CLASS: SCOUT

Very little is known about these ships; they appear to be light scout vessels, but have also been used as test beds for technology research projects. Admiral Jarok used a scoutship to cross the Neutral Zone during his defection in 2366; the Admiral set the ship to self-destruct before Federation personnel could board and inspect it, in order to prevent the Federation from learning about Romulan technology.

This vessel has only recently been seen up close by the Federation, more because no serious effort has been put into learning about such a low priority craft than due to any great effort at secrecy on the part of the Romulans. The craft is approximately equal to a Federation Runabout in size and capability, although it is more biased toward long range transportation and so is considerably faster. The armament is on a par with the Danube class, with six Disruptors and a pair of photon torpedo tubes. One unusual feature of a vessel this size is the installation of a cloaking device.

These vessels are not produced in anything like the same numbers as the Federation Runabouts, even accounting for the smaller Romulan fleet. This has lead to some speculation that the vessels suffer from an undisclosed design fault, perhaps in the warp drive system. A more likely answer is that relatively high warp capability of this model makes it too expensive to be worth producing in very large quantities, and it is likely that the Romulans operate slower classes of shuttles - perhaps variants on this one - to make up the difference.