I'm not entirely unwilling to watch this show.
Why is there resistance to the idea of Starfleet being military?
- Thread starter The Wormhole
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The more I think about it, the more I think the Star Trek universe is pretty funny.
Klog: "I am Klog, son of Kleg and my warrior linage stretches back to the time of Kahless - I have trained from birth to be a warrior, yet you defeated me like a child. Tell me mighty federation warrior of your line"
Hero: "Well I'm a transporter engineer - my dad was a cook. We don't really do that warrior thing in the peace loving federation"
Klog: WTF.
This line of thinking reminds me of a story I was told where there was some kind of friendly competition between two different nations troops (for the sake of preventing patriotic flame wars I won't name the nations) apparently the special forces from nation A did an assault course, set a good time, nation B has a go...doesn't send special forces, sends potato peeling guy from catering. Beats the course faster than the special forces.
Allegedly a true story.
And I guess that's starfleet.
Allegedly a true story.
And I guess that's starfleet.
Re: Riker's battle with the Klingons;
This one gets picked on a lot in fandom because of Riker's performance.
It always looks like Riker just lets the Enterprise get repeatedly pounded, and only returns fire once.
The rest of the time he's discussing damage reports and if the BOP has any weaknesses.
Everyone else (the fans) is saying, "just lock all those weapons and keep trying to blow that BOP away!"
Plus, he didn't even try to remodulate the shields. (This is a post Borg battle)
Worf firing only one torpedo is usually seen more as a mistake than a part of the plot.
Add this to Riker saying that practicing combat skills is a waste of time-- he seems to be saying that combat skills and creative thinking are two separate things. Why do they have to be?
This one gets picked on a lot in fandom because of Riker's performance.
It always looks like Riker just lets the Enterprise get repeatedly pounded, and only returns fire once.
The rest of the time he's discussing damage reports and if the BOP has any weaknesses.
Everyone else (the fans) is saying, "just lock all those weapons and keep trying to blow that BOP away!"
Plus, he didn't even try to remodulate the shields. (This is a post Borg battle)
Worf firing only one torpedo is usually seen more as a mistake than a part of the plot.
Add this to Riker saying that practicing combat skills is a waste of time-- he seems to be saying that combat skills and creative thinking are two separate things. Why do they have to be?
Well if there are "plenty" then why not reel off a couple three examples?
With the Cleavage Twins monitoring everything LaForge saw, what good would that do?
Plus, we (the audience) weren't viewing the bridge the whole time, the view kept switching between the bridge, engineering, and the bridge of the BOP. So Riker could have ordered a rotation of the shield frequencies, or Worf could have been doing that on his own as a standard procedure.
Japanese Self-Defense Forces and German Bundeswehr are generally described as such. Both Australia and New Zealand participate in overseas peacekeeping but have limited to no capacity for sustained operations (NZ has only a few thousand troops and nothing bigger than a destroyer in ships and nothing over a C-130 in planes; RAN has some sealift capacity and a number of C-17s,. but a total strength inc reserves of only ~80,000).
Germany is a NATO member, so the description simply doesn't apply to them short of pulling out of NATO. Which would be hard to see. Germany has (about) the world's 18th strongest military, and the second most powerful in Europe (after France).
While the German constitution (Article 87a) describes the military as "for purposes of defense," a Federal court decision in 1994 defines the term "defense" as meaning (among other things) guarding the security and interests of Germany anywhere in the world.
Arguably New Zealand currently has no capacity to even defend it's home territory. It has two minor ships and got rid of it's last obsolete fighter aircraft at the beginning of the century.
Exactly.
Which gives added emphasis to the concerns of the Klingons in undiscovered country.
Either the federation is lying to itself or its got ulterior motives.
Starfleet is military, to say otherwise is just kidding themselves.
Hell they even use children as human shields on galaxy class starships!
The meshes perfectly with my reaction to "The Way of the Warrior."
Thats a whole bunch of people being moved off the planet. Which is exactly what the Sona wanted. Evacuating to the enterprise both fulfills the enemy goal and puts them in greater danger.
Thats why picard has those pips.
Actually the Bundeswehr might the second largest military force (as defined by number of troops) in Europe, but they have zero expeditionary capability (no naval or air medium to heavy lift capacity, any birds of that type flying out of Germany are RAF and they haven't had a carrier/amphibous platform since WWII), so despite contributing manpower to NATO they are individually a defensive force (far more so than the JMSDF or the RAN which could exercise limited expeditionary capability, though not to the levels that the US can).
I'd cite the old Klingon proverb, "When you are up to your ass in alligators, it is difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp."
Enough pesty skirmishes, and an exploratory fleet becomes full time warriors.
Enough pesty skirmishes, and an exploratory fleet becomes full time warriors.
That's what happens when the enemy declares war. You fight, or you lose everything. Once the war is over, then you can go back to exploring.
Then how did Germany get over five thousand troops into Afghanistan?
Germany is going to be sending an additional 650 troop to the MINUSMA peacekeeping mission in Mali, they already have about 250 troops there already.
And there's an additions 50 troops to be added to the 100 in northern Iraq.
If you need to airlift troops (assuming you're not going straight into combat) you can just charter commercial aircraft. The US military does this all the time.
Plus, are you saying that if NATO calls on Germany to send troops to Poland or Finland in the event of war with Russia, that Germany would refuse to deploy it's troops?
No, they've got plenty of soldiers, about sixty thousand out of a total force of 220,000 (inc reserves) but their individual posture is defensive as they can only supplement the expeditionary capability of other nations not engage themselves.
No, because stopping Russian aggression against Europe is in Germany's defensive interests. Likewise the Bundeswehr has been involved in many recent peacekeeping operations (including against the Taliban and later Daesh) but mostly keep out of Iraq.
They would be useing the logistical support of there allies.
Which happens in alliances, or again they could charter transportation. If German troops ever needed to deploy to (example) Poland, I would imagine that many would travel at least part of the distance by commercial rail.
And part of the point I was making is that Germany's forces are not purely "defensive" for the homeland, they are currently carrying out military missions in multiple foreign countries.
The Baku live a long time, Baku children stop aging after the conclusion of puberty, there are only 600 Baku.
Translation, there aren't very many Baku children.
The Captain's yacht could have removed the children to the Enterprise, or taken them out of the area independently.
And the Federation too.
The Enterprise was just fine, and not removing the Baku is using them as Human shields.
If you agree with the concept and goals obtained that's you, but they were Human (well Baku) shields.
The like the bit of fridge logic meets retcon thinking from a recent interview with Simon Pegg that... (Beyond spoilers ahead)
The Starfleet arrowhead derives from the MACO shark logo. 
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