FANSHIP DESIGN & STATS: Brad R. Torgersen, 1992 - 2004
Archer Class XI - XII Cruiser
The history of the Archer Class cruiser goes back to the 2230s, rooted in the same decade which birthed the famous Constitution Class spaceframe.  Had cost and contracting decisions been made a little differently, the Constitution hull might have gone on the shelf, while the Archer went on to fame and glory.  As it actually happened, the Archer design met the fate of so many promising concepts competing for Starfleet’s largest and most ambitious commissioning project up to that time.  Deemed too expensive for the economy and construction methods of the late 2230s, the Archer was put back into the databanks while the Constitution warped its way into history.  The Archer’s original design team broke up, each member moving on to a different project, and the Archer blueprints would not see the light of day for over thirty years.
            By 2266 A.D., the success of the then-huge Constitution Class hull was apparent to even the most skeptical, both in Starfleet and on the Federation’s military procurement oversight committee.  In spite of having suffered several losses, the Constitution was making a name for itself, and the Federation as whole, across the Alpha Quadrant.  Proving as adept in its science/exploratory capacity as it was in its combat role.  Talk ran heavy about the need to expand the Constitution fleet beyond the original production run, and the Admiralty pressed the Federation’s civilian leadership to reconsider several of the Constitution Class’s never-built peers.
            Up until that time, the Federation had been loathe to pour finances and material into the construction of what many pacifists in the government suspected was a war navy.  It had taken a great deal of political tinkering to get the original Constitution Class contract passed, and the same voices which had objected then, objected once again to the Admiralty’s new desire to see a diversified and expanded inventory of heavy starships; all capable of both peaceful and military duties, as patterned after the Constitution.
            But the looming threat of both the Romulan and Klingon governments could not be ignored, nor could anyone dispute Starfleet’s outstanding burden as the pioneering arm of the Federation.  And with the Constitution fleet already depleted by several ships, a mood of rational pragmatism took hold in the halls of Federation power.  Starfleet was given the green light to commence a new round of heavy ship design contracting, and the databanks were reopened.  Every past blueprint was carefully re-examined with an eye towards finding vessels capable of Constitution-level performance.
            The Archer Class survived several different civilian and military quorums, eventually falling into a select group of classes all of which would be passed along to the shipyards for full prototype construction and testing.
            Along with such venerable hulls as the Anton and the Loknar, the Archer Class—named after the famed original captain of Starfleet’s famed original flagship, the experimental 22^nd century Warp 5 NX-01 U.S.S. Enterprise—slowly took shape at top-secret facilities in Sol System.  Those members of the original Archer team who could be located, and who were not already committed to other obligations, were quickly contracted to begin a refurbishment of their old design: integrating the latest in space-worthy electronics, sensors, science and medical facilities, as well as weaponry and defensive technology.  Pleasantly surprised at having their old class returned to the forefront of the new Starfleet expansion effort, the revived Team Archer set to work at a frenzied pace, competing in a friendly fashion with the other design teams working on similar projects, all of them determined to get their ships to trials first.
            Unfortunately for Team Archer, their project quickly became bogged down in a squabble over mission statement.  Some designers, at the behest of certain Admirals, insisted that the Archer be armed to the teeth, toting the latest in phaser energy weaponry and accelerator cannon technology.  There was even talk of integrating the experimental and dangerous high-yield photon torpedo; a weapons system which had barely begun trials on the Constitution hull.  Days turned into weeks and, eventually, months, as the team argued round and round.  Several members threatened to quit unless the Archer’s primary mission was explicitly exploratory, and when impatient government officials hinted to the team that their project might be canceled if any more time was wasted, those team members who had been lobbying so hard for a gunship, reluctantly agreed to abandon their push.  Better to build an imperfect Archer Class, than no Archer Class at all.  And in the third quarter of 2267 the first trititanium “ribs” were mated to a trititanium “backbone” at a dry-dock facility orbiting one of the larger moons of Sol’s largest gas giant planet, Jupiter.
