A Glass Cannon, the Jem'Hadar 'Fighter'

The Dominion War was the most costly engagement Starfleet and the Federation had in the 24th century. Making up the bulk of it's foes, were the wing of Jem'Hadar Attack Ships, or "fighters". With Polaron based systems that pierced shielding and much unrecognisable technology, the Dominion fleet consisted of many of these powerful but small spaceships. Let's take a look at the lore of this vessel.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:53 Real Origin
02:07 Role
04:56 Specifications

STAR TREK® Online developed by Cryptic Studios and Perfect World.
STAR TREK® and its trademarks (including Picard/Strange New Worlds/Lower Decks/Enterprise/Voyager/Deep Space Nine/Discovery and The Next Generation) are all owned by © Paramount Golbal Pictures/CBS Studios Inc. and distributed by CBS and Paramount Plus.
This Video is for critical purposes with commentary.

Outro Animation made by @icarogabriel17

[thestanleys]

The ship is an analogy of the Jem'hadr themselves high capabilities and quick to build but ultimately disposable

[TheAsvarduilProject]

I like how Ben Sisko was like, "Yeah, a small vehicle with the firepower of a Galaxy class!", then years later found an empire who were like, "Yeah, that's the backbone of our fleet. We see you have a handful. How quaint."

[IN-tmmw]

As of this moment, we are all dead. We go into battle to reclaim our lives. This we do gladly, for we are Jem'Hadar. Remember: VICTORY IS LIFE!!

[builder]

What I also loved about this ship is that it was a solid foundation to create the Dominions whole military doctrine around. The Jemhadar ships and soldiers alike were the peak of cost-effectiveness. Name one other power who can churn out so many ships and soldiers to consider them expendable, but still pack it with enough guns and shields to become a serious threat, especially in numbers.
And the way to have a ship with this kind of cost-effectiveness is being on the smaller side, having high tolerances to allow for crude construction and still maintain high operational reliability, prioritizing speed and firepower over protection, and have it fulfill practically every role your navy needs with no or only minimal changes to the configuration. The only thing you cant do with a design like that is the stuff you simply need heavier ships like battlecruisers for, like busting up heavily fortified space stations or running command and control for large fleet operations, but for those purposes you only need a pretty small number of larger ships to supplement your smaller ones, so economically it still works out.
And in the other corner we have Starfleet, where every ship is its own tinkering project, overbuilt with way too many features like saucer separation, complicated deflector dishes that can do every single MacGuffin beam you could want, holodecks, all kinds of amenities, and they still can completely incapacitate themselves because the cook decided to make his own cheese.

[kacpergraczyk]

One of the best and most iconic Star Trek starship designs

[ozelhassan]

I know you mentioned their transporters but I think? You forgot to mention that they where able to transport over long distances, like several light years. Major Kira Nerys being transported from Deep space nine to empok nor.

[robloggia]

I sometimes wonder how the war would have gone if Gul Dukat was given total control over the dominion fleet He didn't even blink when the federation adapted their shields to block polaron beams.

[richardmcgowan]

The Dominion's lore was very flexible during the run of DS9. A lot changed as time went on. Then settling down to what it finally became.

[christianrissotto.gordohom]

When i did the jemhadar tutorial and i used this ship i couldnt find it more funny and balanced.
Its amazing how maneuverable is and how offensive and defensive it is at the same time.

[mb]

The silliest bit about this ship is in “Treachery, Faith and the Great River”, when Weyoun shows Odo how to destroy an attack ship with only a few phaser shots in a runabout of all things. It was never mentioned again, and clearly wasn’t already known from Sisko’s captured ship!

[AeronHale]

They're quite very impressive little ships.
Especially for one considered to be disposable.

[Raso]

I feel like post Dominion War these would have been everywhere. The market would be flooded with surplus, captured or discarded Attack Ships. It would be like the Steam Summer Sale for rogue states, pirates and the like.

[casbot]

What is surprising is that the Dominion never incorporated Cloaking technology into the Fighter.

They weren't against cloaking as a concept since _the Jem'Hidar soldiers themselves could cloak._

And they had gotten hold of cloaked ships, so they could reverse engineer the tech (and they gave back the Defiant early on!!).

Cloaked Jem'Hidar ships would have been a force multiplier for the Dominion.
Yes Starfleet had some counters to Cloaks, but they still reduced detection range to close range and made targeting difficult.

A terrifying tactic would have been for cloaked Jem'Hidar fighters to ram larger ships and stations in suprise kamikaze attacks. The lack of shields while cloaked was irrelevant if the damage was kinetic backed up by a warp core and its antimatter exploding.
And especially if the target didn't have its own shields up.

Or just beam boarding parties from a bunch of cloaked ships straight onto the bridge of an enemy vessel that is not at alert.

[robertfarr]

So red and white are federation, one shade green for romulans, another shade green borg, reddish orange Klingon, and purple dominion

[thanqualthehighseer]

" A Glass Cannon "

Yes, But a Glass can cut you to pieces

[christopherg]

For me they always looked like giant ticks.
In fact, the Iratus Bug from Stargate Atlantis seems somewhat similar to me.

[TheGuardianofAzarath]

It's a shame we never saw the Dominion get into a fight with the Borg or Species 8472, would have been very interesting.

I've always referred to these ships as "scarabs" in my head, i've always liked the Dominion designs.

[mittensfastpaw]

Back when Star Trek had great designs instead if just being busy for the sake of being busy.

[Nom_AnorVSJedi]

A ship combining quantity and quality crewed by genetically engineered warriors bred in hatcheries that were fanatical and disposable. Perfect combination for an empire like the Dominion.

[BeemingJoint]

I remember the first time I watched deep space nine and seeing the Dominion for the first time and all that and I was very hooked on it and amazed en