Yeah this ship is coming into service at basically exactly the right time to be built in volume in the Dominion War, as a lot of the other small ships in Starfleet service will be suffering high attrition rates. The labs mean it'll have something to do afterwards in between chasing down pirates and Cardassian ultranationalist hold-outs.
Not having a shuttle bay is a shame though. I'd assumed we might have fitted in a vertical one, like the Defiant it the old NX-class, but I guess not. Then again, the Defiant ended up in development hell for a reason lol