Size of the Federation and Starfleet
- Thread starter Patrickivan
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Praetor, I do not put a lot of tech faith into the novels (I save that faith, often tested, in the tech manuals!), but figure the authors have to have worked out some of the numbers off to the side and didn't just pull them out of the blue when assembling numbers of ships into fleets, task forces, etc. I can't remember the exact size of the combined fleet assembled at the Azure Nebula to confront the Borg, but figured that the Federation threw everything they had at them (lines of dialogue suggested that ships within six weeks travel to the Azure Nebula were ordered to rendezvous there, while outlying ships would not arrive in time, and remember that they paid off the Ferengi to arrange someone to keep the Tholians in line), and while certainly the Romulans and Klingons held back some ships to deter their neighbors from misbehaving in the majority fleets' abscence, they also sent an assload of ships as well. If anyone has that section of Destiny open and wants to throw in, feel free. I may go dig it up later if someone else doesn't get to it first, to try and firm that up.
Thanks for passing along the links to the earlier threads; first one worked but second one didn't (fleet composition post 2379). Try 'er again. I'd like to see that. Or zap it to sic1701@cox.net if unable to link.
I, too, don't think every registration number from 1-80,100 (the Luna-class) was taken up by built ships, but rather that they ordered in blocks. I know we've talked about this in the BBS before many moons ago, but put simply I think ship registry numbers were reserved in blocks of up to one hundred. Take a look at the Galaxy-class. The prototype, USS Galaxy, was NCC-70637, but the rest of the class all began with 718XX, suggesting that 71800-71899 is reserved for that class. We have NCC-71807/Yamato, 71832/Odyssey, and 71854/Venture. One may wonder where the other ships that make up the numbers in between went, but I am thinking that the reservations were further broken down into blocks for specific shipyards, and, like, Utopia Planitia had 71801-71825 reserved, and another place had 71826-71850, then 71851-71875, etc, so even though Venture at 71854 is the highest number, that doesn't necessarily mean there were exactly 53 preceeding Galaxies built...just reserved.
That would also have the added beneficial effect of a potential aggressor thinking that there may be more ships to defend Federation space than there really is, but deciding not to test that hypothesis after all, for fear of running into a wall of Galaxy-class ships.
The Excelsior-class is another example. Here we have the original run in the 2000s, then some in the 2500s, then 139xx, 142xx, 145xx, 149xx, 182xx, then a large gap to 340xx, 389xx, 405xx, then a big run in 421xx, and 422xx as well as 427xx-429xx, then 433xx, and finally 504xx. If you assume a maximum potential of one hundred Excelsiors per block, then you have a maximum potential of 1,700 Excelsior-class ships. Seeing onscreen that Excelsiors and Mirandas seem to outnumber the other ship classes does give more credence to a 5,000-ship fleet per Ronald D Moore than it does the 30,000 figure, but then again if you factor runabouts, scout ships, tugs and auxilaries, small ships assigned to starbases, etc., then it may be closer to 30,000. I don't have the raw data at hand, but IIRC the U.S. Navy has some 350-odd ships, of which about 150-200 are capital ships, submarines, dedicated warships, with the rest being support and auxilary craft. And given the built-in flexibility and multimission capability of Starfleet ships, I would actually expect the number of auxilaries to be quite low, with most assigned to starbases as opposed to being integrated with the numbered fleets.
Frankly, I put the numbers of Federation capital ships (larger than Danubes, ranging from Oberths and Novas on up to the Sovereign) at about 1,000 (seemingly mostly Excelsiors and Mirandas, probably many pulled out of mothballs), the Klingons (from B'rels on up, with the B'rels making up most of the number) at 1,500, and the Romulans at 300-500 D'Deridex and Norexan/Mogai/what-have-you.
