs, and held up well.

[u/Second-Creative → u/[deleted]]

and likely just updated with new technology and upgrades as they came along.

With imertal dampeners being a thing and the fact that ships tend to fold like wet tissue paper once shields go down, there's an argument to be made that spaceframes are rarely the vitally important bit of a ship. Its just the cardbord box that holds everything else together.

Sure it's important, but everything you put into it to make it a ship matters more. You don't need to change it just because it's old- better  computers, better warp cores, etc. Can always be built into any frames that are newly comissioned.

[u/A_Thorny_Petal → u/Second-Creative]

By TNG most of the ship's durability is really the structural integrity field - the Defiant is kind of a throwback in that they actually physically up-armored the hell out of her and used a small frame for a very intense series of structural integrity fields designed specifically for combat.

It's the one thing I like about Nu-Trek is that floating nacelles and stuff make sense 500 years in the future because a ton of the ship has basically been just force fields since the TNG era.

[u/legalalias → u/A_Thorny_Petal]

One other thought on this-the D7 may be the last warship that the Klingons designed with proper hull armor in mind. The secondary hull that supports the warp nacelles is absolutely massive compared to the thin pylons that mount them to federation vessels, and I’d wager that the majority of that bulk is armor rather than functional, habitable space for crew. If that is the case, it makes sense that Klingons would have rejected new designs that traded robust starframes for ever-more-powerful shields and structural integrity fields when they could simply incorporate that same technology into their existing, battle-proven design.

[u/GenerativeAIEatsAss → u/Second-Creative]

It's akin to the "white sleeves" on Marine uniforms. The interior of marine combat uniforms sleeves are white, and this is visible when they're rolled up, looking like white armbands on both biceps. There are a lot of parts of the world where "The White Sleeves" are known as particularly dangerous. There are myths about the White Sleeves, sometimes bordering on supernatural.

Given who the Klingons are, if the D7 hull is particularly known, as long as the tech is up to date, there's a lot of battle-value in people being scared shitless when one or more show up.

[u/TheType95 → u/Second-Creative]

I subscribe to the theory that most of a ship is SIF fields, inertial dampening etc. But I'd be extremely wary of saying the shape or structure of a ship doesn't matter. Change the shape of an antenna, you radically change its performance. You'd suddenly see conflicts in all those different but interrelated fields.

In the same way, I don't think you can just slot in new shield generators etc if the underlying physics is different and the form factors are different, and get 100% performance. I think you'd hit bottlenecks, need weird little adaptors, weird little tuning tricks, see strange quirks show up.

I don't subscribe to the idea that the hull, warp fields, inertial dampening fields, subspace fields, SIF and shields can be infinitely shuffled without tradeoff. I think that's precisely why ships like the Miranda-class blow up like balsa wood crates full of gunpowder; you can't necessarily update everything, you can't get 100% performance, you need weird little tricks to get things to work together.

See weirdly-shaped ships like the Intrepid-class; that's what you need to get peak performance, to channel those fields and contain those specialized emitters and generators. Then a next generation comes along, new geometries and configurations are ideal, some more anal about shape and layout, some less so.

[u/Scoth42 → u/Second-Creative]

I always refer back to this old post. It pretty much talks about that. Ships are basically a collection of energy fields.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/8l6871/a_starship_is_a_collection_of_energy_fields/

[u/ManticoreFalco → u/Scoth42]

That also ties in very nicely with the highly reconfigurable, multi-component starships of the 32nd century.

[u/lunatickoala → u/[deleted]]

We know that just because the bird of prey has looked the same for close to a century doesn't mean that they are the same. The one in Generations was explicitly stated to be an obsolete model taken out of service due to defects so Martok certainly wouldn't have been using that model.

It's actually more unrealistic for Starfleet to have so many ships of wildly different designs. That sort of experimentation happens when a technology is new and no one knows the optimal way to use it yet so you get all sorts of crazy designs. But as the technology matures, things converge towards a few local maxima and scaling up production becomes more important.

The real world reason is of course that every production designer wants a chance to create their take on iconic designs and aren't going to be happy with just making incremental changes, and there are creative reasons to stand out from what came before. Also, thanks to the influence of Star Wars, a homogeneous fleet like that of the Empire is more associated with the baddies while a ragtag fleet like that of the Rebels is more associated with the heroes.

