Battleship Enterprise

This is not a general "Is Starfleet is a Military", as I think it is clear Starfleet is one during the alt-timeline of "TNG: Yesterday's Enterprise" but rather a question regarding how Starfleet might conduct itself on a war-footing.

Specifically, the regular!Enterprise has a complement of around 1,000 (fanon assumes 80:20 mix of uniformed v civilian personnel) whereas the Battleship!Enterprise as "capable of transporting over six thousand troops" per dialogue (so is therefore canon for the episode).

So, I have two questions:

1) Does that six thousand include the ship's complement (so about 800 ship's personnel and 5,200 soldiers) or is it combat personnel only?

2) Additionally, are the additionnal personnel purely infantry or a combined-arms taskforce like MEUs? [Personnally, I think they are either the later, or a combination - perhaps 1 combined taskforce (2000 soldiers) used for initial landings and a regular infantry brigade (up to 4000 soldiers) for standing operations.]

Any thoughts?

 

I am guessing it includes the ship's crew..because of the new military lifestyle , they refer to all personnel as troops. And because it is set up for war, I would imagine there would be more crew (for more weapons, etc.).

Now, I wonder how many ground troops would really be needed on ENterprise...I am not sure how practical that would be in a 24th century war. I am basing it on how we saw it in Deep SPace 9. Also, to disperse them, even with multiple transporters and more shuttles....

 

It's possible that in order to make room for transporting soldiers the accommodations on the battleship Enterprise were altered. People who had spacious, private quarters on the ordinary Enterprise may have smaller quarters or even be forced to share in order to free up space.
Transporting soldiers is a chaotic business even in real life. When my Grandfather came home from WW2 he slept on the deck under a set of stairs, there were no quarters at all for him and his comrades. They put people wherever they had space. Yar's estimate on how many troops the Enterprise could transport might reflect that.

 

...Which is a bit odd since the (externally) same ship could evacuate 15,000 people in "Ensigns of Command". The bottleneck there wasn't onboard space, but means of embarking; Starfleet was going to solve the problem by sending just one colonization vessel equipped with suitable shuttlecraft, not by diverting further generic starships in great numbers.

Should this be taken to indicate that the 6,000 were to remain onboard for extended periods of time, ready to spring to action as situation warranted? That is, as opposed to the E-D just ferrying them to a battlefield and dropping them off, like troop transports generally do. The former would call for more spacious accommodation, or at least more facilities and resources probably amounting to similar loss of capacity.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I'd favour a standing HQ staff with combat engineers, logistics, supplemental medical staff with extra security and/or commandos ("marines"/"MACO") for the initial landings [these could potentially be on-call during peacetime] that remain onboard the battleship long-term. This would be similar to old school Marine Detachments aboard major US/UK warships until recently, [400-1,000 of the total].

The remainder of the force would be a wartime Reserve Force, split between a Patrol/Attack Wing (consisting of air-space attack fighters and high-capacity landing shuttles manned by Starfleet personnel) and Ground Forces (mostly infantry, but also "Green Berets", psyops, medical and logistics). This would be rotated out 'drop and go'-style as needed and would probably only say onboard between starbases and "the front" [5,000 to 5,600 of the total]. These would be "Army" to the [wartime] Starfleet Exploration Division's "Navy".

Does that make sense?

 

I would assume the over 6,000 troops would be additional personal for specific missions. Not what they normally carry. Their regular soldier/MACO compliment would be part of the crew list and not commented on like that.

That would be the equivalent to the ship's old evacuation limit save that the troops would be in quarters/barracks and the shuttle bays would be filled with their assault shuttles or whatever equipment and vehicles they might need for the campaign. The old evacuation limit was reached by turning the shuttle bays and cargo holds into places to keep people while they are moved from one place to another.

