Starfleet...Military or Not

haha this is great. I get hit with article 92 ALL the time (so does everyone else) that damn catch all is so frustrating. I once ot a counsling chit (article 92) for leaving my house to pick up to-go food while SIQ. Their reasoning was "you should have gone to the galley for food not out in town" I live off base and its a 15 min drive to base and a 5 min drive to get chicken soup to-go at the diner.oh military how sily you are sometimes.

 

Ah this was something else I found to be very un-military. several times someone will say they "want to resign their commission" (something you cant do in the military) so I always found that interesting (though rules can change I suppose)

 

That was bad wording on my part I should have said "in my experience" because you're very right they did do scientific exploration back in the day, but there are other factors that have me pondering if star fleet is really military or not.

 

I brought this debate to the table because it IS so highly debated. I'm not passionate about either side of the argument (hence being on the fence) So I wanted to hear what everyone else had to say about it. I can find a lot of reasonons why they could be a military, but also just as many that contradict the other. It's a fun and interesting topic to debate and it's nice to see people get so passionate about it

 

That's like comparing apples to oranges. A base and a ship are vastly different. Yes there are families on bases (I'm military) BUT not on our carriers or amphibs or LHAs/LHDs etc. just like in ST there are Deep Space stations and things of that nature which I would liken to a base, then you have the ships themselves. That's where I will have to respectfully disagree on your analogy

 

Policing. Dealing with pirates. They would be the Homeland Security of Earth and its colonies.

 

Not to jump your shit Brie, but the evil overlords here at TrekBBS don't like you to post more than two postings in a row, if you think of something new after you've already posted, just use the edit button to add more insight to the existing post.

No offense intended sweetness.

 

Actually that makes it sound like Starfleet is a future military that's gone back to the age of sails days with more progressive sensibilities.

 

Wagon train the the star and Captain Hornblower.

 

But Starships like the D are basically mobile bases. They aren't like carriers or any other naval vessel currently in service. They have much more in common with bases.

 

I'm SO glad you said this! I agree while I'm still fresh and new in the military (3yrs) when compared to you, I have myslef done very little "combat" and a lot more assisting and peace keeping. This past year I participated in RIMPAC where we docked in Hawaii with 30-some-odd countries and conducted "war games" which covered much more than just "war." The scenarios cover anything from a hostile invasion, to relief efforts to a nation hit by a disaster. I have many friends who's deployments on carriers have been extended so they can provide assistance to a country in need (much like SF does). though there are still some things about SF that make me wonder what it could really be considered which I think is GREAT! I like when a show makes me think and question, it's why I love ST so much!

 

Oh shoot! Thanks/Sorry. Totally off topic thing (and why I did that) how do you quote multiple people in the same post? I have been on for weeks and still can't figure it out lol I feel bad about flooding the thread with post after post by me.

 

No more so that a modern cruise liner is a base.

 

I think the British learned that at some point in time...

I kind of feel that way too. The attitudes in TNG seem to be a backlash based upon attitudes of the day. Also seems to be part of GR's distance from his service in the Navy. TOS was a little more military in its attitude (Kirk's soldier line, among other things).

It's a weird mix sometimes.

There is a multi-quote button at the bottom of every post, next to the quote button. You click "Multi-quote" on each post you want in your post then hit "Post Reply" which is in the lower left at the bottom of the thread.

Somewhere there is an infographic on it, but I can't remember where.

 

Thanks!

 

Actually the proper term is called Paramilitary.

What that means is that an organization will take and use elements of a military.

For example, the police have a rank structure and their own internal justice system, much like a military, but the police are not a military.

And i'm sorry, bu you can not have an organization without some kind of structure to it.

And the Enterprise, at least in Picard's time, the Enterprise is an explorer ship, not a science vessel.

Except in the movies.

They weren't explorers in the movies.

That's why Picard "Does anybody remember when we were explorers?"

 

^ Naw, a 'paramilitary' is more like a civilian force, perhaps closer in structure to a militia.

Starfleet is a Navy in space. Most definitely a military, albeit one whose roles and responsibilities extend beyond "combat situations". Just like militaries through all of history.

The real confusion people keep having over this issue of whether Starfleet is a military or not are because they automatically equate the word "military" with it being some kind of a "combat force", without giving a second thought to the possibility that this might be faulty reasoning in the first place. Sure, combat is a part of the military. But it isn't the only part. As this thread has already ably demonstrated, militaries are historically much more than simply combat forces. Starfleet fits that to a tea.

EDIT:

That's cool. Even I'd admit that there's a progressive strain of thought going on in the Star Trek timeframe which obviously 'demilitarizes' the nature of the organisation, or perhaps simply creates a certain 'informality' that modern and past militaries don't have. But I still think at the core of it, Starfleet is still based on military fundamentals. And when the chips are really down (for example, the Borg incursion at Wolf 359, or during the Dominion conflict), the structure of the whole organisation becomes much more heavily militarized, very very quickly indeed. Almost like they're being forced to revert to a basic training...

