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In the episode "Drone", the sphere that was on the way to intercept them was described as a:
long range tactical vessel with ablative hull armor.
Is this Borg Sphere identical to the Sphere described as a "scout ship" in VOY: Dark Frontier, Part I or the one in First Contact?
As shown here, the Borg have multiple classes and types of ships that are used. In addition to the Borg Cube, they also have armored "Tactical Cubes," lighter scout ships, spherical ships, and different stations. Largely, each ship class is used for a specific need (such as speed or firepower) that can be better filled by a more specialized ship than a more general one.
Borg Spheres seem to come in two sizes; big (AKA "Tactical") at around 1500m-ish and small (AKA "scout/lifeboat") at around 450m-ish. The Borg Sphere seen in 'Drone' appears to be a variant of those seen in First Contact film and although the models used (both physical and digital) were identical, the notable difference is that the spheres in Drone are dramatically larger, at what appears to be around three times the size.
The Sphere seen in Unimatrix Zero, Part I seems to be the larger variant and the sphere seen in Endgame seems to be the smaller kind.
So yes, out of universe they're totally the same. In-universe, they're not.
Probably. The Borg Collective has essentially two ships, the sphere scout spaceship and the giant cube one. The sphere has 160 decks, a crew of 11,000 drones.
Here is a comparison with USS Voyager: USS Voyager NCC-74656 size compared to Borg Sphere.
