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THIS IS A RARE CLASS THAT WAS NOT
INCLUDED IN THE
FASA Ship Recognition
Manuals. Many thanks to Gary Perry
for digging it up out of the old, now-defunct Stardate Magazine (once
officially endorsed by FASA; click here
to see the original Kolm-An, vs. the re-conceptualized version I created.)
This class is but one of several such ships that Gary has kindly submitted to
the OLD&A, almost all
of which came under the Stardate Magazine header "Jaynz Ships of the
Galaxy", an obvious nod to the real Janes.
 In early 2008 I decided it was time to tackle the Kolm-An's schematics in the same
fashion as I had previously tackled the Paine
frigate and the Envoy cruiser: removing the
inconsistent structural details and giving the craft a facelift consistent with
Federation military starship design in the post-Kirk, pre-Picard era; as
exemplified by the
Ambassador and Excelsior
(refit) classes. Like almost all UFP designs in the FASA manuals, the Kolm-An had originally borrowed a
lot of parts from the TMP-era
Enterprise design, without paying any attention to correct scaling.
Thus we had a design contemporary with the
Excelsior, using Excelsior-style warp nacelles, proportioned to roughly the
size of a Constitution class
cruiser.
Wrong. I got rid
of the Enterprise saucer and put in its place a hybrid model of my own
making—bridging the Excelsior, Ambassador, and
Galaxy-style saucers—and replaced the 'thin' warp nacelles with an advanced
Excelsior Refit-type design of more robust quality. The addition of the new
saucer necessitated changing the angle and root joint points of the warp pylons
so as to not block the rear impulse exhausts, and the new saucer is crouched
lower to the secondary hull, too, abandoning the TMP Enterprise two-bay
torpedo deck in favor of form-fitted, twin, two-tube torpedo bays on either side
of the deflector dish (the original stats for this ship always gave four
torpedoes firing into the forward arc, even though the schematics showed but
two.) The deflector itself has been angled, in keeping with the deflector
featured on the Ambassador, and the secondary hull detailing has been revised
with a great many additional portholes and three extra gangway hatches; I reason
that a sizeable troopship would need such hatches for rapid on-loading and
offloading of material and personnel while in dock. The large, aft-mounted
shuttle bay has also been clearly defined, as a class like this would need a
larger-than-usual shuttle hangar to accommodate combat shuttles and heavy
planet-fall craft capable of lofting armored personnel carriers, hover vehicles,
light and heavy tanks, and other hardware in use by the Starfleet Marine Corp.
The exact nature and purpose of the
twin ventral "fins" escapes me, and I almost scrapped them during the final
edit. But, because I wanted to preserve the original outline of the Kolm-An as much as I could, I kept them. Perhaps they contain sensors?
Heat sinks? Might they have some function involving the warp core intermix
chambers? I leave this detail up to the imagination of the players.
Of course, what good is a superficial
makeover without upgrading the guts? The original text for this class
emphasizes its "muscle" but she can't even hold her own against 24th century
light frigates or destroyers, so I built out an additional range of stats which
should compensate for this deficiency. I also gave the new version
larger troop-carrying capacity, since her greater dimensions would allow for
expanded transport operations. Instead of ferrying a single company of
Marines, the Kolm-An now carry roughly two battalions, plus room for training and simulation
exercises and maintenance and storage bays for all combat and logistics
equipment.
—
BRT
From STARDATE MAGAZINE,
courtesy of contributor Gary Perry
Class design by J.M. Kuzee and Pete Rogan
Kolm-An Class VIII-XV Assault Ship
NOTES: "Muscular" is the word used to describe the formidable
Kolm-An assault ship. The Makin and Continent classes carry more men and
equipment, but the Kolm-An carries a heftier load of shipboard weaponry, the
better to provide its landed troops with fire support from orbit.
The Kolm-An class was designed to
transport up to a company of Federation marines, their vehicles and equipment,
to land them on a hostile world via transporters and/or assault shuttlecraft; to
provide all their support needs for up to 30 standard solar days without
re-supply, and to hold off minor counterattacks, all of this without aid or
support from accompanying Star Fleet vessels.
Star Fleet felt it necessary to have
such ships as the Kolm-An class to provide swift deployment of needed defensive
forces at short notice along the Klingon and Romulan Neutral Zones. Unlike
the larger assault ships, Kolm-An need not be based or restricted to limited
patrol routes, or provided with extensive escort and support ships, all of which
increase response time. To deal with the threat of deliberate invasion or
even sudden raids on Federation or neutral worlds on the frontier, the best
course was to place single companies of Marines on constant combat patrol, and
the best way to do that was to build a ship capable of holding its own with a
minimum of external aid.
The Kolm-An can land its troops
combat-ready, in approximately ten minutes from 'go'. Its dual-purpose
Combat Information Center on the bridge coordinates reports from the ground and
monitors the space situation. The ground commander can order phaser or
photon torpedo bombardment with pin-point accuracy in less than thirty seconds
from the receipt of the fire order, evaluate the overall terrain with spaceborne
sensors to determine the local threat, and ensure backup communications control
with the aid of the Kolm-An's sophisticated track-and-comm station.
For quick insertions and rapid
extractions, the Kolm-An has no equal on either side of the frontier. But
its mission profile demands that the local threat be conclusively dealt with in
thirty minutes before the ship's orbit carries it beyond the battle zone.
Some Marine commanders have extended their combat ability by landing as much as
an orbit ahead of time, and attacking the objective only as the Kolm-An arrives
above the Horizon (ATH). Time and circumstances do not always permit this,
though standard orders always explicitly grant Marine commanders the option to
retreat from too large a threat. Only once has a Kolm-An retreated before
landing its forces. Apparently the Marines can adapt to fighting for
extended period with only sporadic orbital support.
Kolm-An are being built at the rate
of 16 per year at the Salazaar, Sol II and Star Base 12 shipyards. Of the
39 Kolm-An class vessels built, 34 remain in active service. of the
remainder, 2 are used by Star Fleet Training Command, 2 have been scrapped, and
1 has been destroyed.
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