The Klingon Defense Force

1. Overview

The Klingon Defense Force is the armed service of the Klingon Empire. It crews the Empire’s warships, guards its borders, fights its wars and, in the Klingon view of things, carries the honour of the whole people into battle. No other institution in the Empire, not even the High Council, is so closely tied to what Klingons believe they are. A Klingon who has never served is unusual. A Klingon who has served with distinction carries that service for life, and so does his house.

This article describes the Defense Force as the Federation understands it in 2393. Much of what Starfleet knows comes from exchange officers, from the joint fleets of the Dominion War, and from long observation along shared borders. The Defense Force publishes nothing about its own strength or dispositions, and where this article describes a pattern rather than a fact, it says so. For the government the Defense Force serves see The High Council and the Chancellor, for the houses that supply its officers see The Great Houses, and for its ships see Klingon Ships.

2. Organisation

2.1 The chain of command

The Defense Force answers to the High Council, and through the Council to the Chancellor. In war the Chancellor may command it directly, and Chancellors have done so. Below the Council, command is held by generals, each responsible for a fleet, a region or a campaign. Below them are the captains of individual ships. Klingon practice gives a commander wide freedom once he has his orders. A general is expected to win, not to report, and a captain is expected to fight his ship as he sees fit.

The Defense Force is organised into fleets. Their number, size and numbering are not published, and Starfleet does not assume that a Klingon fleet is a fixed thing. Fleets are formed, merged and broken up as the Empire’s needs change, and in a great campaign several may be placed under a single general. In the Dominion War some Klingon forces served in joint fleets with Starfleet under combined command (see section 7).

2.2 Border commands

Along its frontiers the Empire keeps standing commands, each responsible for a stretch of border and the ships and stations that hold it. Their exact number and boundaries are not known to the Federation. The one that matters most to Starfleet officers on the Romulan Neutral Zone is the Narendra Command.

The Narendra Command faces the Romulan Zone along the stretch that Starfleet calls the Nevrha stretch, spinward of the Romulan Chaltok Sector, where the Zone runs nearest to Klingon space. It is based at Narendra III. The outpost that Romulan warbirds attacked in 2344, and that the USS Enterprise-C was destroyed defending, stood on that world. The Empire has rebuilt the site as a fortress and a memorial at once: a working base for the ships of the border command, and a place where Klingons remember both the Romulan attack and the Starfleet crew who died answering it.

In 2393 the Narendra Command is held by General Kortaq, of the House of Vreth. The House of Vreth is an old house with a long tradition of service on the borders and many ship captains among its sons and daughters, and it is known on the High Council for wanting a harder line toward the Romulans. Starfleet officers who deal with the Narendra Command should expect its general to hold the same view. What General Kortaq himself has said or done in command is not on the Federation’s public record. See The Great Houses and The Klingon Frontier in 2393.

The tri-border near Starbase 24, close to Khitomer, is a different stretch of the frontier and should not be confused with Narendra. See The Alliance with the Federation.

2.3 House ships and Imperial ships

Not every Klingon warship belongs to the Defense Force in the same way. Starfleet distinguishes two kinds, while noting that the line between them is not always sharp and that Klingons themselves do not always draw it.

Imperial ships are built for and held by the Empire and crewed by the Defense Force. Their captains are appointed through the Defense Force and answer to its generals and to the High Council.

House ships are ships whose commanders, and often much of whose crews, owe their first loyalty to a great house. Some are maintained from a house’s own wealth. In peace they serve within the Defense Force like any other ship, and in war a house places them at the Empire’s disposal as a matter of honour. But their loyalty runs through the house. In the civil war of 2367 to 2368 Klingon ships and squadrons followed their houses, some to Gowron and some to the House of Duras, and the Defense Force divided along those lines. Starfleet has not forgotten that lesson. When the High Council is united, the difference between a house ship and an Imperial ship hardly matters. When it is not, it can matter more than anything else.

On the borders, a captain whose house wants a harder line may act more boldly than his orders strictly allow, trusting his house to defend him on the Council.

3. Ranks

The Defense Force uses a simple ladder of ranks, and Starfleet officers will meet only a few of them. A ship is commanded by a Captain, and its senior officers below him are Commanders and Lieutenants. Above the captains stand Generals, who command fleets, border commands and campaigns, and the rank of Brigadier has also been seen. Ordinary warriors serve below the officers. A Klingon officer’s house is often as important as his rank in deciding how he is treated, and a Starfleet officer should know both. For the full table of ranks, their Klingon names and forms of address, see Language, Names and Ranks.

