MACO fleet?

[Baxten]

During its existence as a military, why didn't MACO have its own fleet of military starships? Why wasn't MACO at the war front, during the Xindi War, with its own fleet of military vessels? Were the "explorers" (Starfleet), instead of the military, expected to fight the United Earth's wars? Isn't that backwards?

Memory Alpha: MACO

As of 2153, MACO tactics and technology were two to three years more advanced than those of Starfleet, but their combat expertise was initially limited to simulations conducted on Earth.​

How could MACO tactics and technology have been more advanced than those of Starfleet, if Starfleet had starships capable of annihilating entire planets, and MACO did not?

While MACOs, at some point, served aboard Starfleet vessels, they were never given command of their own starships. Only a former MACO veteran was given command of the USS Franklin.

The only role MACOs were ever shown to be in is that of foot soldiers. This indicates that Star Trek is using an outdated definition of navy, when it used to be a separate organization from a military. However, in modern usage navy, as an armed force, used alone always denotes a military fleet.

The fact that Star Trek treats Starfleet as a space navy is further proven by Memory Alpha: Intrepid:

The ship's motto was "In Mare In Cælo" ("Into the Sea In the Sky").​

Star Trek was pitched as science fiction that takes place in the "future" of a fictional universe. Treating a navy, as an armed force, as different from a military is regression or retrogression, even by the modern definition of the word.

Back to the original question: why didn't MACO, as a military, have its own fleet of military starships?

UPDATE

It's not that difficult of a question:

Why didn't the United Earth's only military organization, MACO, have its own fleet of military starships? Why was it limited to foot soldiers only? A military is tasked with defense of the state it represents. How could MACO defend the United Earth, if it could not even wage space battles on its own?

A military limited to foot soldiers is an outdated definition of military, qualifying Star Trek for regression or retrogression.

A navy, at its basic definition, is a group of ships. Starfleet vessels are a group of ships, an armed group of ships. By the modern definition, navy, as an armed force, always denotes a military fleet. That means whenever Starfleet makes a claim that it's not a military organization, it is either lying or using the outdated definition of navy, qualifying Star Trek for regression or retrogression.

It's actually not that surprising when you see 19th century naval references within Star Trek. That, however, does not qualify for futuristic science fiction.

It's really that simple. And some people thought that it would go in circles without a solution.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Because ground troops don't operate their own ships - they get the fleet to do it for them. That's just the way it works. Troops fight on the ground, starship crews fly the ships. You have to have specialization.

 

[fireproof78]

Why do MACOs need a fleet of ships if they can travel with Starfleet?

 

[GabyBee]

MACO is implied to be an Earth-bound organization. When/if they do need to travel to other worlds: Starfleet. ENT even implied that NX-01s MACO contingent was the first unit to ever serve off-world, or at least certainly the first to serve outside of the Sol System.

 

[fireproof78]

Would have been interesting if it had expanded a bit more.

 

[GabyBee]

I think that would have kind of killed the intent of what MACO were supposed to be viewed as. A highly specialized military assault unit; not a "standing army" of any sort.

 

[Voth commando1]

I can see detachments of Maco Troops conducting some gunboat diplomacy in the MU.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Uh oh. (honk honk) Better get MACO!

 

[GabyBee]

diplomacy in the MU.

That's a thing?

 

[fireproof78]

Allow me to be more clear. Not "expanded" as in a "standing army" but included more in day to day operations. Have some tension between Starfleet and MACOs over how a mission needs to be done.

 

[Voth commando1]

Yeah give us your dilithium or we destroy you and minor variations thereof.

 

[GabyBee]

Allow me to be more clear. Not "expanded" as in a "standing army" but included more in day to day operations.

Ah, as in having MACO be more elaborated on...

Yeah, would have been nice. Guess we can presume that they had plans for that, and as with too many things on TV, got cut short by getting cancelled. Especially if they had plans to bring back NX-02, and follow up on whether or not Captain Hernandez acted on Captain Archer's advice concerning MACO on Columbia. Could have done another take at the sort of story they did with Trip, and his difficulty transitioning between the ships.

