The bad character who asked the question doesn't invalidate the question
When a complete asshole asks a loaded question like that, it's probably not a legitimate question.
or answer given the answer came from a higher-up...
Who was interrupted mid-sentence by the aforementioned asshole before he could actually give it.
As far as we know the military program got cut while the science and exploration programs lived on in Starfleet.
As far as we know "the outposts along the neutral zone" WAS the military program in its entirety.
Perhaps or perhaps not, but without the rollbar phasers the Reliant's initial broadsides attack would've required the port-side ventral saucer phaser beams to come awefully close to their own nacelle.
Or they could have just rolled ten degrees to port so their ventral phasers had a shot. They only had, what, two and a half minutes to reorient themselves for that?
There's no rule that starships have to be perpendicular to each other's deck level at all times; realistically, they usually WON'T be.
Literally, no. I was just trying to keep within Forbin's metaphor. Phasers are the primary variable-power energy gun used in TOS. There isn't a good equivalent to WW2 terminology other than it was their "big guns".
I don't know that the World War-II analogy is or was ever all that appropriate since large warships rarely if ever engaged with torpedoes. And for good reason, too; if you could get close enough to a heavy cruiser to shoot a torpedo at it, you were either close enough to get eaten alive by its main guns, or you were in something too small for its guns to actually aim at without overshooting.
Here's something to consider, actually: at the time that Star Trek actually went on the air, the most prominent cruiser-type vessels of the day were Guided missile cruisers converted from WW-II vessels.
USS Galveston and similar types would have been examples of the "standard" type of warship at the time. Moreover, the nuclear-powered USS Long Beach, armed mostly with missiles with only a token gun arament (like modern ship types) had been in service for over ten years when Star Trek came out.
We should consider that "Enemy Below" ripoffs aside, Star Trek may have been less about emulating WW-II era warships and more about emulating MODERN ones contemporary with the actual show. Phasers would be a good "dual purpose" weapon good for close quarters combat, light shore bombardment and plinking at enemy fighters, but the ship's OFFENSIVE weapon remains the photon torpedo launcher. By the time the Navy started getting more interesting launcher designs like the VLS tubes and the Armored Box Launches for the Tomahawks the "Torpedoes fire from a single launcher in location X" meme had been grandfathered in and Starfleet stopped emulating the navy altogether.
That is, until STID when we suddenly discover the Enterprise has over a dozen lateral torpedo tubes in addition to the big neck launcher.
Yes for those times when the bow tubes couldn't be turned in time for an attack run and it makes a handy weapon to discourage pursuers.
I'm not the almost-expert I used to be when I was younger, but I am about 100% sure that the only thing a WW-II submarine could do about pursuers was to dive like hell and PRAY FOR A FUCKING MIRACLE. There's almost no record of a submarine shooting its aft torpedoes at pursuing destroyer escorts mainly because 1) since you have to stay at periscope depth long enough to get a firing solution, you practically guarantee the enemy will kill you and 2) since your pursuer is heading DIRECTLY AT YOU, your torpedoes are equally guaranteed to miss.
Those submarines did not use those torpedoes against
pursuers. What they did was, they fired the bow tubes in spread at their first target(s) then while those tubes were reloading, turned away and aimed the rear tubes at a second set of targets; by the time the rear tubes were empty, either the bow tubes were reloaded or the escort ships were zeroing in. If the latter, your attack run is over: dive as deep as you can, shove a cork in your ass and hope they run out of depth charges (or mortars, or both) before they hit you.
It wasn't until the invention (and actually, perfection) of wake-homing torpedoes that shooting at a pursuing escort ship even BEGAN to make sense. Nowadays, submarines don't even bother with torpedoes; if you're unlucky enough to figure out where they are, they pop six harpoons in your general direction and then slink away laughing (silently) at your panic.
Still, in terms of offensive firepower, the 2 aft tubes on the Reliant would've made more sense mounted facing forward, IMHO.
I don't see how, considering starships in the TMP era only ever launch torpedoes one at a time.
OTOH, if Trek had kept pace with the times as well as it did in the 60s, Reliant's Terrier-inspired torpedo pod would eventually have been replaced by a more versatile multi-tube launcher like the one we later see in Into Darkness, something with a dozen less complicated tubes that each be loaded with a single weapon. The nature of scifi space battles means that if your ship launches a Macross Missile Massacre, it doesn't really matter what direction you're facing: your missiles/torpedoes are going to home in like a swarm of bees and your target is either going to doge/shootdown all of them, or he's going to be annihilated.