4. Promotion and Challenge

A Klingon officer rises by merit shown in battle, by the standing of his house, and, in a way that no other service the Federation deals with would allow, by challenge. Starfleet’s understanding of this comes from Klingons who have explained it and from Starfleet officers who have served under it.

The clearest account comes from the officer exchange of 2365, when a Starfleet officer served as first officer of the Bird-of-Prey Pagh. He was told plainly what the post required. A Klingon first officer is expected to watch his captain for weakness, and if the captain shows himself unfit to command, to remove him, by killing him if it comes to that, and take his place. The captain knows this and expects it. Neither man regards it as treachery. It is how a Klingon crew makes sure that it is always led by the strongest officer it has. During that same exchange, when the Pagh’s captain ordered an attack on the USS Enterprise-D on a mistaken charge, the Starfleet officer relieved him of command and the crew accepted it, because by their own custom the stronger man now held the chair.

Challenge is not limited to the bridge of one ship. Klingon custom allows a warrior to answer an insult or contest a matter of honour in personal combat, and it allows a leader’s fitness to be tested by combat as well. In the Dominion War a Klingon officer serving as first officer of the Bird-of-Prey Rotarran, whose crew had lost heart after a string of defeats, deliberately provoked a fight with the ship’s commander. The fight was meant to restore the crew’s spirit, and it did. At the highest level, a Chancellor himself may be challenged; in 2375 Chancellor Gowron died in such a combat, and Martok became Chancellor.

None of this means that Klingon ships are in constant turmoil. A strong and successful captain is rarely challenged, and most Klingon officers rise by serving well and being seen to. But the right of challenge is always there. For the customs of honour behind it see Honour, Faith and Custom.

5. Crews and Life Aboard

Klingon ships are built for war, and they feel like it. Starfleet officers who have served aboard describe dim light, close quarters, heat, noise and very little privacy. The captain sits above his officers on an open bridge, where every one of them can see him.

Klingon ships carry live food such as gagh, and serve heart of targ and bloodwine. Meals are loud, shared and long, and crews sing of battles and of the dead. A crew that sings is ready to fight; a ship where the singing has stopped is in trouble.

Discipline is strict and quick, and an officer who fails before the crew may lose their respect in a way no rank can repair. Yet Klingon crews are often fiercely loyal to a captain who has led them well, and to one another.

The ship’s dead are honoured in the Klingon way. When a warrior dies well, his comrades may roar a warning to the dead that a Klingon warrior is coming. The body is treated as an empty shell once the spirit has gone. See Honour, Faith and Custom.

By reputation Klingon medicine is more limited than Federation practice, and Klingon warriors are impatient of treatment. Starfleet doctors who have served aboard Klingon ships under the officer exchange (section 8) report hard work, difficult patients, and lasting respect once it is earned.

6. Doctrine

Klingon military doctrine is easy to state and hard to face. The Defense Force attacks. It seeks to close with the enemy, to strike hard and early, and to finish the fight at close quarters. A Klingon commander will accept losses that a Starfleet commander would not, if the prize is a victory won with honour, and he will rarely accept a defeat without one.

6.1 The cloaked approach

Most Klingon warships carry cloaking devices, and the cloak shapes how they fight. A Klingon ship approaches its target unseen, chooses its moment, decloaks and fires. The usual rule, for Klingon and Romulan cloaks alike, is that a ship must decloak to fire, and in the moment of decloaking its shields are not yet at full strength. A Klingon captain therefore relies on surprise and on the weight of his first strike. He decloaks close, fires everything he has, and trusts that the target will not recover in time.

In 2293 a single Klingon Bird-of-Prey was fitted with a prototype that allowed it to fire while cloaked. It was used against the USS Enterprise and the USS Excelsior at Khitomer and was destroyed when its exhaust was tracked. Starfleet knows of no Klingon ship in service since that can do the same, and assumes the decloak-to-fire rule still holds. See Klingon Ships.

6.2 Boarding

Klingons value boarding more than any other power Starfleet deals with. To take an enemy ship by hand is among the most honourable things a Klingon crew can do, and boarding parties fight with disruptors and with blades such as the bat’leth and the d’k tahg. Starfleet guidance for any ship facing Klingons in combat is to keep its shields up and its intruder control ready, because a Klingon commander who can board will try.

6.3 The strike and the raid

The Defense Force favours fast, hard strikes against ships, stations, supply lines and shipyards. Klingon commanders are less patient with long sieges and defensive campaigns, though they have fought both.

6.4 Limits

A force that always attacks can be drawn into attacking where it should not. And a captain’s freedom of action, which serves the Empire well in war, can serve it badly on a border in peace, where one captain’s choice to answer an insult may commit the whole Empire. See The Klingon Frontier in 2393.

