WWI didn't have but one old fashioned naval battle, Jutland. German attacks on UK shipping were stymied by the simple adoption of convoy tactics, leaving U-boats first to roam about looking for victims, then to face close in defenders.
Eventually. But early on in the conflict, if you wanted to cross the Atlantic on say... The Lusitania, you were warned in advance by the polite German military that you did so at your own peril. Sounds like someone wanted control over vast areas between points A's and B's.
Improved technology made the U-boats more formidable but advances in sonar and good old convoy tactics won out again. None of the fleet actions in WWII were about control of empty water. Battles in the Coral Sea and Leyte Gulf were in close waters. At Midway, despite Magic intercepts tipping off the US admirals, planes went desperately searching for their enemies across wide expanses of water. The Japanese were unfortunate that their fleet was found while their planes were out looking. But the goal of the Japanese action was to seize the islands of Midway, not hundreds of miles of Pacific Ocean water. Pearl Harbor of course was a straightforward counterforce attack.
Except that had the Japanese taken Midway island it
would have given them control over hundreds of miles of otherwise empty "Pacific Ocean water;" most notably, that expanse between the western Pacific, which they largely controlled, and Midway, which they may have eventually used as a stepping stone for a full invasion of Hawaii. In this instance, we can't ignore the fact that traveling on water is a resource unto itself. The entire Pacific campaign, indeed any traditional form of war whether it be on sea or land, was and is about taking strategic points that give strategic domination over areas that connect other strategic points. Midway Island was a strategic point. It is why the U.S. built its Naval Air base there and one reason why the Japanese wanted it. But any strategic point unto itself will eventually be vulnerable if it runs out of resources. In fact that is the difference between a siege and a campaign. Do I want an island castle and a moat, or do I want huge areas of land with multiple fortifications so that if one should become more vulnerable, another could come to my aid?
Is the point in citing these irrelevant examples to imply that borders in space are equivalent to radar sweeping dozens or hundreds of miles from islands like Hawaii? The thing is, that the scales are preposterously wrong.
Wrong? What is wrong about "scale?" Conceptually, scale is one of the most flexible and amazing aspects of the creative imagination. Imagining a grain of sand on O'ahu as a thriving planet with a golf ball sized star ten feet away, and another civilization headquartered on an equally tiny spec on Honshu or even Midway is not inconceivable. It only takes imagination, which when it comes down to it... is all borders really are.
Borders in space a la Trek is like the US claiming that the defense of Pearl Harbor demands "borders" in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Except that analogy still slights the vastness of interstellar space.
Huh? I don't get this connection at all.
Again, the magic sensors---which are, hard as it is to grasp, theoretically impossible in a way that FTL/time travel/transporters aren't!---were imagined as a device to put foolish war melodrama on screen.
Magic sensors? Subspace sensors are theoretically impossible in a way
different from the theoretically impossible FTL/time travel/transporters? I think we are dancing on the head of a pin here.
By the way, as I recall Voyager, a light year a day was basically standard rapid traveling speed. Saying the Federation needs borders in space for defense purposes is like saying that the US air/sea border needs to be drawn so that no missile or plane would be within 24 hrs. flight! Really, the absurdity of Trek's space borders should be apparent.
Voyager's one light year a day motif is based on the notion that it is totally
alone, in unexplored space, on the other side of the galaxy. As I understood it, warp engines in Voyager's day only allow for so much stress on their components. Voyager had a long crossing and keeping that limit allowed them to travel with less stress for greater periods of time. If they were lucky they would come across some form of resource or new friendly ally to help them on their journey. But as far as I could tell, they were on their own for most of that journey, and one light year a day is just their way making sure they could go the furtherest they could on the limited resources at their disposal.
On more than one occasion however they had to do more in emergency situations and were able to compensate for it eventually. A ship in Federation space, would have a lot more resources to repair and replenish the ship to operational standards. Therefore, any ship that had to do extreme velocities to meet, head on, an emergency 4 light years away and as quickly as possible, might have to put into starbase after the encounter, but the immediate threat could still be met.
