The following is based primarily on materials from Ships of The Star Fleet Volume 2 published by Mastercom Data Center. * * * * * * * * * * * * PA Group Organization A typical PA Group is usually ten vessels. This number will change. A PA Group assigned to a high threat patrol area may have more vessels assigned, a Group in a lower threat area fewer. The PA Group is usually commanded by a Captain (O-6) with the title of Group Captain. One vessel assigned at the Group level, the command ship for the Group, will be either a corvette (CV) are a large perimeter action ship (PKA) commanded by a Commander (O-5) who also serves as the second in command fro the Group. This vessel exercises overall command and control functions for the Group. The rest of the Group consists of nine perimeter action ships (PA) divided into three squadrons of three ships each. One ship in each squadron is designated as the Lead ship of the squadron. The Lead Ship is commanded by a Lieutenant Commander (O-4) who is also tasked as Squadron Commander. The other ships in the squadron are commanded by Lieutenants (O-3) with sufficient time in grade and time in service. Since (as indicated in SotSF2) PAs tend to operate independently, the Squadron exists purely as an administrative entity during peacetime situations. The paperwork has got to go somewhere, and the PA assets need to be managed in an efficient manner. In a combat environment, or on assignment with the Starfleet Border Service (a sub-command of TacFleet), most PAs will operate singly or in hunter-killer pairs, but they may also be deployed as whole squadrons in some situations. PA Groups with more remote deployment stations will have a tender (TE) or combat support vessel (SP) assigned to the Group to serve as a mobile supply or repair point to reduce the amount of time spent at a rearward outpost or Starbase. Most of the time a PA commander will have a great deal of situational autonomy, especially out on the border regions. PA Groups in Starfleet I’ve expanded upon the list found in SotSF2. That book lists thirty Groups as currently active in the Fleet circa 2290. I believe that there were at least twice that number of Groups at one point (perhaps at the height of the Four Years War). I have listed these groups here, but as Inactive. If Starfleet decided to once again expand the PA force, they would likely activate new Groups under the older designations carrying on the traditions and heritage of these units. PAG 1 (Inactive) “Wolfpack” PAG 2 (Inactive) “Bounty Hunters” PAG 3 (Inactive) “Moon Dogs” PAG 4 (Inactive) “Fighting Fourth” PAG 5 Starbase 21 “Boneheads” PAG 6 Starbase 25 “Trail Blazers” PAG 7 (Inactive) “Strike Eagles” PAG 8 (Inactive) “Lancers” PAG 9 (Inactive) “Star Warriors” PAG 10 Star Station India “Star Runners” PAG 11 Starbase 29 “Warp Boss” PAG 12 Star Station Brasillia “Stingers” PAG 13 Starbase 11 “Border Guards” PAG 14 Starbase 26 “Shadows” PAG 15 Star Station Cepheus “Safe Haven” PAG 16 (Inactive) “Spectre” PAG 17 Starbase 15 “Free Scout” PAG 18 Starbase 10 “Peacemakers” PAG 19 Starbase 12 “Vigilantes” PAG 20 Star Station Yalta “Buckslider” PAG 21 Starbase 14 “Fleetwing” PAG 22 (Inactive) “Checkmates” PAG 23 Starbase 19 “Crusaders” PAG 24 Star Station Tiran “Flying Tigers” PAG 25 Starbase 27 “Melafox” PAG 26 Outpost Neris “Broken Arrow” PAG 27 Starbase 16 “Dorviani al Dori” PAG 28 Outpost Ecija “Fighting Elves” PAG 29 Star Station Dallas “Stalkers” PAG 30 Star Station Eureka “Mad Ducks” PAG 31 Star Station Praeses “Fire Ship” PAG 32 (Inactive) “Swordsmen” PAG 33 Star Station Aurora “Pacesetters” PAG 34 (Inactive) “Blue Blasters” PAG 35 (Inactive) “Black Panthers” PAG 36 (Inactive) “Rocketeers” PAG 37 (Inactive) “Fearless Ones” PAG 38 Outpost Principale “Fighting Hellcats” PAG 39 (Inactive) “Cougars” PAG 40 (Inactive) “Patriots” PAG 41 Star Station Yalta “Guardian Angels” PAG 42 (Inactive) “Ghostriders” PAG 43 (Inactive) “Challengers” PAG 44 Starbase 9 “Ravens” PAG 45 Star Station Eureka “Sonaro Parva” PAG 46 (Inactive) “Grandmasters” PAG 47 Star Station Tiran “Zappers” PAG 48 (Inactive) “Vipers” PAG 49 (Inactive) “Marksmen” PAG 50 Star Station Minsk “Hawkeyes” PAG 52 Starbase 