The hellfire torpedo was designed as a compliment to the quantum torpedo. The Hellfire was designed to bypass enemy shields and pack a punch to the enemy ship itself. The Hellfire is designed to 'skip' past enemy shielding using subspace phasing technology first used in 2368. The torpedo has a small, short range sensor array that, as it nears and enemy ship, scans it's target's shield 'bubble', frequency and modulation, and then ativates the subspace phase transporter. This allows the Hellfire to move out of phase with the target, and re-appear within it's shield parameter, and impact directly on the hull. That sequence takes only a matter of milli-seconds. To the naked eye, it appears the Hellfire actually passes though a ship's shields instead of 'skiping' past them. Deadly protomatter is the in the warhead, and is acted upone by antiprotons to cause the violant reaction and deadly explosive force of the weapon. A quantum singularity powers the torpedoes systems and allows it to maintain warp speeds, as well as giving that bright green glow. The torpedo has its own warp coils in the casing and therefore is able to maintain a high warp for a fairly long time. The torpedo has to be fired at warp to obtain warp velocity to begin with. The torpedo has no communication devise, it is completely self controlled and contained, 'fire and forget'. This is a drawback (and at times an advantage) to the torpedo because it may lose the target even if the ship doesn't, but it can maintain lock if the ship has problems. Also the shield modulation can't be sent to the firing ship or any other ship. The short range sensor of the Hellfire can't be modified to do that, the sensors have a too limited range and there isn't enough space for communications gear. So even if a communicator were put in, the torpedo wouldn't have enough time to send any information. This would also make the torpedo better able to cope with changes in the shield modulation because it gets the modulation data at the latest possible time.

Since the Hellfire uses a Mk-II Quantum torpedo's casing. Originally designed narrower, but slightly longer than a quantum torpedo, the Hellfire had a break-away casing is placed around it to allow it to be fired from a standard torpedo launcher on any ship, but this was upgraded in 2377.

Currently the Mark-II Hellfire is under development. The upgrade over the Mark-I is the Mark-II will be able to remodulate it's frequency, allowing it to 'skip' past an enemy's shields easier. This upgrade is still being perfected and far from deployment. Another improvement now under Theoretical review, is for the torpedo to be in a state of temporal flux once fired. However this is years from becoming a reality.

Range Limit: 15 km - 4 050 000 km (from starships at warp)
Warp Speed: 110% of warp factor of firing ship
Sublight Speed: up to a 70% higher velocity (maximum velocity = initial velocity + .70 × initial velocity/ c {or Vmax = Vi + .70 Vi/c}
Shield Scan Range: 6 m
Developed: 2375
Operational Since: 2375
Yield: 350 isotons
Warhead: Protomatter that's ignighted by and reacted upon by antiprotons