<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>since the Excalibur and its counterpart (destroyed in ACtA) were the only ships of that kind in 2267.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Or so we think.
Excalibur and
Victory are being built at an
Earth Alliance shipyard. There is much talk about how they had to
reverse-engineer Minbari and Vorlon technology to make them work. (Which
always struck me as odd - if these are IA ships, why didn't the Minbari just
give them the technology?)
The only thing I've been able to figure out that makes any sense at all is that these destroyers are a joint EA-IA project. Earthforce will presumably get to build their own ships of this class once they're out of the prototype stage, and Earth is footing the bill. (Don't forget, the cost of the new construction was a major sticking point with the Minbari, who had paid for the development and construction of the
White Stars all by themselves, and were still recovering from a civil war when Sheridan proposed the new destroyer class.)
The Minbari are willing to share some technology directly with the other members of the IA (like gravitic drives and artificial gravity) but presumably want to keep other things secret. (In order to maintain both the Minbari and IA government's technological edge. The IA, after all, may have to intervene if its members get out of line and fight among themselves, and they wouldn't want to have to face their own latest weapons in such a case.)
So what if the basic design of the
Victory-class ships and a few key components were given to the EA, but the Minbari withheld the underlying technology and other components that would have given the EA too much power if reverse-engineered by the Humans? Since the Minbari don't have to reverse-engineer anything, having been given some technology by the Vorlons, they could be building ships similar to
Victory much sooner than the Humans could.
(And the defection of the Centauri from the Alliance, coupled with fighting that brings on, could be enough to loosen the Minbari purse-strings.)
So it is possible that ships very much like the
Victory could be in the
IA inventory as early as 2265, even though the first
EA version won't be launched (and won't have contact with the Drakh) until nearly two years later.
Even if the footage is from
Rangers it may not be quite the mistake that we, and Slade, are all assuming.
Regards,
Joe
------------------
Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net
