There's an old military expression; don't tap it, thump it. In short, when planning military operations, one doesn't commit just barely adequate forces, one goes for the highest possible level of overkillthat can be organized. Now, we know that Romulan BoP outgun Federation starships handily (again, look at the earlier quote - one volley from a BoP takes the E-D shields down by 70 percent. Interestingly, we have the following.

Since we know a BoP can take down 70 percent of E-Ds shields witha volley and Picard says the firepower of a Klingon heavy cruiser is roughly twice that of a Bird of Prey its reasonable to assume that a Klingon heavy cruiser can take out the E-D with a single salvo.

Putting evidence together, it appears that the Romulan ships are short-ranged but heavily armed. That tends to suggest that their campaigns would be island hopping in the good, old-fashioned sense. Seizing operational bases and then exploiting them for a forward push.

It appears that the pre Dominion war pecking order in the Alpha Quadrant is Klingon > Romulan > Federation > Cardassia > Ferenghi. Even the status of Federation vs Cardassia is questionable since it appears the Cardassians at leats managed to fight the Federation to a standstill.

The impression I've gotten is that Federation military strategy seems to rely on holding off the enemy long enough to bring its industrial might to bear. They're completely unprepared for out-of-the blue attacks.

During the first Borg incursion, Enterprise was initially the only starship within range. Even with several days' notice, Starfleet was only able to gather 39 starships, and this is less than 10ly from Earth. In other situations, Enterprise is often the only starship available.

During DS9, we saw a brief war with the Klingons, but I only have fuzzy memories of it. However, when the first Dominion threat appeared, Starfleet assigned Defiant to DS9. One starship. When they launched a rescue mission into Dominion space, potentially hostile territory, they sent in a massive fleet of... USS Odyssey. Which didn't last too long.

Despite this, by the time the Dominion war gets into full swing, we see large fleets composed of old Miranda and Excelsior-class starships, Galaxy, Defiant, and Akira-class ships.

If they can hold off an initial invasion, Starfleet seems to have enough time to inform their captains to "stop boldly going and get back here!" And probably to pull a bunch of old ships out of retirement, call up the reserves, and start rushing ships out of the construction yards. The longer they can hold out, the bigger the fleet they can prepare.

Given that the Federation is supposed to span some big number of light-years, and their most threatening neighbors have become allies (Klingons), turned isolationist (Romulans), or just plain don't matter (Cardassians), Starfleet Command probably was just becoming complacent pre-Dominion war.

Sounds like a good start to a Star Trek drinking game.

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The fifth season was the DS9's best, where it produced some of its most outstanding episodes, but the military tactics weren't significantly greater.

In 'Nor the Battle to the Strong', the USS Farragut was alone sent to engge Klingon forces at Ajilon Prime. Surprise, surprise, it was destroyed and so Sisko had to order the Defiant 8) to be taken there. Sisko was a bit cavalier with his ship as well. The difference between Sisko and Archer, is that the Defiant 8) is Sisko's own private tool that he uses for what missions he chooses, while Enterprise is Archer's play thing.

It was great at the end of the season to see huge task forces, the way it should be. Nothing beats that shot of the Defiant 8) and the Rotarran flying into that huge Federation/Klingon task force for season closers.

Sound like the exact opposite strategy of the Empire - which builds a monstrous fleet of gigantic warships and superweapons to deal with miniscule threats from basically a bunch of terrified starsystems that dare not step out of line.

I think Colt's right. The Fed IS the largest force in the quadrant. The other empires are for the most part just made up of one race, not dozens as the others are. The Federation's power is more in the industrial/economic realm, as well as in it's wealth of cultures and peoples, more than military. Think of the United States in WWII. We didn't have an overly powerful military at the beginning, but once the industrial machine got rolling, the US became a mighty force. The Federation is probably the same way.

Given time to get rolling (along with some remedial training in tactics and weapons design), I think the Federation would be pretty much unstoppable. Perhaps that's one of the reasons the Klingons DO tolerate the alliance. Because they know that in the event of a war, they provide the initial military support while the Federation juggernaut builds up it's power, then they both kick serious butt together with the Fed providing a lot of the power the Klingons providing the tactical direction. Of course, I STILL think they would get slaughtered by modern military for the most part.

