how big is starfleet?

[Bry_Sinclair]

During the Dominion War, the Seventh Fleet had 112 ships at the Battle of Tyra. At least ten fleets were mentions during the last couple of seasons in DS9, which would mean at least 1120 combat ships. Though for Operation Return "elements" of the Second, Fifth and Ninth Fleets added up to around 627 ships.

Of course this wouldn't likely include support ships, which would be kept out of the fighting as much as possible.

 

[Timo]

To nitpick, the 9th didn't make it to the fight in "Sacrifice of Angels" at all, so the 600 were "elements" of just two Fleets. Might be up to 100% of the ships from those Fleets for all we know, perhaps to compensate for the fact that the 9th was late.

All the Fleets we saw were a mixture of the new (Galaxy and her ilk) and the old (all the way back to Miranda). Whether any of the types involved were "support" assets, we don't know; for all we can tell, the ubiquitous Steamrunner is a planetary landing craft carrier or a fleet tanker. But there were blessedly few Oberths in the mix. For whatever reason. Would it really make sense to leave your supply wagons home? Or waiting 4.7 AUs off the battlefield, where enemy cavalry could raid them in a flanking maneuver?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazyewok]

I don't see much reason to believe in temporary drops in Starfleet strength. After all, it's not a temporary but constant feature that there aren't ships available to do X. Even at those times when thousands of ships are explicated to exist.

That the hero ship is the only one available to do X is not a mere Hollywood conceit, either - it just means that the other ship does Y and the yet other ship does Z at the time. Weird is their business: even if X appears exceptional and important, Y and Z no doubt are this as well.

Neither TOS nor TNG tried to suggest either that the hero ship (or her immediate sisters) would be unique, or that the ships we see in action would be the only ones in existence. Very much to the contrary, when we see four starships the VFX dept can afford to show, dialogue and Okudagrams establish that they are "in fact" part of a fleet of dozens, and then dialogue further affirms that a fleet of mere dozens is "in fact" so exceptionally small that the Romulans fall from their chairs out of amazement and start worrying where the rest of the hundreds might lurk.

Sure, Kirk's ship is a starship. Nowhere is it indicated she would be the only one, or of the only type, or the only type capable of performing X. If we stick to that which is actually stated, Kirk is doing a job not one in a million could pull off - which already suggests Earth operates thousands of starships...

Timo Saloniemi

Drop in strength doesn't mean drop in hulls.

Starfleet seems to prefer to mothballs rather than scrap.

A huge number of ships are likely stored for "just in case" hence why TMP classes seemed to be used as cannon fodder in the dominion war.

 

[MAGolding]

According to "Bread and Circuses", everything else was just a spaceship and far inferior in every way.

Compare to modern Star Trek, where Enterprise NX-01 a century before and the USS Discovery in the same era can do everything the classic Enterprise could (and much more, in the latter's case)

Your memory is failing you, or else you are confusing three separate things and assuming that they are the same thing, even though there is no proof that the three things are identical.

"Tomorrow is Yesterday":

KIRK: Bridge.
CHRISTOPHER: Must have taken quite a lot to build a ship like this.
KIRK: There are only twelve like it in the fleet.

Does Kirk's 12 include or excluded the Enterprise? Does Kirk mean there are only 12 ships vaguely resempling the Enterprise, or that there are only 12 exactly like the Enterprise? Which fleet are there only 12 like the Enterprise in? The entire Federation Starfleet, the United Earth Space Probe Agency fleet, the fleet patrolling sector K, or some other fleet or sub fleet?

"Bread and Circuses":

CLAUDIUS: You're a clever liar, Captain Kirk. Merikus was a spaceship captain. I've observed him thoroughly. Your species has no such strength.
MERIK: He commands not just a spaceship, Proconsul, but a starship. A very special vessel and crew. I tried for such a command.

There is no direct statement whether the 12 like the Enterprise are identical with the starships that are so much superior and special according to Merik. Perhaps the 12 like the Enterprise are a tiny subset of Merik's starships.

