Ramming

Ramming is a naval tactic. The ramming vessel attempts to use its mass to inflict damage on the enemy target. A ramming vessel can orient itself so its bow faces an enemy's port or starboard, similar to the Crossing of the T. However, rather than rake the enemy ship with weapons fire, the objective in ramming is to impact with the enemy ship and cause damage. During approach, the ramming ship exposes the smallest possible profile.

History

Ramming dates back to antiquity. Wooden triremes rammed their enemies, often with the intention of boarding the enemy ship and killing its crew. The Romans invented the corvus, a wooden plank with a nail on its end, to board an enemy vessel. This required closing to point-blank range. Even after the development of ranged weapons, ramming continued to be used because of the two-dimensional nature of surface naval combat, and the lack of sufficiently powerful weapons.

Ramming was often used as a desperation tactic. In the early days of ironclads, commanders of ships-of-the-line believed ramming was a viable tactic. Fleet commanders studied the Battle of Lissa in 1866 and drew the incorrect conclusion that ramming could defeat ironclads. However, weapons development eventually made closing to point-blank range a suicide tactic.

Attempting to ram or even closing the distance to point-blank often ends in failure with more modern warships. The HMS Hood attempted to close the distance between herself and the Bismarck in World War II. The British knew the Germans had the advantage at greater range, and wished to limit exposure to the Bismarck's powerful guns. However, the Bismarck's weapons were sufficiently powerful and the Hood was sunk before it could close to its optimal distance.

Ramming is often used by inferior opponents to catch unprepared superior opponents by surprise. For example, the suicide bombers which damaged USS Cole closed to point-blank range, and in WWII Japanese kamakazie pilots rammed US naval ships. However, ramming has not been a decisive factor in any major naval engagement since the development of layered defenses. Modern warships have sufficient point defense to discourage suicide attacks, such as the Phalanx CIWS on US warships.

Physics

Newton's Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

In the context of ramming, that means that the force applied by the ramming ship to its target is equal to the force applied by the rammed ship to the ramming ship. Often, proponents of ramming are under the misassumption that ramming will inflict more damage on the defender, simply by virtue of being an aggressor. This is not the case, as a ramming ship will have as much force applied to it as the rammed ship.

Therefore, physics states that ramming is only useful if the ramming ship is prepared to take as much force applied to its target to itself.

Star Trek Ramming

In Star Trek, ramming is used as a desperation tactic to inflict damage, or as a terror tactic. Ramming is also occasionally used by smaller craft to inflict serious damage to high value targets.

The USS Odyssey was rammed by three Dominion ships. These Dominion vessels had inflicted enough damage to give the Odyssey's commander grave doubts, and the Odyssey was in full retreat. Nevertheless, the Dominion ships rammed, possibly to send a message to the Federation the Dominion was prepared to go to any length to defend its territory. No other Galaxy class vessels were destroyed on-screen in many of DS9's major fleet battles.

The Jem'Hadar regularly rammed their ships against Klingon vessels.

The USS Enterprise-E rammed the Scimitar in Nemesis. The Enterprise-E was defeated, and approached the Scimitar with thrusters. Shinzon did not order evasive maneuvers until the last second.

Vulnerabilities

Federation starships rely on forcefields to maintain structural integrity. Structural integrity fields are likely engineered to provide as much strength as needed. Any additional load on a structural integrity field could cause catastrophic failure, as in the case of USS Odyssey. An ad-hoc solution is to boost power to the SIF and kinetic shields, as was likely done in later Galaxy-class to prevent Dominion kamikaze attacks from succeeding.

Star Wars Ramming

To be added.

See Also

• Crossing the t