Who would win: A Federation Starship or an Imperial Star Destroyer?!

Okay, let's go there

Photo by Ben Lei on Unsplash

This all started innocently enough, with a typically odd and old Noah Smith tweet:

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

"How dare your country insult my country, we will crush you!" is the civilizational equivalent of the 13-year-old boy who spends hours and hours on Reddit trying to PROVE that a Star Destroyer could defeat the USS Enterprise.

Now at the time I didn’t really think the analogy held, but I am enough of a nerd to also think, “wait, this is silly, the Star Destroyer would obviously win!”

And then I really started to think. And what with the release of Andor and the coming release of a refurbished, 4K edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it seems worth spelling out my thinking at greater length.

Full disclosure: this speculation took me back to my grade school days. Back then I often imagined the United Federation of Planets and the Rebel Alliance teaming up to fight the Klingons and the Galactic Empire (that was the simple crossover. On occasion I had the Battlestar Galactica and the Cylons join in. When I was really hopped up on sugar and imagination, I would try to find a way to work in Space 1999 and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century). Maybe my imagination was limited, but most of my energy went into the heroes getting to know each other and the villains doing likewise.¹ Crossover battles did not come up much.

As I thought harder about Noah’s theoretical conflict, I realized that my first impulse was likely wrong. So let’s get into it.

First off, my assumptions:

1. We’re talking about the Kirk-era Enterprise and not the Picard-era Enterprise-D;

2. We’re talking about a standard Imperial Star Destroyer from the original-trilogy era when the Galactic Empire was at the apex of its power. You know, like the Devastator at the very beginning of the original Star Wars.

3. Star Destroyer deflectors and turbolasers are roughly comparable to Federation shields and phasers (yes, I am fully aware that lasers are viewed dimly in the Federation’s time. “Turbolasers” implies something much more powerful, however, so I’m cutting the Empire some slack here).

So, who would win? My first, gut impulse was the Star Destroyer. In a space battle the Devastator would have two primary advantages over the Enterprise. First, it would be bigger, thereby making it able to withstand more damage while soldiering on. Second, a Star Destroyer should have plenty of TIE fighters while the Federation mysteriously lacks any single-manned fighter craft. This would radically complicate the Enterprise’s ability to defend itself. It’s like a battleship trying to defeat an aircraft carrier when the carrier has launched its planes. In the Kelvin timeline, small fighters defeated the Enterprise pretty handily.

On second thought, however, the Enterprise would have a few hidden advantages. It has more than one form of ordinance, for one thing. Photon torpedoes likely have greater range than a Star Destroyer’s turbolasers. That would give the Enterprise an ability to fire on the Devastator while staying out of weapons range, a decided tactical advantage.

Another advantage is that a Federation starship can outrun an Imperial Star Destroyer. Light speed is the fastest we ever hear a ship going in the Star Wars universe. Warp technology, on the other hand, allows even a Constitution-class starship to go much faster. Warp one is the equivalent of light speed. The Enterprise can achieve warp five with ease, which is much faster than any speed the Devastator could muster.

The Enterprise’s biggest advantage, however, is in its crew. The few glimpses we get of life in the upper Imperial ranks makes it almost look like the Mirror universe in Star Trek. There is constant backbiting and plotting against superior officers. Vader has a nearly impossible time finding competent admirals in Empire Strikes Back. In contrast, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise is well-trained and capable of improvisation and adaptation in the face of a formidable enemy. Goodness knows that Kirk has vast experience with bluffing. He also learns very quickly from his opponents’ tactics.

So, the Devastator would have size and fighter escort in its favor. The Enterprise would have speed and a more motivated crew on its side. Who wins?

If there is anything that the war in Ukraine should teach us, it is that a will to fight is an underrated element in battle, because it is almost impossible to measure ex ante. In this case, however, we know from watching the historical documents that Federation officers are vastly superior to Imperial officers. That is the key edge.

It is possible that the Devastator is simply too large for the Enterprise to destroy. In a worst-case scenario, however, I am confident of Kirk and Spock’s ability to lure whatever dimwit commands the Devastator into a trap. So my gut instinct was wrong: in this fight, I think the Enterprise wins.

1. As I grew older, this exercise began to falter once I started thinking about Erin Gray as Colonel Wilma Deering in Buck Rogers and readers do not need to know any more about that except that Gray’s life during the time of that show was more difficult than I knew until recently.