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From the nimble Jem'Hadar fighter to the formidable Klingon Bird of Prey, Star Trek is filled with iconic and powerful starships. Find out which vessel comes out on top in our ultimate showdown of the 10 most powerful ships.
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00:00Space is a dangerous place, so you need to make sure you're ready for everything out
00:03there waiting in the darkness. Sometimes a towel just isn't enough. Sometimes you need
00:07a powerful starship. The Star Trek universe is filled with ships that are fast, powerful
00:12and well armed. It's not just the Federation that has them. Multiple galactic organisations
00:16have their own ships needed to dominate their respective territories. Without them it can
00:19be incredibly difficult to maintain an empire no matter how impressive your warriors are.
00:24Obviously in this list you're going to notice, where are those 32nd century ships? Wouldn't
00:29literally any of them paste some of these and our answer to that is that they're probably
00:35going to get their own list because, you know, some of these ships wouldn't stand a chance
00:39so it needed to have at least a bit of help for everyone. Some of the best episodes of
00:43every Star Trek series feature impressive space battles pitting these ships against each other.
00:47In some cases these ships are facing off one on one and other times it's fleet against fleet.
00:51Any way you cut it these battles make for incredible television as well as a great use of special
00:55effects. While each ship has its own unique design with attributes that set it apart,
00:58some are simply more powerful than others. The question is how do they stack up against each
01:03other and which one do you want in a fight? I'm Sean Ferric for Trek Culture and here are
01:08Star Trek's 10 most powerful ships. Number 10 Jem'Hadar Fighter
01:13The Dominion ruled the Gamma Quadrant side of the wormhole in DS9. They were content to live their
01:18lives as they always had until ships from the Alpha Quadrant started arriving in their territory.
01:22Some were explorers, some were looking to set up colonies, others had far more nefarious purposes.
01:27Regardless of their intentions, the Dominion quickly tired of the Alpha Quadrant interlopers
01:31and launched a full-scale war against their neighbours. The Jem'Hadar Fighter was the backbone
01:35of the Dominion's fleet. They were fast, manoeuvrable and outgunned pretty much everything in their
01:39path. Otherwise they were quite spartan in their design. These fighters were used to maintain the
01:43Dominion's dominance over their territories in the Gamma Quadrant and factored heavily into their
01:47plans in the Alpha Quadrant. The first time Starfleet encountered Jem'Hadar Fighters,
01:50a galaxy-class starship that fought them was incapable of destroying one. But one of the
01:56fighters took out the starship with a suicide run. Sometimes it's more about who is flying the
02:01ship than the ship itself. Number 9 The IKS Rotoran or the Klingon Bird of Prey
02:06Few ships in the entire Star Trek universe strike fear into the hearts of their enemies like a Klingon
02:11Bird of Prey. When one decloaks in front of your ship there's a high probability that you're in for a
02:15fight you're about to lose badly. While a Bird of Prey like the IKS Rotoran commanded by General
02:20Martok is by no means the biggest ship in the Klingon fleet they are one of the most effective
02:25and the most versatile. It's filled with a variety of roles but best known for its use in combat
02:29missions. There's a reason why it had the reputation that it did and why it was in service for the
02:33Empire for almost a century. There were two factors that made a Bird of Prey so deadly. First it was
02:37heavily armed featuring at least two disruptors and two photon torpedo launchers but what gave Klingon
02:41ships the edge in any fight was their cloaking devices. You literally never saw them coming. The
02:45only downside was that weapons and shields couldn't be used while cloaked. When a Bird of Prey decloaked
02:49there was a brief moment of downtime before they could put their shields up and the ship was
02:52vulnerable. It took a hell of a marksman on the other ship to take advantage of the window but it
02:56did happen. Number 8 Breen Warship. The Breen are not the best known species in Star Trek. The main time
03:04they played a role of significance in any series was on DS9 during the Dominion War. As the conflict wore
03:08on
03:08the Dominion-Cardassian alliance was unable to bring reinforcements from the Gamma Quadrant.