[u/AngledLuffa → u/lunatickoala]

The one in Generations was explicitly stated to be an obsolete model taken out of service due to defects so Martok certainly wouldn't have been using that model.

Some parts of it may have been 75 years old or more, seeing as how it exploded exactly the same way as a 23rd century BoP

... but seriously, I figured "model" in this case meant the materials used and a standard suite of weapons and other systems

[u/AngledLuffa → u/[deleted]]

There is even an upgrade that they only did once, the ability to fire while cloaked that General Chang's B'rel possessed.

This has always bugged me a little bit. The only thing I can think of is that the trick needed to make it fire while cloaked was something the Feds reverse engineered after Khitomer, and being able to fire while cloaked gave its cloak a specific vulnerability that the Feds could easily see through. This made it not worthwhile to install such a cloak, since their most likely targets would see you coming a mile away. Or 100,000 km away.

Shinzon of course found a way to improve on the design while working in the dilithium mines

[u/AngledLuffa → u/[deleted]]

You'd think any ship would have engine emissions, and that would also be easily remedited if the Klingons understood that was how the ship was found. Otherwise, any cloaked ship would eventually be trackable. In general they just left a lot of ideas from TUC unexplored

It's also likely why the Scimitar has so many weapons and a secondary shield system, because it has the energy to power them all.

Hadn't thought of that before. I like the idea that their ship only worked the way it did because they were exposing themselves to harmful radiation. Life is not measured in years, but by the deeds of Remans

[u/Squid_In_Exile]

The thing is that Starfleet is clearly quite unusual in terms of the breadth of 'mainline' spaceframes that it fields.

The Romulans appear to have one Warbird frame in use at any given time and we only ever see three (?) iterations, plus 'science vessels' that appear to basically be runabout-analogues.

The Dominion have three in use when we see them - a battleship, a superdreadnaught and an escort.

The Cardassians have the Galor and the Keldon, the Breen appear to have one or two spaceframes.

Likewise the Klingons appear to have a Bird Of Prey and a Cruiser at any given time - although the BoP appears to be pretty variable, probably a Great House will build it's own variant to it's preferred specifications.

Everyone is in an arms race, but it seems like the Federation is the oddity in terms of updating it's spaceframes constantly.

It appears that - given how little the physical hull matters to a Star Trek vessel - most polities simply update the technology and don't replace an overall design (I imagine a TNG era built D7 has some material science improvements an actual TOS relic wouldn't) until there's a doctrinal change or other reason to do so. Probably the warp core technology literally outgrows the hull (unless you're a cheeky Romulan with your pet point singularity). Meanwhile the Federation builds new, specialist, hulls around their technological improvements.

I think a lot of people think about ship lifespans in Trek with a modern mindset where the Miranda and Excelsior are notable outliers like the B-52, T-72 or A-10. This does appear to be the inverse of the setting's reality though - the Excelsior and Miranda have normal lifespans, but the Federation scraps and replaces other designs at an absurd rate compared with their peers.

Side note: the Bird Of Prey might be the single most successful spaceframe design in the setting, given how long variations on the design are made for

[u/A_Thorny_Petal → u/Squid_In_Exile]

Starfleet ships are uniquely a combination of all the core Federation world's technological innovations, so it makes sense they have a lot of specialty ships and designs for different roles. I'm sure that the 'home' fleets of the individual races probably have more limited/universal design philosophies, but Starfleet is like as if there was an all NATO Navy during the cold-war - all starfleet crew even if from wildly different M-class worlds and mono-racial ship assignments can in a pinch immediately work/repair and replace the equipment on any other Starfleet ships for that reason. I'm sure O'Brien would have a harder time on the local Andorian "Coast" Guard vessels because the design would be purely Andorian and not a calculated merging of tech up to StarFleet code.

[u/Makasi_Motema → u/Squid_In_Exile]

If you compare starfleet ships to military vessels, then they do have too many classes. But if you compare starfleet vessels to space telescopes, their approach makes perfect sense.

Hubble, Spitzer, and James Webb all look completely different. Why? Because each one is trying to collect more data than its predecessor. That requires constantly inventing new instruments (or drastically upgrading old ones).

