Unlike many ships of its day, the Loknar Frigate was built from the beginning to serve almost exclusively as a warship with the Federation fleet. Ships of the Loknar class were capable combatants who were the equals of the venerable Constitution cruisers in battle. The ship's unique shape, including its 'horned' saucer section, are all marks left by the Andorian engineers who oversaw the development and construction of the first Loknar Frigates.

The Loknar was one of the first ships to receive phaser upgrades as they became available in the early 2250's. The Loknar saw extensive structural changes during the series of refits allowing for its to expand its existing armament to provide more complete weapon's coverage to the ship. The upgrade replaced the ship's four wide arc light lasers with four intermediate lasers (the best developed at the time), and the accelerator cannon was removed to make room for no less than three bleeding edge photon torpedoes.

The resultant ship maintained the Loknar's tactical superiority in the fleet. The Loknars would continue to serve in the fleet into the late 2280's, but attempts to upgrade the design further proved fruitless. Due to the size of the vessel it was simply impossible to mount worthwhile numbers of newer, more powerful weapons onto the hull. It was decided instead to invest in the construction of newer light cruisers such as the Miranda which could perform more generalized missions while exerting nearly as much firepower.

As the Loknars were pulled out of service from 2289-2297, many were purchased by the Andorians for service within their own homeworld defense fleet. There the ships were mildly refitted and added to their already venerable racial fleet.