For these numbers I point at TNG and DS9 dialogue for justification, ranging from the big deal over the Wolf 359 lost ships (morale effect of such a loss so close to the Federation core not withstanding, though thanks to Praetor for including a link to the earlier thread in which a poster likened the Wolf 359 battle analogous to a nuked carrier battle group off the coast of Florida) and Tyra one hundred-plus ship loss, to the comments that the big-ass Dominion invasion fleet of 1,200 outnumbered the Federation fleet (which we have to assume was the max the Federation could throw at the attempt to seal off the Alpha Quadrant from Dominion reinforcements, which was a pretty big deal) 2-to-1, and the dialogue that the two thousand Dominion ships that would pour from the wormhole (the vast overwhelming majority of which would be the little "bug" fighters) would cause the Allies to lose the war. With that much on the line, the Federation would have pulled everyone off exploration duty and sent them on that mission, and the run-up to war left plenty of time to bring the outlying ships in.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for passing along the links to the earlier threads; first one worked but second one didn't (fleet composition post 2379). Try 'er again. I'd like to see that. Or zap it to sic1701@cox.net if unable to link.
I, too, don't think every registration number from 1-80,100 (the Luna-class) was taken up by built ships, but rather that they ordered in blocks. I know we've talked about this in the BBS before many moons ago, but put simply I think ship registry numbers were reserved in blocks of up to one hundred. Take a look at the Galaxy-class. The prototype, USS Galaxy, was NCC-70637, but the rest of the class all began with 718XX, suggesting that 71800-71899 is reserved for that class. We have NCC-71807/Yamato, 71832/Odyssey, and 71854/Venture. One may wonder where the other ships that make up the numbers in between went, but I am thinking that the reservations were further broken down into blocks for specific shipyards, and, like, Utopia Planitia had 71801-71825 reserved, and another place had 71826-71850, then 71851-71875, etc, so even though Venture at 71854 is the highest number, that doesn't necessarily mean there were exactly 53 preceeding Galaxies built...just reserved.
That would also have the added beneficial effect of a potential aggressor thinking that there may be more ships to defend Federation space than there really is, but deciding not to test that hypothesis after all, for fear of running into a wall of Galaxy-class ships.
The Excelsior-class is another example. Here we have the original run in the 2000s, then some in the 2500s, then 139xx, 142xx, 145xx, 149xx, 182xx, then a large gap to 340xx, 389xx, 405xx, then a big run in 421xx, and 422xx as well as 427xx-429xx, then 433xx, and finally 504xx. If you assume a maximum potential of one hundred Excelsiors per block, then you have a maximum potential of 1,700 Excelsior-class ships. Seeing onscreen that Excelsiors and Mirandas seem to outnumber the other ship classes does give more credence to a 5,000-ship fleet per Ronald D Moore than it does the 30,000 figure, but then again if you factor runabouts, scout ships, tugs and auxilaries, small ships assigned to starbases, etc., then it may be closer to 30,000. I don't have the raw data at hand, but IIRC the U.S. Navy has some 350-odd ships, of which about 150-200 are capital ships, submarines, dedicated warships, with the rest being support and auxilary craft. And given the built-in flexibility and multimission capability of Starfleet ships, I would actually expect the number of auxilaries to be quite low, with most assigned to starbases as opposed to being integrated with the numbered fleets.
Frankly, I put the numbers of Federation capital ships (larger than Danubes, ranging from Oberths and Novas on up to the Sovereign) at about 1,000 (seemingly mostly Excelsiors and Mirandas, probably many pulled out of mothballs), the Klingons (from B'rels on up, with the B'rels making up most of the number) at 1,500, and the Romulans at 300-500 D'Deridex and Norexan/Mogai/what-have-you.
For these numbers I point at TNG and DS9 dialogue for justification, ranging from the big deal over the Wolf 359 lost ships (morale effect of such a loss so close to the Federation core not withstanding, though thanks to Praetor for including a link to the earlier thread in which a poster likened the Wolf 359 battle analogous to a nuked carrier battle group off the coast of Florida) and Tyra one hundred-plus ship loss, to the comments that the big-ass Dominion invasion fleet of 1,200 outnumbered the Federation fleet (which we have to assume was the max the Federation could throw at the attempt to seal off the Alpha Quadrant from Dominion reinforcements, which was a pretty big deal) 2-to-1, and the dialogue that the two thousand Dominion ships that would pour from the wormhole (the vast overwhelming majority of which would be the little "bug" fighters) would cause the Allies to lose the war. With that much on the line, the Federation would have pulled everyone off exploration duty and sent them on that mission, and the run-up to war left plenty of time to bring the outlying ships in.
