The text below is from an email exchange I was having with a friend. I open it up to thoughts here:
I long believed — during the run of DS9 — that Starfleet probably totalled around 12,000 or so capital ships (loosely defined as any vessel capable of conducting the full spectrum of Starfleet operations indepedent from any other vessel for ongoing support). I wasn't fanatically wedded to that number, mind you. I can believe 10,000. Or 8,000. Anywhere in between. I don't remember exactly why I settled on 12,000 — it had something to do with the writers mentioning at some point that the Dominion had 30,000 ships, and figuring that even when you discount a lot of that due to the Jem'Hadar fielding a large number of small ships, the UFP still needed to be relatively competitive.
But the exact number doesn't matter, per se. The important thing is the perceived expansion in the fleet from TNG to DS9. Whatever the total number is, it suddenly seemed to get a whole lot bigger.
Possible explanations:
1. Fleet was always large, but dispersed out of the core of the Federation. This means a lot of ships on long-range exploration missions, and a lot of ships "forward deployed" to border areas, while the core of the UFP, believed secure, is lightly defended. This can be logically justified with many canon references, but is somewhat unattractive simply because it presumes that Starfleet is almost criminally negligent in leaving the core exposed despite plenty of hints that that is dumb. AKA V’Ger, Whale Probe, Borg, apparent relative proximity to Neutral Zone, etc.
1b. If this is the case, the Federation might have a Fleet specifically assigned to the defence of the core (to take dialogue from the most recent Trek movie, call this the Primary Fleet). Wolf 359 might have seen the Primary Fleet, what Shelby simply referred to as "the Fleet", gutted, while most of Starfleet remained intact, but too far away to intervene.
2. Massive expansion of the fleet after Wolf 359. This is certainly plausible, and would explain the sudden appearance of so many new classes of ship, a sharp break from the apparent Starfleet policy of relying on older, proven designs. It's not hard to fathom that an organization the size of the UFP could go on such a building binge. But it would put a huge strain on logistical and human(oid) resources. Just because you can crank about 200 new starships a month for an entire decade doesn't mean you can find captains for them.
2b. I would imagine that with some few exceptions, this expansion would have prioritized smaller, heavily armed ships over large multi-purpose ones. Intrepids and Akiras seem to pack a lot of punch, but neither seems to come close to the overall mass of a Nebula-class. I’d imagine Starfleet took what existing Nebula and Galaxy-class ships it had, punched up their firepower until they were total ass-kickers, and then made sure that they had lots of comparatively little ships that could escort them and give them cover. (Akiras, though, might be as powerful or even more powerful than Nebulas, but I bet an upgraded Nebula is in the ballpark of any frontline Federation ship, other than the Sovereign, which really do seem to be the ultimate Federation battle vessel, you know, when they're not boldly going).
3. Some expansion of the Fleet, combined with the re-activation of a large number of mothballed Miranda and Excelsior-class ships.
4. General tactical upgrades to the entire fleet. My sense with the Galaxy-class (and comparable ships of that era) is that they were not designed to be as powerful as the Federation could build 'em, but as powerful as the Federation felt they'd likely need. Since they were designed as explorers, I'm sure that their tactical systems were settled upon something like this: "OK, Intelligence estimates that the best Klingon warship can do X, and the best Romulan ship, Y. So let's round that up 20% and design a ship that can reasonably best that ship in combat." Only later on, after the Borg and the Dominion first contacts, did Starfleet go back to the drawing board and say, "OK, forget that. How much firepower can these ships actually hold, and how long to refit all of them to be that powerful?" So you'd have every class of ship in the fleet get a Tactical Capabilities Review. All new ships would be built to that standard. All existing ships would be refitted to achieve it.
5. Planetary defence fleets nominally under the control of member planet governments could be federalized and added to the Starfleet order-of-battle in times of war or crisis. There’s a certain appeal to this (especially if we assume that most UFP local defence organizations typically purchase designs already in service with Starfleet). If that’s the case, maybe the sudden surge in the number of older ships can be explained by the fact that most local UFP defence organizations use Excelsior and Miranda class ships as the backbone of their militias. But overall I don’t like this point, since there is absolutely nothing in canon that would even hint at it. At all. Even though it’s plausible.
Personally, I think the big change was related to #4, and is like what Q said when he flung the Enterprise into the path of the first Borg cube. The Federation WAS complacent. For 200 or so years, it had measured itself against the Romulans and the Klingons ... and had been growing in power in relative terms the entire time. After the Praxis explosion, the UFP was left with a fleet that was more than sufficient to defeat the Romulans and the hobbled Klingons. Over the course of the 24th Century, the Klingons became outright allies, further isolating the Romulans, and the only real threats to the Federation aren’t fundamental threats to its existence — Cardassians, Tholians, Tamarians and Tzenkethi are all dangerous to the colonies and starship crews in the contested sectors, but not to the existence of the Federation. When the Borg comes along and blows right through the Federation to Earth in a couple of weeks, and later on when the Dominion begins rolling through UFP territory (far enough through to threaten the Romulans and Klingons directly), for the first time in a LONG time, the Federation faces an existential threat to its survival. Not this or that border colony, but the actual survival of the Federation as a geopolitical entity.
After that realization sinks in, I actually imagine that every option discussed above is used in some measure. I personally favour 1 and 4 the most, but agree that 2 and 3 would also have played a part. I think the Federation strategy was essentially this: “OK, the first thing we do is get the fleet back home and concentrate it in actual combat units. Then we increase the firepower on every one of them — no more bullshit about keeping them competitive with other races’ ships, we want to have the most powerful ships we can field, bar none. We’re also going to want to ramp up building as quickly as we can, and we should probably look into putting mothballed ships back into service whenever that makes sense on a case-by-case basis.”