You know, with all this time travel they seem to be able to do, why don't they just zap back to the 20th century, grab a few good military commanders, and hop back to the 24th century with them. Let THEM run the military. I guarantee you that the next time the borg showed up the Federation would be ready and waiting to mop the floor with them.

OK. The Federation is a pacifist democracy. Despite evidence to the contrary, the basic belief is that if we don't threaten them, they won't attack us (the citizenry believe that all other alien races are also pacifistic). So the response to an invasion is to stall for time until Starship-sized replicators are built and the enemy can be swamped. Upon victory, anyone who has shown any sign of military competence is demoted or sent to a mental institution to redirect their anti-social tendencies. Military vessels are converted to cargo ships or frying pans, and holodecks installed on any remaining vessels to monitor any aggressive fantasies.

I could have sworn I saw a Star Trek drinking game somewhere, but I don't know where...
Although I did find a list of "50 things that will never happen on Star Trek".
Joke's on you though, it's in Swedish... :wink:

[edit]Gee, that was hard to find... *cough*Google*cough*

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That was my impression. They don't say how powerful each warbird is; they may be smaller models that won't hold up one-to-one.

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This is the impression that I have always gotten from Star Trek, that it is a mirror of the world when the show was created. Here is a thread in which I give a list of what the ST races corresponded to in the world. And regardless of anything which I said in that thread, the Federation acts alot like the USA, it is an American show afterall. -Colt

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I forgot to add this.

*does this from memory* There are two types of Bird of Prey which the Romulans have. There is the smaller one which theys hare with the Klingons and holds about 15 people and then there are the larger versions as seen in TNG. My speculation to this is that they went by the motto of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." so they just enlarged the design, alot. -Colt

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[quote="Avatar28"]I think Colt's right. The Fed IS the largest force in the quadrant. The other empires are for the most part just made up of one race, not dozens as the others are. The Federation's power is more in the industrial/economic realm, as well as in it's wealth of cultures and peoples, more than military. Think of the United States in WWII. We didn't have an overly powerful military at the beginning, but once the industrial machine got rolling, the US became a mighty force. The Federation is probably the same way.

It has been my impression that in this era of warfare (late 20th/early 21st cent.) that if you are going to go to war you better have what you need at the on set because wars are short and fast and a nation would not have time to bring on new replacements because the war would be over? This makes me think that in future warfare, the time to replace lost gear would be even more unlikely.

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See what really got me is the way they stock their ship with specialists. There is no redundancy or replacements available if one is killed.

There is one doctor with a few assistants. (and the EMH does not count for Enterprise)

One compitent engineer (altought this can be filled by the science officer once in a while)

One science officer

one lead security official who is alos the sole Weapons specialist.

well that's just because they are too cheap to hire hundreds of actors :wink:

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Not strictly true, we see the chief engineer, chief science officer etc. It's called Cast Economy, too many faces are hard to keep track of and lots of regular speaking parts cost a lot of money. Graduates from the Academy seem to have an in depth knowledge of most specialities apart from medical.

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Remember the Federation is about exploration and discovery not military conquest. TOS was set in a hostile Cold War world, TNG is set after the fall of Communism, I think it reflected this.

NATO won the cold war without having to go to war, diplomacy, treaty and economic strength.

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I don't think this is correct. In fact, given the surrounding circumstances I don't think it can possibly be. That would assume that the Klingons and Romulans during their travels never encountered another intelligent species and the Federation has a monopoly of such contacts. However, there's another aspect to the subject. If we look at any Starfleet ship, they are crewed by humans almost exclusively. The number of non-humans (even including non-humans who look human such as betazoids) who are part of a crew is so small its an almost-vanishing percentage. To all intents and purposes Starship crews are humans and humans only. We are only aware of the small percentage of non-humans on the ships because we see the ship in-depth on a regular basis. We don't see Klingon or Romulan ships the same way. Our contact with them is passing and almost invariably restricted to a bridge crew. If we had a series set on a Klingon ship where contact with Starfleet ships is equally restricted, we'd probably have the impression that the Federation was purely human.

Firstly I'd dispute the basic assumption; the economic and industrial strength of the Federation. The Federation is a communist state run by a highly-centralized bureaucracy. To all intents and purposes, there is no private enterprise, no private transportation and movement is severely restricted. These are not the attributes of a strong industry and economy. The comparison with the US in WW2 falls at that point. US economic power is based around mobilizing the tremendous strength of its private sector. In the Federation, there is no private sector to harness.

