The Federation Starfleet was born out of the conflict - indeed, a joint naval operation against the Romulans by the future Federation member states was one of the first steps on the path towards union. After the establishment of the United Federation of Planets, the various member states' naval services took on joint security as one of their major tasks. This was particularly true for the United Earth Space Probe Agency (UESPA) and the Andorian Imperial Guard, but all the founders possessed naval forces for commerce protection and system security in addition to exploration and scientific missions. 

From the founding, a series of conflicts followed, notably the First Federation-Romulan War of 2186-2190 and the Federation-Kzinti War of 2219-2222, that demonstrated the fundamental permeability and fragility of the Federation's borders. Despite the Federation Council's aspiration for the United Starfleet, which had been steadily centralizing uniformed service since 2207, to be a primarily exploratory organization, it was impossible to deny that the Starfleet had to maintain military capabilities. 

That said, the Council did stand firm on several points, including a general refusal to authorize or sustain dedicated warships - that is to say, starships that did not have a peacetime function equal to or surpassing their military function. This in turn caused on tension with UESPA and by extension United Earth, which had commissioned a fleet of six battleships at substantial expense during the early years of the Federation. By 2202, UESPA had refitted half of those ships with improved warp propulsion, allowing them much greater operational range. This caused significant debate in the Federation Council about the role of the UESPA battleships and ultimately led to the decommissioning of the remaining three unrefitted hulls. While two of the three refits made important contributions in the Federation-Kzinti War (including U.S.S. Venus, which was destroyed in action), the Council refused to authorize resources to maintain and update these ships further, and they were placed on inactive reserve in 2226 before being scrapped in 2230.

The divestiture of the Mars class battleships didn't make the Federation's external security threats go away. While conventional wisdom indicated that the Romulan Star Empire was fully contained and did not pose a threat to the territory of the Federation, relations with the Klingon Empire had been slowly growing strained. From their peak in the early 2220s, when the Empire provided defense advisors to the Federation during their efforts to defend against the Kzinti, starting in 2229 the Empire disputed the Federation's border claims with increasing vehemence. While the Four Year War and the War of 2256 were still decades away, Federation planners noted with concern the potential for armed conflict in the future. These fears appeared to be borne out in 2234-2235, when the Klingons launched a series of incursions into disputed space prior to launching diplomatic negotiations.

While the Federation Council's official position on the war of 2234-2235 was that the entire event was a cultural misunderstanding, behind the scenes a number of policy changes started to take effect. In 2237 the Federation indefinitely delayed plans to fully dissolve the member-state naval services, instead transitioning them to second-line "national guard" type forces. In particular, this policy change allowed Vulcan to retain control over the Vulcan Expeditionary Group rather than fully incorporate it into the United Starfleet. The Federation also started construction on a number of starship classes that were more geared towards military operations and were planned to be solely operated by Starfleet Military Operations Command. A representative example of these type of ships was the Nimitz class, which probably correlates to the Star Fleet Battles YDN configuration. 

The first Nimitz class ships entered service in 2227, and while historians frequently refer to them as battleships or battlecruisers, Starfleet chose to adopt the nomenclature "dreadnought." Federation intelligence had previously used this term to describe the Klingon Empire's IoS class cruisers. The Federation, possibly in part as a result of Klingon propaganda during the period of relatively good relations from 2217-2229, has always tended to overclassify Klingon starship classes, habitually describing destroyers as battlecruisers and cruisers as dreadnoughts. While the Nimitz class proved to be obsolete by the 2256 war, it was still an important part of Federation security planning in the first half of the 23rd century.

In addition to the Nimitz, however, the Federation also had something bigger. At some point before 2275, the Federation built seven "ships" of the Defender class. These vessels, which historians often refer to as battleships, were really more mobile bases, and represented an attempt to address the flaws in Starfleet static defenses highlighted in the assault on Starbase 1 in 2257. The Defenders were approximately two kilometers long from the tip of the saucer to the end of the engineering hull, and had substantial capacity for weapons, personnel, and cargo stores. While in theory the Federation imagined a Defender as a 'strongpoint' that would pin down invading enemies while more maneuverable ships attacked at the flanks, in practice the Defenders mostly operated as logistics hubs and large-scale transports. Starting in 2273, at least some Defenders had hangars for combat shuttles, which enhanced both their power projections and close-in defense capabilities, but they never lived up to their promised role in protecting Federation star systems.

