Why no security personnel personal shields?

[Deks]

A power pack would be able to protect from phaser fire if used as a generator for a personal forcefield.
You can strap on a bunch of them onto a belt-type device, tie them to work in unison and the result would be a more powerful personal forcefield.
That's essentially what I was getting at.
But most of the time, the 24th century personal protective fields have been portrayed in a form of armbands.
Voyager comes to mind.
Seska used one to protect herself from radiation when she went to retrieve the Fed replicator on board a Kazon ship.
They also used similar devices that would push temporal pockets away from the user.
Then we have an example from TNG where similar personal field generators were modified to create an artificial pocket of time around a user.

Conclusion:
Those armbands were able to generate fields (usually subspace in origin) to handle temporal energy and radiation among other things.
A regular force-field would probably be far less demanding to make in comparison to a subspace one.
And even those subspace fields were forcefields in part because they were used to protect a user from various problems.
Leyton did mention in DS9 that personal force-fields would be handed out to security personnel.
That's your evidence.
Verbal confirmation. And as I said, they have the technology to use it for tactical advantage, it's the real-world reasons we never got to see away teams actually using personal force-fields though.

And no, I don't insist that they should be wearing protective force-field generators simply because contemporary humans carry body armor.
It's a sensible precaution for an away team to have additional protection in a potentially dangerous situation.
I'm sure we can all think of several occasions where usage of personal force-fields would have been beneficial ... but the main reason we never got to see them was because they would probably have made the writers think of a different way of harming the away team and putting them into life-threatening situations (quick fix = forget practical technology and common sense).

 

[Timo]

But most of the time, the 24th century personal protective fields have been portrayed in a form of armbands. Voyager comes to mind. Seska used one to protect herself from radiation when she went to retrieve the Fed replicator on board a Kazon ship. They also used similar devices that would push temporal pockets away from the user. Then we have an example from TNG where similar personal field generators were modified to create an artificial pocket of time around a user.

So essentially you are arguing that since laboratory workers protect themselves from harmful chemicals with paper suits, an infantryman should be immune to bullets by wearing a paper suit made of slightly stiffer paper?

There is no evidence that those armbands could stop a phaser, not even if you hooked a starship's warp core to them. There is no evidence that anything portable could stop a phaser, period.

I might accept a phaser-stopping forcefield device the size of a very large backpack. (Indeed, perhaps the mysterious backpack we saw in "The Cage" was a device of this sort?) However, there is no precedent for forcefield devices of portable size that can stop deliberate attacks by anything heavier than a black-powder .45 revolver.

Leyton did mention in DS9 that personal force-fields would be handed out to security personnel. That's your evidence. Verbal confirmation. And as I said, they have the technology to use it for tactical advantage, it's the real-world reasons we never got to see away teams actually using personal force-fields though.

Today's infantrymen do not use riot shields even though they offer a level of protection. They are simply not good enough, which means they are worse than useless. But Admiral Leyton could very well be deploying riot control troops rather than infantrymen, as his actions were all about quelling riots by unarmed Earthlings - he knew, after all, that there would not be a Jem'Hadar attack, and that the armed forces were only meant for securing the success of his military coup.

It's a sensible precaution for an away team to have additional protection in a potentially dangerous situation.

It would be a sensible precaution for today's policemen to be bulletproof, too. Too bad that the technology doesn't exist to make them bulletproof.

Sure, they could all drive around in tanks rather than police cruisers - but that would diminish their ability to do policing. Similarly, our Trek landing parties and away teams would probably be diminished in their abilities if they had to haul along a minimum-protection forcefield the size of a washing machine.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

Uhm ... tell me something ... if a personal force-field is an armband device or even a belt ... how exactly does it impair movement of the away team?
Also, unless you have some direct evidence that personal force-fields don't exist ...I'd say the on-screen evidence is rather clear on the subject, and further substantiated verbally.

You are comparing contemporary lab protection in comparison to the 24th century capabilities?
Timo ... please.
A subspace forcefield is hardly what I'd call 'easy' to generate.
Subspace forcefields were mentioned to be one of the more difficult issues to produce and manipulate in comparison to standard force-fields.
Creating artificial time pockets is easier than a simple force-field projection?
Don't give me that.
Worf created a personal force-field generator using components out of a combadge.
The field was weak because the badges power cells he used were not enough to sustain such a field for long.
The fact that he created the field in the first place using components from an entirely different equipment (which in turn used a power source of lesser intensity) suggests that it's not only possible, but that proper versions would probably be belt-like or armbands of far better capabilities and intensity.