7 “Sovishir” PAG 53 (Inactive) “Titans” PAG 54 (Inactive) “Nomads” PAG 55 (Inactive) “Masters of the Art” PAG 56 (Inactive) “Slime Devils” PAG 57 (Inactive) “Conquistadors” PAG 58 (Inactive) “Snakes” PAG 59 (Inactive) “Fist of the Fleet” PAG 60 (Inactive) “Sehlats” Here’s an example of a typical PA Group: Perimeter Action Group 26 “Broken Arrow” Command and Support Element – Group Captain Arik Kofoed USS Robust CV-3251 Cdr. T’Shon USS Zeigler TE-4107 Lcdr. Ian Elson Perimeter Action Squadron 261 “Star Pirates” USS Akula PA-1090 Lcdr. Amelia Mariko Tsuchida USS Kuei PA-1103 Lt. Thelon USS Kutaisi PA-1111 Lt. Gwen Stirling Perimerter Action Squadron 262 “Knighthawks” USS Atuga PA-1028 Lcdr. Ehleahteahloilr Auhfeissoiyuwal USS Nunivak PA-1162 Lt. Marshall Gruber USS Tuira PA-1073 Lt. Aleksey Miheyev Perimeter Action Squadron 263 “Fighting Tribbles” USS Julin PA-1065 Lcdr. Detlef Bronk USS Anacapa PA-949 Lt. Sarn USS Ensenada PA-1138 Lt. Iris Marks A Note on Squadrons: Typically there are three Squadrons per Group. They are numbered within the Group. The first digits(s) in the Squadron designation are the same as the Group’s. For example: in PA Group 3 you will find PA Squadrons 31, 32, and 33; in PA Group 26 you find PA Squadrons 261, 262, and 263, and so forth. This scheme serves to identify both the Group and Squadron in a single designator, and should not be taken to imply that there are anywhere near 261 PA Squadrons. In fact, there were only 120 squadrons when all 60 Groups were active. Outpost Neris: Outpost Neris is located in Sub-Quadrant 3-South, near the region bordered by the Klingon Empire. The Outpost was originally built and established as Deep space Station K-8. It operated as a trading post and way-station for about thirty-one years. In 2286, rising tensions with the Klingons caused a decline of civilian traffic in the sector, and the station. At this point Starfleet toke over operation of the station and re-designated it as Outpost Neris. While there is still some resemblance to its former incarnation as a K-series deep space station, there have been many changes. The Starfleet corps of Engineers spent the better part of nine months upgrading structural components as well as internal systems. The central module of the station now houses command and control facilities capable of monitoring a (classified) number of remote drones and listening posts. The lower portion of the central structure now houses limited repair and refitting facilities to accommodate battle damage suffered by the perimeter action ships home ported there. The three outer modules now contain facilities for the support of the Perimeter Action Group stationed at the Outpost to include recreation, medical, and other crew support functions. There is provision for the billeting of crew replacements for the Group if needed. During the refit, the Outpost was fitted with an adaptation of the CIDSS system as well as phaser banks. Outpost Neris is also the homeport for the 448th Fighter Squadron (VF-448) which operates twenty-four “Killer Bee” assault craft for the close-in defense of the Outpost. Outpost Neris is under the command of a Captain (O-6) during peacetime, but could be superceded during combat operations by a flag officer if it is deemed appropriate to the level of operations in the region. Uniforms: Uniforms would follow the same model as the majority of Starfleet, except that the day-to-day duty uniform is more likely to be a one-piece coverall type of thing that can be donned very quickly in an alert situation. Probably similar to a present-day flight suit, or maybe the uniforms we saw in Star Trek: Enterprise. Those red jacketed uniforms seen from ST2: TWoK forward (if they exist at all in the FRS universe) would only be used very rarely on special occasions as a dress or formal uniform. Life Aboard USS Akula: Not too different from what we’ve seen in TOS and the first six ST movies. But different enough. Long deployments of up to two years, sometimes with six-plus months at a time with no shore-leave or re-supply are common. As a result, ship’s corridors at the beginning of a deployment are stacked with containers of extra supplies