The original Class 1 proposal consisted of five elements:

• A laser-armed cruiser designed for deep space exploration but suitable for a broad range of mission profiles
• A fast, well-armed tactical escort with enough endurance to operate either independently or as part of a task force
• A scout ship using the same spaceframe as the tactical escort design, intended for very long range exploration missions
• A modular fleet tug that could attach a number of different pods to significantly change its capabilities
• A phaser-armed cruiser with enhanced command and control facilities to act as a fleet flagship and coordinate operations of multiple ships in a sector

The first four starship types were all approved fairly readily by the Federation Council after early proof of concept studies demonstrated the feasibility of the concept. It was the fifth bullet, however, that proved to be a sticking point. Robert April envisioned this ship as being a large dreadnought-type ship that could challenge Klingon cruisers directly if necessary. Under the most favorable of circumstances, building a ship of that power would have been extremely challenging for the late 2230s-early 2240s Federation, and making such a ship that could also fulfill April's "five year mission" concept left Federation planners extremely skeptical.

Ultimately, the command cruiser role was initially filled by ships like U.S.S. Hood that added command and control facilities to the Constitution class design. It was only after the Klingon War of 2256-2257 that the Federation seriously revisited the original "big cruiser" concept, ultimately leading to the authorization of 20 Class 1 dreadnoughts on Stardate 6066, with the lead ship planned to be U.S.S. Federation. With the Nimitz class demonstrably obsolete and fast headed for mothballing or for the scrapyard, the Federation class was the only major combatant in the United Starfleet for many years. The Federation class underwent several improvements over the course of its production life, including an upgrade with added capabilities similar to the Enteprise refit (DN+) and new a new building plan for later designs with enhanced capabilities (Ascension subclass, DNG/DNH).

While the dreadnoughts were often one step behind their Klingon counterparts, they filled an important role in the Starfleet. The only issue was production - simply put, the Federation couldn't build enough of them. 

The issue of dreadnought production plagued the Federation for many years, and the appearance of the new Hurgh class destroyers in 2280 galvanized the Council to demand a solution. It's important to note that, from a historical perspective, the Federation had achieved functional parity with the Klingons by this time - the CB refit for the Constitution class was a match for the Hurgh. However, the sting of the War of 2256 still impacted Federation intelligence analysis and decision making, and there was a real concern in the Federation that the Klingons still enjoyed a technical advantage. 

After issuing a "put up or shut up" ultimatum to the various dreadnought programs in various stages of development, two contenders for increasing dreadnought production survived: the ADREFT program and the "Super Balson" program. The Council had already decided in classified session to authorize a supplemental order of four new dreadnoughts, using the contract numbers for canceled or decommissioned Achernar class cruisers, to be built to whichever dreadnought replacement program could provide the best value.

ADREFT (Avenger Design Refit) was the more ambitious of the two designs. Based on part on technology transfer from the Gorn Hegemony, ADREFT consisted of a "stretched" Avenger class heavy frigate equipped with 12 main phaser banks, 6 torpedo tubes, 2 defensive phaser batteries, 2 megaphaser cannons, and four multi-purpose launch tubes that could serve as additional torpedo tubes or launch defensive drones for point defense against shuttles or projectile weapons. To power the huge arsenal, a third warp nacelle was added on the centerline, creating a trimaran appearance. 

U.S.S. Balson (NCC-2105) was originally laid down as U.S.S. Combination with a commissioning targeted for 2265. Unfortunately, the ship was plagued with delays, and when the first DN+ refits started the only progress made on her was the completion of most of her engineering hull. In 2277, the Federation Council officially cancelled U.S.S. Combination and directed Starfleet to complete the ship as an Enterprise class cruiser to be commissioned as U.S.S. Balson. There was some confusion in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers on how to interpret the directive, but ultimately upgraded the unfinished Combination engineering hull to the Federation (II) technical standard and made adjustments to her warp dynamics to support an Enterprise class saucer section. The end result was a CC+ saucer section mated to a DN+ engineering hull. While somewhat underpowered for her size, Balson was still able to serve effectively as a command ship and almost immediately the SCE began studies on a production version of the Balson. While these proposals lost out to the CB initially, the so-called "Super Balson" remained in development when the 2280 dreadnought ultimatum came down.

The Super Balson design had 10 main phaser banks, 6 torpedo tubes, 2 defensive phaser batteries, and 2 multi-purpose launch tubes, but she was more maneuverable and energy efficient than the ADREFT design. Most importantly, the Super Balson was much closer to being production-ready, with ADREFT unable to deliver a first article until 2282 at least. When Federation Intelligence learned that the new CheS class cruisers were starting space trials and expected to enter service beginning in 2281, the Council reluctantly declined to fund ADREFT and instead awarded the Kirov class contract to the Super Balson design. 

