Borg sphere The Borg long - range tactical vessel , commonly referred to by the Federation as a Borg sphere , was a sphere - shaped starship used by the Borg Collective during the late 24th century . Technical data . Borg spheres were used by the Borg as scout ship s or long - range tactical vessels . Borg spheres were also embedded into some Borg cube s , and were used as auxiliary craft . ( ; ) Borg spheres had a crew complement of 11 , 000 Borg drone s . ( ) The spheres were approximately 600 meters in diameter , and had an interior bay large enough to hold an starship . ( ; ) Borg spheres had transwarp capability and ablative hull armor . They were also equipped with a tractor beam . ( ) Provided its deflector shield s were down , a Borg sphere could be destroyed by a starship with relative ease using quantum torpedo es . ( ) History . In the year 2063 , a Borg sphere from the future was used in an effort to prevent the first globally publicized contact between Earth and Vulcan , an incident historically brought about by noted inventor Zefram Cochrane . The sphere launched an attack on Cochrane ' s hometown of Bozeman , Montana , but was soon destroyed by the " Sovereign " - class , which had followed the sphere back through time . ( ) At least some of the remains of this sphere ended up in the Arctic Circle . In 2153 , a team of scientist s found the remains of the sphere there . ( ) The same vessel had initially been launched from a Borg cube in the culmination of the Battle of Sector 001 . After that incident , the sphere was observed to have time travel capabilities , by generating a temporal vortex through the controlled emission of chronometric particle s ; it was this method that enabled the sphere to travel to 2063 . ( ) In 2375 , the crew of successfully retrieved a Borg transwarp coil from a damaged sphere , as part of Operation Fort Knox . At the time , the sphere was only able to travel at warp 2 because it was regenerating from the damage . ( ) In 2378 , Starfleet attempted to destroy a sphere with a fleet of starships . The sphere was holding " Voyager " , which was able to destroy the sphere from the inside using transphasic torpedo es . ( ) Design . A sphere had no living quarters nor a discernible engineering section for the propulsion systems . There was , however , a primary shield generator inside the shield matrix . The several transwarp coils of a sphere were contained inside specialized rooms called transwarp chamber s that featured heavy shielding . ( ) Appendices . Appearances . Background information . A Borg sphere was mentioned for the first time in the first draft script for , dated , where scene 4 described an apparently more belligerent and independently operating sphere thus ; " " A huge , spherical Borg warship as it takes a phaser shot from an unseen vessel . The BLAST smashes into the Borg Sphere , but the massive ship continues . The Sphere returns FIRE . " " In the movie as featured , however , the sphere was ultimately primarily depicted as an escape vessel for the Borg Queen , though its original aggressive nature was not altogether abandoned , as the vessel was seen bombarding 21st - century Earth , before being destroyed by the . At one stage while the Borg sphere was being designed , it was conceptualized as measuring 3 , 000 feet ( 914 meters ) in diameter . The design team that worked on " Star Trek : First Contact " finally decided it was meant to be only 1 , 500 feet ( 457 meters ) in diameter , as shown in the film ' s official size comparison chart . ( ) However , according to the size of the debris field , as referenced in , the radius was calculated at " about 600 meters in diameter . " One of the first ideas Mike Sussman had for the episode " Regeneration " was that some technology had survived from the Borg sphere in " Star Trek : First Contact " , and had somehow been appropriated by one of the designers who had participated in the Warp Five program . From that , Brannon Braga retained the idea that debris from the Borg sphere had survived . ( " " , issue 99 , p . 16 ) While " Regeneration " was proceeding to develop , Mike Sussman wanted to establish that Borg spheres weren ' t constructed in some type of complex but were instead transformed from other ships following assimilation of each of those vessels . Sussman was also interested in having the transport ship " Arctic One " become a Borg sphere during the course of the episode . However , these concepts were rejected . ( " " , issue 99 , p . 16 ) In the final draft script of " Regeneration " , the debris from the Borg sphere was initially described as , " " A JAGGED HULL FRAGMENT twenty or thirty feet high , jutting out of the ice at an odd angle . The metal is heavily damaged , covered with snow and ice . . . it ' s obviously been here for a very long time . Smaller pieces of debris are buried in the glacier around it . As we ' ll learn , this is debris from a BORG SPHERE that crashed in the Arctic Circle almost a century ago . " "