For additional meanings of "Dreadnought", please see Dreadnought.

In starship classification, a dreadnought was a type of heavily armed starship.

The Federation-class USS Entente was an example of this class of vessel. (Star Trek: The Motion Picture)

Background Edit

There are only two known on-screen references to a dreadnought; one comes from the radio chatter in the first Epsilon IX scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The dreadnought named Entente, was derived from Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual, which also states that it is a Federation-class dreadnought. The outline of a three nacelled Federation-class ship is briefly glimpsed in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock computer screens on the USS Enterprise. Another comes from Star Trek Into Darkness, where the USS Vengeance is identified as a Dreadnought-class ship.

The term "dreadnought," denoting a class of warship larger and more heavily-armed than a cruiser, was taken from the HMS Dreadnought, a Royal Navy ship-of-the-line of the early 20th century which was regarded as the first such vessel. HMS Dreadnought is considered to be the prototype modern battleship design and is considered a battleship, not a distinct class of ships, by current naval historians.

External link Edit

• Dreadnought at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works