Dirip

  Ah, the huge difficulty of finding anything that has not been through a whole succession of brains already.  I had thought a dirip was a new found thing, barely touched by Culture.  I discover that in fact  it is, was and (this is less certain) will be a Cardassian Gul Vystan-class cruiser starship of the Cardassian Union's Central Command in the 24th century. The Dirip was [sic] in active service around the year 2377.