03:13That's when they turned to the Breen Confederacy. They had long been trading partners with the
03:16Cardassians, one of the few Alpha Quadrant species willing to deal with them. The Cardassians also
03:20didn't completely trust the Breen as they had also been known to shoot down Cardassian ships and use
03:25their crews as slaves. What the Breen brought to the war could not be ignored though. Breen warships were
03:29equipped with energy dissipators. These weapons disabled an enemy's engines, shields and weapons,
03:34effectively leaving an opponent's ship defenceless and unable to run away. While the Allied Federation
03:38Klingon and Romulan fleet eventually worked out a way to defend against the dissipators,
03:42the Breen warships were still a game changer for a time. Number 7 Galar-class Cardassian Warship.
03:48Of all the antagonistic races in the Star Trek universe it's entirely possible that the Cardassians
03:53may be among the worst of them all. They occupied Bajor for 50 years, strip mining their resources and
03:58killing millions in the process. The Cardassians were also the first species to sell the Alpha Quadrant
04:02out to the Dominion, but they do make a decent warship. The Galar-class cruiser was a mainstay of the
04:07Cardassian fleet for years. They were heavily armed and surprisingly versatile, which made them perfect
04:12for any number of operations. In many cases that meant suppressing Bajoran resistance cells and
04:16fighting the Federation. Still, these were the ships that helped build and maintain the Cardassian
04:21Union for many years. Eventually the Keldon-class cruisers were developed and prepared to be the
04:25superior to the Galar-class, but they carried less armaments than their Galar counterparts and seemed
04:29to fare much more poorly in battle. Despite Cardassian military rhetoric, the Galar-class cruiser
04:34was the ship that defined an empire. Number six, the USS Defiant. The Defiant represented the first
04:41time that Starfleet developed a ship specifically for the purpose of combat. After encountering the
04:45Jem'Hadar and their fighters for the first time and losing a Galar-class starship in the process,
04:49Sisko knew he needed more firepower. As such he pulled a prototype ship out of mothballs called
04:54the Defiant. Technically categorized as an escort vessel, the Defiant was designed solely for war,
04:59a role it took to quickly. A smaller ship than most in Starfleet, the Defiant-class was overpowered for
05:04its size. Since it was originally designed to fight the Borg, that actually makes a lot of sense. The
05:08ship had four phaser cannons, three phaser emitters, four forward-facing torpedo launchers and two aft
05:14torpedo launchers. Defensively, the Defiant-class ships had shields as well as a blade of armour.
05:18But the USS Defiant had one other trick up its sleeve that the rest of its class did not. As
05:23the first and
05:23only one of its line at the time, Sisko was able to cut a deal with the Romulans to use
05:27one of their
05:27cloaking devices. The condition was that the Federation would only use said cloaking device
05:31in the Gamma Quadrant, though once war broke out the Romulans were a lot more lenient on that rule.
05:36After the first USS Defiant was destroyed in combat with the Breen, no other ships in that class
05:40ever had a cloaking device that we know of, but even without that capability it remained one of the
05:45toughest ships in Starfleet. Number five, Dideredix-class Romulan Warbird. The Romulans are possibly the
05:52coldest, most calculating and least trusting species in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. They look similar to
05:56Vulcans, except they're more dominated by paranoia and a desire to rule the galaxy than their cousins.
06:01That's probably why they developed a ship like the Warbird. Like the Klingons, the Romulans have
06:05been around since the original series. After a 53 year hiatus from the affairs of the Alpha Quadrant,
06:09the Romulans reappeared on the next generation when a Warbird decloaked in front of the Enterprise D.
06:14It was a disconcerting moment for all involved as no one knew what the Romulans wanted or how powerful
06:18their ships were. Dideredix's Warbirds were as dangerous a ship as you're going to find in Star Trek.
06:23They're large, powerful and heavily armed. On top of that, every Romulan ship is equipped with a
06:27cloaking device, meaning this beast can appear out of nowhere and open fire. But they prefer
06:32subterfuge to open combat, so they're more likely to stay cloaked and watch what's going on.