We have several examples from on-screen evidence that the technology is usable and tactically sound, yet you use the argument 'it wasn't shown on screen in constant use and therefore it MUST be impractical'.
As I already stated (and I am beginning to repeat myself), the only reason it wasn't shown on a regular basis on-screen was due to the drama.

But if you prefer to think otherwise, then feel free to do so.
I respect your opinions Timo and acknowledge them, but of course I don't have to agree with them.
:-)

 

[Meredith]

They have too many people in starfleet so battlefield casualties are a good thing for starfleet's bottom line....

 

[Tigger]

A subspace forcefield is hardly what I'd call 'easy' to generate. Subspace forcefields were mentioned to be one of the more difficult issues to produce and manipulate in comparison to standard force-fields.

It is like more a function of energy dissipation then field strength.

Both bullets and phasers convert matter into energy when they impact their targets. The trick is, a bullet doesn't convert 100+kg of matter into energy like a phaser does.

Even if Worf's shield could stop a phaser, it would need significant orders of magnitude to do so based on the sheer amount of energy it needs to dissipate. And I don't believe that kind of power is "being-portable", hence why we have not seen it.

It takes a lot less energy to fire a bullet then to stop it. The same would likely apply to a phaser burst.

 

[Timo]

Uhm ... tell me something ... if a personal force-field is an armband device or even a belt ... how exactly does it impair movement of the away team?

Well, I insist that the minimum plausible size is a body harness. And even then, how do you move through a copse of woods or in any sort of undergrowth if you have a forcefield bubble around you?

You are comparing contemporary lab protection in comparison to the 24th century capabilities?

No. You are comparing 24th century laboratory protection with 24th century combat protection, in an utterly nonsensical way. Spock's flying boots do not comprise a starship, and anti-time-anomaly armbands do not comprise phaserproof armor.

A subspace forcefield is hardly what I'd call 'easy' to generate.

Agreed, I guess. So it shouldn't be too difficult to accept, then, that Starfleet cannot create one that would be phaserproof.

Creating artificial time pockets is easier than a simple force-field projection?
Don't give me that.

What sort of non sequitur nonsense is this? It's much more difficult to make a pocket calculator than a concrete pillbox. Why should this mean that concrete pillboxes must be a viable, pocketable means of protecting you from bullets?

We have several examples from on-screen evidence that the technology is usable and tactically sound, yet you use the argument 'it wasn't shown on screen in constant use and therefore it MUST be impractical'.
As I already stated (and I am beginning to repeat myself), the only reason it wasn't shown on a regular basis on-screen was due to the drama.

What's the difference? Star Trek drama dictates that there be no phaserproof forcefields, and that's the end-all of it (at least in the context of the known series, movies and spinoff shows).

And contrary to what you claim, there is absolutely no evidence that the technology would be "tactically sound". It is never ever seen in action. It is never said to be phaserproof. And phaserproof personal shielding comes as a nasty surprise to our heroes when a superadvanced adversary possesses it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

Riiiight ... and the fact a phaser has a power cell which is smaller than a palm but is able to generate that much more power, but yet a force-field of the same magnitude is 'impossible' ...
Don't make me laugh.
The power cells of the personal force-fields would be able to stop phaser energy.
Let's take energy sources into equation.
A starship or a star-base use a same energy source for their shield and weapons.
So if you take two same palm sized power sources, one for a phaser and one for the personal force-field ... what exactly is the difference?

By that analogy shields would be useless against ship based phasers, and their energy come from same sources.

If a phaser is able to destroy a futuristic building at level 16 with it's tiny power cell or vaporize an individual, what makes you think a simple force-field projection to stop a phaser is not plausible?

As I said, Worf made his own forcefield, but it was unstable due to the power source (which belonged to the comm-badges btw).
Do you really think he had the time to think about calculating possible energy emissions and how much it takes to stop something?
No.
He focused on creating a forcefield capable of stopping incoming attacks.
Comm-badges have an infinitely smaller battery in comparison to a phaser or a palm power cell, and if we apply a simple 'size matters' when it comes to hand-held objects, I would say that with a proper power cell or two, Worf would be able to maintain a forcefield for much longer periods which would be able to absorb multiple attacks.
And one other thing ... the instability of the forcefield might have been contributed with a fact that Worf created his own version and did not use a standard issue.