            Construction on the prototype Archer spaceframe proceeded through the end of 2267 and well into 2268, with the silhouette of a grand new spaceship slowly materializing within the cagework of the Jupiter dry-dock.  Computer testing and re-testing of the design and its components was exhausting and extensive.  If a mistake was made, there might not be time to go back and fix it.  Team Archer was already well behind the rest of their peers working on the other classes, and the Archer group was determined to keep pace, if not make up ground, as a matter of professional pride.
            Then, another design-killing dilemma presented itself.  As politicians are want to do, several influential members of the military procurement oversight committee began to reconsider their initial decision to proceed with the prototyping of so many new designs.  Citing the need for budget conservation, they zeroed in on the Archer Class, as it was once again deemed too expensive and, in light of the already-proven Constitution and the science-focused Anton, somewhat redundant.  Appalled at having the rug yanked out from under them a second time, Team Archer appealed to their friends within Starfleet Command, and even the civilian press, in an attempt to get the committee to lift their bureaucratic blade off the back of the Archer’s neck.  The prototype U.S.S. Archer was barely two weeks away from her first powered voyage beyond the protective confines of dry-dock.  It would be criminal to scuttle the project when it was so close to completion.
            Attention turned to the motivations of the procurement committee itself, as the press, smelling the scent of a potential government scandal, dug deeply into the histories of each of the committee members.  It soon became apparent that those members most opposed to the Archer project had constituencies on planets where a good deal of contracting was being done for some of the other prototype designs.  A modest scandal broke when it was suggested that these committee politicians were deliberately sabotaging an otherwise perfectly viable design in an attempt to divert monies from the Archer project towards those ship classes that would most benefit their own voters back home.
            Still, the committee moved closer to canceling the Archer, for its capabilities and mission did closely overlap with the Anton—already in trials—and the Constitution.  Why spend the money, the argument was made, to further develop a design that possessed no uniquely qualifying features when compared to the rest of the fleet?  As a warship the Archer was no match for the Constitution and its dual-punch armament of phasers and missile weaponry, while the Anton boasted extensive scientific equipment and facilities that made it at least a match for the Archer, if not a superior design.
            Desperate to sell their product, Team Archer argued heavily in favor of their class, specifically highlighting its capacity for carrying consumables, which was greater than either the Anton or even the Constitution, allowing extended exploratory forays which could penetrate deeper into the frontier for longer amounts of time than perhaps any ship yet built.  Again, the committee remained nonplussed, and it was not until one of the Vulcan members of Team Archer made an unorthodox proposal that the Archer group began to turn the tide in their favor.
            Using his contacts at the Vulcan Science Academy, Team Archer’s Vulcan member suggested that the prototype U.S.S. Archer be floated as a platform for an experimental, advanced deep-space sensor system, currently being constructed by Academy graduate students and originally intended for use on a Vulcan civilian ship.  Willing to try anything, the Archer group agreed to the idea, and several extended subspace conversations later, the revered Vulcan ambassador, Sarek himself, was contacting the Federation procurement committee regarding the possibility of placing the experimental sensor system onboard one of the new prototypes currently in the works within Sol System.  Specifically, Sarek named the Archer spaceframe, which had been recommended to the ambassador by several trusted Vulcan acquaintances.
            All extra expenses regarding the incorporation of the sensor system would be eaten by a government-subsidy research fund under the aegis of the Vulcan Science Academy.  Upon hearing of the chance to place their new system onboard one of the new workhorses of the Federation Starfleet, the students and their academic supporters had deemed it only logical to put their equipment to the test in an arena where it might do the most possible good: the Federation’s boundless frontier.
            How word of the Archer’s plight had managed to fly so quickly through the Vulcan grapevine is still a mystery.  Suffice to say, Sarek’s involvement in the Archer design only served to further intensify the media scrutiny then focused on the procurement committee, thus increasing the career-damaging nature of the growing scandal by several orders of magnitude.
