Number of Starfleet vessels?

[darkwing_duck1]

Ron Moore once said he figured there were between five and eight thousand ships in the Starfleet, and while he was not usually the go-to guy for this sort of thing (...[TECH]), this feels right to me.

This number would not include certain kinds of ships (science ships, freighters, etc.) that might receive numbers in the registry scheme but are not Starfleet ships of the line. That leaves us plenty of wiggle room.

I think the number should be kept relatively low, because the ships seem to operate independently so often and I really can believe Starfleet is spread somewhat thin sooner than I can believe the opposite, because it seems to have taken some significant time to assemble fleets, and because the loss of 40 at Wolf 359 was evidently significant. I think maybe seven or eight thousand ships before the Dominion War and perhaps somewhat fewer afterward feels right.

Picard once said the Federation was spread out "over a thousand light years".

He said "eight thousand light years," and since this really gets hard to think about, that's got to be like two "pseudopods" or separated "enclaves" of Federated worlds that are really far away from one another. The Federation "inner perimeter" seems to be only a couple of hundred light years across.

Either way, that's a heck of a lot of cubic light years of volume to cover. At Warp 5 it takes a ship a nominal month to cover 20 ly (barring a fortutous "warp highway").

One firm datapoint we have is that at the height of the war, the dominion was fielding over 20,000 ships. The Klingons at that point had an effective fighting force of ~1500 ships. Make of that what you will...

 

[JNG]

One firm datapoint we have is that at the height of the war, the dominion was fielding over 20,000 ships. The Klingons at that point had an effective fighting force of ~1500 ships. Make of that what you will...

Yowza, did they say that directly? What episode was that in? Doesn't surprise me that they might have had so many overall, but I guess we should figure they didn't get to bring but a small number of them across from Gamma Quadrant.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

One firm datapoint we have is that at the height of the war, the dominion was fielding over 20,000 ships. The Klingons at that point had an effective fighting force of ~1500 ships. Make of that what you will...

Yowza, did they say that directly? What episode was that in? Doesn't surprise me that they might have had so many overall, but I guess we should figure they didn't get to bring but a small number of them across from Gamma Quadrant.

"Tacking into the Wind", if I recall correctly. The Klingons had discovered that ONE of their ships was immune to the Breen energy dampening weapon because of an adjustment to it's warp reactor. They were refitting their ships accordingly and had promised 1500 ships within a short time. Sisko said "That still means you'll be outnumbered 20 to 1!"

Actually, that would make it 30,000 Dominion ships (Jem Hadar, Breen, and Cardassian combined).

 

[JNG]

Ah, found it, in "When it Rains..."

MARTOK
By tomorrow, we'll have eleven
hundred Klingon vessels ready for
deployment.

ROMULAN
(dismissive)
With the Breen, the Cardassians
and the Jem'Hadar you're still
outnumbered twenty-to-one.

MARTOK
(sharp)
I'm aware of that, general.

That's as scripted; I don't have the finished episode handy.

Counting the Breen and Cardassians gives us some wiggle room, but still, yowza. It is amazing to me that with so many ships available, the Dominion still planned to withdraw for a while. Then again, I imagine any small area could be made nigh-impregnable with so many ships...and I guess I imagine wrongly, since this didn't exactly happen, but the Cardassian betrayal must have really cost 'em.

This reference would be pretty consistent with the Federation numbers I was posting about previously, or at least not inconsistent in any obvious way, so maybe the writers did actually take a minute to talk about this.

 

[Timo]

I had to check, as I always get these final episodes confused: this bit seems to be in "When it Rains...", the preceding episode. TrekCore has an earlier version of the script, making reference to 1,100 Klingon ships, but I remember the 1,500 figure from the aired version, too.

There are a couple of caveats in there that we might acknowledge:

1) The 20:1 ratio was probably an exaggeration, the truth rather being something like 17:1 or even lower. The exclamation was politically motivated, after all - the Romulan general (I think it was him, rather than Sisko, although the TrekCore script can't be really trusted) would have wanted to stop the Klingons from attacking.

2) The ratio would also deal with ship numbers, not ship strength - and the latter might favor the Klingons, whose small ships seem a bit more powerful than the Jem'Hadar or Breen small ships, and who have a higher percentage of large ships than the Jem'Hadar do.