Hope this helps.
Maybe a mod should add the speculation about fleet size to the FAQ thread and bookend it with a nice 'we don't know.'
Like Drake said, if that were the case, we wouldn't have anything to discuss...
I'm pleasantly surprised that it has remained a civil discussion so far.
I don't expect an answer to my speculation, and I would certainly say this is something we won't know due to a range of numbers thrown out there from different episodes.
Speculating is just fun and is 90% of Star Trek. As for the size of Starfleet proper in relation to the HUGE volume of space the Federation takes up, in TOS, I always thought of Starfleet being small (relative to the size of the Federation), numbering perhaps in the hundreds. Space seemed huge in that series (despite Kirk's many encounters (for dramatic purposes)). In the movies, that sense didn't really change, but the Federation seemed to have grown up a little (silly emotions linked to me growing up
). TNG and DS9 came along and all of a sudden the Starfleet felt huge and all grown up. It seemed like there could be thousands of ships.I don't think it's a number we can logically come up without more data, but in TOS, I'm sticking with only 200 or 300 hundred (that includes older pre-TOS ships still in use), and I think I'm being generous because my gut instinct when I was yonger, was that there were maybe only dozens. But by TNG and an explosion in construction and design techniques (eg replication-large transporters) I am comfortable with a max of 10000 ships. But these ships are spread out across a huge Space with small battle ready groups kept in strategic locations.
I agree, and me too, actually. Yay us.
I think those numbers are fair and I agree - although I would also hope that about 20% of those 10000 were scouts and general non-combatants - transports and whatnot.
There was also that thread about there being about fifty canon and semi-canon class names (of which I suppose only four would be TOS/movies era - Constitution, Miranda, Excelsior, Oberth) so as a logical extension of speculation it might be interesting to try to break down how many ships there are per class in which period.
I think people generally aim too low when guessing the number of ships in Star Fleet. Big numbers are hard to comprehend, but if the Federation has a thousand worlds in it, that's a *lot* of space to cover. I'd expect a Star Fleet in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. If the argument is that starships are just too expensive to build lots of them, then I'd expect a lot less cavalier usage of them.
I think a lot of the reason why people (at least I) tend to argue for lower numbers is based on what we've seen and they way Starfleet has been depicted, rather than a desire to not deal with higher numbers or the vastness of the Federation.
The Enterprise often happens to be 'the nearest ship' or 'the only ship in the Quadrant.' Combine that with the loss of 39 starships at Wolf 359 apparently being a great tactical loss, and the numbers we saw during the Dominion War on DS9, and you get the reasons I tend to think that Starfleet isn't as big as one might be tempted to think.
The Enterprise often happens to be 'the nearest ship' or 'the only ship in the Quadrant.' Combine that with the loss of 39 starships at Wolf 359 apparently being a great tactical loss, and the numbers we saw during the Dominion War on DS9, and you get the reasons I tend to think that Starfleet isn't as big as one might be tempted to think.
Wow, SicOne, somehow I completely missed reading that lengthy post. I shall fix that and address what you said there now. My bad.
Well, I assume the authors generally have at least an internal consistency to try to maintain credibility over what they're talking about and don't mean to be completely dismissive of them - but as has been the case with the depiction of the fleet on the series, fewer ships seem to be more 'dramatic.' One might rationalize that all sides involved in the Dominion War (particularly the Federation) ended up decommissioning and scrapping a lot of formerly decommissioned ships that were held in reserve as well as those 'kitbashes' from the DS9 technical manual, because the war had simply been too much for them and there was no point in re-reserving them at their age.
Perhaps they didn't perceive the need for 'quick' replacements for those sheer wartime numbers and was caught in some regard with their pants down, as the replacements that could pick up any needed slack weren't ready yet, and therefore the fleet they could muster was quite smaller than the Dominion fleet. One might also take into account what I believe to be the intent that Starfleet had tried to get back to exploration and had presumably redeployed the remainder of its ships to the 'far corners' again. Just look at how few ships could be quickly assembled in TNG's 'Best of Both Worlds' and 'Redemption' for examples of how long it might take to re-gather a central Task Force from deep-space assignments.