            Predictably, those committee voices taking the brunt of the heat quietly withdrew their motion to cancel the Archer, for fear of enduring any more media criticism.  The Vulcan Science Academy was added to Team Archer as a subcontractor, a prototype sensor array was delivered via Vulcan warp freighter—along with a crack team of eager Academy graduate students—and The U.S.S. Archer was allowed to complete construction near the end of 2268, and began trials as of New Years, 2269 A.D.
            For once, things went smoothly.  The great majority of the Archer Class’s primary hardware had already been field-tested onboard the Constitution Class, so there were few bumps during the months that passed on the U.S.S. Archer’s shakedown cruise.  Only the integration of the Vulcan sensor array proved problematic, with the prototype eventually having to return to dock for a complete overhaul of the array itself, and a re-tooling by Academy personnel and Team Archer people both.  By the time the Archer officially completed its shakedown, other classes like the Anton had already had the champaign broken over their bows, and some on the Archer group waxed pessimistic about the chances their Johnny-come-lately vessel had of making its mark in Starfleet.
            Nevertheless, on October 11, 2269, the U.S.S. Archer was officially commissioned into the Starfleet, with messages of congratulations arriving via subspace from all the principle contract parties, the Vulcan government and Science Academy, and several other Starfleet vessels, including the members of Team Anton and the crew of the U.S.S. Anton, who congratulated Team Archer on a battle fought hard and fought well.  The Archer may not have been the first of the new designs to reach commissioning, but if the class had half the heart of its design team, it would go far and perform well.
            The Archer was immediately dispatched to the Federation’s Beta Quadrant frontier, while Team Archer settled down to the mundane, yet in some ways more enjoyable task of regular production.  Two more Archer Class vessels were to be built by the end of 2270, and assuming the first year of fully operational duty went as planned, a complete run of fifteen Archer Class starships was to be commissioned, through 2273 A.D.  That meant Team Archer had no time to lose, and every effort was made to streamline the production process, with heavy input from the Vulcans, who had essentially assumed the role of co-partner on the design, as the incorporation of their sensor array had become a major selling point of the Archer Class.
            The structural design of the Archer itself had been interestingly modified to accommodate that array, which was mounted on the traditional sensor hardpoints on the ventral surface of the ship’s main saucer.  Experience with the Constitution hull revealed that its engineering section and navigational deflector sometimes occluded the sensor envelope of the Constitution’s standard sensor suite, also located on the ventral surface of the saucer section.  After using computer modeling to test the feasibility of placing the Vulcan prototype sensor array on another part of the Archer’s frame, it was ultimately decided to leave the array itself in place, and instead push the entire engineering section back by a significant percentage.  Where once the dorsal pylon had connected the engineering hull directly to the saucer section—as seen on the Constitution—there now was a lengthy “neck” of strengthened, saucer-thick superstructure that extended away from the engineering portions of the ship and afforded the sensor array an unparalleled field of “view” from its ventral mounting location.
            Likewise, instead of mounting the warp nacelles on angled pylons projecting from the engineering hull, it was decided to reduce the amount of sensor “noise” generated by the warp conduit system in that previous configuration by instead placing the warp core feed couplers for the nacelles at the top of the vertical intermix chamber, rather than at the tail of the horizontal intermix chamber, as had been done with the Constitution.  There was no discernable reduction in operating efficiency using this method, and placing the nacelles and their pylons above and behind the sensor array all but eliminated the warp conduit interference that had been experienced on previous designs.
            When the U.S.S. Archer began to return her first surveys of uncharted systems in Beta Quadrant, Starfleet was stunned by the volume and accuracy of the data that flowed back from the frontier, thanks to the new Vulcan array.  Word began to get around that the Constitution had a real rival on its hands, while at the same time confirmation of the Anton Class’s limited range reaffirmed Team Archer’s first claim that the Archer Class had a superior overall operating envelope.