There's no evidence the Federation is any sort of democracy (pacifist or otherwise). There's a lot of evidence that economically its communist and politically its a military dictatorship. This puts an interesting light on the irrational hatred of the Ferenghi by the way.

Take a look at the following quotation.

This is immensely significant to understanding the economic and political background to the Federation. The only two alternatives available to Ambassador Alkar are a "Federation transport ship" and a Starfleet warship. In other words, he has two forms of government-owned transportation to choose from. The option of a privately owned vessel is never discussed, even though that is the ideal solution to this particular problem. The obvious explanation to this is that private transportation (and private communications) do not exist in the Federation. Total state control of transport and communications is a defining feature of both marxist states and of dictatorships. The dicatorial powers of Starfleet are shown here.

So, a military organization is the governing authority for a centralized government-run science council which can deny access to certain planets which it deems scientifically valuable? Can anybody say Soviet Academy of Science

This impression is reinforced by:

This is a classic example of why socialist bureaucracies eventually fail. In a more open and independent research environment, some researchers would have probably looked into the situation further, perhaps finding ways to experimentally test and verify these claims. In this case, a single governing body announces that it's not worth looking into, and all scientific inquiry ceases. Later in the same episode, Data makes reference to placing a request with the Federation Science Council for research efforts. Again, there seems to be no other source of scientific research funding but the government-run Federation Science Council; a stifling environment in which to conduct research.

Actually, the Federation is not pacifist at all; its militarily aggressive but incompetent. Take the following example.

There are several interesting things about this. One is that even after discovering Cardassian interference in the DMZ, Captain Picard and Admiral Nechayev both agree to crack down on their own side in this little skirmish, rather than levelling the playing field by playing tit for tat with the Cardassians. yet, they're quite happy to drop the boom on the colonies in the DMZ - even though they have withdarwn Federation membership and protection from those colonies. There is only one explanation for this readiness to shoot up colonists and refrain from confronting Cardassians - the Cardassians can shoot back. This leads to another observation - this spineless behaviour must be based on pure fear. The Federation must be so afraid of a possible escalation with Cardassia that they'll do anything to prevent it. They'll even attack and imprison their own people. Since individual Federation ships appear to outclass Cardassian warships, the Cardassians must have a military advantage of some sort. The Cardassians fought the Federation to a standstill despite being heavily outgunned and outnumbered. The only real factor left is quality; the Federation's military incompetence must be so startling that they are unable to take down even a medium-sized power - suggesting they are one themselves.

Starships are not and cannot be replicated. Consider the following

Replication is a very limited technique. Across the series it becomes obvious that many substances and pieces of equipment simply cannot be replicated. Here, obviously, if they're experimenting with various fusion processes in order to make their warp conduits, they must not be able to replicate them. Therefore, starbase spare-parts requirements cannot be met by simply saying that starbases have huge industrial replicators.

Anybody spell Gulag?

There's another problem with the Federation mobilization principle. Where do they get the crews from? If we look at the Uk in both WW1 and WW2, the small size of initial armed forces was a major constraint on mobilization. There just weren't enough trained soldiers to train the recruits. Asa result the British had severe manpower shortages throughout WW2. In WW1 the situation was made much worse by the destruction of the original trained cadre in 1914/15. That meant there was virtually no skilled training cadre, a factor that explains much of the sad story of 1915 - 1918. The problem isn't top leadership, its senior NCOs and junior officers. The effects of the Dominion War mobilization on Starfleet offiicer/enlisted quality must have been a catastrophic blow.

A few years ago, I wrote a letter to Phil Farrand, author of The Nitpickers Guide for Next Generation Trekkers and follow up books. I gave a run down of some nits in Voyager and First Contact I'd found, but afterwards, I also wrote a short piece on pretty much what you were saying, Stuart, although not in such a professional way. I thought it peculiar also that the Gene Roddenberry would write a series where the good guys were communists in the middle of the Cold War.

Things looked slightly brighter during the period of the Classic movies. In those, Starfleet was treated like it was, a military organisation, whose constant butting in annoyed civilian scientists such as David Marcus.

Personally, I prefer the Ferengi.

