After the Romulan bombardment of Earth in 2156, Earth's primary orbital shipyards lay in ruins. All of Earth's few capital ships were destroyed in the battle except for the Enterprise NX-01 that had been on a deep space mission at the time. The only remaining platform for ship construction was the new freighter shipyard at Utopia Planitia. This Mars orbiting complex had been built to construct the experimental warp-5 freighter, code named Daedalus. Under the leadership of Commander Bryce Shumar, the Daedalus command hull was mated with NX nacelles salvaged from one of the four unfinished NX Class starships destroyed in dry-dock during the Romulan attack. The large Daedalus warp reactor was housed in a newly designed "engineering section" below the two nacelles.

At first, development of the Daedalus was considered by many as a waste of resources. However, shortly after the first Romulan attack, Vulcan High Command came to the conclusion that Earth's defeat was likely and Romulan influence would soon envelope most of the Alfa Quadrant. To avoid entering the conflict themselves, they formulated that the humans would require a technological leap to combat the high-warp Romulan fleet. Diagrams of a dilithium-matrix power converter were subsequently given to Starfleet. This converter design would compress warp-plasma flow allowing improved high-warp propulsion if enough power could be supplied. It quickly became obvious that the huge warp reactor designed for the Daedalus freighter was the only engine capable of supplying the required energy. Construction of the first Daedalus starship, re-designated NX-100, took less than three months.

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