[Galaxy] 2161 November 22, Starfleet Corps of Engineers, "A series of Lectures" Part 1

[Ethan Armstrong]

-- Forwarding on behalf of Commodore Kravchik --

OOC: I apologise in advance for the length of this post. This is Part
1 in a planned 4 part series of posts to bring everyone up to speed
with the technological direction of TFE. The next post will be done in
a few days.

These post, by agreement, take place in a time period after the Fleet
arrives and prior to the Federation announcements.

[Starfleet Command, San Francisco]

Commodore Markus Kravchik seemed to wear a perpetual scowl on his face
these days. It might have had something to do with the war and being
the man responsible for rebuilding the fleet. It might have something
to do as well with how Admiral Garroway had finally managed to trick
him into accepting a promotion. He'd been happy being the senior most
Captain in the SCE, but with the Corps expanding like it was, he
needed a proper higher rank to run the entire department properly.

Right at this moment however he was busy at the front of Starfleet
Academy's Lecture Theatre 1. The briefing he was preparing to give was
for every member of the SCE that could make it, a smattering of
individuals from Starfleet Operations, Medical and the Sciences as
well as any and all Brass that wished to attend.

The theatre was already starting to fill up with people, the front few
rows still empty, reserved for the Admiralty who had RSVP'd for the
SCE meeting. As the clock started to tick down towards the time
Kravchik had announced for the briefing to start, Markus noticed the
first of the Admirals to start walking in with selected members of
their staff in tow.

This was going to be a large scale briefing to write home about.
Nothing this big, that wasn't tied to the now finished Romulan War,
had been done since before the Enterprise itself had been launched.
"Ladies and Gentleman," Markus finally spoke up, his voice still
tinged with a faint Russian accent and amplified through the theatre's
sound system. The place was meant for up to 800 students at once and
was packed. "I thank you all for coming to this SCE briefing,
especially this early in the morning and when I know there are still
celebrations on going. The entire briefing I wish to present to the
SCE will be multi-part and consume the better part of the day.
Admirals, I will give summaries to both parts of today's briefing and
hope to have you free before lunch. Everyone else, there will be a
catered lunch before this afternoon's sessions where I will be diving
into technical details and answering very specific technical questions
as we progress."

Grabbing up the clicker from the lectern before him, Markus clicked to
the first slide of his 'brief' briefing. It simply had three emblems
sitting on a blue background. The middle of the three was the SCE's
seal. The left was the seal from the NX program, but modified to read
'NX 2000'. The right one was brand new, never seen outside of the SCE
until now.

"Admirals, assembled ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct pleasure
to present to you the NX 2000 Fleet upgrade program as well my pet
personal project, Project Daedalus. The NX 2000 upgrade is purely a
project name for the next series of NX upgrades that will be rolled
out across the entire NX line, from the base ships to the Freedom
subclass, bringing all ships to the new NX standards I will present to
this gathering before the day is out."

"Project Daedalus is the SCE's proposition for a brand new class of
starships. The next generation of explorers that will, to put it
politely, make the NX class a rear line ship as soon as numbers of the
Daedalus class start to roll out of the shipyards. Highlights of
Daedalus include a new class of ship built from the keel up with new
technologies from the start and my personal favourite - a Warp 7
engine that will make Daedalus the fastest human ship ever built, able
to keep pace with the Vulcan Surak class vessels and the front-line
Andorian cruisers."

Another click, a pause for a sip of water and Markus was now standing
in front of a huge screen that was now home to a rotating diagram of
the NX class starship. "I'll start with the NX upgrade program since
it is immediate and in fact I have, as head of the SCE, already
authorized it for the ships currently sitting in slips at the William
Pickering yard in lunar orbit as well as the San Francisco and
Annapolis Orbital facilities. At current, ESS Intrepid will be the
first ship completed with this program. Yorktown will follow shortly
after as both ships have been in yard hands for slightly longer then
the rest of the fleet due to their not being in the Battle of Cheron."