7. The Dominion War

The Defense Force fought the Dominion from the first battles of the war to the last. In 2373, after Cardassia joined the Dominion and the Empire restored the Khitomer Accords, Klingon ships came to the defence of Deep Space Nine. Later that year a Federation and Klingon force destroyed the Dominion shipyards at Torros III, and in 2374 a Klingon fleet joined Operation Return.

Starfleet and the Defense Force fought together in this war more closely than at any time before or since. Some forces were combined into joint Federation-Klingon fleets under shared command, with Starfleet and Klingon officers on one another’s staffs. One of these was called the Fourteenth Joint Fleet. How many such fleets there were, and how their commands were divided, is not set out in any public record.

In 2375, after the Breen joined the Dominion and their energy-dampening weapon destroyed the Allied fleet at the second Battle of Chin’toka, Klingon ships were for a time the only Allied ships able to fight it, thanks to an adjustment to their warp cores. For those weeks the Defense Force carried the war almost alone. It was in this period that Chancellor Gowron took personal command of the Klingon forces and ordered a series of costly attacks, and that he was killed in combat. Martok became Chancellor, and the Defense Force fought under him at the Battle of Cardassia, where the war ended.

The war cost the Defense Force heavily, and left it with a generation of officers who had fought beside Starfleet. See The Alliance with the Federation.

8. The Officer Exchange and Training with Starfleet

Starfleet and the Defense Force have exchanged officers since at least the 2360s. Under the exchange, a Starfleet officer serves for a time aboard a Klingon ship, and a Klingon officer aboard a Starfleet one, each under the other service’s rules. The exchange of 2365 aboard the Pagh is the best known. Starfleet doctors have also served aboard Klingon ships under the programme. The exchange continues in 2393. It is not large, but the officers who go through it are among the few in either service who understand the other from inside.

After 2383 a Defense Force contingent trained with Starfleet on Mars in fighter tactics. Starfleet officers taught small-craft tactics to Klingon pilots, and Klingon pilots, by the accounts of those who worked with them, taught their instructors a good deal about aggression. How far the Defense Force has taken up small-craft tactics since is not known. For the exchange and its place in the alliance see The Alliance with the Federation.

9. The Raids of the 2380s

After 2379, when Shinzon’s coup killed the Romulan Senate and the Romulan Empire turned inward, the Romulan side of the Zone was thinly held. The years from 2379 to 2382 are the period the Romulans call the Silence. From about 2382 to 2390, young warriors of lesser houses and some Klingon ship captains raided Romulan border holdings across the line. Many of the raiders were sons of the House of Gharvel, a lesser house. Their reasons were old grievances, glory and plunder. Klingons had not forgotten Narendra III in 2344, Khitomer in 2346, or Romulan support for the House of Duras in the civil war of 2367 to 2368.

The High Council neither sanctioned the raids nor stopped them. When the Romulan patrols returned to the Zone, from 2387 and in strength from 2389, the raids grew costly, and after 2390 they tapered off. The Romulans have never forgotten them. See Klingons and Romulans.

10. Posture in 2393

In 2393 the Defense Force is at peace, and on the Romulan border it is watchful and restless. Chancellor Martok has led the Empire since 2375, and his long chancellorship has the great houses thinking about who comes after him. That question reaches into the Defense Force, because the houses supply its officers, and because the house that leads the next Council will have much to say about who commands the fleets.

Two houses on the High Council matter most to Starfleet on this border. The House of Vreth, to which General Kortaq of the Narendra Command belongs, wants a harder line with the Romulans. The House of Tarkesh, rich in shipbuilding and in mining in the outer colonies, wants the alliance with the Federation kept steady and the border quiet. The balance between them shapes how freely Klingon captains on the Zone are allowed to act. See The Great Houses.

On the Narendra stretch, Klingon ships patrol their own side of the line and watch the Romulan garrisons of the Nevrha Sector, which watch them in turn. The raids have stopped; the Klingon memory of Narendra III has not. A Klingon captain near the Zone shares Starfleet’s adversary but not its methods. Where a Starfleet crew sees an incident to be defused, a Klingon crew may see an enemy to be answered and honour to be reclaimed. The help such a captain offers Starfleet is real and valuable, and it is also capable of starting the war that Starfleet on this border exists to prevent. Managing the ally can be harder than managing the adversary. See The Klingon Frontier in 2393 and The Romulan Side of the Zone.

11. See Also

The Klingon Empire · The High Council and the Chancellor · The Great Houses · Language, Names and Ranks · Klingon Ships · The Alliance with the Federation · Klingons and Romulans · The Klingon Frontier in 2393 · Honour, Faith and Custom · The Romulan Side of the Zone