CLASS:
For much of the operational life of the Romulan Warbird, Starfleet knew absolutely nothing about it. Indeed, it was not until 2364 that any Starfleet personnel even saw a Warbird firsthand. Prior to this only the haziest of intelligence reports existed concerning any class of Romulan vessel. An encounter between a Romulan Warbird and the USS Enterprise at the Romulan neutral zone in that year provided Starfleet with its first good information on the Warbird. The first impressions were not comforting ones; the Romulan vessel was almost double the length of the Enterprise, itself then the largest and most powerful vessel in Starfleet. The Warbirds cloaking device was highly effective against the latest Federation sensors, and the great size of the vessel indicated that it outgunned Starfleets finest by a considerable margin. The appearances of overwhelming size and strength was to prove somewhat deceptive. Much of the vessels internal volume is given over to ground forces and their supporting equipment. Although the disrupter armament is impressive, the technology behind it is significantly behind that of the Federations phaser banks; the disrupters have a high power but relatively low rate of fire and somewhat limited range. The eighteen torpedo tubes are capable of firing only one torpedo each at a time, and have a combined rate of fire some 80% that of the two tubes of a Galaxy class battle section. The Warbird is also somewhat slower and a great deal less manoeuvrable than a Galaxy class starship. The Federation has also made considerable progress in defeating the Romulan cloaking technology in the past few years; the deployment of wide area tachyon nets along the border together with advanced sensor posts has made penetrating Federation space a rather chancy proposition for the Warbird.