Another slide came up with bullet points of the program, right at the
top being the simple phrase of 'Warp 6 top speed'. "The key purpose of
the NX upgrades is to bring the entire NX fleet up to a maximum top
speed of Warp 6 as soon as possible, giving Starfleet a faster rapid
response time to developing emergencies. Simulations and empirical
testing however gives us a much more realistic number of Warp 5.7 as a
maximum long term cruise speed. I should note that some of the
advances being rolled into the NX fleet for this speed increase will
be rolled out into the Sol and Neptune fleets as well, bringing both
classes up to a maximum speed of Warp 5. Admirals, I will be wanting
to discuss with you in the following weeks the Sol and Neptune fleets,
especially in light of Project Daedalus."

"This speed increase is the largest and most significant upgrade for
each ship and will require significant yard time to pull off. Since a
majority of the ships that participated in the Battle of Cheron are
severely damaged, the upgrades will be going in as repairs are done to
the ships. ESS Intrepid, it should be noted, will still be the first
done due to some...unorthodox activities aboard that ship warranting a
complete nacelle replacement for the ship. That right there is over
fifty percent of the upgrade program for each ship. Extensive core
upgrades will be required and are already in progress. The NX fleet is
the priority, with the Sol and Neptune classes only being upgraded as
ships come in for yard time over the next two years."

"The next major point is the rolling out of Starfleet's first
generation of energy shielding for shipboard use." While the bullet
points stayed on the screen, an empty portion was taken up with a
rotating image of the new shield generator as well as a transparent
wireframe of an NX class ship and where within the vessel the
generator was going to be going in. "Due to the NX class's
pre-existing defensive technologies, the system is not as capable as I
would have liked due to limitations imposed by the space frame.
However, the supplementing of the Fleets already existent armour and
hull polarization techniques will drastically improve the durability
of our current front line vessels."

"In conjunction to superior defensive arrangements for the NX
upgrades, the SCE has managed to find a way to increase existing
offensive capabilities with minimal impact to the NX class's original
mission specifications. Recent developments in engineering and weapon
technologies will allow the SCE to increase the power of existing
phase cannons with minimal upgrades from 4 to 6 terawatts of power,
giving the NX class a capability of projecting up to 36 terawatts of
offensive beam weapon power."

"This will require us to completely remove all the existing phase
cannons and replace them, but as the emitters are essentially modular
components in essence, it won't take long. In fact, the SCE has
already built up a stockpile of components in this regard, thanks to
the war effort."

Another click, another frame, this time highlighting all the torpedo
launchers aboard the NX class. "As you can see, we've also redesigned
the torpedo capabilities of the class. This is a slightly more
intensive upgrade, but again, one we have parts for in surplus and
were gearing up to deploy anyway. Essentially we have balanced out the
numbers of photonic and spatial warhead launchers to two fore and two
aft of each type. Most ships of the line are essentially ninety
percent compliment with this upgrade and I don't envision this part
taking to long with each ship."

The next highlighted bullet point read 'Tractor Beam emitters' and was
accompanied by a similar rotating device image and wireframe of its
in-ship location. "The last major upgrade to the entire fleet will be
the inclusion of a tractor beam emitter assembly. With assistance from
Vulcan and Tellerite tech transfers as part of the Coalition
agreement, the SCE has managed to bridge the gaps in our understanding
of tractor beam systems and moved them from a purely laboratory piece
of equipment to something small enough and capable enough for
shipboard deployment. I warn the Fleet however, this is still
experimental technology, but one I feel is ready for wide spread
deployment in order to crowd-source the debugging of this equipment
that I hope will within a year completely replace the grappler systems
currently used across the fleet."
"In conjunction to these major upgrades to critical systems, the
latest advancements and modification to sensor suites, computer
systems and life support will also be undertaken. These however are
more in line with standard upgrades on new iterations of existing
technologies and as such more of a side note to the major upgrades
already taking place."

"At this time, with the basic outline covered, I would like to take
any questions the Admiralty might have in regard to the NX 2000
upgrade program before moving on to the Project Daedalus summary."

TO BE CONTINUED

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Commore Markus Kravchik
Starfleet Corps of Engineers

&

Assembled Guest