Deflector dish

The deflector dish is a feature usually seen on Federation starships, facing foreward. The dish projects a force field ahead of the ship that deflects small debris out of the ship's path while it is travelling at warp speed. This field protects the ship from warp-speed collisions with micro-meteoroids and other small objects, since even interstellar dust could be harmful to the ship at such high speeds.

Other use for Defector dish are Can be used weapons like Star terk Best of Both World part one and Two where threay can destory borg ship and the starships fire it. Meaning it could be light weapons. Star Trek Generations) The Deflector dish used creation exposing got ship soom miss.

The starships of other major Star Trek civilizations usually do not have highly-visible deflector dishes, but they presumably have a less obvious mechanism that performs this function.