I too would be interested in hearing the passage in regard to the numbers of that fleet.
Hm. I don't know how I did that wrong. Anyway, here is the correct link for anyone interested. (I was afraid for a moment it had been lost.)
Essentially we agree then, I think that Starfleet tends to save certain 'round numbers' and maybe the first few of that set for a specific class project, then might skip the rest in that series to the next 'round number' and only do a few there before skipping to the next. I was primarily thinking of the Constitution and Excelsior here since their numbers are NCC-1700 and NCC-2000. In the Galaxy's case it would almost seem that number was assigned arbitrarily, but perhaps the Galaxy's number was designed to honor her predecessor, NCC-637?
This 'piecemeal' approach is the only one I can think of that maintains Jefferies' original approach somewhat by also taking into account modern Trek. Without having a gigantic fleet of 40,000 ships, that is.
Now this is something I gave a lot of thought to a while back and need to revisit, to go with my perpetually incomplete Excelsior Tech Manual. I was trying to figure out, based on established registry numbers, just how many Excelsiors there were. I decided on 200 roughly built and launched over time, but I think it could be higher too. It is my belief that there was a block of eleven in the 2000s (excluding NCC-1701-B), probably not sequential due to the nature of the transwarp issue, then another dozen block in the 2500s launched soon after. I tend to think that the 139xx-149xx were probably a series of ordered dozen blocks launched by circa 2325, and that the 340xx-405xx were another series of these blocks launched circa 2345, as were the 422xx-433xx.
I am rather fond of the idea that the Khitomer Accords placed an initial limit on the number of heavy cruisers that Starfleet could have, that the Excelsior was deemed superior to the aging Constitution, essentially dooming the Constitution, and that as such an Excelsior was launched for each Constitution retired. (I speculate that a few Connies were held in reserve and selectively reactivated in the 2360s as tensions eased and they reused the models.
) I think this requirement was probably revised or lifted in the 2350s due to the Cardassian and Tholian issue. I have also toyed with the idea of there being somewhat 'continual' production as part of war fears with the Cardassians and Tholians, thus explaining the numbers.
Incidentally, where do you get NCC-504xx? IIRC the highest established Excelsior is the Melbourne, NCC-62043, which was originally intended to be a Nebula until they redid the effects for 'Emissary' but kept the registry number. I have therefore 'concluded' that the Melbourne was the final ship built, not part of a block but built from 'spares' to test the incorporation of various technologies derived from the Galaxy and Nebula programs, which ultimately proved successful and allowed the class's continued proliferation.
Those are good points. I think I've explained my reasons for believing in the proliferation of Excelsiors. To me, that also explains why there are so many Mirandas but so few Constitutions; as a part of the Klingon treaty the Excelsiors replaced the Connies but the Mirandas didn't 'have' to be replaced. I'd rather the 5,000 ship fleet refer to 'first-rate' ships such as the heavy cruisers and explorers, allowing for another 2,500 to 5,000 second-rate and non-combat ships, just given how big space is. I think one other thing to bear in mind in making these estimates is the number of overall Starlfeet ship classes (about 40-45) that have been listed as being active in the modern era, compared to the number of classes we actually saw in action in the Dominion War. Retconing the reasons for this are a task unto itself, but I believe it's simplest to conclude that these ships were in the fleets that we didn't see.
I still maintain that a larger fleet is possible while maintaining the 'drama' of these situations if you consider how widespread these ships probably normally are during peacetime, and the particular significance of the incidents you mention.
Still, I'd prefer keeping the war-time fleet under 10,000 active and the pre-war fleet under 5,000 active.
Well, I assume the authors generally have at least an internal consistency to try to maintain credibility over what they're talking about and don't mean to be completely dismissive of them - but as has been the case with the depiction of the fleet on the series, fewer ships seem to be more 'dramatic.' One might rationalize that all sides involved in the Dominion War (particularly the Federation) ended up decommissioning and scrapping a lot of formerly decommissioned ships that were held in reserve as well as those 'kitbashes' from the DS9 technical manual, because the war had simply been too much for them and there was no point in re-reserving them at their age.