 

[F. King Daniel]

In the unofficial backstory of Balthazaar Edison and the Franklin from Simon Pegg, Doug Jung and Sean Hargreaves, the Franklin was a MACO cargo ship prior to the formation of the Federation. This MACO patch was on t-shirts worn by Pegg and Lin, and supposedly is stencilled on the bike Kirk rides in the movie too:

So, perhaps they did have warp 4 cargo ships, which were just off-screen during all the Earth-related crisis in Star Trek: Enterprise (if it existed in the ENT universe and isn't just a ripple backward in the space-time continuum from Nero's arrival in 2233)

 

[GabyBee]

Eh, I've never put much stock in the unofficial backstory stuff. In the novelization for The Motion Picture which was written by Roddenberry himself, he speculated that a giant hydroelectric dam had been constructed at the Straits of Gibraltar, and the Mediterranean Sea significantly drained (though not entirely). But we've never seen any evidence of this. From Earth orbit the Mediterranean Sea looks quite intact.

 

[Timo]

ENT even implied that NX-01s MACO contingent was the first unit to ever serve off-world, or at least certainly the first to serve outside of the Sol System.

Alternately, the same evidence could be interpreted as establishing that the specific MACO unit assigned to Archer's ship was on its first-ever off-Sol assignment, and indeed on its first-ever real mission.

It need not be that Archer would have gotten substandard help. Rather, Major Hayes' bunch could have special training that the actual combat veterans lacked; better take rookies who know how to deal with aliens than veterans who'd be, say, stymified by unintuitively nonhuman opponent tactics and technology or untrained in transporter-based assault.

As regards MACO ships, MACO is some sort of a special branch of the Military. But Starfleet is the Navy, the force that fights the wars involving ships. Indeed, Starfleet is nothing but the fighting Navy until NX-01, reputedly the first-ever deep space exploration starship of the organization, comes along.

(Either that, or then Starfleet is a mere paper tiger for the first few decades of its existence, doing nothing while awaiting for the launching of its exploration ships. But we see older ships, and at least one of those is explicitly commanded by a skipper in Starfleet uniform, and shows combat prowess.)

Today's armies sometimes operate ships, mainly small logistics vessels and perhaps brownwater combatants. (Today's Marines basically never operate ships of their own, though, relying on Navies on doing their transporting for them.) Possibly the Military might have a selection of spaceships, but what sort of ships? Insystem only, to match the fact that Hayes' MACO team has never been outside Sol as far as we can tell? Interstellar transports for taking the troops on exercises in other star systems? Planetary assault vessels, either short range ones operating off Starfleet assets, or then vessels of actual interstellar range? We just don't know.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Wormhole]

Since the MACOs aren't a naval force, that's primarily why they don't have a fleet. At most, I can see them having troop carriers and cargo ships like the Franklin, but that'd be it.

 

[GabyBee]

Starfleet is nothing but the fighting Navy until NX-01

I'm not so sure about that. ENT is probably the most explicit of any of the series in identifying Starfleet of its era as a non-military organization. Archer and Hernandez both pretty explicitly say so.

 

[Timo]

Amusingly, if the Franklin is a former MACO logistics ship, then it would make sense for her to be exceptionally good at landing on and taking off from planets!

I'm not so sure about that. ENT is probably the most explicit of any of the series in identifying Starfleet of its era as a non-military organization. Archer and Hernandez both pretty explicitly say so.

You mean Captain Archer and Captain Hernandez explicitly claim so while wearing their military uniforms aboard the bridges of their combat starships.

The claim has never sounded as hollow as in ENT. Although arguably both these officers are commanding dedicated exploration ships, probably a first in human naval history.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[GabyBee]

They look more like an evolution of NASA jumpsuits than military uniforms. Matching the opening montage of NASA's history, and potential future.

 

[The Wormhole]

The Starfleet being military matter in Enterprise is complicated. Some of the early development work was actually going to have Reed be a Starfleet Marine, but that was abandoned. Some say there was an intention for the United Earth Starfleet to be completely non-military, the idea being they developed into a military because of their experiences over the course of the series we saw Starfleet to be just as militaristic as the others. Hell, Enterprise is the one series where we see a Starfleet stockade on screen.

They look more like an evolution of NASA jumpsuits than military uniforms.

The US Air Force and Navy also use similar looking jumpsuits.