Canon Facts Backstage Info  Speculation

Notes : Although the Constitution and Miranda classes were widely regarded as being more than able to defend the Federation, in the 2260's it was decided to produce a new class of vessel which would give Starfleet a decisive superiority over the Romulan and Klingon Empires. This new vessel was to be almost totally dedicated to the combat mission; she would carry very little in the way of scientific research or diplomatic conference facilities. This marked a radical departure in Starfleet design ethics, and lead to a type of vessel new to the Federation - the Dreadnought.

The ship was given a heavy weapons fit comprising five phaser banks of two phasers each plus two photon torpedo tubes. The latter were of a new and heavy type, far more powerful than those in service at the time. In defensive terms the ship was equally well provided. The shields were  almost 30% stronger than those of the Constitution, while the hull structure was considerably stronger than those generally used by Starfleet. The entire hull was also covered in a superconductive coating which spread the energy of impacting phaser strikes across the entire ship, greatly increasing the resistance to battle damage.

Uniquely for the time, the vessel employed a three nacelle configuration which coupled with the far more powerful warp core allowed considerably greater speeds to be achieved - the Dreadnought was capable of a sustained Warp 10, almost double the speed of a Constitution class vessel.

The first ship, USS Federation, was launched in 2260 with more soon following. Sadly, the most notable incident this class was involved in came when the second ship, the USS Star Empire, was used during an attempted coup against the Federation council. Other Starships, led by the USS Enterprise, were able to defeat the conspiracy with minimal loss of life, but the Federation class was tainted with a reputation of being too militaristic for their name. Nevertheless, twenty vessels of this class were constructed and served with distinction until their retirement in 2296.