In an alternate universe, the first ADREFT launched in 2283 as U.S.S. Kirov, NX-2150. This ship deviated significantly from the original ADREFT concept, replacing the stretched Avenger hull with a heavily refitted Ariel class saucer. The ship generally met its performance expectations and would have many characteristics associated with a heavy carrier (essentially, take the DNW from Star Fleet Battles, but replace the Battle Pod with a Heavy Carrier pod). It's unclear if the production Kirovs had megaphaser cannons. In that universe, five ADREFT Kirov class ships were completed and they served from 2283-2299.

And That Brings Us To...

Nathan Bedford Forrest was an North American general who lived from 1821-1877. In 1861, at the age of 40, Forrest betrayed his oath to the United States of America and joined the Confederate States of America, a separatist organization dedicated to the perpetuation of slavery in North America. According to Mitcham (2016), he coined the recruiting slogan "Let's have some fun and kill some Yankees!" for his regiment, and then proceeded over the next four years to kill countless Americans. One particular exclamation point in the campaign was the Battle of Fort Pillow where, in addition to inflicting ordinary battlefield deaths, Forrest's troops tortured and murdered wounded, surrendered, or otherwise incapacitated Union soldiers, with a particular emphasis on individuals with darker skin pigmentation, who in the Confederacy formed a slave caste. 

After the war, Forrest briefly experimented in civilian business before finding his true career calling: domestic terrorism. Forrest organized the infamous terrorist group known as the Ku Klux Klan, dedicated to brutalizing, intimidating, and murdering former slaves and ensuring that the light-pigmented former master caste retained political power. Two years before he died of diabetes, Forrest did appear to have something of a change of heart and began to advocate for reconciliation, but his 14 years of treason, war crimes, and terrorism fundamentally define his legacy.

This is exactly the kind of person the United Federation of Planets would name a starship after, right?????

No, of course they wouldn't. Fun fact, 1762's sister ship, 1763 is supposedly named after the Soviet military officer who ordered the shootdown of Korean Airlines flight 007. I don't know what Steve Cole was smoking when he came up with these ships' names, but I don't want any. Star Fleet Battles is an essential and invaluable contributing source to the Star Trek Expanded Universe, but the existence of anomalies like 1762 really illustrate the importance of authors having control over how much their personal politics bleed into their writing. 

Fortunately, we have a solution, which I'll get to in a moment. First, let's talk about dreadnoughts some more.

As I mentioned earlier, there are three distinct versions of the Federation class dreadnought, both in Star Fleet Design and in Star Fleet Battles. First there's the original 2260s Federation class, which is basically a jumbo Achernar with a third warp engine and overall larger superstructure. The Federation Council ordered 20 of these ships but only actually built 12 of them. These ships were refitted to the DN+ configuration (or in the case of 2109 Concordat to the DNF configuration) starting in 2277. At the same time, 10 entirely new dreadnought hulls were authorized to fill in for the unbuilt 8. These were initially contracted for NCCs 2520-2529 starting with U.S.S. Ascension and construction started concurrent with the DN+ refits.

Its worth noting that NCC-2120, U.S.S. Entente, was the last of the cancelled excess Federation class ships. By the time the Ascensions were nearing commissioning, the Federation Council decided to retain the naming scheme of Entente and changed the NCC-25xx to NCC-21xx numbers for continuity with the original Entente. Entente, incidentally, is a canonical ship, mentioned in background radio chatter in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The names of the other 10 Ascension/Ententes are a matter of speculation as two equally credible sources exist, but I'm inclined to go with Star Fleet Reference Series, if only because the names seem a little less fanciful than the ones in Federation Master Ship Book. 

However, the reclaiming of the 21xx numbers for the ten A/E class dreadnoughts leaves the other three Balson class ships orphaned - they were NCCs 2128, 2129, and 2130. Conveniently, NBF and her sister ships were three in number. Do you see where I'm going here?

Almost as soon as the Federation Council authorized the production of the four Kirov class ships using the "Super Balson" configuration, they authorized four more hulls for a total of either The planned ships were:

• NCC-1751 -- U.S.S. Kirov 
• NCC-1752 -- U.S.S. Australia
• NCC-1753 -- U.S.S. New Zealand
• NCC-1754 -- U.S.S. New Jersey (built as U.S.S. Shangri-La, BCV configuration)
• NCC-1761 -- U.S.S. Kurita
• NCC-1762 -- U.S.S. Doria
• NCC-1763 -- U.S.S. Walker
• NCC-1764 -- U.S.S. Defiant (II) (built as BCV 2285, refitted to BCS circa 2288)

It's worth noting that FASA offers alternate names for the four Kirovs, but these indicate planned commissioning dates before the Kirov program was authorized, so these ships were probably planned for the original cruiser contracts and never actually built. Considering that Minsk was built as an Ascension class ship under NCC-2125, commissioning in 2280, and the original Republic, believed lost, was recovered in 2282, these names wouldn't be used on 2283+ new construction. We can probably safely ignore the FASA names for these ships.

