Is Starfleet a military or not?

[Timo]

Besides, the way ENT treated the MACOs in season 4 seemed to suggest that they were intended to be the forerunners of Starfleet Security.

More like Johnny-come-latelies: Archer already had people toting plasma and phaser rifles for a living and keeping the ship internally secure (with about as much success as the MACO later had)...

Since there was a Starfleet, one would assume there to be a Starfleet Security already as well. The tasks would exist with the existence of starships, so why not the organization and the personnel, too?

Except that he wore a Starfleet uniform with a vice admiral's rank pin, which would correspond to a lieutenant general. Memory Alpha speculates that he may have been a Starfleet vice admiral with the billet (job title) of colonel.

Or with the name of Cornell West... In any case, him being associated with ground forces is somewhat ill-founded speculation. He presents a plan of using starships to liberate Kirk and McCoy, after all!

Interestingly, when we do see ground fighters in DS9, their rank titles appear naval. That is, we don't get "sergeants", and when we do get ground-fighting "captains", they are the superiors of "commanders", not the underlings of "majors". With "lieutenants", we of course cannot tell much.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Wormhole]

However, things do get a little different when we look back at Earth Starfleet in the Enterprise era. Although that version of Starfleet did have a military rank structure, Enterprise was initially not a well-armed ship and had no defensive or security purpose to its initially defined mission. More importantly, it was established that, at the time, there was a distinct military organization, the MACOs (basically space Marines), that had a contingent assigned aboard ship when it was sent on a clearly defined military mission in the third season. Later, in season 4, Captain Hernandez expressed unease at the suggestion of having "military" personnel such as MACOs as part of her crew.

I was under the impression when Enterprise was first being developed the intent was to have Starfleet be "more militaristic" than the other shows. It was one of the few times they actually laid out an enlisted rank structure with rank pins for the enlisted ranks (which eventually got abandoned anyway) and some of the early character outlines describe Malcolm Reed as a Starfleet Marine. They didn't start trotting out the "Starfleet isn't military" line until the Xindi storyline, when they needed to differentiate Starfleet from the MACOs.

In my Rise of the Federation novels, I've assumed that the MACOs became Starfleet Security once the Federation was founded and the services integrated.

So you don't believe in a Starfleet Marine Corps, then?

As for SF Security: I always thought they were just in charge of security on board a ship. They are all the redshirts, as it were. And we all know what always happens to redshirts; somehow I doubt a professional fighting force like the MACOs would be that sloppy.

I mean, I wouldn't think that Starfleet would just pick redshirts, or any other starship crew, and send them to the front lines as ground troops. You can't be both. There must always be specialization. Starfleet has to has some branch of itself which is dedicated solely to ground combat; taking starship crew and turning them into infantry on a whim, would not seem to make a ton of sense. IMHO.

And yet, the US Marines used to take care of security for the US Navy. In fact, while running around the aircraft carrier Enterprise in Trek IV Chekov is chased by Marines, who were played by actual US Marines serving aboard USS Ranger at the time. I am aware Marines no longer provide security aboard Navy ships, and while I don't quite know the reason behind it, I don't think it's because someone said "ground force or security work, one or the other" and they chose to be a ground force.

Since there was a Starfleet, one would assume there to be a Starfleet Security already as well. The tasks would exist with the existence of starships, so why not the organization and the personnel, too?

Indeed, there was actually an officer in season four who was from Starfleet Security, Commander Collins in Affliction.

 

[Lance]

It's a "Flip Flop Of God", as TVTropes would have it. Gene used to say that he only used military trappings -- ranks, naval terminology, etc -- for 'atmosphere' purposes; and that his intention was that Starfleet would be less about military might and more about scientists and explorers. But this was later on, around the time he was prepping ST:Phase II in the late 1970s, when his views of life (and how that related to what he'd done on The Original Series) had developed since the sixties. On some level, the TOS tv series tended to go just that one bit further into the realms of presenting it as more of a military, albeit one that espoused noble ideals. Phase II, and then TMP after it, seen Gene trying to reformat the series format into something that downplayed the military aspects. It didn't really take, and when power of the following movies was taken from him, those military aspects were placed front and centre again for TWOK.

For what it's worth, the The Next Generation series bible, written in 1986/87, goes out of it's way to try and distance itself from what Gene had by then decided was an uncomfortable military obsession in the TOS movies. One section specifically states that TNG will be less militarized than the original show, "and very much less militarized than the movies" (or words to that effect). Whether one still sees it as a military of sorts is down to personal opinion, but Gene didn't like the whole aspect of harsh military life. He liked the idea of borrowing the naval traditions for 'flavour', without it simply being a military in space.

But then, bear in mind that scientists and explorers were part and parcel of the great militaries of the 17th and 18th centuries. So it isn't like there wouldn't be some precedent for an emphasis on exploration within the military that is Starfleet, not everything has to be about combat operations.