I long believed — during the run of DS9 — that Starfleet probably totalled around 12,000 or so capital ships (loosely defined as any vessel capable of conducting the full spectrum of Starfleet operations indepedent from any other vessel for ongoing support). I wasn't fanatically wedded to that number, mind you. I can believe 10,000. Or 8,000. Anywhere in between. I don't remember exactly why I settled on 12,000 — it had something to do with the writers mentioning at some point that the Dominion had 30,000 ships, and figuring that even when you discount a lot of that due to the Jem'Hadar fielding a large number of small ships, the UFP still needed to be relatively competitive.
But the exact number doesn't matter, per se. The important thing is the perceived expansion in the fleet from TNG to DS9. Whatever the total number is, it suddenly seemed to get a whole lot bigger.
Possible explanations:
1. Fleet was always large, but dispersed out of the core of the Federation. This means a lot of ships on long-range exploration missions, and a lot of ships "forward deployed" to border areas, while the core of the UFP, believed secure, is lightly defended. This can be logically justified with many canon references, but is somewhat unattractive simply because it presumes that Starfleet is almost criminally negligent in leaving the core exposed despite plenty of hints that that is dumb. AKA V’Ger, Whale Probe, Borg, apparent relative proximity to Neutral Zone, etc.
1b. If this is the case, the Federation might have a Fleet specifically assigned to the defence of the core (to take dialogue from the most recent Trek movie, call this the Primary Fleet). Wolf 359 might have seen the Primary Fleet, what Shelby simply referred to as "the Fleet", gutted, while most of Starfleet remained intact, but too far away to intervene.
2. Massive expansion of the fleet after Wolf 359. This is certainly plausible, and would explain the sudden appearance of so many new classes of ship, a sharp break from the apparent Starfleet policy of relying on older, proven designs. It's not hard to fathom that an organization the size of the UFP could go on such a building binge. But it would put a huge strain on logistical and human(oid) resources. Just because you can crank about 200 new starships a month for an entire decade doesn't mean you can find captains for them.
2b. I would imagine that with some few exceptions, this expansion would have prioritized smaller, heavily armed ships over large multi-purpose ones. Intrepids and Akiras seem to pack a lot of punch, but neither seems to come close to the overall mass of a Nebula-class. I’d imagine Starfleet took what existing Nebula and Galaxy-class ships it had, punched up their firepower until they were total ass-kickers, and then made sure that they had lots of comparatively little ships that could escort them and give them cover. (Akiras, though, might be as powerful or even more powerful than Nebulas, but I bet an upgraded Nebula is in the ballpark of any frontline Federation ship, other than the Sovereign, which really do seem to be the ultimate Federation battle vessel, you know, when they're not boldly going).
3. Some expansion of the Fleet, combined with the re-activation of a large number of mothballed Miranda and Excelsior-class ships.
4. General tactical upgrades to the entire fleet. My sense with the Galaxy-class (and comparable ships of that era) is that they were not designed to be as powerful as the Federation could build 'em, but as powerful as the Federation felt they'd likely need. Since they were designed as explorers, I'm sure that their tactical systems were settled upon something like this: "OK, Intelligence estimates that the best Klingon warship can do X, and the best Romulan ship, Y. So let's round that up 20% and design a ship that can reasonably best that ship in combat." Only later on, after the Borg and the Dominion first contacts, did Starfleet go back to the drawing board and say, "OK, forget that. How much firepower can these ships actually hold, and how long to refit all of them to be that powerful?" So you'd have every class of ship in the fleet get a Tactical Capabilities Review. All new ships would be built to that standard. All existing ships would be refitted to achieve it.
5. Planetary defence fleets nominally under the control of member planet governments could be federalized and added to the Starfleet order-of-battle in times of war or crisis. There’s a certain appeal to this (especially if we assume that most UFP local defence organizations typically purchase designs already in service with Starfleet). If that’s the case, maybe the sudden surge in the number of older ships can be explained by the fact that most local UFP defence organizations use Excelsior and Miranda class ships as the backbone of their militias. But overall I don’t like this point, since there is absolutely nothing in canon that would even hint at it. At all. Even though it’s plausible.
Personally, I think the big change was related to #4, and is like what Q said when he flung the Enterprise into the path of the first Borg cube. The Federation WAS complacent. For 200 or so years, it had measured itself against the Romulans and the Klingons ... and had been growing in power in relative terms the entire time. After the Praxis explosion, the UFP was left with a fleet that was more than sufficient to defeat the Romulans and the hobbled Klingons. Over the course of the 24th Century, the Klingons became outright allies, further isolating the Romulans, and the only real threats to the Federation aren’t fundamental threats to its existence — Cardassians, Tholians, Tamarians and Tzenkethi are all dangerous to the colonies and starship crews in the contested sectors, but not to the existence of the Federation. When the Borg comes along and blows right through the Federation to Earth in a couple of weeks, and later on when the Dominion begins rolling through UFP territory (far enough through to threaten the Romulans and Klingons directly), for the first time in a LONG time, the Federation faces an existential threat to its survival. Not this or that border colony, but the actual survival of the Federation as a geopolitical entity.
After that realization sinks in, I actually imagine that every option discussed above is used in some measure. I personally favour 1 and 4 the most, but agree that 2 and 3 would also have played a part. I think the Federation strategy was essentially this: “OK, the first thing we do is get the fleet back home and concentrate it in actual combat units. Then we increase the firepower on every one of them — no more bullshit about keeping them competitive with other races’ ships, we want to have the most powerful ships we can field, bar none. We’re also going to want to ramp up building as quickly as we can, and we should probably look into putting mothballed ships back into service whenever that makes sense on a case-by-case basis.”
