(How exactly it was portrayed on TNG is, arguably, a different topic--which isn't really relevant where the new movies are concerned, since they're based on TOS more than the later shows.)
Agreed.
But even in the later shows, Starfleet carries out military missions all the time. Would we send NOAA out to stand toe-to-toe with a Russian nuclear submarine, as we've seen the Enterprise do several times with the Romulan warbirds during TNG? Twice in the first season when Roddenberry was running the show.
I had to think about this because the NOAA links really stuck in my eye here.
As I said before, the singular reason you wouldn't send NOAA into combat is because their ships have no weapons. When you add weapons to those ships, the difference between NOAA and Starfleet vanishes altogether.
But it's more than that. The similarities are so jarring that you almost wonder if "NOAA with weapons" is what the producers had in mind all along.
What really jumped at me was this:
The network and computer systems aboard the Ron Brown are used for everything from sensor acquisition and data analysis to administration and payroll. Nearly all of the ship's scientific devices are integrated into an on board oceanographic system called the Scientific Computing System (SCS). The SCS is a network that collects, stores, processes, retrieves, and sends oceanographic data from all the navigation and environmental sensors, bathymetric sonar systems, and other mission sensors. Internet access is readily available on the ship.
This same passage could just as easily refer to a Starfleet vessel:
The network and computer systems aboard the Enterprise are used for everything from sensor acquisition and data analysis to administration and payroll. Nearly all of the ship's scientific devices are integrated into an on board astrometric system called the Library Computer System. The LCS is a network that collects, stores, processes, retrieves, and sends astrometric data from all the navigation and environmental sensors, stellar cartography systems, and other mission sensors. Computer access is readily available on the ship.
NOAA vessels devote a huge amount of their internal space to large specialized laboratories. Their sensors are optimized for mapping the sea floor, analysis of oceanographic phenomenon and examination of living creatures encountered in their voyages. Their auxiliary craft are highly versatile and they have a wide variety of scientific probes. Their officers corps is a
Federal Uniformed Service with a navy-style rank structure
and has no enlisted ranks. (Hint Hint!). As a uniformed service they are technically equivalent to the Coast Guard or the Navy such that providing them with defensive armaments would technically be legal under the Geneva Conventions. Moreover, NOAA has been known to name several of its vessels after famous exploration ships and/or famous explorers (e.g. the MV Neil Armstrong).
Their STATED goal is exploration and scientific research, which -- like Starfleet -- their ships spend most of their time doing. This is also very much UNLIKE the U.S. Navy, who -- with the singular exception of NR-1 -- hasn't conducted a purely scientific expedition since 1957 and whose exploration activities have since been reduced to a support role for NASA.
When it comes down to, in the end, is that NOAA would be almost IDENTICAL to Starfleet if their ships were armed. I strongly believe that if Earth's oceans possessed an abundance of pirates, giant squads, homicidal mermaids, Lovecraftian sea monsters and sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads, NOAA vessels probably WOULD be armed. This, finally, explains why NX-01 completely neglected to install or test any of its main armaments until they were already well into their mission: The
RV Atlantis wouldn't need them either unless they thought raids by genetically engineered terrorists were going to be a routine hazard.