ranging from rations, to phaser coils, to toilet paper. In fact any available space is fair game for storage if needed. The crew on a PA are simultaneously very disciplined and very informal with each other. Personnel are rigorously screened before being assigned to the PA force. These are relatively small groups of people living in relatively tight quarters for long periods of time. While certain formalities of rank and position remain by necessity, much of the “red tape” of life on a larger starship is absent from the daily routine of a PA. In the PA force results tend to count much more than the manner of achieving those results. One of the unofficial mottoes of the PA Service is: “It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission”. PA crews are picked to be able make quick decisions when it is necessary without first looking over their shoulders for adult supervision; but at the same time they must be able to follow the hard orders when they are given. “Starship crews make holovids, perimeter action crews make history.” – An Unknown PA Commander
“Starship crews seek out new life and new civilizations, perimeter action crews blow things up.” An Unknown Starship Commander
I'd like to see how you'd adapt ideas like these to the 4 Years War Kiaga-era. NONONONONONONO In the 2250s, standard duty would tend to be more like this: http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/...8-E987-4275-889B-EA55E80EFBA8_zpsx5gvvznd.jpg In the 2260s, like this: http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/...B-BD2C-4611-A035-7129C92A2FB4_zps5aqelvhx.jpg And in the 2270s, like this: http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/...B-6D09-4F90-845E-44176193C018_zpsx7ff45ls.jpg Though in the TMP era, I see the perscan units not being used for standard duty. I see them as exhaustive scanners used to record human physical and mental reactions to situations where that information might be useful, ie when testing new technology like a new ship, when making planetfall on an unexplored world etc. With that understanding, I see a 2270s PA landing party looking something like you'd expect (and earlier landing parties being a variant on this): http://img.trekmovie.com/images/comics/tmp_guard_uniforms.jpg And... no toilet paper. How do you think they get so tough?
I wasn't going to say anything. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to regret opening my big mouth. But here goes: There's a lot missing here: so far it's is barely unrecognizable as anything in the Star Trek universe and might as well be Mass Effect fanfiction. What are the exploration goals of the PA group? I would tend to think that these smaller and more mobile platforms would be used a lot more often on low-gravity worlds/asteroids, missions that involve space suits and advanced zero-gee training. That, IMO, would more than justify having a large fleet of such vessels since a lot of the more interesting resource finds in space aren't going to be buried in the crust of Class-M planets. Comet surfaces, dwarf planets, rings, abandoned satellites/space stations would also be the the primary responsibility of PA crews that are better trained for EVA work and, potentially, for zero-gravity combat. Being smaller and more mobile would also mean the PAs are a lot more likely to have to enforce traffic violations (civilian ships operating without a flight plan or crossing a border without a permit) and chasing smugglers and hijackers. Not really sure why these ships would need to be organized into "squadrons" except during wartime. Otherwise, they'd probably spend all of their time in lone-wolf patrol duty going on their various adventurers. "Cruisers make first contact. Permies make money." - Commander Virgil Grafton, USS Arbiter
The timeframe these things come up are the Four Years War, and short war around Organia, and the long Cold War with the Klingon Empire. I could see such a thing also come up for the war with Cardassia, but it be basically useless against the Dominion a decade or two later, when Starfleet seemed to be losing a full on starship a week on border patrol before the war started and during each lull in the fighting.