Amazing stuart. You really got me thinking there. Not that i think about it, it seems that you are right.


So who did Roddenbery make out to be the Western non-communitst factions?

See I origonally thought the Romulans to be Communist (and i still do). Who is the most democratic? Not the Vulcans, Not the Ferengi (i think), Not the cardassians. The only ones i can think of is the Klingons. The vote for their leaders.

No, the Romulans are actually a republic. Note the senate and the like. However, I would compare them more with ancient Rome than with the US.

Come to think of it, I don't think I've SEEN any major powers that I could say would be the ST equivalent of the USA. Probably have seen some minor planetary governments, but no major powers.

I said the Knlingons, but they seem more like a stylized version of Japan than the U.S.A.

But that i can think of, they are the most democratic.

Isn't it the "Imperial Romulan Senate"?

And g99, the Klingons elect an Emperor... kind of reminds me of how Popes get elected, violence and all (historically speaking of course). After that election it's not much of a democracy.

I thought that the Federation president was elected?

Stuart, do you even like Star Trek? If not, why do you apparently know so much about it? And where are you getting all of these quotes?! *starts thinking that Stuart must be an ex-writer*..

And yes, the Federation is communistic. Just because they are called a Federation does not mean that they are a democracy. :P If you look up the definitions for "federation" and "federal" they sound more like a communist state than a democracy. Of course there is nothing wrong with partial-communism, the reason it won't work in the modern day is because there are power-hungry people who are willing to take over.

I think that the reason we do not see many private enterprises on Star Trek is that all of the shows have been set on ships which are in Starfleet, a military/exploration organization so of course we are going to see more of that than anything else. -Colt

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The Romulans aren't half as bad as most episodes make them out to be. -Colt

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Several points.

There are non human crews but they tend to be complete crews with their own ships, this has been refered to on lotd of occasions in TNG.

Military standoffs are essential to the plots, If all that Picard had to do was call up a task force and wipe the enemy out there would be no point or interest. Similarly if the Enterprise is given unlimited replicators then it's an easy get out for any sticky situation. As it is they cop out of too many problems by suddenly discovering a new partical or 'reconfiguring' everything.
A good example is Dr Who, he had a device called the 'Sonic Screwdriver'. When first encountered with John Pertwee it was used for unscrewing bolts or opening locks. By the time Tom Baker left it could do all sorts of wonderful things and was written out of as being a plot hole getter outer. Similarly with K-9 the robot dog, if the Doc was in trouble he just zoomed up and zapped everyone.
Star Trekisn't about space exploration, or military hardware and tactics or even Sc-Fi. Star Trek is a about the interplay of characters and their reactions to situations and each other, about overcoming the odds and winning through.

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Don't say that! If BA learns that there's no sci-fi value in Trek, he'll lock this thread. :P

I liked TOS which was a remarkable achievement for its day. The first two series of TNG were pretty grim and it went downhill from there. Voyager was gruesomely awful and Enterprise has failed to reach that standard. DS9 varied from the excellent to the dreadful, sometimes in the same episode.

Smile when you say that stranger..........

This is a very standard apologia for the excesses of communist regimes. I'm one of the people who has actually read Das Kapital in its entirity (don't try that at home kiddies, its a sure recipe for a serious case of brain pain). Its difficult to decide whether Karl marx was incredibly naive or exremely dishonest. His basic philosophy was that if the State is given supreme power, then it will not abuse that power. In fact, a study of the failed communist regimes has shown that the communist ideology can only be brought about by the use of unrelenting state coercion. Communist ideology, by its very nature, can only be effected by a police state with supreme power invsted in and used by the state. The reason why it doesn't work is because it can't; the basic mechanisms proposed are not conducive to an efficient and effective state system. Its nothing to do with power-hungry people taking over (except in that the ideology can only be applied by people whose basic nature is power-hungry) . Pol Pot in Cambodia was a classic communist and his regime was taken straight out of communist theory. They didn't call the result "the killing fields" for nothing.