That's not a bad description, really. When you take into account that space is 'the new frontier', it'd make some sense that the Navy might tackle that with a return to a more 'romantic' mission statement.

 

Oh, now you have my wheels turning! Even though I served for 23 years, I didn't agree with the crazy, stupid things that I saw. I guess stuff has to make sense to me and some of the things that happened were just 'SMFH' moments. I often couldn't stomach it. I'm still as surprised as my mother was to know that I served 23 years (and a large part of that in Special Ops.) I hate authority.

For example, while stationed in Korea as an E-4, I was working nights or 'mids' and lived in a barracks that was about two miles from the chow hall. If you lived on base, you had to eat at the chow-hall because they won't give you BAS, but the chow hall was open 4 times a day (morning, noon evening, and night). Now, working mids meant you could eat 'breakfast' in the afternoon after you woke up, then eat lunch at night, but then the chow hall would close at midnight and you weren't able to catch another meal until it re-opened at 6 a.m. The chow hall had a rule that you had to be in uniform to eat there during the night feeding.

So, the end result of this setup was that you ate all of your meals in reverse order (You may have lasagna for 'breakfast' and scrambled eggs and bacon for 'dinner'). That was OK to me, but the requirement for uniforms meant that on your days off, you had to get in uniform to go eat, and you had to hike there and back, rain, snow or shine. For lunch, you had to get on a bus to the chow hall, which was a good distance from my work. That meant you could hike it (not feasible), or ride the base bus, which came along about every ten minutes or so. You had 45 minutes for lunch (door to door) so that meant that you had about 20 minutes left to stand in line at the chow hall, shovel it in quickly and get out the bus stop for the ride back to work. And if you were a minute late, your good ol' clock-watching supervisor would nail you.

So, as you can imagine, it became a hassle to even eat at the chow hall so most of us just paid out-of-pocket and ate out, or bought food at the base exchange and rucked with it in our backpacks. No BAS for us because, as our supervisor and commander explained, we were 'too stupid' to control our money, and would blow it all and not have enough left to eat for the month. So that's why we got a meal card to eat at the chowhall....that we never ate at.

So, we paid out-of-pocket to eat...because we were too stupid to know how to pay out-of-pocket to eat...

Prior to that, I was in Special Operations role (Pararescue) and served as part of a crew that sat 'hot' on a helipad. That meant that you were on-duty for 24 hours in a row inside an alert facility and had to 'mobilize' to the chopper (UH-60 Blackhawk) and be ready to go with all of your gear by the time the blades had finished run-up. You NEVER wanted to be beaten to the bird by the Pilots or you got your butt chewed. Anyway, I had a mandatory dentist appointment and asked to switch shifts in order to meet it and was told 'no.' I had to reschedule the appointment, they said, because re-doing the alert schedule was a hassle (even though it would probably take all of five minutes).

So, I called to reschedule the dentist appointment and was told that it was put back by another week. However, few days later, the Base Hospital sent a 'no-sho' to my boss and he called me in to ask me why I missed my dentist appointment. I explained to him that I had re-scheduled, but for some reason, they still kicked out a no-sho letter. He then told me that I was getting an LOC for not showing up for the appointment. The funny thing was, I had already went to the make-up appointment by that time, so I had already completed the obligation for which I was getting an LOC for not completing). He asked me why I re-scheduled in the first place and I said "Because you told me to."

His next statement was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard:

"Well, I'm only an E-5 and the doctors at the base hospital out-rank me, so their word is always superior to mine."

Me: "So let me get this straight...You're giving me an LOC for following your order to re-schedule the appointment?"

Him: "No, Airman. I'm giving you an LOC for not making your appointment"

Me: "I went to the appointment 6 days later, and the hospital has a record of the appointment being re-scheduled the same day I called them to re-schedule!"

Him: "Airman, I don't get to make the rules. Besides, you do enough dumb sh*t around here anyway. It's about time you get an LOC for something. "

So I got an LOC for: 1. Following his order and not those of the hospital. 2. Not making an appointment that I made, and 3. Because I hadn't received an LOC yet. -Cant deny that logic.

I actually framed that stupid LOC and kept it over my desk for many years as an example of what not to do as a supervisor. As a result, I still have former troops calling me today asking for career/life advice. I like to think that I was the antithesis of all of those idiots that pulled those kinds of stunts.

 

NOAA is one of the Uniformed Services of the US, but not DOD. They fall under the Dept of Commerce. I believe they were an outgrowth of the Navy, originally.

Starfleet is its own animal, and doesn't fit neatly into real-world classifications. It seems to be the successor to NASA, but I think of it as a military organization, or at least paramilitary, with the primary mission of exploration and science, and the secondary mission of defense and peace keeping.

Starfleet Medical seems to be a branch of Starfleet, and a real world analog might be the Medical Corps in the Navy or Army.