Think of Starfleet not as being analogous to the modern military, which by its very definition is more of an offensive/defensive force than 'explorers' per se; but think instead of Starfleet being more like a romanticized version the the military powers of the old world: they have battles, they have conflicts, but they also have these ships making great strides in gaining knowledge and charting unknown waters. That's what Starfleet essentially is: its an "old style" military. In space.

 

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ Probably why Trek always had the "Horatio Hornblower in Space" moniker. Makes a lot of sense.

 

[Lance]

^^^ Probably why Trek always had the "Horatio Hornblower in Space" moniker. Makes a lot of sense.

Exactly. Bear in mind that when most people ask "Is Starfleet a military?", they're mistakenly looking at it from within the prisim of today's navy, which bears some traditions of time's past but which ultimately operates in a very different way.

In the sixteeth, seventeeth and eighteenth centuries, so much of the world was still being explored and charted. What we would now call scientists (people like Botanists) were more than just token members of a ship's compliment, they were a part of her status: yes, these navies had a primary mission of declaring and supporting the territorial initiatives of the governments which sent them, but they also had a secondary mission which was basically to fill in all those areas on a map that were empty. Of course, *today's* military doesn't have that. It isn't concerned with that, because we already know it all. But in the old days, discovering new land masses and cataloguing the bizarre and unusual plant and animal life there was very much a part and parcel of the service. It didn't make them any less "military", it just meant they had a much broader mission statement than today's military.

And that's the military that, I believe, Starfleet is. It bears little core resemblence to today's military, but it's fundamentally closer to the days of Columbus or Cook, when military powers sought to do more than simply change the boundries on a map: they sought to learn more about the world, a vast, marvelous world of which we still knew surprisingly little.

So yes, Starfleet *is* a military. But that doesn't mean they're a military in the 20th/21st century sense of the term. They're explorers as well as soldiers.

 

[Christopher]

They didn't start trotting out the "Starfleet isn't military" line until the Xindi storyline, when they needed to differentiate Starfleet from the MACOs.

Not in as many words, perhaps, but season 1 made it quite clear that the crew didn't expect to be going into combat on a regular basis, and that the ship was launched without heavy armaments in place. And there was rarely any sense of strong military discipline; Archer called his officers by their first names, and Reed was the only one who really embraced a military way of thinking and acting.

In the sixteeth, seventeeth and eighteenth centuries, so much of the world was still being explored and charted. What we would now call scientists (people like Botanists) were more than just token members of a ship's compliment, they were a part of her status: yes, these navies had a primary mission of declaring and supporting the territorial initiatives of the governments which sent them, but they also had a secondary mission which was basically to fill in all those areas on a map that were empty. Of course, *today's* military doesn't have that. It isn't concerned with that, because we already know it all. But in the old days, discovering new land masses and cataloguing the bizarre and unusual plant and animal life there was very much a part and parcel of the service. It didn't make them any less "military", it just meant they had a much broader mission statement than today's military.

And that's the military that, I believe, Starfleet is. It bears little core resemblence to today's military, but it's fundamentally closer to the days of Columbus or Cook, when military powers sought to do more than simply change the boundries on a map: they sought to learn more about the world, a vast, marvelous world of which we still knew surprisingly little.

So yes, Starfleet *is* a military. But that doesn't mean they're a military in the 20th/21st century sense of the term. They're explorers as well as soldiers.

Yes. Exactly. The Federation is like 18th- and 19th-century England, a civilization in which discovery and science are embraced with a passion and explorers are national heroes.

(Columbus is a bad example, though; his interests were strictly commercial, and he was a terrible explorer because he sailed on a false assumption, survived only by stumbling onto a land mass he didn't expect to find, and never even correctly identified what it was he'd discovered -- yet nonetheless happily enslaved and murdered the people he found there.)

 

[T'Girl]

Except that he wore a Starfleet uniform

Unless that was a generic service uniform wore by both Starfleet and whatever service West was in.

The two services use different rank insignia, West wasn't a Vice Admiral anymore that Captain Kirk was a Lt. Commander based on current naval sleeve braid.

 

[Christopher]

Unless that was a generic service uniform wore by both Starfleet and whatever service West was in.

Is there any real-world precedent for different services using the same uniform? Besides, West's uniform bore the Starfleet arrowhead insignia that we know (from VGR's "Friendship One" and ENT) was originally the emblem of the United Earth Space Probe Agency.

There's also the fact that West's "Operation Retrieve" graphics were all headed "Starfleet Command."

In sum, everything about West says "Starfleet" except for his title of colonel. That title is the exception to the rule; it doesn't make sense to go by it alone and ignore all the other evidence. It stands to reason that he was a Starfleet officer who simply held the title of "colonel" for some reason, perhaps as a billet as Memory Alpha suggested.