Perhaps they didn't perceive the need for 'quick' replacements for those sheer wartime numbers and was caught in some regard with their pants down, as the replacements that could pick up any needed slack weren't ready yet, and therefore the fleet they could muster was quite smaller than the Dominion fleet. One might also take into account what I believe to be the intent that Starfleet had tried to get back to exploration and had presumably redeployed the remainder of its ships to the 'far corners' again. Just look at how few ships could be quickly assembled in TNG's 'Best of Both Worlds' and 'Redemption' for examples of how long it might take to re-gather a central Task Force from deep-space assignments.
I too would be interested in hearing the passage in regard to the numbers of that fleet.
Hm. I don't know how I did that wrong. Anyway, here is the correct link for anyone interested. (I was afraid for a moment it had been lost.)
Essentially we agree then, I think that Starfleet tends to save certain 'round numbers' and maybe the first few of that set for a specific class project, then might skip the rest in that series to the next 'round number' and only do a few there before skipping to the next. I was primarily thinking of the Constitution and Excelsior here since their numbers are NCC-1700 and NCC-2000. In the Galaxy's case it would almost seem that number was assigned arbitrarily, but perhaps the Galaxy's number was designed to honor her predecessor, NCC-637?
This 'piecemeal' approach is the only one I can think of that maintains Jefferies' original approach somewhat by also taking into account modern Trek. Without having a gigantic fleet of 40,000 ships, that is.
Now this is something I gave a lot of thought to a while back and need to revisit, to go with my perpetually incomplete Excelsior Tech Manual. I was trying to figure out, based on established registry numbers, just how many Excelsiors there were. I decided on 200 roughly built and launched over time, but I think it could be higher too. It is my belief that there was a block of eleven in the 2000s (excluding NCC-1701-B), probably not sequential due to the nature of the transwarp issue, then another dozen block in the 2500s launched soon after. I tend to think that the 139xx-149xx were probably a series of ordered dozen blocks launched by circa 2325, and that the 340xx-405xx were another series of these blocks launched circa 2345, as were the 422xx-433xx.
I am rather fond of the idea that the Khitomer Accords placed an initial limit on the number of heavy cruisers that Starfleet could have, that the Excelsior was deemed superior to the aging Constitution, essentially dooming the Constitution, and that as such an Excelsior was launched for each Constitution retired. (I speculate that a few Connies were held in reserve and selectively reactivated in the 2360s as tensions eased and they reused the models.
) I think this requirement was probably revised or lifted in the 2350s due to the Cardassian and Tholian issue. I have also toyed with the idea of there being somewhat 'continual' production as part of war fears with the Cardassians and Tholians, thus explaining the numbers.Incidentally, where do you get NCC-504xx? IIRC the highest established Excelsior is the Melbourne, NCC-62043, which was originally intended to be a Nebula until they redid the effects for 'Emissary' but kept the registry number. I have therefore 'concluded' that the Melbourne was the final ship built, not part of a block but built from 'spares' to test the incorporation of various technologies derived from the Galaxy and Nebula programs, which ultimately proved successful and allowed the class's continued proliferation.
Those are good points. I think I've explained my reasons for believing in the proliferation of Excelsiors. To me, that also explains why there are so many Mirandas but so few Constitutions; as a part of the Klingon treaty the Excelsiors replaced the Connies but the Mirandas didn't 'have' to be replaced. I'd rather the 5,000 ship fleet refer to 'first-rate' ships such as the heavy cruisers and explorers, allowing for another 2,500 to 5,000 second-rate and non-combat ships, just given how big space is. I think one other thing to bear in mind in making these estimates is the number of overall Starlfeet ship classes (about 40-45) that have been listed as being active in the modern era, compared to the number of classes we actually saw in action in the Dominion War. Retconing the reasons for this are a task unto itself, but I believe it's simplest to conclude that these ships were in the fleets that we didn't see.
I still maintain that a larger fleet is possible while maintaining the 'drama' of these situations if you consider how widespread these ships probably normally are during peacetime, and the particular significance of the incidents you mention.