            By 2171, the Archers in operation had become vital to Starfleet’s exploration subcommand.  Only one of the original Constitution Class ships had returned intact from its last five-year mission, and the Antons had clearly proven themselves to be short on legs, forced to return for refurbishment and refitting more often than Starfleet would have liked.  Combat had yet to be a concern as the Archers had not seen significant engagements with hostile forces, but such opportunities were sure to come as the federation flagship was condemned to lie in dry-dock for the duration of an extensive and groundbreaking refit program, began in 2271 following the promotion of Enterprise captain James T. Kirk to the Admiralty.
            For a time, the Archers, the Antons, the Loknars, and their like, were the mainstay of the fleet.  Production of additional Constitution hulls had not yet made up the ground lost with so many of the original Constitutions having been destroyed or scrapped.
            Perhaps sensing this vulnerability, the Romulans, Klingons, and other hostile nations pressed their case against Federation expansion, leading to multiple ship-to-ship fights which exposed the weaknesses of the Federation fleet.
            In mid 2271 the U.S.S. Shran, named in honor of an Andorian contemporary of the original Captain Archer of Starfleet lore, was exploring an uncharted system near the Federation Beta Quadrant border with the Klingons when she was set upon by several early-model D-7 type Klingon cruisers.  Ton for ton, the Shran was the better ship, but lacking the decisive killing punch of a missile weapon, and faced with a numerically superior enemy, the Shran took a severe beating before eventually escaping into the momentary safety of the system’s kuiper belt.  There, amidst the dark, frozen debris, the crew of the Shran attempted to piece their ship back together and recover both dead and wounded.  All the while sending desperate subspace signals for assistance, and playing cat-and-mouse with a trio of lethal Klingon combat craft.
            For three days the game went on, until at last the Anton Class U.S.S. Condor left warp and entered the system, attracting the attention of two of the three Klingon D-7s still bent on finding and finishing the Shran.  A system-wide melee ensued, with the Condor also taking heavy damage, but not before both the Condor and a somewhat-recovered Shran managed to obliterate one D-7, permanently cripple the second, and drive the remaining Klingon ship from the field.  Before the Federation crews could approach and attempt to board the D-7 left in their grasp, those Klingons aboard self-destructed their vessel in defiance, rather than face the dishonor of capture.
            Both the Condor and the Shran limped back to the nearest Starbase, where word of the fight quickly made its way through Starfleet channels, both official and unofficial.  Nominally, the crews of both Starfleet ships were lauded as heroic, showered with honors, and the toughness of both ship classes boasted of by both the design teams and the crews who had fought aboard them.  But privately, strategists in Starfleet’s think tanks fretted over the general vulnerability of the fleet, and relayed these concerns to the contractors overseeing the production of new Constitution hulls, and the experimental refit of the Enterprise.  When delivered, the message was clear: the Starfleet cannot stand without its toughest player in the game.
            Perhaps if the controversial Federation Class dreadnought had been built in sufficient numbers, it could have stood in for the Constitution.  But the Federation Class had proven even more controversial than the Constitution, and what few ships of this type existed were unable to cover all of the Federation’s dangerously porous borders at any given point in time.  Besides which, the pacifists in power hated the Federation Class, a warship by design and breeding, whose title and purpose was an affront to everything the United Federation of Planets stood for.
            Such pacific attitudes held sway at least until the V’Ger Incident, which came directly on the heels of the firefight between the Klingons and the Shran.  The V’Ger machine probe penetrated Federation space to its very heart, destroying virtually every ship in its path, and nearly the Enterprise herself, before the crisis could be averted.  Public outcry over the state of the Starfleet was overwhelming.  In spite of themselves, even the pacifists could no longer deny that the Galaxy was a very, very dangerous place, and if the Federation was to remain whole and sovereign, it would need, in paraphrased words oft attributed to old Earth author George Orwell, “rough ships, ready to do violence on behalf of the citizenry."