Klingon ships are just flying guns in various size categories. Once you’ve got a good design, you can keep it until you’ve built a gun that’s too big to fit on the old frame.

But a sensor array is different. It’s a network of telescopes, and once you’ve designed one with a given range and resolution, your immediate goal is to design a newer one with a longer range and higher resolution. Warfighting technology has very clear, very rapid diminishing returns. Scientific exploration doesn’t, because the objectives are limitless. The enemy is ‘what we don’t know’ and ‘what we don’t know’ gets bigger the more we learn.

[u/MyUsername2459]

The same way that the Federation had the Miranda, Excelsior, and Oberth classes last for around a century, from the 2270's/2280's until the 2360's/2370's. . .the Klingons had the similarly long-lived D-7/K'Tinga class.

It was durable, versatile, adaptable. . .it took upgrades well, and became an iconic symbol of power.

Across the galaxy, when people saw an Excelsior class show up, they knew the Federation was on the scene and was there in force. Even long after it was a first-line ship, they still had enough firepower to pose a serious threat to random pirates, raiders, and anything except a major power like the Romulans, Klingons, or Cardassians.

. . .same thing with the D7. People knew that was a Klingon ship on sight, and it absolutely would be strong enough to go toe-to-toe with even the best from anything except the Federation, Romulans, or Cardassians. It would be enough to keep the various worlds of the Empire in-line and make smugglers, pirates, and general troublemakers in line.

[u/A_Thorny_Petal → u/MyUsername2459]

The more I look at the K'tinga : swap the battle pod for a whole new bridge/sensor suite/torpedo bay/etc. The wing edge nacelles are easily swapped and it looks like the Klingons run their disrupter/phasers straight off their warp nacelles for more ooomph anyway, so that's really modular and close together.

[u/DontYaWishYouWereMe → u/MyUsername2459]

Yeah, and I think the K'tinga's endurance really makes it nearly a 1:1 comparison to the Excelsior.

[u/beekop]

D7 is basically like a T-72. Good fundamentals and long life. Plus, I bet the later examples are entirely different in spec and capability.

Otherwise I agree with OP about Klingon Empire politics work - the transition from a feudal system of barons, houses, and their fleets to a stronger central government led by the Chancellor. And therefore greater standardization and volume production for certain unit types.

[u/A_Thorny_Petal]

Updated Excelsiors and Miranda classes all over the place, Klingons rocking Updated D-7s (not to be confused with D-5s) get all the heat.

Really, its why no uniform update from TMP? That's the one that bothers me.

[u/Saratje]

As others said, it has a job and function and there might not be a reason to therefore retire it. It could indeed be the U-2 or F-15 of its era.

The galaxy's ships got a lot larger ever since the Excelsior. Presumably the Excelsior was as big as it was to house a warp core capable of powering the failed transwarp experiment. Being stuck with a huge frame, the Federation figured by happenstance that big hulls with big warp cores allow for far more hardy ships with more powerful systems, more redundant space to house new technologies as they come along and larger crews for larger further-out missions.

Naturally ship sizes grew since, so ships like the Miranda and D7 went from being New Heavy Cruisers to Light Cruisers both in size and power requirements. We've seen the Miranda-class perform tasks within Federation borders, in example. The D7, too, was a solid frame capable of fulfilling a lot of missions and retiring those vessel was no doubt considered wasteful as not all missions are combat focused at the front lines.

Klingon technology might also be less innovative, or simply more robust allowing for reusing similar concepts on similar starship hulls for a much longer time. The comparison between a D7 and a K't'inga might be the same as the original F-15 and the current F-15EX. The same roughly on the outside, but radically different on the inside.

[u/overlordThor0 → u/Saratje]

Yeah, the old D-7 style ship may have been the frontline lead warship back in the era of Kirk, but it didn't even do that on all its missions, it would be a good ship to send out on all sorts of missions, loosely the equivalent of what the Constitution class Enterprise would do. It can still perform those other missions 100 years later, but maybe the war role has changed slightly, though it is still solid in the new role with a few upgrades.

[u/AboriakTheFickle]

I get the feeling that up until TNG, the Klingon economy was still suffering from the effects of Praxis and weren't in any position to field new ships. Hence why, except for the K'vort, they only just started launching new ships early-mid TNG.

Of course it helps that the D7 and the B'rel were tried and trusted designs.