And what about Constitution class starships? There are no mention of starship classes in TOS. The plaque on the bridge describes the Enterprise as a Starship class vessel - if anyone can read it onscreen to make it canon. In "Space Seed" Khan asks to study technical manuals of the Enterprise, and later is seen viewing a schematic of a phaser for a Constitution class ship - if anyone can read it onscreen to make it canon.

As far as I am concerned there is no need for anyone to believe that the 12 like the Enterprise, starships, and
constitution class ships are the same. They might be two or three different and perhaps overlapping or nested categories.

So nobody knows how many starships there were in the era of TOS.

 

[drt]

I’d say for TOS Starfleet had about 1200-1500 ships, by TNG something like 50,000. To explain the discrepancy (since the Federation obviously wasn’t 30x smaller in TOS), I could see that maybe in TOS the Federation member worlds still kept sizable “national” fleets, plus, TNG’s Federation was much more of a post-scarcity society than TOS’s, so it was also easier to build more ships.

 

[Ithekro]

Nine characters long.

 

[Sgt_G]

KIRK: There are only twelve like it in the fleet.

Yes, in the Fleet. Meaning that there are more ships other than Constitution-class ships in the fleet. No telling how many or what type.

Heck, for all we know, they could be the last twelve Constitutions left out of how-many and everything else is newer.

 

[Timo]

Not only was TOS semi-intentionally vague about things like this, letting us to do decades of speculating and writers to write curveballs to put the best of that speculation to shame - it sort of comes off as natural and verisimilitudinal and whatnot, too. Obviously Kirk wouldn't give "cabbagehead" answers to these sorts of questions, in-universe. And if it turns out that the Constitution class was really old school and Kirk's ride was prestigious mainly because it takes courage to even step aboard the damn thing and supreme skill to keep the old boilers from blowing up, why, there's all the more reason for him to be a bit ambiguous about it...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazyewok]

As for the size of Starfleet academy.
The campus we see in sanfransico is likely only the administrative campus and maybe also specialises in command courses.

Other campus are likely scattered around the solar system in which cadets rotate each semester depending on what courses they choose.

 

[Sgt_G]

Yes, definitely. Just look at how many ways it's possible to receive a commission into today's US military. There's the three Academies at West Point, Annapolis, and USAFA Colorado (four if you count Coast Guard), private military colleges such as VMI, ROTC at most major universities, and OCS/OTS "90-day wonder school" for people who have a degree. Star Fleet is dozens of times larger than the US military, so there is No Way that all officers went thru one single academy campus in San Francisco.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Yes, definitely. Just look at how many ways it's possible to receive a commission into today's US military. There's the three Academies at West Point, Annapolis, and USAFA Colorado (four if you count Coast Guard), private military colleges such as VMI, ROTC at most major universities, and OCS/OTS "90-day wonder school" for people who have a degree. Star Fleet is dozens of times larger than the US military, so there is No Way that all officers went thru one single academy campus in San Francisco.

With transporters, there could be Academy "annexes" all over the planet, so that the institution functions as one mega-campus, overseen by the commandant whose office is in San Francisco.

 

[BillJ]

I tend to think the numbers were low in TOS and early-TNG due to the thinking of Starfleet taking care of Earth. Later on, they realized the universe is a really big fucking place.

 

[Crazyewok]

Yes, definitely. Just look at how many ways it's possible to receive a commission into today's US military. There's the three Academies at West Point, Annapolis, and USAFA Colorado (four if you count Coast Guard), private military colleges such as VMI, ROTC at most major universities, and OCS/OTS "90-day wonder school" for people who have a degree. Star Fleet is dozens of times larger than the US military, so there is No Way that all officers went thru one single academy campus in San Francisco.

Also the science corps likely had affilitations with university's. A Starfleet science officer likely did a chunk of studying at places like Harvard or Cambridge.


As for why we sa only only 47 ships at wolf 359?
Remember the federation had only just ended a war with the cardassians, a big chunk of that fleets is probably still on those borders being slowly phased out to different assignments. You Also had the tzenkathi war aswell.

