The USS Defiant pioneered many different aspects of starship design for the Federation. One of them was the general shape of the ship. With nacelles so close to the main hull most ships would be uninhabitable, theoretically anyway. Another of its aspects was the minimized warp field grid. The Defiant has the absolute smallest area of warp field grid for a ship of its size. Barely more than grating that was meshed over the nacelle ends like windows, they provide the ship with a double bar magnet effect with the warp field. Each nacelle only provides half of the requirement to send the ship to warp instead of the standard full amount. This has made the Defiant one of the most efficient designs to date.

One of the most, anyway.

Though the Defiant pioneered many innovations, it was the Akira that first put them into practice. The anti-Borg weaponry is standard issue for this ship. A rotating shield matrix, the first of its kind, creates a series of layers for the shields making it that much more difficult to pierce through them. The uni-polar nacelles allow the ship to proceed into high warp without harming the surrounding universe. Its unique catamaran design improves warp field efficiency and cuts down on its silhouette. With a slimmer silhouette the target area is reduced making it one of the most effective ships in evasion from attack.

This is where is interesting part comes into play. The Akira is a very fine ship, but it wasn't the only design to make it through the war. The Excelsior was easily the most prolific ship in the entire fleet, let alone the war. The Excelsior has just as much going for it as the Akira. Come to find out, due to the highly adaptable design of the Excelsior from the beginning, it was able to withstand just as much or more than the brand new Akira! What a surprise. The Excelsior is Starfleet's first attempt at a battleship and it truly did live up to that designation during this and other wars.

At 511.25m in length, the Excelsior is longer than the Akira at 464.43m, but the Akira is wider at 318.67m vs. 195.64m, and deeper at 87.43m vs. 86.76m, the difference of about a Jeffries Tube. But other than the obvious, the Akira does have some interesting things going for it that the Excelsior should be aware of. That is primarily the ease of construction and low resource cost of the vessel. Ironically, the more advanced nacelle is far simpler than the elder style and much faster to construct because of it. On top of that the hull is far smoother and able to be constructed more efficiently with a lot more variance allowed. But due to the Excelsior's modular construction design, it too is able to be built very efficiently.

There are many major points that have made the Excelsior so popular. Its large deuterium tank was designed to fuel the Transwarp Drive that it was supposed to have. This allows the ship to endure far longer than any other ship in the fleet until the Galaxy-class.

The nacelles were more efficient than the current models of the time. Although true Transwarp was never achieved, the Excelsior did re-write the warp curve. Under today's scale, it was the fist to reach warp 9.993. This made it the fastest ship in the galaxy by far, but it did fall drastically short of the Transwarp goal.

The hull was very modular. When it was originally built, the Excelsior was constructed in pieces to withstand the awesome stresses it was supposed to experience. Because it never saw even half of that stress, the ship design was far stronger than any ship. When the Transwarp tests were over, the Excelsior was retro-fitted with some heavy armaments. The hull shape and rating allowed it to become the Federation's fist battleship.

Though its weapons were nothing to write home about their quantity and the amount of power that was able to be channeled into them was. With so much raw energy leftover from the M/ARC the weapons, shields, and structural integrity could all be boosted. The Excelsior-class was so overpowered that it has been known to take out stations and starbases.

Power, strength, space and versatility. All of this has made the Excelsior the most popular and used ship in Starfleet. But the Excelsior is getting old. The U.S.S. Excelsior has been around without much fuss for nearly one hundred years. This is the oldest surviving ship in Starfleet, excluding temporal anomalies or name changes. The Federation Council opted to replace the Excelsior many years ago with the Galaxy. Though the Galaxy was a good idea, it did not fulfil that primary obligation. Even still, it did become the next standard and flagship. It took many years before the Council got a second chance.

The Defiant was the next move, but the Council and Starfleet Command knew that thew would be no chance that this would replace the Excelsior. It was specified for war instead of speed. But what the Defiant did do was provide a springboard for designers to come up with something that the Council was after.

But the Excelsior's success was in that it was build as a test-bed with little more in mind. The Defiant was designed as a warship, Starfleet's first, while the Akira had only replacement in mind. Fortunately, the Akira was not designed to replace the Excelsior, though that may happen anyway. She was built as an upgrade and complete replacement of the Miranda-class.

The Miranda is older than the Excelsior and aching for improvement. A small amount of technology can fit in the unforgiving hull. With little room for equipment, there's even less for crew. That's where the Akira steps in. She's newer, bigger by far and much more tolerant to new technologies. In short, the Akira was designed for future technology yet to be invented. This is similar to the Excelsior.

During the Dominion War, the two ships fought along side each other. Now during peace, they are pitted against one another to determine what happens net. Starfleet is beginning tests and will be tabulating the results soon. Until then, we are left waiting.

The performance of each vessel is quite impressive. With the Excelsior, much is known of its abilities and strengths, while the Akira is too new to truly gauge. But as seen from action, they both faired fairly equally. Both are swift and able to strike at a moments notice and even extract themselves from perilous surroundings in a very short period of time. The only thing that the Akira has over the Excelsior is that it is newer. The designs were specifically drawn to accept the new warp limit and still be an anti-Borg vessel, while the Excelsior was designed from the age of Klingons and Romulans attacking distant outposts for no apparent reason. It was that mentality that allowed the Excelsior to last as long as it has while still being able to survive this most recent war after nearly one hundred years of existence.

But the most important aspect of this relationship is the Akira's ability to adapt. The Excelsior, well, excelled at just that, but the new design is able to scan a nebula, fight a battle and rescue a cat caught in a tree a sector over in under two days. The Excelsior does come close to that, and would, but its design structure is unable to accept the newer, more general sensors that are commonplace on the Akira. Though they could tie if raced across the galaxy, the Akira would win in simple power output. Because the nacelles only produce half the power that the standard models do, the Akira is able to use much less fuel than its comrades. This allows the Akira to use the additional power produced from the M/ARC toward weapons, life support, shields, or any other resource that is needed at the time. It is also able to last longer during an endurance run than any compatriot before its time.

Starfleet has long since decided that the Akira would be along side the Excelsior and not replace it, but the Federation Council may have other plans. The performance of both ships are well known to Starfleet and they will be undergoing a complete audit to determine what should happen next, but who knows? With the war over and the reconstruction of Cardassia and the Dominion at hand, the Federation is not likely to get itself involved in anything that would require the loss of either ship. So with that said, the two ships are very much like each other, but they do have subtle differences. Truly, though, the Akira is now the Federation's newest 'workhorse'.