Notes : Since their very first journey into the alpha quadrant in 2364, the Borg have been an implacable threat to every species that they have encountered. That first contact resulted in the destruction of two Federation Starbases and an unknown number of Romulan installations on the edge of the Neutral Zone. A further contact in 2365, initiated by the Q entity, led to an unprovoked attack on the Enterprise-D by the Borg which resulted in the death of eighteen crew members and near destruction of the ship.

The next Borg attack on the Federation destroyed the New Providence colony and the Starship Lalo. Subsequently the battle of Wolf 359 resulted in thirty nine Starfleet vessels being destroyed with eleven thousand people killed or assimilated. Subsequent encounters have been even more destructive.

Borg vessels generally appear to follow a very similar design philosophy, with the exception of the single vessel created by the Borg under the direction of the android Lore. All other Borg vessels are cubical, with all onboard systems distributed evenly throughout the ship. The entire vessel is protected by an adaptive shield system that is highly flexible and powerful; once the shields have adapted to a weapon no known force is capable of overcoming them. Starfleet has attempted to shortcut this problem by designing weapons which re-tune after each discharge and these have met with some success, but even so the distribution of systems makes the vessels extremely damage resistant. A Borg cube can function even if 80% of it is destroyed completely; in the Typhon sector battle an entire fleet plus heavy reinforcements succeeded in inflicting damage only to  the outer hull of the Borg cube despite continuous heavy attacks over a prolonged period.

Even if the vessels main functions fail due to extensive damage, the nanotechnology-based repair systems can continue to rebuild from a severely damaged hulk. Should members of the crew escape, a single Borg is capable of establishing a collective and spreading outwards from there.

Borg offensive weaponry is as potent as their defensive capacity. Their standard tactic is to use a high energy tractor beam or specialist warp capable energy weapon to drain the shields and disrupt the warp field of a target vessel, then to cut it up into sections with a laser cutting beam. These sections are then taken inside the Borg vessel, where the technology is analysed and then broken down and used in the Borg ship. If the vessel is thought to present a direct threat to the collective then the cutting beam or plasma weapons are used to destroy it once the shields are down.

Starfleet continues to field new technologies and more powerful Starships in order to overcome threats such as the Borg. But given their nature it is unlikely that they can be defeated by the Federation in any military sense. Establishing some form of Diplomatic settlement also seems unlikely, but in the final analysis this may be the only realistic option. Recent progress has been made in disrupting the operation of the collective by Captain Janeway on the uSS Voyager, who managed to spark off a rebellion amongst the Borg.

Notes : Little is known about this craft; Voyager encountered one in 2375 and found it to be a relatively small and poorly armed ship apparently designed to act as a manned probe vessel. Scans indicated that the probes armament was significantly weaker than Voyagers, and when it attempted to assimilate the Starship Captain Janeway beamed a photon torpedo onto the probe to disable it. Unfortunately, the torpedo detonated near the probes power system and it was destroyed.

Voyager recovered eight thousand metric tons of wreckage from the probe, and although most of it was too badly damaged to be of use some important tactical data was recovered. This allowed Voyager to mount an attack on a Borg scoutship, recovering a transwarp coil which ultimately allowed them to cut another twenty thousand lightyears from their journey home.

Notes : One of the increasing number of Borg vessels known to the Federation which do not conform to the standard cube shape, the yacht was encountered by Voyager in 2375 when Seven of Nine was recaptured by the collective. It is apparently some form of command vessel; the only example encountered was used as a flagship by the Borg queen during the assimilation of Species 10026. The vessel is rather smaller than a Borg cube, and is presumably less well armed and defended. It is known that the yacht has shields and carries at least one tractor beam emitter, and has at least one assimilation chamber on board.

The yacht encountered by Voyager in 2375 was destroyed when Voyager collapsed a transwarp conduit whilst it was inside.
 

Notes : The Borg sphere has only been seen in action by the Federation on one occasion, during the Sector 001 battle. The last act of the Borg cube destroyed in that battle was to launch a sphere carrying a small group of drones. The sphere generated a temporal vortex, allowing it to travel into the year 2063 in order to prevent the formation of the federation.

The Sovereign class Enterprise-E followed the sphere through the vortex, and observed it firing some form of low energy plasma weapon on Earth. The Enterprise fired a volley of quantum torpedoes at the ship and succeeded in destroying it, although some Borg drones where able to beam aboard the Enterprise and begin assimilating it.

There is little solid evidence concerning the capabilities or numbers of the Borg sphere. It may have been specially constructed solely as a timeship, but this seems unlikely as the Borgs attempt to alter the past appears to have been a last minute plan after the failure of their conventional invasion. The lack of shields and relatively limited armament on this ship suggest that the sphere is some form of science vessel, perhaps with a scouting or courier role also. Given the nature of the Borg, it is likely that they could easily equip this vessel with heavier armament and the statistics above reflect Starfleet projections of a spheres potential combat capability. Given this, the data must me regarded as highly speculative.

Notes : Relatively little is known about this type of Borg vessel, except that it is a tactical rather than general purpose vessel. Voyager encountered one in 2376 when Captain Janeway attempted to infiltrate the collective in order to assist a small group of Borg rebels in their efforts to escape the collective. The cube had a more armoured appearence than the more general purpose ships and carried heavier weaponry, but Voyager was able to last long enough in battle with the cube for Janeway and her officers to succeed in their plan to get aboard and become assimilated. Unfortunately, the cube destroyed the Delta Flyer in the process.

Notes : In 2368 the Enterprise-D discovered a Borg scout ship crashed on a moon in the Argolis Cluster. They rescued an individual whom they named Hugh from the wreckage; Hugh later returned to the crash site and was recovered by another scout ship.

In 2369, The Enterprise encountered a new form of Borg vessel which did not conform to the standard cube design. They discovered that Hugh had been a member of the crew of this vessel, and that his return to the ship after developing his own sense of individuality had caused the destruction of the collective mind on board this particular ship. The ship had drifted for some time before coming under the control of the android Lore, who used it and the Borg in an attempt to take over the Federation.

It quickly became apparent that the new Borg vessel was capable of generating transwarp conduits which allowed it to travel at incredible speeds. One such conduit was accessed by the Enterprise-D - the ship covered sixty light years in eight seconds, an average of 236,000,000 times lightspeed. Standard Borg cubes do not seem to be able to achieve this level of speed, so Starfleet analysts have theorized that the new design was an advanced prototype built by the Borg to test out a newly assimilated transwarp technology. The vessel is capable of operating in the second transwarp domain, at speeds approaching Warp 30 - a feat which is far beyond standard Borg vessels. It was evidently sent out on a test flight to the Argolis cluster, a trip which would take some two and a half hours with this drive system.

The Borg ship fought several small skirmishes with the Enterprise-D, which eventually masked itself by hiding within the outer layers of a star. The Federation vessel subsequently used its phasers to create a large solar flare which destroyed the borg ship.

The absence of further examples of this type of vessel indicates that the Borg have abandoned this technology - it is possible that they took the destruction of the collective on the prototype as a sign that the technology was somehow flawed. In any case, they do not seem to be constructing more ships of this kind - a fact for which the peoples of the galaxy can be profoundly grateful.
 

The information for these alien ships was derived from the Daystrom Institute website: http://www.ditl.org/

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