 

[137th Gebirg]

The problem with how rank devices are used in Starfleet (and in most science fiction in general - both incarnations of Battlestar Galactica were particularly guilty of this, as well as Star Wars), is that their usages are unclear. The entire real-world point to rank devices is to clearly and quickly understand from a distance to whom you should salute, or from whom you should expect one. To give a mere Colonel (the approximate equivalent of a naval Captain in most western militaries, so far as I am aware) a rank device normally used by a Vice Admiral is simply sloppy costuming work. Such a thing would likely never have happened in the "real world". Colonel West was a pure aberration on so many different levels, it's really logically impossible to derive the how's and why's of his existence.

 

[J.T.B.]

There's no canonical evidence of one. It's entirely fan conjecture. Besides, the way ENT treated the MACOs in season 4 seemed to suggest that they were intended to be the forerunners of Starfleet Security.

Makes sense to me. The US Air Force also evolved their "Military Police" to "Air Police" to "Security Police" to "Security Forces" with serious ground-fighting capabilities, armored vehicles and so on. I can definitely see Starfleet security filling a similar role defending ground bases. Whether this means Starfleet security would form divisions (or larger) for offensive ground warfare is another question, and depends on knowing more about the Federation's warfighting doctrines than we really can. It may be that the policy is for Starfleet to control the space around a planet, applying pin-point phaser fire from orbit and transporting small forces where needed, avoiding major battles on the ground.

And yet, the US Marines used to take care of security for the US Navy. In fact, while running around the aircraft carrier Enterprise in Trek IV Chekov is chased by Marines, who were played by actual US Marines serving aboard USS Ranger at the time. I am aware Marines no longer provide security aboard Navy ships, and while I don't quite know the reason behind it, I don't think it's because someone said "ground force or security work, one or the other" and they chose to be a ground force.

Well, that's kind of what it was. The post-Cold War downsizing of the armed forces persuaded the USMC that those marines could be used better elsewhere. What is interesting is that since 9-11, the USN has expanded its own security forces (master-at-arms ratings) to something similar to what those marines used to do.

But it's true, for most of its 220 years the USMC was a small force, providing security and ceremonial functions at sea and ashore and landing forces for naval vessels. The Corps being a sort of specialized, smaller parallel army with its own artillery, air, combat support and so on is a WW2 and post-war thing.

 

[Anwar]

Back in TOS, the Federation was NOT a multi-species Cooperative. They were a Human Empire that simply called itself a Federation and inducted other aliens in as weak Partners instead of outright conquering them the way the Klingons and Romulans would.

TOS Starfleet was indeed, just your usual run-of-the-mill Space Navy.

Around TNG they changed things by making the Federation a real Multi-Species Cooperative instead of a Human Empire and that Starfleet could be more than just the usual run-of-the-mill Space Military.

Unfortunately, the writers underestimated how obsessed viewers were with the idea of a Great Human Empire that was 100% Space America and how enchanted they were with Starfleet as the typical Space Navy.

Which leads us to debates like this today.

 

[137th Gebirg]

The TOS crew was hardly "100% Space America". Kirk and McCoy were the only senior members from the former confines of the United States; Iowa and Georgia, respectively. Spock was from Vulcan, Sulu was from Japan, Chekov from Russia, Scotty from Scotland and Uhura from the United Sates of Africa. It was definitely a human-centric crew; I would agree with that, yes, probably still lingering from the days of Archer's era, where the Enterprise and others like her were called "Earth ships" (a title that the TOS Enterprise was also referred to by Klingons, Romulans, etc., IIRC). And America's navy is largely based on the English model navy, as are most western powers, but I wouldn't call it "100% Space England" either.

 

[T'Girl]

Sulu was from American, current boundaries.

 

[Anwar]

The TOS crew was hardly "100% Space America". Kirk and McCoy were the only senior members from the former confines of the United States; Iowa and Georgia, respectively. Spock was from Vulcan, Sulu was from Japan, Chekov from Russia, Scotty from Scotland and Uhura from the United Sates of Africa.

Which implied that all of Earth was more or less dominated by 1960s American culture, which is why they were all fine with each other but racist to Spock.

 

[wulfio]

What's the connection to Oliver North?

And how does west represent the western world?

To the first, I would say Colonel Compass Direction is your answer.

To the second, when constructing an East-West metaphor, unless you're incompetent, you don't introduce a character named West if you aren't intending to make an editorial comment about the West of some kind.

Beyond the superficial name selection, West being up to subterfuge parallels North having been up to subterfuge.

Good show, Hypaspist, for picking up on this and pointing it out.

I see, that's interesting, I had to read up on Oliver.

