Timo said:
How do you figure? Earth Starfleet had seldom ventured out beyond its own solar system and nearest stars. Even if combat had been a major part of their mission role, their lack of experience and primative weapons would have been just powerful enough to scratch the paint on a Nausican shuttlepod. Prior to this, they mostly depended on the Vulcans for defense, with the MACOs probably functioning as a counter-terrorism force.
If the immediate pre-ENT UESF is a poor combat force, it is an even poorer exploratory one...
Well... YES. They pretty much sucked at everything until the Vulcans stopped playing overlord and let them do stuff. Enterprise was the first ship in the fleet whose mission actually WAS exploration, but it didn't require any prototype equipment for that function, nor did it require the invention of totally new proceedures:
ARCHER: "So, like, we just found this class-M planet. Maybe we should, I dunno, scan for life signs or something?"
TRIP: "Life signs? You mean like a bill board?"
Timo said:
But it is a combat force - it consists of starships armed to the teeth, capable of repulsing a Klingon attack in "The Expanse". And it seems to serve little other purpose.
Considering their reacion to the Xindi on two seperate occasions, they're not much of a combat force either. Again, the comparison to the Coast Guard is apt; four ships against a single Klingon gunboat is a pretty safe bet even if each of those ships is equipped only with a single phase cannon and a .50 caliber machinegun. Like four coast guard cutters against an old Russian torpedo boat.
Timo said:
Besides, Malcolm clearly knows the difference between Starfleet and the (for some reason still existent) Royal Navy, such that the latter IS a military organization and thinks of Starfleet as a kind of consolation prize, like a guy who flunks out of the police academy and then gets a job as a security guard.
No, Malcolm does not quote "being military" as a distinction between the RN and the UESF.
No he doesn't quote it. He is just VERY familiar with the differences between them.
Timo said:
If Earth Starfleet is a combat force, why is the concept of "Battle Stations" so alien to Enterprise crew?
Quite possibly because NX-01 is the
Calypso of UESF - barely armed (with those plasma peashooters instead of the standard phase cannon seen on the ships of "The Expanse"), thinly crewed, built for exploration.
The phase cannons on Enterprise were prototypes; that the ships in "Expanse" had them is somewhat miraculous, unless they were retrofitted immediately after the Xindi attack, which is quite likely.
And it doesn't really change the crew's lack of familiarity with the very concept of combat readiness. In a combat-oriented organization, the armory officer of your starship doesn't have to figure out how to put the ship at a combat footing at a moment's notice. Somebody would have figured that out already before the ship ever left port.
Timo said:
Nevertheless, both the disinterested Archer and the obsessed Reed agree that UESF already uses the protocol of "battle stations" (by that specific name) in combat situations.
It would seem to suggest the exact opposite, given that 1) Archer and T'pol both seem mystified when Reed's modifications bring the weapons online quickly and 2) it was Reed who thought up the name "battle stations" as the name for the new protocol and Archer who specifically vetoed it on the spot. Even if Enterprise is Archer's first command, unless nobody ever bothered to train the man, he would at least know if Starfleet already HAS a tactical readiness proceedure in place.
But we don't have to infer, because that alert status doesn't appear earlier in the series. No call for "battle stations" appears in any of Enterprise' earlier combat situations, notably in "Silent Enemy" and "Fight or Flight."
Timo said:
The mentally affected Archer then asks Reed to name the new protocol something less aggressive than the preexisting "battle stations".
What, other than assumption, leads you to believe "battle stations" was pre-existing? Anything from reference?
Timo said:
In any case, if Archer and pals seem a little lost with combat procedures, they are even more out of their depth as regards exploration. The latter seems like the more novel and alien thing for UESF by far, yet clearly is what Archer is tasked with.
But again, Enterprise left space dock equipped for exploration, where its weapon systems were not even operational until the ship had already been in space for a couple of weeks. Targetting scanners out of alignment, phasers not installed, etc. This isn't a mentality that reflects a particularly strong emphasis on combat, and it goes FAR beyond Archer's passivility since this would have been a decision by the engineers, not the crew.
Timo said:
Actually, I'm reasonably sure the MACOs had their own ships apart from Starfleet. They'd sort of have to, after all; no military assault command organization is worth all that much if its soldiers have to call somebody else whenever they want to move from one position to another.
Uh, USMy-ass-rides-in-navy-equipmentC?
Equipment, sure. But even U.S. Marines have their own pilots fly their own transports and choppers, their own fighters, and in some cases crew their own ships. And this just for the MARINES, which are by definition "Naval infantry."
There's nothing in the MACOs that implies a a dependence or relation to Starfleet in any way. Indeed, we don't even know that the two ships that helped chase off Duras' ship WERE starfleet ships and not MACO vessels assigned to assist the less-heavily armed intrepid in meeting Enterprise.
Timo said:
Starfleet seems to possess the perfect Marine deployment vessel already - the warp-capable transport seen in "Regeneration".
Which, you forget, is supposed to be very poorly armed and is referred to as a "survey ship."
Timo said:
Apparently the contingent aboard NX-01 is somewhat familiar with joint operations with UESF, but is supposed to take time to get its "space legs" anyway. It seems unlikely the troops would have seen much interstellar action before ENT, in an Earth dominion limited to a handful of planets separated by long transit times; nor do they refer to such past exploits.
Which sort of nixes the idea of the MACOs being related to Starfleet, doesn't it? Otherwise, getting their "space legs" would have been part of their basic training in the first place. More likely the MACOs have their own airborne (spaceborne) division with small, fast, well-armed ships designed to slice through enemy defenses and deposit large numbers of specialist troops in a given location. Starfleet ships of the time would be extremely poorly suited to this task.
That's sort of the reason why people HAVE standing militaries in the first place. In order to gaurantee you have the best combat force in town, you need to have a group for whom combat is the entirety of their job description, because that's their entire job and all they will be asked to do. The same applies for ships, training and equipment, which again the MACOs famously demonstrated on multiple occasions, and most notably in "The Xindi."
Timo said:
If anything, the MACO force comes off like a SWAT or SEAL team, a minor player of very special nature that assists rather than plays it solo.
If that were the case, Archer, Gardner and Hernandez wouldn't have referred to them as "the military."
Timo said:
Certainly it isn't Earth's principal infantry
And you know this how? For all we know there are eight million MACOs in the Solar System. Certainly seems more likely than having an army of Starfleet red shirts whose principle representative (Malcolm) measures up poorly even by MACO standards.
Timo said:
But it is obvious that it is a novel experience for test pilot and explorer Archer and his scientist subordinates, and much less so for his combat crew.
But Archer's "combat crew" consists entirely of Malcolm and, to a lesser extent, Travis. It only ceases to be a new experience with Malcolm insofar as he comes from a military family, so Major Hayes is nothing new to him, not even when the Major completely embarasses him in front of his entire staff by demonstrating what a crappy marksman he is.