As to what they'd be for? Taking Klingon starbases I would think. Maybe colonies since most seem to only have one major settlement with maybe a few thousand people on the whole planet. Or reinforcing multiple bases with replacement companies or platoons taken form a regiment or three assigned to Enterprise to draw from as they rotate out long term missions and troops holding various planets against the Klingons. With such a force, Enterprise could reinforce or relieve a large number of locations before returning the survivor units back to Federation core areas.

 

Yar's boasting certainly is limited to saying the ship is "capable" of carrying troops - no troops are in evidence as such. But she also seems to be boasting that the capacity is an important design feature, indeed the most important aspect of the ship as she mentions it the very first thing (and then finds Castillo's eyes too interesting for her to continue with further specs).

The ship appears to be a wartime development, so there would exist a recognized, practical need for the troop capacity. How much is 6,000 soldiers? In "Siege of AR-558", in a somewhat later and alternate take on the Trek universe, a unit commanded by a Captain (Colonel) but numbering just 150 may count as a modern Company or a futuristically small Battalion, in either case enjoying atypically high-ranking leadership in modern view. (High rank is fine for high profile missions such as ENT S3, but AR-558 wasn't supposed to be high profile originally.)

Perhaps 6,000 would be a Brigade, perhaps a Division - but would there be a flag officer aboard to command it, bowing to mere Captain Picard's authority while in transit and not even making an appearance in the episode? More probably, the troops weren't embarked at the time, or Picard might have risked a stratagem of letting the Klingons board...

Timo Saloniemi

 

But according to wikipedia, 150 is about right for a slightly depleted (about 90-95%) unit based on USN SEALs (3x40 Operators per Numbered Team) or an RAF airfield-defence field squadron (though these are typically lead by Sqn Ldr's (equiv to Lt Cdr/Mjr) rather than Gp Capt's (equiv to Capt/Col), the later of which is similar to the role of the AR-558 defence unit IMO.

 

I don't know the answer to the OP's question - it looks like others are offering some fine attempts - but what I DO know is that "Yesterday's Enterprise" was done a SERIOUS disservice by the lack of budget and time allocated to it. I mean, don't take me wrong, it's still one of my favorite episodes. But they should have had combat appropriate uniforms (perhaps "evolved" in a different way from the Monster Maroons) instead of the usual pajamas with just an add-on, and honestly I don't think the -D in their timeline should have looked the same at all, given that "our" -D was specifically designed for long range exploration and to accommodate families. Their -D probably should have been something more like the Defiant, or maybe like the Vengeance from "Into Darkness".

Of course, it's probably really for the best that they didn't get the chance to go all in on the episode, because (as examples) while yet another multiple-Brent-Spiner episode would have been cool (I refuse to believe that Federation would have declined to thoroughly examine Data and Lore and mass produce soldiers*), and seeing the other Enterprise phase-cloak and kick ass would have been awesome, they would have made it hard to believe that the Federation was actually losing to the Klingons!

* Before you argue that maybe they wouldn't have been able to, consider that I don't necessarily mean their brains. Their *bodies* controlled by a simpler (possibly even non-sapient) AI or even by the ship's computer would still have been a massive advantage.

 

I wonder what the fan reaction would have been if the Y-E Ent-D had been the Three Nacelled one from All Good Things. Have a merging/flickering shot of the ship just like the shot of the bridge at the beginning.

Imagine that thing defending the Ent-C.

Also you can hear over the intercom in this episode, that this -D has a Cetacean ops.

 

Honestly, while there are time periods where the Federation could lose a war with the Klingons (potentially any time prior to the launch of the Connie for instance), I've always thought that a Fed-Klingon War was unlikely to be lost by a Federation with the will to prosecute it - which is definately the case in YE compared to the canon Fed-Klingon War of the 2370s.

 

We never learn that their bodies would have been anything special. Indeed, android bodies were often seen in TOS, and in "Return to Tomorrow", Dr. Mulhall felt the heroes would be capable of building some for the Sargonians, basically reacting with hurt pride when Sargon wanted to do the building on his own.

