Timo wrote:
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we know from VOY's "Thirty Days" that there is a such thing as the Federation Naval Patrol.
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Which sounds like a Boy Scouts type of organization, rather than an actual line of employment let alone a defense organization. After all, it involves "ancient sailing ships" somehow! |
Well, the CG still trains on them, and Annapolis used to. The US Navy still operates the Constitution. So the FNP could be a wet-navy adjunct to a garrison army as I explicated above
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Or it could be a National Guard-equivalent force, a ROTC/JROTC-style organization, or a branch of Starfleet.
Naturally, "Starfleet" might be the part that is analogous with "Navy", while "Federation" we know is the armada-like defense organization defending, well, the "Federation" (as explicated by Chris Pike). 
Timo Saloniemi
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I tend to think that "Starfleet" would be the umbrella name, and Navy would describe which arm of that ovarall organization they served in. But in a galaxy, the navy would cover the largest volume, and become the tail that wags the dog, so in common usage, you might understand "Starfleet" to mean "Starfleet Navy", while other services would be described the opposite way: "Army" meaning "Starfleet Army". But when introducing himself to the government of an independent planet, he'd say "Starfleet Navy", and when meeting a governor on a UPF world, he might say "Starfleet", only to have the governor say "you're probably wondering why I asked for the Navy..."