            Following a hasty post-V’Ger shakedown cruise, the refitted Enterprise was declared fit for duty, equipped with ultra state-of-the art firepower, sensors, shields, engines, et al.  Now become the ship of the line for the Constitution Class, Enterprise raised the watermark for the rest of the fleet, and the design teams for all of the Constitution Class’s peers rushed to their drawing boards, carefully examining the significant changes made to Enterprise, and determining how these changes, if any, might be applied to their own vessels in a similar refitting fashion.
            The Anton is probably the best-known class—beyond the Constitution itself—to come out of this frenzied refitting process.  Only, by the time the Anton emerged from its cocoon, it had transformed so utterly, that the new design was declared a new class unto itself, and all existing Anton Class ships were slated for refit and upgrade to the much-superior Miranda Class benchmark.
            The Loknar frigate and Larson destroyer underwent similar transformations, though without enduring a class re-designation, while the Archer soldiered bravely on, continuing to thrust into the Beta Quadrant frontier using technology that had, very quickly, become outdated.  All save for the Vulcan sensor array, which was still superior to that of other classes; a primary reason Starfleet kept the Archers in the field in spite of the fact that they were, quite frankly, outgunned.
            Ultimately, not even the Archer could avoid the refitting mania that had taken Starfleet by storm.  By the mid 2270s those Team Archer members who had originally worked for a well-armed Archer Class, again pressed their case, this time with the overwhelming support of their superiors in both the military and the government.  The U.S.S. Archer, still in service in spite of several nasty scrapes with heretofore unknown alien menaces in the frontier, returned to the same dry-dock which had birthed her, to undergo her own modernization.
            The same upgraded shields, engines, and phasers which had been installed on the refitted Constitution, were easily borrowed for use on the Archer Class.  All save for the torpedoes, which had never equipped the original Archer, and posed a significant design problem for the refitters.  Team Archer briefly toyed with building in a torpedo bay at the base of the dorsal pylon, on top of the engineering hull, as had been first done on the Enterprise, but it was concluded that this would cause too many problems with the sensitive and delicate sensor array.  A plan was also drawn up to evacuate a large portion of the forward saucer to make room for two torpedo assemblies that would fire from apertures in the forward wall of the saucer itself, but this dislocated vital crew quarters and science facilities, which could be relocated to the engineering hull only at the cost of precious consumables storage space.  Thus, that idea also was deemed unfeasible.
            Ultimately, the inspiration for the Archer’s solution came not from the similarly-constructed Constitution hull, but from the greatly transformed Anton, in its Miranda format.  The “roll bar” weapons pod effectively doubled that ship’s firepower while costing the ship nothing in valuable internal volume.  Linked directly to the tops of the warp pylons, the phasers and torpedoes of the Miranda Class had already proven formidable, and the Archer group stared long and hard at that design, trying to discern how a similar solution might be adapted to their own class.  Some of the Team Anton members were even brought on, in a peripheral consultation role, to assist with the brainstorming.
            In the end, it was decided no such “roll bar” could ever work with the Archer in its current configuration, but one of the original designers, who had lobbied hardest for the then-radical idea of photon weaponry on the original Archer design, recovered several of his hand sketches he had made: depicting how the dorsal structure of the Archer might be economically altered to accommodate a weapons pod even more puissant than the one used on the Miranda.  The rest of the group fell in love with the idea, and eventually the refitting took place—over the course of four months—wherein the Archer slowly dematerialized and rematerialized into its currently recognizable form.
            Instead of adding a “bar” for the torpedo bay, the Archer group extended the spine of the dorsal pylon through the lengthened slab of the impulse deck, forward of the impulse engine and vertical intermix chamber, so that the weaponry pod would ride just above and behind the bridge, at the tip of the dorsal pylon—able to strike fore and aft with photon torpedoes, as well as 360 degrees with additional phaser hardpoints.  The engineering hull was greatly retrofitted and enlarged to make room for still more consumables and equipment, while the old Shuvinaaljis FWF type engines were replaced by the much more modern Leeding FWG type nacelle.  As with Enterprise before her, the Archer’s existing warp pylons were insufficient to the task of supporting the FWG, so they were scrapped in favor of a swept, strengthened pylon design.