The original sourcebook pegged it as the 2280s to early 90s, at which point the "Cold War" footing had persisted for decades (and would be almost 50 years after the Four Year's War). It also has most of the same problems: it reads like the "UNSC technical manual" and doesn't preserve a lot of overt Star Trekian themes. More likely would be the case of repeated Borg invasions and/or the discovery of a Borg-infested region of space. The Defiant basically IS the 24th century's perimeter action ship, and a fleet of them intended to overwhelm the Borg via swarm tactics might be a workable strategy. But this is Starfleet we're talking about. EVERYTHING they build is dual-use, and even the Defiant had to conduct science missions from time to time. It would be very difficult to justify a fleet of ships PURELY to defend against the Borg threat; they would have to have a peacetime application as well, so that they would still be able to pull their weight in the 95% of their lifespan they spend out of combat.
Ships of the Starfleet style book are more or less military in mind. Everything is about the combat problems facing the Federation and the pacifist blocks in the council are seen as impediments to the defense of the Federation. The background information reads more or less like US Naval political history from the 1940s to 1990 with the cutbacks and rebuilding of the 70s and the restructured fleet under the Reagan Administration. Even bringing out the old large ships for refits like the old Iowa-class battleships were followed by the removal of most of the other older fleet ships in an effort to standardize the fleet's fuel needs and abilities. Even the massive Shuttlecarriers, which I still can't picture as having a real use in Starfleet, are a major deal in these books. Though in these books you also have a number for Starfleet as being under 1,800 starships. The Federation is a huge area of space to patrol and explore. And this is around the time of TUC, where Starfleet seems to be its most militaristic and anti-Klingon force in history. When the end of hostiles is discussed, they worry about the mothballing of the fleet.
In the SotSF view, the 4YW is an unresolved conflict and Axanar merely forces the Klingon advance to stop and their leadership (and subsequent strategy) to change. A hot war becomes a cold war. The exploration seen in TOS is a direct result- five year missions to the contested deep space perimeter are an effort to determine its nature and possible utility. It is, in some ways, akin to the part of the 1960s space race that had to do with securing the "high ground" of the moon because of the belief it might have strategic importance. The romance and PR value of those moon missions was, in some ways, a veneer over their real purposes- develop advanced booster technology and secure the moon and cislunar space. Think of the 5YM in a similar way. With this in mind, the PA force and the entire perimeter defense strategy follows upon that "exploratory" phase to defend high value assets deemed worthy of future exploitation via settlement or other means. That is where the carriers come in. Think of them not so much as aircraft carriers as giant colonial settlement and evacuation platforms (as well as bases for military operations utilizing shuttles, drones, troop landers, "Starship Trooper"- like armored troops, mechs, and beamed infantry). The size of those carriers increases as their mission and duration increase in the 2260s. The perimeter action ship has no real exploratory goals. Dedicated scouts would follow the 5YM ships for in depth exploration while the PA force and its attendant support ships would defend the spacelanes that make the targets for those scouts useable (as well as providing a deterrent to invasion or incursion along likely corridors). The idea that there are likely corridors for an invasion came from the 1970s Star Trek Maps, which ventured the notion that their were areas of space conducive to easier warp travel because of the distribution of interstellar gas, dust and, one would assume, its impact on subspace.
I'll admit, I've never liked the perimeter action designation even though I understand the strategy behind it. I view that role as being filled by escorts and destroyers without the need for a separate category. You'd also have the option of using some of the bigger guns like command cruisers or even dreadnoughts or battleships that could be assigned to support patrol vessels as needed.
I'm still trying to get a feel for what these ships are. Can you provide a description of the armament (number of phasers / photon tubes, etc.) and that of the Constitution-class heavy cruiser from the same universe? Is there an image of said PA ship on-line anywhere? Thanks!
Organizational sub-division? I've alway assumed that the TOS Enterprise and the TNG Enterprise were attached to a squadron or fleet below the overall Starfleet level. For maintenance, finance, personnel purposes, etc.
The basic PA ship is the Akyazi class, which is a bit smaller than a movie-era heavy cruiser (216 meters). It mounts 6 twin phaser banks plus 2 single banks and 3 torpedo tubes (2 forward and 1 aft), giving it firepower roughly similar. It carries a higher degree of tactical and intelligence equipment because of its specialized role. Two additional subclasses, the Arbiter and the Akula, also entered service. The Arbiter class has an extra torpedo launcher aft and an improved shielding system, although some ships also dropped one of the single phaser banks. The Akula drops the extra torpedo system and most have only one single mount, but has a specialized deflector pod that acts as a sort of lightning rod and absorbs some energy from incoming attacks, thereby weakening the strain on the normal deflector shield system. This variant also has improved defensive capabilities.