The problem is we don't see anything that even hints of a private sector or even private possessions. There isn't a trade mark or logo visible anywhere in any of the series. Not even in Quark's bar - when did you last see a bar without advertisements for the appropriate products? We never hear about a private corporation within the Federation. A good example is the DS9 episode "Prodigal Daughter", which features a mining company founded by Ezri's parents and operates out of New Sydney. It quickly becomes apparent that New Sydney is a city on a non-Federation world and their financial dealings were handled with precious substances instead of Federation credits? Note also that Federation "credits" are not taken seriously by anybody outside the Federation. Another critical sign of Federation economic and political weakness. To get how serious that is, try travelling with a pocket full of US dollars. You'll find that not only are they accepted worldwide, in many (most?) countries you'll get a discount on the price of your purchase if you offer the seller a greenback or two. in payment - in preference to the local currency. Acceptance of currency is a key indicator of a nation-state's wealth, power and prominence. What's the actual instrument of inter-power trade in the ST Universe? Gulprest Latinum - the Ferengi currency. That tells us a lot about the relative economic strength of the Federation and the Ferengi.

That is correct, but the same could be said to apply to the Romulans and Klingons. We've never seen an all-Vulcan or all-Betazoid crew in Star Trek; they're just spoken of. So other Romulan and Klingon ships could be crewed by other races from their empires. Incidently, there is some evidence that is correct for the Klingons - look at the difference between TOS Klingons and those appearing later. Its pretty obvious that Kirk and co ran into ships crewed by a different race from the Klingon Empire.

AKA technobabble. As to the other point, remember we're trying to figure out how the Federation as shown in thes eries works and is situated (in an astro-political sense) . The dramatic resons behind the decisions aren't really our concern.

Your last comment is true about all drama. Its so general that it really lacks meaning; all stories, in the final analysis are "about the interplay of characters and their reactions to situations and each other, about overcoming the odds and winning through". That applies to The Illiad or The Epic of Gilgamesh as much as Star Trek or to the novels of Dornford Yates.

Star Trek is science fiction; more importantly it's about a sub-set of science fiction that deals with space travel and space hardware. It very specifically is about those subjects. If it wasn't, it would be indistinguisable from The Guiding Light. Star Trek, however, makes another claim - it and its supporters claim that its realistic, scientifically based and depicts an attainable future. What we're showing here is that its basic presumptions are so faulty that whatever aspect of the show we look at, whether its astronomy, economics, politics or military, the whole show falls apart. It's Bad Economics, Bad Politics, Bad Military and Bad Science all merge together to form a cohesive whole that's the ultimate in Bad Astronomy.

Stuart: I will, without a doubt, stick my foot in my mouth: but, did not Marx say that there would be a transition in which the government would have to carry the revolution to the end? An end where, finally, the people would be able to govern themselves without government? The reality of whether this kind of ideology works or not can only be proven by time. The latest round of communism has failed, but, it is not dead.

In the far future of ST, it has been mentioned more than once that people of this era are beyond material wants. Communisim? Maybe. But one thing we know is that the 24th century is not Kansas anymore Toto.

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It seems to me that Federation Credits are only good OUTSIDE of the Federation. I distinctly recall Picard telling someone (from the past I believe) that they no longer value any form of currency. He then uttered an eerily marxist statement about everyone's needs being filled by the Federation. Forgot the episode though.

So does that mean that to join the Federation a civilization must utterly forgo their use of currency?

What about the poker games? They could just be friendly games with no value attached to the chips, however that would make for a pointless game. Every hand would invite a huge bluff as losing means nothing.

ST represents the ultimate in welfare state. Hey, they predicted the Clinton Administration! But really, why would anyone go through the difficulty of Starfleet Academy (or any job) if all your needs are provided free of charge? What body determines what your 'needs' are?

Ah, fanatical imperialism must be the answer. The Federation brainwashes it's citizens into not only accepting whatever the gov't determines to be their 'needs' but also to dedicate their lives to spreading that system to everyone they encounter.

As to why we don't see much racial diversity in enemy ship crews, perhaps that is because these cultures do not tolerate the existence of the conquered cultures. Maybe the Klingons just kill any inhabitants of planets they capture, for example. We know the Cardassians esentially enslaved the Bajorans. It makes sense that they may be servants on ships, but not allowed onto the bridge for security purposes. Given the Romulans fixation on secrecy, it would make sense for them to kill anyone on a planet they capture.

This leads to the issue of actually inhabiting the places they conquer though. Assuming the conquest was to exploit resources, these empires would quickly run out of bodies to do the resource exploitation.