 

[Timo]

The power cells of the personal force-fields would be able to stop phaser energy.

But that's a patently false statement, just like it's false to claim that a rifle magazine would be able to kill a moose. You can't kill a moose with a rifle magazine; you also need the rifle.

Power alone will do you no good against phaser fire. You need some sort of a device that can translate the power into shielding. And nothing suggests that the devices witnessed so far would be capable of doing that.

Take for example the TAS life support belts. You and I probably agree that they are fairly simple forcefields, nothing fancy there, essentially miniature versions of starship shields or starshipboard corridor security fields. Now, how come these cannot stop phaser blasts? It should by your interpretation be trivially easy to hook a phaser clip onto the belt and ramp it up to a level that stops a phaser. But we know this does not happen: the belts in "Slaver Weapon" are incapable of blocking the Kzinti beam weapons.

If the bulky life support belts cannot be adapted into shielding devices, what are the odds that a more compact device could handle the job?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

We keep spinning in circles.
Worf was able to make a personal forcefield.
Meaning he constructed the device capable of utilizing the comm-badges batteries as a temporary/unstable power source which in turn was able to channel that energy into projecting a forcefield around his body.
Given the resources at his disposal, he didn't have much to work with, but if he had a proper power cell, the field would be far more stable.
Worf never stated of how much the field was able to take in the form of punishment ... but given the on screen evidence, the field only lasted for 12 seconds due to the batteries he used, and probably would be able to deflect several shots with a hand phasers if he had a proper power cell and did not use comm-badge batteries.

They have the technology to make it work but as I said, the tv portrayal is a dumbed down version and didn't make it into regular use for away missions due to the 'drama'.

Oh ... but there is another example.
Insurrection movie.
Picard and his crew used portable force-field generators to seal entrance to caves.
Those little things had to be slapped onto the walls and the forcefield was holding.
Instabilities were not present, nor was the field limited in how much it can operate (but I suppose there is a limit of hours involved and just how much energy it takes to penetrate the field).
I fairly doubt a hand phaser would be able to penetrate a personal force-field with only one shot at maximum setting.
Several shots yes, but hardly one.
It wouldn't be much of a personal defense if they couldn't take some punishment (and don't bring the argument 'they probably aren't' into the equation because then for that matter shields and corridor based security forcefields wouldn't have an effect which use the same power sources).

 

[Timo]

Oh, I have no problem with cave-blocking devices. Those would probably be what the "platoon-sized shields" of the TNG TM fame are like, too. Bulky pieces with significant power requirements, good for camping but not for advancing or retreating. And capable of deflecting shrapnel and other indirect attacks, but not all that good against concentrated fire.

It's just that I see no dramatic reason to see the leap from there down to man-portable shielding. Our heroes don't have that sort of shielding, hence there is an in-universe reason for it (there's an in-universe reason for everything, by definition, or it wouldn't be an universe, and our heroes should be going around shouting "It's a FAAAAAKE!" and "End program!" a lot). And since it's difficult to see a reason why it wouldn't be tactically useful, it's easier to say that it's technologically unviable.

The lack of personal shields is no different from the existence of transporters. Both are implausible from the technological standpoint alone (perhaps personal shields should exist as they aren't that futuristic compared with the rest, and perhaps transporters should not exist as they are so incredibly futuristic and unbelievable), and both stem from definite dramatic and economic necessities faced by Desilu/Paramount/CBS rather than by Starfleet.

We can accept the existence of transporters (and the corresponding lack of plausible shuttlecraft). Why not accept the nonexistence of personal shields in the same spirit?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lieut. Arex]

Take for example the TAS life support belts. You and I probably agree that they are fairly simple forcefields, nothing fancy there, essentially miniature versions of starship shields or starshipboard corridor security fields. Now, how come these cannot stop phaser blasts? It should by your interpretation be trivially easy to hook a phaser clip onto the belt and ramp it up to a level that stops a phaser. But we know this does not happen: the belts in "Slaver Weapon" are incapable of blocking the Kzinti beam weapons.

They are capable of blocking the phaser beams, specifically the bridge defense phasers as seen in "Beyond the Farthest Star". Being stunners, it's probable the Kzinti weapons are designed to circumvent shielding.