I understand all of that, but I really think it's just too much of a departure from the in-universe depiction of Starfleet's goals. It's almost as if there's a huge segment of Trek fandom that would hear Kirk tell them "We're on a mission of peaceful exploration" and respond, "Ohhh, yeah, peaceful exploration <giant un-subtle wink>." TUC war hawks aside, in retrospect (and with a further 20 years of Trek lore behind it) I think it's clear at this point that Starfleet justifies its military budget by piggybacking it on their exploration program. This allows them to build a huge number of very powerful vessels without ever having to justify the costs to pacifistic members like Vulcan or Betazed. The costs are already justified: the exploration ships benefit everyone all the time, and if someone comes looking for trouble, they can handle that too. I don't see why they would be, considering how rarely they actually return to port. The whole purpose of organizational subdivisions is to coordinate large groups of assets that share a pool of resources in a logistics chain plus a common chain of command. Enterprise never visited the same starbase more than twice and never answered to the same commanding officer more than three episodes in a row. That suggests to me that the ship is actually semi-autonomous and Kirk/Picard answers to whatever Starfleet bureaucrat has jurisdiction over the region of space they happen to be in. That makes more sense to me from an explorer's point of view. You have a starship traveling to the far reaches of explored space, probably leapfrogging multiple frontier command bases on its way out, none of which may be its actual "home port" as such. If Enterprise gets one of its nacelles ripped off by a black hole, does it limp all the way back to its home base and file a report to its squadron commander, or does it report in to whatever deep space outpost is the designated base for this region and have the teams there conduct repairs? Come to think of it, the better play for the PA fleet is probably to organize them around the Deep Space Outposts on rotating patrol schedules. If, say, Deep Space Four is the sector headquarters for two settled worlds and a dozen small mining operations and frontier towns spread across ten star systems. The PAs would, in that case, operate like a Coast Guard force, making regular safety inspections, monitoring merchant traffic, responding to disasters and emergencies and generally spot checking the frontier towns to make sure all their satellites/beacons/navigational equipment are working correctly. They wouldn't be organized into "squadrons" as much as long-term attachments to a particular outpost, kind of like the runabouts (and later, USS Defiant) on Deep Space Nine. In that sense, it's even possible that the PA ships would spend a fair amount of their time parked in a hangar somewhere until the starbase commander gets a call from New Tortuga about a mysterious starship with black warp nacelles and decides to send his first officer and a team of redshirts to "look into it."
Is it wrong that I find your last few sentences funny? You make some very good points and I agree with the idea that exploration can be a useful for piggybacking military stuff as needed. I think FASA even referenced some of these ideas in a few books, with the TNG OM rather amusingly suggesting that with the Klingons becoming formal Federation members in the intended FASA TNGverse, Starfleet itself might be obsolete! I agree with the Coast Guard analogy as well, as I personally don't mind the idea that Starfleet possesses a number of dedicated warship designs as well as multipurpose or exploration ships. I believe it's best to have some sense of balance, because conflicts against the Borg or the Dominion aren't as suited for those ships whose typical roles aren't necessarily military.
