Insights Sought on UFP Ground Forces

[Gatekeeper]

Everyone:

There's some civilized discussion going on over at an alternate history board that I belong to regarding the state of the UFP ground forces and support elements. While I do enjoy "Star Trek," I'm in no way best-suited to such a discussion. If it interests you, here's the link to the thread itself:

http://www.alternatehistory.net/discussion/showthread.php?t=88007

The discussion takes off later in the aforementioned thread, which is otherwise mainly about which AH/SF entities would be capable of destroying S.M. Stirling's Draka. The UFP comes into the thread because it's postulated that it might be capable of taking on the Draka "superrace."

Gatekeeper

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

Who are the Draka? And why do so many Trek fans have a fetish about the Federation/Starfleet having an army of some sort?

 

[JoeZhang]

Who are the Draka? And why do so many Trek fans have a fetish about the Federation/Starfleet having an army of some sort?

Because I don't see social scientists being particular useful against crack Klingon ground troops?

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

Who are the Draka? And why do so many Trek fans have a fetish about the Federation/Starfleet having an army of some sort?

Because I don't see social scientists being particular useful against crack Klingon ground troops?

They're sitting at tactical, nuking them from orbit

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Who are the Draka?

Characters created by S.M. Stirling. Linky

Basically the worst parts of the Nazis, Klingons, Nietzscheans, Confederates, etc. all rolled into one. Probably the most brutal slave-owning and expansionist race I've ever heard of. Thoroughly nasty shit.

And why do so many Trek fans have a fetish about the Federation/Starfleet having an army of some sort?

I wouldn't call it a fetish. We all know they *do* have it - we've seen and heard it. It's just fun to debate what specific form it takes.

 

[JNG]

That thread makes me lol a bit. "So they have phaser rifles and no heavy support or combined operations?" Well, Starfleet troops are deployed from *starships*, and it has already been established that they are left on the surface without the ship nearby only in extraordinary circumstances. They can be inserted virtually anywhere by transporter or shuttlecraft and evacuated the same way, and we've seen phasers used from orbit against surface targets. As for other "heavy support" for troops with phaser rifles, a single guy with phaser-3 can level a mountain! I know the fanboys want to see the Starfleet guys all armored up with pouches and stuff like Rob Liefield art, but the man-portable weapons of the era are too powerful to make this of practical value. Shielded transatmospheric shuttlecraft (Starfleet varieties appear typically warp-capable), maybe atmospheric "hoppers" or "skimmers" that serve a similar purpose and are less resource-intensive, and highly mobile men with hand weapons so potent that only those good-sized shielded craft can take those hits: those seem to be the Starfleet recipe for dealing with planetside invasion forces and whatnot, and I guess it is no surprise that control of the space around the planet is what really matters when a typical Federation starship in the Next Generation era has more than enough firepower to wipe out everything on a planet's surface in a reasonably short period of time (General Order 24, was it?).

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

I know the fanboys want to see the Starfleet guys all armored up with pouches and stuff like Rob Liefield art, but the man-portable weapons of the era are too powerful to make this of practical value

Sort of like Starship Troopers, Rico mentions something about the suits making tanks and other military hardware obsolete, simply because the suit is so powerful and versatile.

 

[Nerys Myk]

When you can stun entire city blocks from orbit why waste time using ground troops? Stun them, send down the occupying forces and when the enemy wakes up they're all POWS.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

When you can stun entire city blocks from orbit why waste time using ground troops? Stun them, send down the occupying forces and when the enemy wakes up they're all POWS.

Weapons fire can be shielded against.

 

[Timo]

And the usual problem of all "nonlethal" weapons is that they tend to kill the innocent bystanders and spare the bad guys, because the latter are shielded heavily enough to require ramping up the force till the cute babies start to die.

Still, the underlying argument here is that certain weapons technologies completely transform warfare. They have done it before, and they will probably keep doing it till the unforeseeable future. As there are many truly radical technologies available in the Star Trek future, it makes little sense to assume that today's conventions of warfare would survive till that era.

It is by no means impossible that the right mix of future technologies would result in the rebirth of early 21st century warfare styles, of course. It's equally possible that future technologies resurrect the medieval style of fighting, too. Or the classic Alexander the Great style formation fighting. Or perhaps they make future battlefields look intriguingly similar to chess boards or basketball courts.

