The Klingons are noted for their ability to wring every last drop of usefulness out of a design, even sometimes to the point of absurdity. The development of the B'rel class cruiser from the Bird of Prey is a case in point, but having successfully scaled up one design to make an entirely new ship, nobody could have imagined that they would then go even further in the same direction.

In the 2350s the Klingons decided that they needed a new class of ship which would easily match the most capable planned Federation designs. Given the difficulties they had experienced with the Vor'cha design, it was decided to develop a class based as much as possible on existing technology. The B'rel design had long proven itself in action, so the Klingon designers simply scaled up this design still further to an incredible 654 metres long! This resulted in a massive vessel which carried a pair of huge wing tip mounted disruptor cannon, a series of secondary disruptors, and two clusters of the triple fire torpedo tubes developed for the Vor'cha.

Although the development program was relatively quick and successful, the finished vessel was unfortunately not. The drawbacks are not a result of bad design, but are rather inherent to a vessel of this kind. The Klingons strengthened the hull structure to compensate for the larger mass, but modifications of this kind become inherently more difficult as the design is scaled more and more. While the B'rel has shown that it can function successfully, the D'tai proved to be a step too far. This led to limitations being placed on heavy manoeuvring. The placement of the warp coils within the main body of a ship this big led to further reductions in manoeuvrability, while difficulties encountered with shielding the radiation emitted from them led the designers to reduce the vessel's top speed to a mere warp 8.8.

While these problems were not sufficient to cause cancellation of the project, the Klingons did limit the production run to a dozen ships. These served on the Klingon/Romulan or Klingon/Federation border. Their service there was relatively uneventful, although three fo them participated in the Enterprise D's mission into the Romulan neutral zone following the defection of Admiral Jarok.

Following the suspension of the class, the Klingons decided to press ahead with a totally new design of large starship in the project which became the Negh'var.

During the Dominion war all twelve D'tai class vessels saw extensive service. Although they gave a good account of themselves, all were lost during that conflict.