3) Finally, the exclamation could refer to the local tactical reality, where Klingons would initially be dispersed but the Dominion side would be concentrated - so the ratio wouldn't mean 30,000 ships against 1,500, but more like 1,000 ships against 50 per each relevant battlefield.

Edit: Beat me to it! As for the seeming weakness of the Dominion, point 2, about them having small ships, would probably work in their disfavor. OTOH, the fact that they had that many ships at this stage of the war, when they had apparently had far fewer in the early stages of war (or they would have won at that time already!), would speak in favor of retreating and using this impressive escalation potential for creating an even more crushing superiority.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mysterion]

Starfleet would IMHO strive to keep at least 80% of its ships active at all times, there being no major difference between wartime and peacetime footing. There would also be very little difference between wartime and peacetime shipbuilding, as the dockyards would always be stretched to their maximum in trying to provide sufficient ships for maintaining the peacetime Federation.

Hmmmm....maybe so. Taking into account ships involved in training, routine refitting/overhaul/maintenance, etc. I suupose Starfleet could set-up some sort of rotation so that at any one time you've got at least two-thirds of the fleet "on station" doing it's mission-oriented activities (i.e patrol, exploration, hauling the mail/dignataries, whatever) and the other third is in-port for crew replacement, warp-core maintenance, crew-rest/leave, or taking part in training exercises.

I've written some stuff for my own amusement about the perimeter action ships and how their units might be organized. My thoughts in that area are that being so far out from the bulk of the UFP and all, there would be dedicated tender/suuply ships that run a circuit of the various PA bases/ships doing the stellar equivilent of underway replenishment as the present-day carriers do. This owuld allow the PA's to spend more time on-station along the border and other critical areas. I also imagine the Perimeter Action Groups described in Ships of the Star Fleet Volume 2 being divided into three squadrons giving commanders the flexibility to rotate and individual squadron back to a base or outpost for various reasons or needs, while leaving the other two squadrons available to patrol the border trace (or escort convoys, or whatever that PAG does for a living).

Now you could expand this throughout the rest of the fleet but I don't think it'd be really necessary in most of the fleet's operations (look how often the 1701-D is able to be popping into a starbase for little or no reason), and it'd add tremendously to the personnel and vessel needs of the fleet.

Anyone here with real-world naval experience got a take on this?

 

[Vance]

Either way, that's a heck of a lot of cubic light years of volume to cover. At Warp 5 it takes a ship a nominal month to cover 20 ly (barring a fortutous "warp highway").

But it's also largely a lot of empty space to cover, and you won't really need standing fleets to cover the points between planets/bases/colonies any more than the US Navy needs a physical ship to cover every square inch of the Earth's oceans.

You would just need them in 'areas of reaction', when a ship could reasonably respond to any given point in a reasonable amount of time. For that, you really need to know how many points there are to work from, such as the number of member worlds the fleet has to protect, and so on.

 

[Mysterion]

Either way, that's a heck of a lot of cubic light years of volume to cover. At Warp 5 it takes a ship a nominal month to cover 20 ly (barring a fortutous "warp highway").

But it's also largely a lot of empty space to cover, and you won't really need standing fleets to cover the points between planets/bases/colonies any more than the US Navy needs a physical ship to cover every square inch of the Earth's oceans.

You would just need them in 'areas of reaction', when a ship could reasonably respond to any given point in a reasonable amount of time. For that, you really need to know how many points there are to work from, such as the number of member worlds the fleet has to protect, and so on.

Makes sense. Of course then the problem is to decide what strategic points to spread your finite resources (ships, people) to. Or where to put your starbases which do not necessarily need to be on or near a planet or star system.

 

[Tigger]

The Seventh Fleet went into Tyra with 112 ships, though whether this was the entire fleet or a few task forces was never made clear.

 

[Praetor]

I had to check, as I always get these final episodes confused: this bit seems to be in "When it Rains...", the preceding episode. TrekCore has an earlier version of the script, making reference to 1,100 Klingon ships, but I remember the 1,500 figure from the aired version, too.

There are a couple of caveats in there that we might acknowledge:

1) The 20:1 ratio was probably an exaggeration, the truth rather being something like 17:1 or even lower. The exclamation was politically motivated, after all - the Romulan general (I think it was him, rather than Sisko, although the TrekCore script can't be really trusted) would have wanted to stop the Klingons from attacking.