06:37Number four, the Galaxy-class. Starfleet's Galaxy-class starships were one of the toughest
06:42ever designed and put into use by the Federation. It's also one of the most familiar starship designs to
06:47fans as the class of ship as the Enterprise D was on the next generation. In addition to being one
06:51of the
06:51largest classes of ships in the fleet, the Galaxy-class was also one of the most devastating
06:55in combat. They could have up to 14 phaser arrays, two photon torpedo launchers and often carried an
07:00array of antimatter mines. Galaxy-class starships like the Enterprise D were designed to be self-sufficient
07:04when on long missions. One of the more fun tricks of the Enterprise D having at its disposal was
07:09splitting into two separate ships. The saucer section could detach, turning one ship into two.
07:13This gave the Enterprise D the option of putting the civilians on board the saucer section and sending them
07:18to safety. While the crew continued to fight by running the aft section from the battle bridge,
07:22at least two different Galaxy-class ships had this option. Number three, the IKS Nagvar.
07:28When the Klingons were concerned about the Dominion invading Cardassia, they showed up at Deep Space
07:32Nine with a massive fleet. It was led by Chancellor Gowron's new flagship, the IKS Nagvar. De-cloaking the
07:38Nagvar in front of the station made for one hell of an impression. This classic vessel was one of the
07:43biggest
07:43put into production by the Klingon Empire. It was immense in size, dwarfing pretty much everything else in the fleet.
07:48It boasted several disruptors and photon torpedo launchers, giving it a devastating array of weapons
07:53to work with. Plus it had a cloaking device, like virtually every other Klingon ship. The biggest
07:57impact the Nagvar had on the battlefield was how intimidating it was, particularly when surrounded
08:02by birds of prey and forked shot cruisers. The ship could park itself just off the outer perimeter of
08:06a station like Deep Space Nine and pummel it into submission, which it almost did on one occasion.
08:12Number two, Jem'Hadar Battleship. While the most common Jem'Hadar ship to run into was the fighter,
08:17they also had battleships in play. A Jem'Hadar Battleship was not the most agile ship in space,
08:22nor is it the fastest, but that's not the point. The entire point of a ship like this was sitting
08:26in one spot and pummeling its opponents with torpedoes. These battleships had 10 or more photon
08:31launchers, meaning that it could let an endless barrage of the destructive weapons loose. The first
08:35Federation vessel to encounter a Jem'Hadar Battleship was the USS Valiant, which was summarily destroyed.
08:40The crew of the Valiant, a Defiant-class ship, estimated that battleship was three times the size of a
08:45galaxy-class vessel like the Enterprise D and two times more powerful. Jem'Hadar Battleships were
08:49not easy to escape from and even harder to destroy, but combined with the nimble Jem'Hadar fighters,
08:54they made devastating one-two combination that was enough to take on the enemies of the Dominion.
08:59Number one, Borg Cube. A Borg Cube is one of the most ominous sights in space, simply because it's
09:05virtually indestructible. It's a prime example of how the crew make the ship, a fact that's more true in
09:10this case than not. On its own, a Borg Cube is pretty impressive. They are massive ships loaded
09:14with an incredible variety of weapons and defensive capabilities. A cube is so powerful that being
09:18attacked is barely a concern. It frequently stops in a fight to take cross-sections from enemy ships
09:23to study and learn them. But it's not the size of the weapons that make Borg Cubes so deadly. The
09:27Borg
09:27operate as a hive mind, with thousands of beings plugged into the system. All individuality is lost.
09:32Because of this, a Borg Cube is able to attract and adapt to new threats incredibly quickly. A cube is,
09:37in many ways, a virtually unstoppable juggernaut. They seek to assimilate all species they encounter,
09:42adding their diversity and strength to the collective. Every victory makes the whole
09:46that much more powerful. The few victories that anyone has over a cube have happened thanks to
09:50the extreme levels of creativity in combat and with a lot of sacrifices. That's everything for
09:55our list today folks. Thank you so much. What did you think? Let us know in the comments below.
09:58Thank you so much to Ian Goodwily who wrote the article on which this video is based. You can check
10:02that out over on whatculture.com. You can follow us on the various socials at
10:06trekculture and at trekcultureyt on Instagram. I'm at seanferrick. You'll find me on the various
10:10socials too. Whatever you're doing until I see you again make sure that you live long and prosper.
10:14Treat yourself with kindness. Treat those around you with kindness. Please don't forget to subscribe
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