The Prometheus Class - Three Attack Ships in One

As outstanding as the Defiant Class proved to be, its design was something of a "rush job", from an engineering perspective. While quite effective in battle, it had some flaws (https://imgur.com/gallery/gCy4y6B)

When the Defiant was in development, Starfleet took a step back to design a fighter more carefully, more deliberately. The result was the Prometheus.

FP Edit: if any of you are skilled at making Intergalactic quality Trek GIFs, let's be friends.

Its first appearance was in the Voyager episode 4x14 "Message in a Bottle". Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram gets sent across the galaxy through an alien communications array to make contact with the only Federation ship in range - the Prometheus.

When the Doctor arrives, he finds the ship has been taken over by Romulans and his only source of help is his counterpart - the Prometheus EMH. To his surprise, the personality of the EMH Mark II has been "upgraded" to Andy Dick.

The Prometheus was a Long-Range Tactical Escort Vessel - a brand new experimental prototype with features rarely/never seen on a Starfleet vessel - such as FOUR (six? see below) nacelles, regenerative shielding, ablative hull armor, and a special feature called Multi-Vector Attack Mode

In an extension to the old "separate the saucer section" trick, a Prometheus Class ship is THREE ships, each with AI-assisted navigation and combat capabilities, each with independent warp capability.

The "alpha section" on top has at least one retractable nacelle at the peak, behind the bridge, and what appears to be a second underneath - bringing the total, when fully deployed, to 6.

UPDATE: Six nacelles confirmed by the ship designer: http://fsd.trekships.org/art/prometheus.html

Oh, it's also faster than any other ship in the Federation.

All this combined made each one into one of the most powerful ships in the known galaxy.

This, of course, is why the Romulans wanted it so much.

The prototype project was such a secret that only four people in all of Starfleet were trained to operate it, according to Wacky Dr. Andy.

As always with Starfleet computer security, that didn't stop the Romulan crew from running it perfectly the moment they were on board. (This took place shortly before the Romulans joined in the Dominion War).

Aside from "Message in a Bottle", the only other appearance the Prometheus class made in Voyager was in the finale, "Endgame".

As of the end of Voyager, the Prometheus Class was nearly unrivaled in the galaxy in terms of speed, flexibility, attack and defense. Even the Borg might think twice about facing a Prometheus.

If you'd be interested in similar posts about any particular ship or ship type, feel free to comment.

Spot tax.