2) The ratio would also deal with ship numbers, not ship strength - and the latter might favor the Klingons, whose small ships seem a bit more powerful than the Jem'Hadar or Breen small ships, and who have a higher percentage of large ships than the Jem'Hadar do.

3) Finally, the exclamation could refer to the local tactical reality, where Klingons would initially be dispersed but the Dominion side would be concentrated - so the ratio wouldn't mean 30,000 ships against 1,500, but more like 1,000 ships against 50 per each relevant battlefield.

Edit: Beat me to it! As for the seeming weakness of the Dominion, point 2, about them having small ships, would probably work in their disfavor. OTOH, the fact that they had that many ships at this stage of the war, when they had apparently had far fewer in the early stages of war (or they would have won at that time already!), would speak in favor of retreating and using this impressive escalation potential for creating an even more crushing superiority.

Timo Saloniemi

This may just be me, but I always assumed that the 1,100/1,500 ships referred only to the ships that they would have recalibrated successfully by that time, and that the Klingons would have the rest of their ships recalibrated later. I guess either way that could still mean a Dominion fleet of up to 30,000 - which could easily be up to a third or even a half Jem'hadar bugs and Hideki class Cardassian scoutships, IMHO.

Personally, I think Starfleet, at the peak of the war, had at or below than 10,000 commissioned ships in operation, including ships pulled from reserve fleets and surplus depots, and new ships both rush-launched and cobbled together from 'leftovers.' I would think up to 1500 of these could be scoutships and non-combat worthy antiquated supply ships, such as the U.S.S. Lantree as seen in TNG. I imagine before the war Starfleet strength was probably around 6000-7000 and afterward remaining in the 8000s until tapering back down to pre-war levels by the time of Nemesis. I think the 'only ship in the sector' cliche can be easily explained by the 'spidery' Federation territory depicted in, among other publications, the Star Trek Star Charts book from a few years back, and allows higher numbers than you might think. I really wouldn't support their having EVER been more than about 10,000 operating at once (anything with an NCC), and that's only during the Dominion War.

 

[Saturn0660]

I guess the real question is how many ocean going Military ships are there now
I guess to me that would give an idea as to how many ships for the whole Fed...

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

10,000 is accurate...for the number of shuttles Voyager lost.

Starfleet has a high turnover rate, ships get lost in anomalies, time warps, etc. all the time. Some even implode due to the neligence of their captains.

The Obereth and Miranda classes are just death traps.

 

[Saturn0660]

10,000 is accurate...for the number of shuttles Voyager lost.

Starfleet has a high turnover rate, ships get lost in anomalies, time warps, etc. all the time. Some even implode due to the neligence of their captains.

The Obereth and Miranda classes are just death traps.

They seem to be... Course Galaxy class has a warp-core cooling system made of hair thin glass it seems.. Always of the fritz..

 

[Timo]

This may just be me, but I always assumed that the 1,100/1,500 ships referred only to the ships that they would have recalibrated successfully by that time, and that the Klingons would have the rest of their ships recalibrated later.

That's my take on it as well - or then the 1,500 ships would be those that can be recalibrated and are in the right theater to carry on the battle. Either case would mean a Klingon fleet larger than 1,500, but would not necessitate a Dominion force larger than 30,000 - a figure I'd like to keep as small as possible.

In any case, there are interlocked issues here. Klingon strength cannot be too small or too large in relation to Starfleet strength, or else the politics of the TNG era aren't plausible. But the sum total of Klingon and Federation strengths has to be sufficient for countermanding the implied 30,000 Dominion vessels at least to some degree of plausibility, or the politics of the DS9 era would play differently. Romulans may factor in here, but probably their numbers aren't that decisive - it's probably rather the size and quality of their capital/showpiece ships, but more importantly their decisive astrographic position, and their position as the small extra weight that tilts the balance.

I guess the real question is how many ocean going Military ships are there now. I guess to me that would give an idea as to how many ships for the whole Fed...

OTOH, today's warships have no secondary roles, so they always stand at military readiness and thus massively affect the deployment numbers. OTTH, today's warships are "quayside queens", always under maintenance, repair, overhaul, whereas Starfleet vessels appear to stay out there for a great percentage of a multi-year mission at a stretch and only require minimal maintenance.

Timo Saloniemi