I think the name is pretty coincidental though. Thinking back on tv shows/movies I've watched in my time, I feel like the name <insert rank> west is extremely common. Authoritative military figures tend to have monosyllabic names.

I'd have to disagree with your 2nd point. I honestly don't think a paid writer would be so obvious and elementary as to make a commentary with a characters name unless it was satirical. It'd be like hey, this is General Murica, he ordered an invasion of a primitive race for resources! I can see that happening in a Mel Brooks movie, but not in a sci-fi/drama.

If they're going to make a commentary on the west, or culture in general it's going to be more elaborate than that. Like how they represented pillaging the earth will result in our destruction(TVH). They didn't just bring in a guy named Mr. Poacher, and have him play the antagonist.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

There's no canonical evidence of one. It's entirely fan conjecture. Besides, the way ENT treated the MACOs in season 4 seemed to suggest that they were intended to be the forerunners of Starfleet Security.

Makes sense to me. The US Air Force also evolved their "Military Police" to "Air Police" to "Security Police" to "Security Forces" with serious ground-fighting capabilities, armored vehicles and so on. I can definitely see Starfleet security filling a similar role defending ground bases. Whether this means Starfleet security would form divisions (or larger) for offensive ground warfare is another question, and depends on knowing more about the Federation's warfighting doctrines than we really can. It may be that the policy is for Starfleet to control the space around a planet, applying pin-point phaser fire from orbit and transporting small forces where needed, avoiding major battles on the ground.

Except for Starfleet already having their own security forces in Enterprise.

So if anyone would likely be the forerunners of Starfleet Security it would be the already existing Security division of the United Earth Starfleet.

 

[Timo]

Authoritative military figures tend to have monosyllabic names.

This. Plus a few other aspects of how a name has an impact... "Colonel North" and "Colonel West" both sound cool; "Colonel East" would be a bit iffy, though, as "East" is a less commonly heard surname overall and especially in Hollywood. It's not just the impression of orientality, it's the long vowel at the start, too. And "Colonel South" sounds like the brand name of some barely nutritional product, for obvious reasons.

DS9 writers avoided promoting their character to "Colonel Kira" for the longest time for exactly this sort of seemingly frivolous reason...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[137th Gebirg]

Sulu was from American, current boundaries.

Oh, that's right! San Francisco ("I grew up here"). My mistake. Then again, I was born in New York but grew up in Virginia, so that doesn't quite necessarily mean place of origin. But fair enough, either way - he was clearly more American than not, yes.

The TOS crew was hardly "100% Space America". Kirk and McCoy were the only senior members from the former confines of the United States; Iowa and Georgia, respectively. Spock was from Vulcan, Sulu was from Japan, Chekov from Russia, Scotty from Scotland and Uhura from the United Sates of Africa.

Which implied that all of Earth was more or less dominated by 1960s American culture, which is why they were all fine with each other but racist to Spock.

Where are you drawing these conclusions from? What racism? The only person that was even remotely racist towards Spock on the entire ship that I can recall was Styles, but only after everyone was shocked into suddenly realizing that Romulans were an offshoot of Vulcans in "Balance of Terror". And the words said between them during "Day of the Dove" doesn't count, as they were all under the influence of the negative emotional energy entity. If you're talking about McCoy's sniping, that was clearly done from years of friendship, something that many of us have experienced over time (myself included) when working in an environment with people from other creeds who are comfortable enough with each other enough to poke occasional jibes of an ethnic variety and adult/professional enough not to take offense. Apart from that, I don't recall any actively negative racial issues on board, explicit or implicit. In fact, the show went out of its way to demonstrate that to be the case.

 

[MacLeod]

The problem with how rank devices are used in Starfleet (and in most science fiction in general - both incarnations of Battlestar Galactica were particularly guilty of this, as well as Star Wars), is that their usages are unclear. The entire real-world point to rank devices is to clearly and quickly understand from a distance to whom you should salute, or from whom you should expect one. To give a mere Colonel (the approximate equivalent of a naval Captain in most western militaries, so far as I am aware) a rank device normally used by a Vice Admiral is simply sloppy costuming work. Such a thing would likely never have happened in the "real world". Colonel West was a pure aberration on so many different levels, it's really logically impossible to derive the how's and why's of his existence.

Or it could be that the title 'Colonel' was largely honourific a throw back to the MACO's and it was simply a title that could be used by a person in a specific position i.e Head of secuirty, and West was one of the people who liked to use it.

 

[137th Gebirg]

I suppose that's possible. Although, if he was of a grade equal to that of Vice Admiral, being called Colonel would be a considerable bit of a demotion, even for an unofficial title. Were I him, I wouldn't consider it an honor to be called such a thing in that specific situation. "Commandant" might have probably been a better choice of title in that regard. Again, there isn't enough on-screen evidence to ascertain the how's and why's either way on that one.