But the MDP ships/missiles only took action when their target was within visual range of Mars - indicating that they would only be good for two applications:
a) stopping an Earth-bound enemy who thinks two-dimensionally and thus feels compelled to fly past Mars
b) stopping an enemy whose target is Mars
Personally, I think that MDP is there solely to defend Mars, and plays no role in defending Earth. Each of the inhabited or industrially significant planets in the Sol system would have their own Defense Perimeter - we heard the one at Jupiter tackle the Borg and fail, we saw some of the Mars action, and we missed the Saturn action but did see the prelude or aftermath where the Cube flew past that planet.
Also, I like to think that these clearly nacelle-equipped ships/missiles are older corvettes or similar small starships that have been converted into flying bombs after retirement. The overall design isn't all that different from the TOS-R Aurora, so I could easily see these ships act as fully crewed small patrol vessels in the 2240s-60s Starfleet - perhaps with proper ramscoops on the nacelle forward ends, and a bridge about where the conning tower of a submarine would go. Those features would be removed in the conversion to kamikaze drone, and antimatter charges installed, perhaps where the silos of the submarine hull are.
(Incidentally, was the central hull of the ship/missile created out of a "stock" Typhoon class submarine kit, or a dedicated Red October kit? Does the latter even exist? If it does, and was used, then the next question is, does this model follow Tom Clancy's lead in featuring an increased number of missile silos, 26 against the 20 of a standard Typhoon? Anybody?)
Timo Saloniemi
I'm pretty sure I had a
Red October as a kid. I don't
think it was just a Typhoon-class.
I'd like to add that Mars, with the Utopia Planitia Yards, is as far as we know a much more valuable military target than Earth. It would make sense to protect it as much or more than Earth.
My own conception is that Earth must have planetary shields. If they did not, North America would be a smoking wreck. I don't care what Trek writers think antimatter can't do.
Still, like ship-based shields, the planet-based ones did not entirely prevent damage from the Breen attack, but reduced the damage to manageable levels.
Another possibility is that the Breen brought down the major planetary shields and only the independent units, such as protecting major metropolitan areas and Starfleet Command and the president's office, continued operating. In this case, the damage to San Francisco is indirect, the result of one or more nearby matter-antimatter detonations. British Columbia no longer exists. That's okay, from all appearances, the
eastern seaboard has been going back to nature since World War III (NYC's never been mentioned in Trek, nor has Washington), and this would make things nice and symmetrical.
I'd submit that torpedo launchers are probably pretty common on Earth, and even more common in Earth orbit, but actual ground-based phasers are verboten, for the simple reason that a phaser blast of sufficient power to reach and harm a starship would be similar to detonating a nuclear weapon.
Finally, to address the issue of cloaked torpedoes (essentially ICBMs for the Star Trek age)... for sound dramatic purposes, they surely didn't want to go down that road. I suppose the answer lies in the fact that any spaceborne vehicle requires significant fuel. A
cloaked torpedo even moreso. Perhaps it requires so much fuel that the vehicle might as well be a fully-manned and fully-operational starship.