 

[AlanC9]

The problem with TAS life support belts is that the technology never showed up in anything but TAS. Are we supposed to assume that the Federation didn't find them cost-effective in the future? Some things from TAS shouldn't be canon.

Deks, exactly what are you basing your argument on? You seem to be making all kinds of assumptions about how shield technologies scale. Are you a certified Starfleet engineer?

 

[Lieut. Arex]

There are any number of things which were shown in various episodes of all the series which never showed up again, even though their use would have made perfect sense.

Two words: Subcutaneous transponders.

The life support belt was conceived for "The Tholian Web" and dropped, possibly due to budget reasons as was discussed above. I have problems with the concept and how it would function, but it exists(ed) in the universe and is a logical starting point for discussing personal deflector technology. In universe, why have we never seen them again? The Enterprise and others used them as part of a test program, discovered they weren't as effective as suits and they were abandoned. That said, I'd be surprised if field generators weren't or couldn't have been used in the Security forces armor shown in the early movies.

As to canon: It refers only to what the writers are obligated to honor; doesn't mean the rest didn't happen or doesn't exist.

 

[Deks]

The problem with TAS life support belts is that the technology never showed up in anything but TAS. Are we supposed to assume that the Federation didn't find them cost-effective in the future? Some things from TAS shouldn't be canon.

Deks, exactly what are you basing your argument on? You seem to be making all kinds of assumptions about how shield technologies scale. Are you a certified Starfleet engineer?

I am basing my arguments on verbal confirmation from DS9 in which an Admiral stated that SF has enough personal force-fields capable of equipping an entire army, and visual evidence from TNG/VOY (armband subspace/various other forcefield projectors) which clearly suggest the level of technology at the Feds disposal is able to produce that technology.
The only reason it never made it to regular use was because the writers conveniently forgot it for the sake of the drama so they can wound the main cast easily.

 

[Tigger]

I am basing my arguments on verbal confirmation from DS9 in which an Admiral stated that SF has enough personal force-fields capable of equipping an entire army, and visual evidence from TNG/VOY (armband subspace/various other forcefield projectors) which clearly suggest the level of technology at the Feds disposal is able to produce that technology.
The only reason it never made it to regular use was because the writers conveniently forgot it for the sake of the drama so they can wound the main cast easily.

And yet, you think they would have had them at the Siege of AAR-558 (or wherever) as well as in "Starship Down" (?) when the Jem'Hadar were attacking since both were also DS9 episodes.

I am of the opinion Leyton was calling for equipping the troops with a system that could protect against an "armed militia" of the population revolting against the coup. However, it is highly unlikely that "militia" is armed with modern energy weapons. There may be some old laser pistols or even phase pistols, but nothing serious.

As such, those shields would be sufficient to protect the troops against "low-yield" threats as encountered in an urban environment and not in a full-scale battlefield.

 

[Timo]

...It is possible that both "Siege of AR-558" and "The Ship" ("Starship Down" is the one where they dive into the gas giant) were exceptional combat circumstances where the Starfleet troops opted not to don their personal shields for reason X.

In "The Ship", X=they didn't beam down with those clumsy things to begin with. They weren't expecting combat, after all.

This excuse goes for basically all away missions, except for those during the Dominion war, and our DS9 heroes didn't really do combat-oriented away missions during that war. And the Jem'Hadar might not have mastered the personal shielding technology yet, or then they think that stealth is better protection - and shields would completely negate stealth if the opponent has even a primitive tricorder-style device.

Yet in "AR-558", X=??? Perhaps the planetoid had a technobabble field that prevented the use of shields? Note that the encampment doesn't have fixed shields, either. But the dialogue suggests nothing of the sort - at most there is a bit about sensor jamming.

And surely this deployment would have warranted a base shield and three-four platoon shields originally, even if personal shields don't exist. What happened to those? If the Jem'Hadar pounded them to bits, why aren't they on Larkin's shopping list when Sisko comes to deliver supplies?

Perhaps it's not tactically viable to have shields in place there - perhaps the Starfleet troops don't want to expose their positions to sensor scans. But the Jem'Hadar should know the location of their comm array already, so a big base shield around it would still make sense.

As "AR-558" doesn't feature shield types known to exist, it is no wonder we don't see the putative personal shields there, either. I guess we're still left without good examples of situations where Starfleeters could plausibly have worn personal shielding (assuming it's too clumsy to be regular away team gear).

Timo Saloniemi