 

[Sgt_G]

ended a war with the cardassians .... the tzenkathi war as well.

Boy, for not being a military organization, Starfleet sure fights a lots of wars.

 

[Tenacity]

the federation had only just ended a war with the cardassians, a big chunk of that fleets is probably still on those borders

This makes a lot of sense.

 

[Crazyewok]

This makes a lot of sense.

Exactly, the peace was not exactly stable and I doubt either the cardassian or feds just packed up and went home.
I doubt the fleets where anything near the size we saw in DS9 but my guess there was several hundred ships posted near the DMZ

 

[Timo]

That forty or so ships could be summoned on such short notice is a miracle unto itself - the underlying premise of Trek being that getting two starships to respond to a crisis within a week never happens.

Plus, Starfleet does not idle its ships near Earth where they usually can do no good. Even with the Borg, the doctrine called for meeting them en route, far outside Sol; the Borg just happened to be exceptionally fast intruders, so "rushing to meet them" meant going next door to Earth only. Klingons and the like would apparently be stopped by having all the ships out there and in depth between the frontier and Earth. Which would backfire if the Klingons could penetrate deep unseen, just as the Borg or V'Ger or the Whale Probe could penetrate deep fast, that is, could not be slowed down.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

Until DS9 starships are depicted as rare and precious. When there is an emergency on some Federation world there might be one starship in vicinity to be summoned, if they're lucky. There certainly are not fleets of ships guarding every world. The 39 ships at Wolf is an significant concentration of force and it's destruction a great blow. However, in DS9 there are suddenly fleets of hundreds of ships, and in battle scenes these massive capital ships are flying in squadrons and blowing up like TIE-fighters. I blame the relative ease of copypasting CGI ships over the older physical model based approach. I certainly prefer the pre-DS9 version where starships were a big deal.

 

[Gabriel]

Until DS9 starships are depicted as rare and precious. When there is an emergency on some Federation world there might be one starship in vicinity to be summoned, if they're lucky. There certainly are not fleets of ships guarding every world. The 39 ships at Wolf is an significant concentration of force and it's destruction a great blow. However, in DS9 there are suddenly fleets of hundreds of ships, and in battle scenes these massive capital ships are flying in squadrons and blowing up like TIE-fighters. I blame the relative ease of copypasting CGI ships over the older physical model based approach. I certainly prefer the pre-DS9 version where starships were a big deal.

Well not me the federation is a big place and starfleet ships aren’t incredibly fastest. The Federation will need a lot of ship To defensd to its territory and also to explore. Because it doesn’t matter how big the ship is if it replaces a lot of small ships in the aspect of it can’t be at multiple places at once. Modern day navies so starting to figure that out. And I would think Starfleet would be better. And plus I like the big fleet battles. Also the 30 night shift was all the Federation could muster because the Borg was going pretty fast and there fleet was probably not close to earth.

 

[Crazyewok]

Until DS9 starships are depicted as rare and precious. When there is an emergency on some Federation world there might be one starship in vicinity to be summoned, if they're lucky. There certainly are not fleets of ships guarding every world. The 39 ships at Wolf is an significant concentration of force and it's destruction a great blow. However, in DS9 there are suddenly fleets of hundreds of ships, and in battle scenes these massive capital ships are flying in squadrons and blowing up like TIE-fighters. I blame the relative ease of copypasting CGI ships over the older physical model based approach. I certainly prefer the pre-DS9 version where starships were a big deal.

The federation at that point mostly likely had the bulk of its fleet 2 weeks away on the cardassian/ tzenkathi borders, plus patrolling the neutral zone.

A borg cube turning up at at warp 9.9999 or whatever is not going to give much time to react.

The ships on the cardassian border will not be able to get to earth in time and the cube blew through the area around the neutral zone, only the enterprise was able to barely intercept it and slow it down. Other ships in that area probably had no chance of catching up.

The ships at wolf 359 where likely the only handful of ships in any position to intercept the cube.