I believe the exact opposite: that Starfleet's increased emphasis on military readiness in the face of the Dominion threat was a disastrous miscalculation and quite possibly something the Founders engineered deliberately in order to weaken Starfleet from within. Think about this: Starfleet's strength has always been it's adaptability, its capacity to deconstruct a threat and then come up with a solution that PERFECTLY fits the adversary in question. In most cases, they try to neutralize the threat without actually destroying it, finding a way that eliminates the source of the conflict rather than the adversary itself. If this is not possible -- if the nature of the dispute is as fundamental as "I am hungry and you are my food" -- the result is usually the complete obliteration of said adversary by some device or system specifically designed to destroy it. But Starfleet didn't go this route with the Dominion. Quite the opposite, in fact: in their very first engagement with the USS Odyssey they resorted to the rather brute force "arm the hell out of our ships" approach, under circumstances that suggest the Dominion had already heavily infiltrated Starfleet and knew everything there was to know about them already. I'd bet a year's salary that "Captain Keogh" had been replaced by a changeling at the time of the engagement and convinced the DS9 crew that "rush in, guns blazing, and save the day!" was a perfectly viable tactic (as opposed to "send in a couple of runabouts and keep a low profile so the Jem'hadar won't detect us" which is, let's face it, what they NORMALLY do in this situation). The Dominion did the exact same thing to the Tal'Shiar and the Obsidian Order: rather than work from the shadows and rely on intelligence and sabotage as is their specialty, both organizations stuck thousands of their best men on a giant combined battle fleet and tried to take the Dominion head on, only to be massacred for their trouble. I'm reasonably sure that Starfleet's entire response to the Dominion was heavily influenced by the Founders. They never DID catch the four infiltrators O'Brien changeling bragged about in "Paradise Lost" and I'd be willing to bet that most of Starfleet's strategic planning in the lead up to the war came from them: they pulled hundreds of old ships out of mothballs, modernized their shields and weapons and then stuffed their shuttle bays full of old support couriers modified to function as "attack fighters." In other words, the brute-force military strategy, which is EXACTLY the kind of approach the Dominion excel at defeating (and exactly why Starfleet repeatedly got its ass kicked in the opening moves of the war). I have to think that if somebody had figured out what was going on (without getting eliminated by the Founders in the process) Starfleet's war preparation would have more closely resembled the process described in "Best of Both Worlds" where the entire R&D division was practically scrambling to invent totally new weapon systems just to fight the Borg. New shield frequencies to neutralize Dominion weapons, new phaser modulations and new types of torpedoes that are more effective in disrupting Jem'hadar power systems; new ways of dealing with swarm tactics and new defense systems tailored for this. The first battles of the war would open with a dozen Galaxy class starships zapping an entire Dominion line with some kind of technobabble deflector beam that causes all their shields to collapse and then Picard personally ordering them to surrender; instead, Starfleet charged head first into Jem'hadar cannons and got themselves cut to pieces while the Enterprise-E seems never to have PARTICIPATED in the Dominion War. Sorry for the long rant, but I do believe what we saw in the Dominion War was actually Starfleet's least impressive performance of its entire existence: the entire fleet basically trying to be something it's not, ignoring its strengths and playing to its own weaknesses. It's no wonder the Dominion curb-stomped them through most of the war.
Perhaps to some extent we can agree to disagree then. I'd have to go back and look at some of the earlier DS9 contacts with the Dominion, but I'm not sure I'd agree about the choice to send the Odyssey as being "brute force." The Dominion claimed to own the whole Gamma Quadrant and had made their displeasure with the wormhole known by destroying a number of colonies on the other side, and when the Odyssey took serious damage and was retreating, the Jem'Hadar destroyed it with a ramming attack to show how far they were willing to go. It wasn't necessary, but it made the point from a political perspective. The Odyssey was sent because it was meant to be a big gun from a political view as well as being capable enough (in theory) to accomplish the mission. It's interesting to me how the Tal Shi'ar/Obsidian Order strike force might have fared differently if the Founders hadn't learned of the original plan; I do think the fleet as shown is rather silly because I consider the number of ships too small and I think both groups erred in underestimating how well the Dominion could deal with AQ weapons. I tend to view Starfleet's actions in the war as being more consistent with those of the U.S. in any of its major wars, including the world wars. In such cases we turn more of our focus to building larger guns and weapons research. The Dominion, unlike the Federation, has a whole military dedicated exclusively to combat and suppressing worlds the Founders control, and an infrastructure designed to support that arm. So I can see them having an advantage for the early phases of the war even if the Feds do everything right.
Actually, I think that the Arbiter also has an additional pair of single phaser banks flanking her aft torpedo launchers.
It doesn't have any mounts firing directly aft, if that's what you mean. The vessels that do retain the twin single mounts have them in ventral aft mounts on the section connecting to the nacelles. The rear torpedo tubes are situated lower.