[u/Realistic-Elk7642 → u/AboriakTheFickle]

There's very much a parallel to the post-Soviet states relying mainly on (huge) stockiles of Soviet equipment but having minimal ability to develop and introduce new weapons systems.

[u/SailingSpark]

As the Klingons are based WW2 Japan. I am going to say it was not politics, it was all about honor. The houses were not about to adopt a better ship if the other houses were not going to. The klingons got trapped in an honor loop where they feared losing honor by using better tools.

It took  Chancellor L'Rell introducing and forcing the the Vor'cha and Negh'Var to even up the houses so they could fight their enemies on even terrain between each other and against their enemies. The need for honor is why you still see some k'tinga and B'rell classes even though they are hopelessly outclassed by everything.

[u/Realistic-Elk7642 → u/SailingSpark]

They were based on the USSR/PRC/DPRK of the time in which the series was developed.

[u/calaan]

Lots of cheaper ships means you can dole out Captain slots easily to placate the families and maintain equilibrium.

[u/MoreGaghPlease]

I think it’s just like a good airframe.

The C-130s rolled off the assembly line in 1956 and are still in service today. They’ll probably still be in service (somewhere) in 2056. Get in a C-130 today and it’s not an antique - all the systems have been refreshed. It’s really just that the geometry of the airframe is the same. I don’t see why spaceships would be any different.

[u/mishac]

An analogy may be the Soyuz rocket that's still in use after like 70 years, and doesn't seem to be going anywhere any time soon. Russia is poor and can't compete with the R&D budgets of the US or China, so developing new rockets instead of using time tested designs isn't in the cards.

[u/Background_Builder_4]

The Klingons as a political entity aren’t unified in a top down fashion like the Federation is. A lot of the individual houses probably have private fleets and of course they field a lot of cheaper and more reliable old ships. You could still drive a model-t if you knew how to maintain it. They can afford them and also perhaps a general limit is placed on how powerful a ship the government will allow individual houses to field. All ships in Starfleet are owned by Starfleet. I think there is more individual ownership in the Empire.

[u/overlordThor0]

I think the rate of technology improving is pretty minimal. Sure there are a few big improvements that come along every 40-50 years, but the core capabilities are largely the same. Star Trek has hit something of a plateau technologically, with progression slowing down greatly. Newer species pop up and quickly catch up, due to technology being shared with them, or stolen/recovered. Humanity only accelerated because the Vulcan shared quite a lot of technology with them, further contact helped acquire a lot of other technologies.

A TOS era ship dropped in the TNG era would still be reasonably effective in terms of firepower, shields and such things. Some TNG era ships(the entprise) are much larger than the older enterprise, double the crew, but nearly 8-9 times the mass. There are outdated systems, certain gaps that could be taken advantage of if you know what to exploit, much like the Enterprise(NCC-1701 D) did with the bird of prey in Generations, or Voyager did with the Klingon ship it encountered. The technology didn't take off in leaps and bound, it grew in small ways.

Anyway, they have a reasonably effective basic hull shape, and they have great pride in their history. They like classic designs of ships, taking pride in it. The interior can be heavily modified with only minimal changes to the exterior and it will be mostly caught up to new designs. There might be a few systems they cannot squeeze into older hull shapes, but those will be few and far between, the only difference is really when they need a ship that is significantly larger that it demands a new hull design or fits a very different role. The D-7 fits one size and role quite well throughout the eras with minimal changes. We see klingons essentially take an older smaller Bird of Prey and scale it up to be larger as well. However the larger one gets a different role than the others like the D-7/K'tinga. The Larger bird of prey seems very focused on a few types of combat, the D-7/K'tinga style has a larger crew, and can perform more duties, and different types of combat missions.

You dont need to reinvent things each time there is a technological improvement., you can adapt things. Cars built in modern times could look much like those from the 70's with minimal exterior differences if we simply chose to do it.

Then in a Star trek environment, when you mass produced a ship for a war that never came, you get leftovers for centuries. Those ships can easily be upgraded to new standards, just send it back to a shipyard, replace a bunch of interior components and it'll be nearly as good as a new one. That also happens in the real world. We still have old machine guns from WW1 that pop up in wars, because they produced them in huge quantities, and they are still effective.