And the concept of android armies in "Measure of a Man" was something of a non sequitur - there certainly wasn't a sequel to the waving of that particular card in the line of argumentation. I doubt the UFP really is in want of android armies, or replicated armies, or armies of any sort; manpower shortages were not commented on during the Dominion War, say (even if mounting casualties were).

The UFP still held back in some respects, as they certainly had starkiller stuff but never nuked, say, Cardassia with it. The Klingons blew stars on the faces of their enemies without qualms, though. But a bit of bushido or Queensberry rules on some fronts is allowed when you're simultaneously hitting under the belt with a steel mallet (or a bioweapon)...

Timo Saloniemi

 

I think manpower shortages are unlikely, I'm not sure whether we've ever been given any canon on the population of the Federation, but most estimates and licensed sources that I am aware of suggest a minimum of 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) sentients which with the "engagement rates" of modern populations in the military would give a "pool" of between thirty and ninety million personnel*, and that even without considering the implication that the "engagement rate" is likely to be higher as many functions covered by civilian authorities and private companies appear to be run by Starfleet.

*At an average of 10,000 per starbase (total <1000) and 500 per starship (total <5000), this would require only 2.5% of population.

 

We could also argue that a lower percentage of people in general work for a living, in the TNG utopia of the core worlds (and that the tiny colonies still valuing hard work represent an insignificantly small fraction of the total population). It needn't affect the issue much, though, as the leading incentive to doing productive work would be to fight boredom, and taking part in a war would certainly qualify!

Traditionally, creation of warriors has required training. This is just barely the case today, what with automatic weapons that create more or less the desired effect in the hands of utter novices already. Trek infantry weapons would probably require even less of the user (aiming isn't mandatory, say - not that today's soldiers would aim much anyway). OTOH, Trek wars are waged with starships. Is operating one of those intuitively simple for 24th century folks, or is training required? I'd wager the former - but the big issue would be repairing the hardware, an issue where automation is less useful than in maintenance or operation. Is the unavailability of Miracle Workers the reason why Starfleet doesn't build enough ships for its peacetime operational needs?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Starfleet didn't change their uniforms when they fought the Dominion War and still threw the same ships at them. I always figured the Galaxy class was probably still being developed normally as the Klingon war flared up, so initially it may not have changed that much externally but eventually internally they threw out anything that wouldn't help with the war effort. maybe they could have strapped a few more guns to it, like the "warship voyager". When Yar says it was the first Galaxy class warship built by the Federation, does she mean that this ship is basically a renamed USS Galaxy or is she drawing a distinction between Galaxy class starship and warship?

 

Good points, all - except I'd dare say that they *did* shift ship production toward ships with an emphasis on combat, like the Defiant-class. And I'm not suggesting their Enterprise-D couldn't have been similar - maybe even just a different saucer with more combat features, or heck, maybe even a jump to the general layout of the All Good Things Enterprise, since she was apparently *also* at least partially the result of a timeline where things were heating up with the Klingons.

 

I imagine that - in peacetime at least - Starfleet favours recruiting personnel that can cover the essential tasks - watchstanding, damage control, administration and security - with limited to no training, but the more technical personnel (even the enlisted like O'Brien and Tarses) probably did get extensive training in their roles but probably drawn more generally than the current US military.

 

Senator Vreenak specifically states the Federation (and perhaps the Klingons by extension) are "facing a manpower shortage", which Sisko doesn't deny. Tied with the recurring importance of casualty lists in the episode, I'd say that manpower was becoming an issue.

"Facing" offers a bit of wiggle room - perhaps losses were just about manageable for the time being, but would soon become a limiting factor on the Federation war effort if the conflict were to continue much longer.

 

Seems more likely to be (mostly) the latter. Though the difficulty of moving large amounts of crew could be worsening the situation vis a vis the former.

 

Yeah both good points. I realised after I wrote it that I didn't even take into account that if the Dominion War had raged for twenty or so years like the Klingon War had then they probably would have been more like "Yesterday's Enterprise" anyway.