However, a television show involving future warfare suffers from the bias of needing to show a style of combat the audience is expected to enjoy. A further bias comes from the need of doing battles affordably, which the double effect of recycling of some 21st century resources and of keeping the fighting relatively small-scale and intimate. This double effect highlights what we see in the news anyway: the guy with the assault rifle, sometimes supported by a few vehicles of identifiable function.

So as long as it is possible for 24th century technology to support 20th-21st century fighting styles, it will... At least in those aspects of warfare that we most often witness during the course of the episodes. Hopefully, some futuristic elements can still be seen in the background.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nerys Myk]

When you can stun entire city blocks from orbit why waste time using ground troops? Stun them, send down the occupying forces and when the enemy wakes up they're all POWS.

Weapons fire can be shielded against.

Why so serious?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

When you can stun entire city blocks from orbit why waste time using ground troops? Stun them, send down the occupying forces and when the enemy wakes up they're all POWS.

Weapons fire can be shielded against.

Why so serious?

Why not? This is a serious discussion.

Besides, I have heard that argument before (that since ships have phasers, ground forces are obsolete) and I don't buy it.

Why do you think Starfleet didn't do that at AR-558, for example?

 

[captcalhoun]

air power alone never won a war, why should a starship in orbit?

look at the 91 Gulf War. a month of aerial bombardment and then they still sent in the armour and the infantry.

look at the Kosovo war in 99. NATO bombed the serbs for ages and then sent in ground forces.

look at Afghanistan. air raids and cruise missiles out the wazoo and now they're still fighting ground battles 6 years later.

 

[PhoenixIreland]

air power alone never won a war, why should a starship in orbit?

look at the 91 Gulf War. a month of aerial bombardment and then they still sent in the armour and the infantry.

look at the Kosovo war in 99. NATO bombed the serbs for ages and then sent in ground forces.

look at Afghanistan. air raids and cruise missiles out the wazoo and now they're still fighting ground battles 6 years later.

Actually they never sent them in or had any intention of doing so as they knew NATO troops dying to protect people their home countries populations never heard of would be riskey and they'd not tolerate high casualties, the troops were put on the border as a bluff, and it worked, the entire war was won from the air.

Is it possable theres a Starfleet version of the MACOS? since theres a fed starfleet taken over from the earth starfleet it seems reasonable?
Espechally with that Col West lad in TUC

 

[captcalhoun]

you obviouosly missed the bit where we nearly had WWIII because the Russians sent troops into Pristina airport and that idiot Wesley Clark wanted the UK forces to stop them. and by stop them i mean actually start shooting at them. thankfully General Sir Mike Jackson had the sense to say "bugger off" to Clark...

 

[flandry84]

So,starfleet doesn't have standing regiments of conventional soldiers?
OK,so you're saying that shipboard platoons of security men/women/beings are as much as starfleet needs .So if starfleet has well,how many ships 200 300? Then maybe it deploys only several thousand "troops" in the field.Add those on ground assignments protecting installations/consular missions etc. ,it still seems a rather undermanned force.

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

I'd say that security personnel are rushed into action as make do infantry, just to fill in the spaces as needed on the ground. If a starship can't beam or stun the enemy out of there, ground personnel aren't going to do much better.

 

[PhoenixIreland]

you obviouosly missed the bit where we nearly had WWIII because the Russians sent troops into Pristina airport and that idiot Wesley Clark wanted the UK forces to stop them. and by stop them i mean actually start shooting at them. thankfully General Sir Mike Jackson had the sense to say "bugger off" to Clark...

No he wanted to park stuff on the runways so they could not land.

but that was not a NATO invasion, at any point.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I'd say that security personnel are rushed into action as make do infantry, just to fill in the spaces as needed on the ground. If a starship can't beam or stun the enemy out of there, ground personnel aren't going to do much better.

I don't see how that's possible. Starship security forces are just that: for use on starships. Trying to use them as full-time ground troops would be like sending a Wal-Mart security guard to Afghanistan or Iraq. It wouldn't work. Specialization is the key.

 

[PhoenixIreland]

No support for the idea of UFP MACOs?