Each Kirov was expected to take about 18 months to build, and even allowing for some delays, the Federation Council expected to receive at least one such ship per year on a staggered production schedule between the 175x and 176x contracts. Kirov launched in 2281, Kurita in 2282, Australia in January 2283, and finally Doria in August 2283. However, the "Kurita class" ships were not identical to the Kirovs. As defense cooperation with the Gorn against the Romulans increased, the Federation initiated a series of defense related technology transfers. One of the fruits of those trades were examples and technical production data for manufacturing plasma blasters. Compared to the Kirov's six torpedo tubes, Kurita and her sister ships have four torpedo tubes and two blasters. 

As mentioned above, Doria launched in 2283. In 2285, while operating in Romulan space, Doria was involved in the Battle of Oxvind V, where Klingon "allies" disrupted attempts by the Romulan Star Empire to negotiate an end to hostilities with the Federation. We don't know much more about Doria's adventures and FASA doesn't provide a maintenance history or fate for 1762. However, the Balson history that we drew the replacement names for this class from indicates that all the Balsons were out of service by 2299, so we can assume that she didn't receive the early 2300s X-Tech refits that the Kirovs appear to have gotten. Either Doria was lost at some point, or she was retired before the end of the century.

As you probably recall from some of our previous discussions, Lexington was another one of those ships who jumps contracts several times. Initially authorized as NCC-1703, then transferred to NCC-1704, she was finally built as NCC-1709. However, before Lexington commissioned in 2248, there was NCC-1709, U.S.S. Valiant, which commissioned in 2245 (roughly the same time as U.S.S. Enterprise). According to Ships of the Star Fleet, Valiant was lost eight months after commissioning in the vicinity of the Eminar star system. According to the German-language novel Fire with Fire, Valiant was lost shortly after stardate 1966.9 in star system LC-13 when an alien entity caused it to crash into a planet. Memory Beta indicates that this stardate corresponds to 2266, but I suspect it actually corresponds with stardate 2246, in line with the SOTSF data.

Lexington replaced Valiant a few years later as a Constitution class cruiser. Initially under the command of Captain Korolev, Lexi completed two five year missions, including supporting the fleet responding to the destruction of Starbase 18 in the early 2250s. Captain Mark Rousseau took command in 2258. Probably concurrent with Captain Rousseau's assumption of command, Lexi received a refit. FASA records the refit as to Constitution mk III (i.e., Achernar subclass), but the date indicates it occured several years before the launch of Achernar. Most likely, her configuration resembled the late 2250s Enterprise - that is to say, Bon Homme Richard subclass, but with the phaser refit.

Starfleet reported Lexi missing and presumed lost in 2261, but she subsequently reestablished contact with Starfleet Command and resumed her mission. Captain Rousseau retired in 2264, passing command to Commodore Robert Wesley. Lexi led the fleet at Organia in Errand of Mercy in 2267 and subsequently had a series of adventures in that general region over the course of the year. In 2268, Lexington was involved in the M-5 computer incident, losing 53 members of her crew and sustaining serious damage. Commodore Wesley retired from Starfleet some time after the M-5 incident but before 2269.

Lexi's "season of adventure" continued through 2270, with many appearances in the licensed fiction as well as many path-crossings with the U.S.S. Enterprise. We can presume that some time before 2277, Lexi was retired from active service.

Some time around 2277, a new U.S.S. Lexington commissioned as a command cruiser. FASA describes the ship as an Enterprise mk. I using the same registry as the original. Star Fleet Command indicates that Lexi had the command cruiser package and was a CC+ statistically. However, there is some evidence that this ship is actually NCC-3092, the lead ship for the Lexington class of command cruisers. While statistically similar to the Constitution based CC+, the ship was much closer in design lineage to the Excelsior class, especially in terms of warp propulsion design. Captain Grant Franklin took command of Lexington for a series of adventures along the Klingon neutral zone, as described in The Strider Incident. 

The Lexington class was small (only 6 ships) and don't appear to have served very long. By 2306, a new Excelsior class U.S.S. Lexington was in service as NCC-2026 (and later NCC-14427). That ship's adventures, however, are out of scope for this article.

Meanwhile, probably around the same time the new Lexington was being built, the Enterprise subclass heavy cruiser U.S.S. Christopher Pike was built using NCC-1709. She was probably a CC+. In 2285, this ship led a fleet to respond to an expected Mirror Universe incursion. We don't know much about the Pike after this, but it appears she refitted to CB in 2286 and then to CX in 2297. After one final five year mission, she was scrapped in 2303.