Still, I'd prefer keeping the war-time fleet under 10,000 active and the pre-war fleet under 5,000 active.
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I'd like to know where you got this figure from, since last time I looked, opinion on this was pretty varied.
Also, 8000 cubic light years may be as low as 20 x 20 x 20 light years in each direction...
Varied numbers?
It's been scientifically established the Milky Way is 100 000 ly's across, and about 1000 ly's thick.
Also, Picard clearly stated that the Federation is spread over 8000 ly's.
'Cubic' was never part of the line and is fan speculation.
To say the Federation is tiny is a bit inconsistent.
The writers messed it up good on numerous occasions because they were unable to properly imagine the full scope of just how vast space is.
Star ships being expensive to build?
Money doesn't exist in the Federation, and if it's spread out over 8000ly's alone, resources are practically unlimited for them.
Having hundreds of thousands of ships would be feasible ... but even if we stick with a much lower number of 10 000 ships, it's still doable because sensor technology is highly advanced and virtually has a radius of 40 ly's for a single Intrepid class ship.
The writers as usual failed to adapt the drama to the actual size of the Galaxy alone and scientific/technological aspects native to the time/universe the story is set in.
As for the Milky Way, as Deks said, it's pretty much an accepted if not absolute number, but I got this number at the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey page from the University of Calgary (amongst other sites).
I'm using rough figures to get the volume. Firstly, to make life easy, I'm giving the Federation the shape of a cylinder that is 8000 ly across (as per Startrek.com) and 1000 ly thick (as per science- though that is at the Milky Way's most and perhaps I should half that number considering we're something like 28000ly from the centre of the galaxy where it's thickest).
Then I simply apply basic math to obtain the volume of space, V= pie x r(squared) x height, or V=piex4000ly(squared)x1000ly
Oh- and this is fun. At the bottom of this page, they give a Star Trek perspective of our galaxy!
http://www.ras.ucalgary.ca/CGPS/where/plan/
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To justify my math, I'm going with cubic because it seems reasonable enough and not really a stretch of the imagination, kind of like how countries claim air and water space. Though I can see this space maybe being spherical or egg shaped, or whatever abstract shape, it would no doubt be a massive 3D environment. I just needed to pick something.
Even if it was a sphere, the volume would still be something like 26 billion lys. Half of the cylinder, but who cares? After the first 25 billion, it just gets silly!
I understand the choice of these shapes just to approximate possible volume for the heck of it, but for the record, it is extremely unlikely that many Federation members are located in such a way that it creates large blocks of "contiguous" space. I am sure there are many pseudopod-like projections leading away from the core worlds and individual members who are way out on their own. The 8,000 light year figure probably represents the two points within the Federation Defense Perimeter farthest away from one another, and the core area containing a lot of the major members who joined up early on is probably only a few hundred light years across.
DS9 was originally supposed to be "out on the frontier" but later had people almost casually heading to Earth in a runabout, so (even though we must rationalize ships picking up the runabout and ferrying it at high speed or something) we can't conclude it was all that far away. The political biz with Cardassia must have kept it mostly out of the loop. This heavily habitated local area, which fortunately contained Earth, Vulcan, Tellar, Andor and some other cool places, is also relatively close to Cardassia Prime, Romulus, and whatever you'd like to call the Klingon homeworld, too.
DS9 was originally supposed to be "out on the frontier" but later had people almost casually heading to Earth in a runabout, so (even though we must rationalize ships picking up the runabout and ferrying it at high speed or something) we can't conclude it was all that far away. The political biz with Cardassia must have kept it mostly out of the loop. This heavily habitated local area, which fortunately contained Earth, Vulcan, Tellar, Andor and some other cool places, is also relatively close to Cardassia Prime, Romulus, and whatever you'd like to call the Klingon homeworld, too.
Not really - as we see starships occasionally meet each other, with 1000 ships in the vastness of the Federation, they never would.
In peacetime Starfleet is probably around 10,000 starships. Losing 40 ships and 11,000 lives is a tragedy no matter how big your fleet is. The effect on a few small towns in Scotland of the Nimrod disaster that killed 14 men was massive, but it was not a crippling loss for the RAF, merely a tragedy.
