Mission Scout

The Federation Mission Scout was a type of Federation auxiliary craft in operation during the late 24th century.

The scout was a single-pilot starship with a forward mounted cockpit separated from the rest of the vessel. It was slightly larger in size than the Enterprise-E shuttlecraft, and carried dual-mounted phaser banks and photon torpedoes. The vessel is accessible through its docking hatch on the ventral hull. (Star Trek: Insurrection)

Background

According to its designer, John Eaves, the mission scout was designed to reflect the appearance of the USS Defiant and the Danube-class runabout. Overall, it was to have been given the appearance of a being both "compact" and "aerodynamic."

Michael Piller wanted the scene involving the scoutship to be similar to a World War I and II dogfight, where both pilots were in open cockpits, and could see each other. John Eaves' solution to this was to create a vast windshield in the front of the ship.

The cockpit of this class was a reuse of the set designed for the class 2 shuttle Cochrane for Star Trek: Voyager.

It is uncertain whether this vessel can be classed as a shuttlecraft, a runabout or a starship in its own right, but, like the latter two, it carried a distinct registry number from the Enterprise (the scoutship's registry is NCC-75227). However, this could be the registry number of its mothership, just as the shuttle it pursued had the NCC-1701-E registry of the vessel it was attached to.

That being the case, its mothership could be the USS Ticonderoga and NCC-75227 would be its registry number. The USS Ticonderoga is listed in the Star Trek: Encyclopedia as being the Federation starship that inserted the duck blind mission team onto the Ba'ku planet.

Apocrypha

Star Trek: Armada and its sequel give this vessel the classification of "Venture-class", but this has not been canonically identified as such. Furthermore, it could possibly conflict with there being a USS Venture around the same time, though this vessel was Galaxy-class in design.

This vessel is also listed in role-playing games, such as those from Last Unicorn Games and Decipher, as a Talon-class ship. The 24 meter long intermediate step between shuttle and runabout, carrying a crew of up to four, was armed with four type 5 phasers and three micro-torpedo launchers. It is this ship, with substantial changes, that was the baseline model for the Valkyrie-class fighters in the Activision Playstation game Star Trek: Invasion.

While neither name is canon, the latter, Talon, does not conflict with a canon ship as Venture does.