A Jem'Hadar fighter (also referred to as an attack ship or patrol ship) was a small type of warship that formed the bulk of the Dominion fleet. These versatile starships were also known to perform the roles of patrol ships and scouts.

Jem'Hadar attack ships were vaguely insectoid, looking much like a Terran scarab in design. Extremely sturdy, these warships were capable of surviving the impact onto a planet's surface. As well, Jem'Hadar attack ships were able to land intact on a planet and take off again. Once landed, the Jem'Hadar could land troops from the warship from a large access hatch on the belly of the ship. While capable of making planetary descents, they were not capable of conducting battle maneuvers while in sub-orbital flight.

Although highly maneuverable, they lacked the edge in maneuverability that Starfleet's Danube-class runabouts possessed. Despite this, they still heavily outgunned the smaller Federation vessels.

Jem'Hadar fighters were relatively easy for a large starship to destroy. A few solid phaser or photon torpedo hits were enough to cripple or destroy one, therefore, they usually operated in groups of two or three during routine operations, and in much larger swarms in large battles so that the loss of one or two would not make much difference.

The primary directed energy array was located in the forward section of the ship, and had a range that exceeded 100,000 kilometers.

Armaments of this type employed by this class varied from disruptors to phased polaron beam weapons. During initial encounters with the Federation, these phased polaron beams were capable of penetrating the shields of Federation starships.

During the waning days of the Dominion War, in late 2375, Jem'Hadar fighters were retrofitted with Breen energy dissipator following the Breen's alliance with the Dominion. However, this came too late in the war to have an effective impact; shortly after the refits began, the Cardassian Rebellion successfully obtained a fighter with the weapon and delivered it to Starfleet.

In addition to directed energy weapons, they were also armed with an undefined type of torpedo system.

Outside of conventional weapon use, these ships were also used in performing kamikaze attacks on enemy vessels, which allowed them to inflict more damage than their weapons alone could perform.

In addition, cloaking technology would not reliably hide a vessel from a Jem'Hadar fighter's sensors because they used a form of antiproton beam. This technology was later advanced to include a form of long-range tachyon scanner, which was capable of penetrating a starship's cloak from a great distance.