It is actually 3600 I believe, and that was the first wave of reinforcements. Besides it does not imply a whitewash merely that it would tip the balance of power and provide victory. That often does not take much.
Tell that to the Taliban, with hit-and-run tactics they are holding down a massive, technically superior International force with small groups operating independently, similar to Martok's proposed tactics.
When did we see an unscheduled rendezvous, though? When the Reliant appeared in ST2 without prearrangement, Saavik was on the verge of fainting from shock (as far as half-Vulcans go) when she realized the ship was not only in the same sector, but actually in the same quadrant (a smaller division), and slowing for a rendezvous...
There's always the "Das Boot" clause, too: if and when the ships operate blind, without contact to home base or other ships, sheer random chance sometimes will bring them to the same star system (or within each other's sensor range at least) against all odds - just like two U-boats might meet in the middle of the Atlantic at random.
Umm, that would be valid if the Taliban were stopping Patton or Zhukov from storming Germany. The international force in Afghanistan is not involved in any sort of a "push" in any direction, and the Taliban are not protecting any territory - they're merely making life difficult for an already present occupying force that doesn't even have ambitions on occupying all of the territory.
Timo Saloniemi
I think the Federation territory almost has to be a big nebulous blob, similar to what is shown in the Starcharts book, for anything regarding its organization to make any real sense. There is a 'core' but then there are 'legs' as well.
I agree. The way it's been depicted, it seems like a surprise that they accidentally 'run into' each other, as it appeared to Saavik in TWoK. There are scheduled rendezvouses yes but they don't just bump into each other.
Also, one wonders just how long it took to recall all those ships for the Dominion War to form those fleets? Command clearly saw the Dominion buildup for a while after Cardassia joined the Dominion but before Sisko mined the wormhole, and viewed it as a threat even before then. I don't see why Starfleet couldn't have been reactivating old ships for a while before Cardassia even joined the Dominion, and then immediately started recalling ships from deep-space assignments. That might account for the fleet we saw the Defiant join at the end of 'Call to Arms' and the implied extra-long break between those two seasons might have accounted for the rest. It's also possible there had been a degree of 'recall' after the Klingon problem that was never fully redispersed.
I think this is also an important point to bear in mind regarding Wolf 359:
I agree. The way it's been depicted, it seems like a surprise that they accidentally 'run into' each other, as it appeared to Saavik in TWoK. There are scheduled rendezvouses yes but they don't just bump into each other.
Also, one wonders just how long it took to recall all those ships for the Dominion War to form those fleets? Command clearly saw the Dominion buildup for a while after Cardassia joined the Dominion but before Sisko mined the wormhole, and viewed it as a threat even before then. I don't see why Starfleet couldn't have been reactivating old ships for a while before Cardassia even joined the Dominion, and then immediately started recalling ships from deep-space assignments. That might account for the fleet we saw the Defiant join at the end of 'Call to Arms' and the implied extra-long break between those two seasons might have accounted for the rest. It's also possible there had been a degree of 'recall' after the Klingon problem that was never fully redispersed.
I think this is also an important point to bear in mind regarding Wolf 359:
You are exagerrating slightly - Saavik could well be surprised as the reason a training ship was sent was there were no other ships in the quadrant, for a fully commissioned cruiser to show up where it shouldnt be would surprise anyone.
Besides I think it is fairly easy to deduce that the 24th century Starfleet is a lot bigger than the 23rd.
Well the Germans did have hundreds of U-boats...?
That betrays a very rudimentary understanding of how military operations work. It would have done Patton very little good to go storming Germany if his communications and logistics were not maintained due to guerilla operations, essentially (especially given the historic problems governing Patton's logistics in particular) even a moderately effective attack on his rear would grind any operation to a halt.
The mission of the international force in Afghanistan is to control the territory and provide security, the Taliban are effectively preventing this mission and inflicting heavy casualties on the occupying forces.
If anything facing an enemy who will come meet you in a field for a big battle is much easier than dealing with someone sneaking around your flanks. In WW2 the French resistance and Russian partisans made a massive impact on reducing the German's ability to fight.