            The transformed Archer Class emerged in 2276 a greatly augmented animal.  Weapons studies charts indicated that the Archer refit was even deadlier than the Miranda or Constitution classes, while possessing shields and hull strength at least as good, or better.  Where once the Archer had been something of a weak link in the Starfleet fire chain, now it was a lion, with teeth and claws to spare.
            All existing Archer Class ships were ordered into dock for refitting, ala the Archer, while Starfleet expanded overall procurement again, this time ordering thirty more Archers on top of the original production run, with estimated long-term procurement projected in excess of eighty vessels by the turn of the century.  The rapid expansion of the Federation demanded the rapid expansion of the Starfleet, and every shipyard across the heart of the Federation was enjoying a military boom the likes of which had never been seen before.  By 2280, Archers were being built at three shipyards in three systems, to the tune of nine ships per year.  Upon christening, almost all of them were hurled back into the Beta Quadrant—that old proving ground of the original Archer, where they did much to secure the peace against Klingon and other alien aggression directly prior to the signing of the famed Khitomer Peace Accords of 2293 A.D.
            Even after the Accords went into effect, Starfleet was kept busy in that region of space, continually exploring the unknown, while simultaneously handling nasty problem after nasty problem as bad apples from the Klingon Empire, determined to resist the “sickness” of the peace, turned entire ships against the Empire and the Federation alike.  Seeing as how the new Excelsior design was still too few in number to combat the threat, Starfleet’s old work horses—the Constitution, Miranda, Loknar, Archer, and a few newish designs such as the Triton—held the line against the renegade Klingon menace well into the 24^th century.
            By 2290 A.D. the Archer design was over fifty years old.  Greatly improved since its first conception in the 2230s, yes, but still old when compared to the larger, more powerful ships due to enter Starfleet in the early portion of the 24^th century.  The Archers would undergo two more refits—beyond the original 2276 refit—keeping them in the inventory well into the 2340s, though by that time they had, admittedly, been relegated to reserve and training roles, or had otherwise been scrapped or committed to one of the many fleet museums across the Federation.  No Archer saw combat operations past 2343, and the last Archer on active exploratory duty was decommissioned in 2349.  Past that point, the Archer has become yet another relic of Starfleet’s lengthy history, a curiosity item for children who will witness the end of the 24^th century and the beginning of the 25^th—children whose idea of what a starship is and how it functions has been shaped by the likes of the Galaxy Class, a design not even conceivable when the first engineers and scientists sat down at their 23^rd century CAD stations and laid the first lines of what would come to be known as the Archer Class.
            All in all, the ship that almost didn’t get built had a grand total production run of 102 ships, terminating with the commissioning of the U.S.S. Gruthnork in 2308.  Ironically, the youngest ship of the line would have the shortest lifespan of them all, as the Gruthnork—named after an early Tellarite commander from the first days of the Federation—went missing shortly after checking in with Deep Space Station J-12 in the Beta Quadrant frontier, just a month and a half after her christening.  She was neither seen nor heard from again for over twenty years, until a Constellation Class cruiser chanced across a widely-strewn field of debris at the edges of a pulsar system deep in the Beta Quadrant frontier.  Smashed components recovered from the field were determined to be of Federation manufacture, matching the time frame of the Gruthnork’s assembly, and data fragments retrieved from damaged isolinear chips revealed that the wreckage was indeed from the Gruthnork.  No records indicating the fate of the ship were ever recovered, however, nor was any conclusive evidence found that might tell of how she met her demise.  Like many Starfleet ships lost to the frontier, the Gruthnork’s fate is sealed forever, along with the lips of her crew.