Starfleet Jedi

What is known about Mars Defanse Perimeter spacecafts. In the books and other none cannon sourses.

Almost nothing.
-Mike

Was Mars Defense Perimeter spacecrafts in firing range for a normal Starfleet starship before the Borg cube destroying them? If they were in firing rang for normal UFP starship before Borg cub would it not mean that were maybe had only been armed with a warhead may be some close range weapon self defense.

Probably some sort of attack drone designed to provide a manuverable opponent with decent level of firepower. Given the UFP's enemies, those drones would probably be designed to harrass and weaken warships before they can pose a threat to a planet or perhaps even to aid in fleet operations in the event of an invasion.

However, I highly doubt they were designed to face anything close to a Borg Cube, so their quick destruction isn't surprising.

Though loathe to admit it, I actually concur with Jason here . . . they were well within starship weapon range.

So either they had no weapons (e.g. they were megatorps) or else they had some other objective. For instance, they may have been saving phasers for closer range. The basis for this would be Cdre. Decker's "too far away" comment, as well as phaser adaptation by the Borg.

That said, however, they were well within visual range when destroyed . . . damn near spitball range, actually. Even a "whites of their eyes" firing plan would've been overdue at that time, just about.

I would thus submit that they were probably unmanned missiles of some kind. The lack of huge explosion upon detonation suggests that perhaps something other than antimatter was the load, unless the Borg weapon used had some special properties.

It's possible that they were equipped with very short range phasers due to lack of power generation capability onboard. It's doubtful the drones are meant to be a serious or credible combat threat and like Mirh said, are primarily a delaying and expendable harassment force until a starship or fleet of starships can stage and deploy. Of course there's nothing ruling out the "mega-warhead" theory either. It would've been interesting to see how they would've performed against their most likely intended targets (Klingon, Romulan and Cardassian starships) but the truth of the matter is that we'll never know as their real intended purpose was to show how big bad and powerful the Borg were :p