How large is Starfleet?

IIRC Sisko's armada was a combined force comprising the Second, Fifth, and Ninth Fleets

 

Yep, that was a typo. But still the result I posted is correct: 0.003 = 0.3%. You forgot to move the decimal two spots.

 

Yes, the fleets were said not to be at full strength, so I presupposed the full strength had to be over 600 ships. That still wasn't full strength, which is where I got the 700 ship figure for a fleet.

 

But would "full strength" at 700 mean each fleet comprises 700 ships? Or does it mean that three fleets at full strength would number at 700 when combined together? So ~230 ships per fleet?

 

The fleets going in near the start of the war seemed to be under 200 ships each. As time goes on, more ships get added to these forces, or the much smaller "ships" get added to the numbers...like the runabouts and fighters which seem to have NCC hull numbers. The Seventh Fleet was 112 ships before disaster reduced it to 14 during the opening months of the war. The fleets could be augmented as mothballed ships, new construction, and ships arriving from other sectors of the Federation arrived, as Fleets like the Seventh would be rebuilt and get huge losses again during the war.

 

We know of at least 19 fleets during the Dominion War, the 10th Fleet was supposed to be guarding Betazed.

 

Did we ever hear of any numbered fleets over 10? I don't recall hearing any numbers higher than that for the Federation.

 

I think you misattributed a quote by RAMA to me.

 

Maybe it was both, lowered standards as well as Sisko's imprimatur.

One thing that I was never clear about was whether Starfleet enlisted people into its ranks. In order to become a Starfleet personnel, did one first have to get accepted and then successfully graduate from Starfleet academy?

In their time of need for personnel like during the Dominion War, did Starfleet go out and recruit people to enlist? It would seem to be very inefficient to have to have a person go through the academy (however many years that would take) before that person could be pressed into service to fight.

Starfleet could effectively run out of capable personnel in a war before the next academy class graduated. Besides, how many cadets are there in a class anyway?

When you need a lot a people in a hurry, drafting and/or recruiting and enlisting would appear to fulfill Starfleet's need more effectively.

I don't believe Nog had even graduated yet. He was still a cadet -- an underclassman for that matter -- when he was pressed into service. Recruits could be trained to perform whatever it is that would be required of them. If Nog could manage to perform his duties before even coming close to finishing his studies at the academy, I am sure recruits could do the same.

 

Nog was a cadet when the war started a he was assigned field duty on Deep Space Nine for his sophomore year (this could be like when Kirk was assigned to the USS Republic). The war starts about six months or so later and Nog remains on USS Defiant for the first several months before being field promoted to Ensign right before Operation Return. Nog was promoted again to Lt. jg, after the end of the Dominion War. This would probably have normally been during his fourth year at the academy.

 

It was never clear how people enlisted to not be officers since it seems like the vast majority of people we encounter are at least ensigns. Rand wasn't at first, neither was O'Brian ever. We hear people called crewman and chief. And some cadets from time to time get more departmental ratings. But mostly it is officers.

 

Miles O'Brien (Usually referred to a "Chief" and self-described as "not an officer").
Janice Rand (Described as a Yeoman (c 2267) Indicated that it took three years for her to make ensign. Though this is contradicted by her being a Chief c 2273 (TMP) and then a Lieutenant Commander by 2293 (VOY: Flashback).
Simon Tarses (Specifically attended the "the Academy's training programme for enlisted personnel" which qualified him as a medical technician but meant he didn't have to "spend four years sitting in classrooms".
Burke and Samno of the TUC conspirators.
Various other backgrounds, but the above are the best examples.

 

And there's Celes, who had to take "Starfleet Training Courses." which Janeway compares to her time at the Academy, establishing it as separate.

 

Sometimes, given that they do have enlisted personnel, officers are in odd duty assignments. Example, Commander Sulu at the helm, a position today would be assigned to a mid level petty officer.

 

It would seem to me that a far lower percentage of the total population would be involved in anything and everything in the UFP than on today's Earth.

It's not that nations today require X number of soldiers per citizen. They require X soldiers, period, X dictated by the needs of the military hardware the nation operates more than anything else. Even the number Y fighting for the other side is largely irrelevant in defining X, because there's little or no use for the excess guys once the needs of the tanks and the field guns are met. And the numbers of the tanks and the field guns are dictated by budgets rather than needs. Sometimes (but not always) big nations can afford a higher value of X than small ones; often they go for an artificially and uselessly high X to compensate for the fact that they really can't afford to.

OTOH, a high percentage of the population today is needed for labor in order to keep the total population fed. In the Trek future, a very small percentage might be needed, and indeed the few non-soldiers appear to be either unemployed or then nonproductively employed. The volunteering sustenance farmers of the frontier notwithstanding, that is.

But "Flashback" was just a dream. Which was more or less the point: Valtane died in the dream, which was in contradiction with the real events, and this contradiction in fact was in full compliance with the episode itself because the dream disease made its victims see unreal death.

We saw the real version of the events, and in there Rand was just a junior Lieutenant. Which is probably fitting career progression for somebody who has "mustanged" herself after a long enlisted career. Perhaps Rand went for the commission because she was jealous of her red-and-curly-haired big sister who was a full Commander (ST3:TSfS)?

Timo Saloniemi

 

What we see Sulu do is fly the ship and point the guns. Either task alone might be much more challenging than today - the former is in 3D, with significantly more options than in today's sedate 2D naval maneuvers, while the latter has never been handled by a single person in naval history.

Given certain advances in automation, it might well make sense to provide the ship with a single professional who essentially plays a first-person shooter game with the ship. His (hopefully suitably augmented) insticts decide the outcome of the fight that the CO merely orders started and stopped.

Timo Saloniemi