Starfleet Admirals' ship?

That is actually a good question and if I remember correctly admirals in star trek ended up on a desk job lol. I have seen some episodes where the admiral would ride a different ship and there was a captain aboard. Gee I need to research that and pay more attention to star trek.

I'm fairly sure that an Admiral gets a Desk at Starfleet HQ or at a Starbase to go with the promotion,and only gets on a ship again on a special assignment..James T.Kirk may have been an exception,as they couldn't keep him at a desk Kirk ends up getting demoted from Admiral in the Movie series,and was as a result happy to be able to get "back" to command of a ship again...

Firstly Admirals usually lose their starships and get desk jobs however there are some exceptions when james t kirk was an admiral he got back the command of the enterprise however in star trek generations Kirk told jean luc picard not to accept promotion so he could remain in command of the enterprise and in a similar vein michael eddington told benjamin sisko that people join star fleet to be captains not admirals when they discussed eddington ambitions.And on the question aboutthe chain of command a star fleet officer of a rank less than captain who commands a star ship is refered to as captain maybe the same is true for those of a higher rank

Quite often, an admiral relinguishes command of his or her starship to another captain (or new commanding officer). That new captain can either be the First Officer, maybe a even new captain assigned to take command of the ship.

If we're talking about the various incarnations of Star Trek, Kirk was somewhat of an exception to the rule, because in all those first four movies, he was an admital in command of the Enterprise. Supposedly (Not sure how true this was) before the time that The Motion Picture takes place in, it was Captain Spock who was in command of the Enterprise for two five-year missions.

In The Next Generation, Captain Picard turned down promotions to admiral, because he wanted to remain going out in space, & not confined to mere desk duty. I believe that there have been at least two or more offers that he turned down.

<---*Powers up Star Trek nerdness to 9000*



Typically admirals give up a ship to become commanders or specialists for Starfleet's high command requirements. This could include....

--Command of a specific fleet of starships (usually from a Starbase which they also command or Starfleet Command) and this could include just a number of ships or a sector of particular space, or both.

--Becoming head or adjutant of a department of Starfleet (security, tactical, research and development, judge advocate office, intelligence, science, medical, academy)

---Command of a specific outpost, base or project if a higher ranking officer is required (Anti-Borg Task Force, Temporal Affairs, Project Pathfinder, etc)

--Command of fleet assembly, maintenance and new ship production (Utopia Planitia, etc).

These of course are the "desk jobs" that have been referred to by other mylotters but there are some variations in the tasks performed depending on department. Seems like some of these people get out and about so to speak:)

There are exceptions to the rule and as pointed out by some already Kirk "got"(begged the hell out of Nogura for) a special assignment which put him back in command.

Another case to look at is the rank of Commodore and those that held the rank when it was active (Commodore= Rear Admiral lesser half currently). Commodore Matt Decker had USS Constellation, Robert Wesley commanded USS Lexington. Some admirals may have ships to help with their particular assignments (patrolling space, research, etc). Or more simply, the admirals had privilege and selected a starship as their own flagship.

There were some other admirals with their own flagship either as a temporary measure (Borg invasions I recall) or as a permanent assignment (Admiral Ross' USS Bellerophon). Another example is Riker's case (albeit from an alternate Q-made timeline). He commented that Enterprise-D was going to be decommissioned but remarked that one of the perks of being an admiral (in his case a Vice Admiral - 3 pip admiral) was the selection of a flagship.

About the question of whether a Captain is onboard or not. Typically they are not assigned to the ship, as the higher ranking officer must assume command (in most cases). There is at least one case where an Admiral was posted on a ship with a Captain: ISS Avenger NX-09. The Captain was in command of the ship, but Admiral Black was commander for the anti-rebel Assault Fleet. From what I could gather, given Commander Archer's remarks to Terran Starfleet and Black's own remarks: the reason why Black was on a ship that has a Captain was due to the supposed limited number of starships.

About the question if promoted Captains retain their ship. It could happen but from the look of things, the old Captain takes their new assignment and either a promotion among the existing command structure occurs or a new captain is brought in. The old Captain may pick an assignment which has something to do with their old command: like having the vessel as part of their starbase/space-sector command (this being the alleged non-canon case for Captain/Commodore April, Captain Pike and the original Enterprise back in 2245-2251).

Well you got some really good answers here before I stumbled onto this discussion. I was going to say that for the most part when a captain got promoted to admiral it mostly involved a desk job. That is the main reason Kirk fought that promotion so long. He only got his ship back after being promoted because there was an emergency that required his expertise. Keep on trekkin.

from what I know, Admirals will have to give up their ships as being promoted to the admiralty means more important duties.

If an admiral needs to go somewhere, they usually just 'catch a ride' with any available starship. We do however know that some admirals have their own starship (Nechayev had the USS Crazy Horse and later the USS Sovereign) but they are under command of a captain. The admiral is not going to keephimself busy with running a ship

In the event where an admiral is in command of a fleet (admiral Hanson at the Battle of Wolf 359) we can assume that the admiral (with his command staff),while in command of the entire fleet,is not present on the bridge of the ship but rather in a secondary command center where he can oversee and command the whole fleet rather then be in the way of the captain of the ship who needs to put his full attention on commanding the ship