U-10 Cestus Class

NOTE:  You can click on most pictures to get a larger view of them.

During my review of the Eaglemoss Special #11, the USS Enterprise (XCV-330), a Starliner Class or sometimes called a Declaration Class ship, I proclaimed my fondness of ring ships.  I shared my collection of my various ring ships, and the Romulan U-10 Cestus Class was one of them.

This ship has never appeared in anything canon and I only learned about it while researching another really ancient Romulan ship.


I had managed to get my hands on a digital copy of the Federation Spaceflight Chronology books.  One of the books was dedicated to just the Romulans and thier ships.

While researching another ship from a resin kit that I was building, I stumbled across the following picture and it's accompanying text.  Please note that the following information was shamelessly taken right from that book.  

Romulan U-10 Cestus Class

SPECIFICATIONS: 
Length: 125 m
Beam: 90 m
Draft: 60 m
Mass: 73,500 DWT
Crew: 85
Armament: 2 lasers
2 missile tubes
1 plasma cannon
(wartime refit, replaces both lasers)
Cruising speed: warp 2.3
Maximum speed: warp 3.8
Innovations:
• Believed to be the first Romulan starship design intended to be powered by a controlled singularity
• Ancestor of the famed “Warbird” sub-family of Romulan starship designs

The Cestus was unique among Romulan starships of the war. It was basically a reduced-hull U-9 fitted with a toridal reactor system instead of its normal one. This gave the Cestus its unique, ringship-like appearance. The rear-mounted ring for the new reactor system mandated a rearrangement of its engine support pylons, resulting in the forward and up-swept appearance that has since become something of a Romulan design standard. This one-of-a-kind drive system made it the fastest starship in the Romulan Space Navy at the time of the war. It also made it one of the most expensive of the pre-war Romulan designs, and no more than two dozen are believed to have been built. 

It is believed by many starship historians and Romulan analysts that the Cestus came about as the result of early Romulan efforts into developing controlled singularity drives. This would account both for its tail ring and its small numbers in comparison to other Romulan starship classes of the era. Postwar intelligence has since revealed the existence of at least one other Romulan design, the un-built “Medium Attacker” of 2158, which employed a similar arrangement. The ring-like structures of both were apparently intended to house the field generators for an early singularity drive, not unlike the arrangement used on the V’terdix prototype and the X-generation Romulan starships of the late 23rd century. The failure of singularity research at this early stage apparently did not prevent the Romulans from testing a compatible starship design with the Cestus class, since it could be easily converted from existing U-series components. The more complex “Medium Attacker,” on the other hand, being entirely original, would never leave the drawing board.

Although intended for the interceptor role, Cestus was used primarily for long-range, deep-penetration missions. Most frequently these were for scouting purposes; however, the occasional raid by a Cestus was not unknown. They excelled in the hit-and-run role due to their sheer speed; however, their limited numbers tended to make them non-expendable in the eyes of Romulan fleet commanders. During the war the most frequent use for a Cestus was as a long-range fleet scout.
It was once believed that all examples of the Cestus were destroyed in the final Federation offensive of the war. This was during the Romulan retreat to Cheron, when they were sent on a desperate gamble to harass the forward elements of the Federation fleet, thus hopefully slowing their pursuit of the retreating Romulan fleets. The wreckage of one heavily damaged Cestus, which apparently crashed on an asteroid during one of these encounters, was found and recovered by Starfleet in 2264. It has since been rebuilt by the Starfleet Association and is now housed at Memory Beta as a museum ship.

Cestus is widely regarded as the direct ancestor of the “Warbird” sub-family of Romulan starship designs. The controlled singularity reactor for which it had been designed (but never fitted) would not be perfected for almost 150 years until the V’Teridix class cruiser made its debut in 2271.

CESTUS DESIGN BY PHOENIX EXPERIMENTAL SHIPYARDS
“MEDIUM ATTACKER” CONCEPT BY ARIDAS SOFIA
CLASS NAME, SPECIFICATIONS, AND BACKGROUND BY RICHARD MANDEL
VISUALS BY PHOENIX EXPERIMENTAL SHIPYARDS

Note: If you are able to find the Federation Spaceflight Chronology ebooks online, I highly recommend you checking out them out as they have tons of fascinating non-cannon historical history and ship information including lots of pictures.  Unfortunately, due to copyright, I don't feel comfortable proving links to those books, but a Google search will most certainly point you to them.

At the time that I researched this ship, my kitbashing skills had developed enough that I felt comfortable with trying to make an attempt at building this ship.  She's not perfect, but to my knowledge, no one else has one of these ships in thier collection.

Romulan U-10 Cestus Class

Unknown Scale AMT Kitbash

 

 

 

 

Build Notes:

Parts Used: AMT Round 2 1:2500 Scale Romulan Bird Of Prey and sheet styrene.

This was a relatively quick build that I was able to accomplish in under a week.

I started by cutting down a Bird Of Prey hull to thin her out.

 

I then used the boiling water trick to fashion a small ring for her.

 

I then puttied in the gaps from cutting down the hull.

I finished rounding out the warp ring and then I cut out some Styrene for the nacelle wings and the ring support struts.

At this point, I set about the tedious work of measuring and cutting the ring struts down. I had to take some creative licensing and make an assumption of what the top of the ship looks like since there are no other pictures of this ship.

 

I cut down the vertical support struts to fit inside the ring and glued them on.

I painted the entire hull and ring a light gray.

 

Once the paint dried, I mounted the ring.  I also cut down the excess off the vertical fins and mounted them.

 

 At this point, I then cut down the horizontal wings and mounted them.

 

I then mounted the nacelles and spray painted the whole thing a light gray.

 

I started doing some detail painting.

My painting skills are not super, and definitely not super enough to paint the bird on the bottom of the model.  Soooo... I used the model's decals.  this in itself was a win for me as I'm not very good with these things either.  The lesser of two evils won out though.  I then finished painting some feathers to connect the bottom decal as well as painted on some feathering on the ring.

 

And there you have it. 

As always, I hope you found this article useful and informative.  If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to comment below.

So for now, "Live long and prosper!!!"



Additional Links To Photos Of My Collection:

U-10 Cestus Class ( Model     WIP )