The Aims and Responsibilties of Starfleet

[Newtype_A]

^^ I would too. Seems like Earth has had a series of "kick in our complacency" moments since the day Zephram Cochrane woke up that fateful morning and annnounced, "Hey Lilly, I think I just figured out how we can get rich!"

Still, I'm all for Starfleet being somehow seperate from UESPA; in fact, I'd be a little happier if they made some distinction between members of the probe agency (the explorer guys) and members of Starfleet (the astronaut/soldier guys) so we don't have officers trying to do both, and doing them poorly.

 

[Timo]

Again, the comparison to the Coast Guard is apt.

Agreed. But a Coast Guard is a combat force, as opposed to an exploration force - which was my original point. The UFP Starfleet seems to derive directly from the UESF, which in turn is not an "armed NASA" as much as it is either a US Coast Guard or then a weakling Navy of some non-powerful nation (there being little difference between the latter two).

He is just VERY familiar with the differences between them.

What differences? Reed only ever says he knows people like Hayes and his MACOs because he has grown up in a military family. And he is a full-fledged member of that family - an armory officer in the spatial navy of Earth, a career soldier whose training centers on blowing up the enemy.

Archer is different, because he is the Cousteau of Starfleet, steering the Calypso. But history remembers him as being different - "the greatest explorer of his time" and all.

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.

Just goes to show that any UESF ship save NX-01 is a prime recipient of top-notch military equipment. Archer's ship was originally slated to receive just three of the weapons, even though she has gunports for thirteen (and eventually comes to carry thirteen). Starfleet definitely knew how to blow up stuff, but it didn't consider NX-01 to be the foremost tool for doing that.

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.

Reed had no problem with figuring out anything. But Archer sailed out with a partially completed ship, with a partial crew of eighty that is rattling inside the giant vessel, and was intent on not having any combat during the mission. Most of his (or rather, Tucker's) personnel are probably veterans of debugging warp cores of factory glitches, rather than veterans of debugging the corridors of Xindi insectoids.

...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.

Untrue. The subject is introduced by Reed with

Reed: "I've been thinking about a ship wide emergency alert. Something a bit more comprehensive than battle stations."

That is, Reed wants something more than the preexisting procedure of battle stations. Archer agrees, reluctantly (because his ship isn't a warship), but then asks Reed not to call the new procedure "battle stations". Which is a good idea, because that would confuse it with the preexisting procedure of that name!

No call for "battle stations" appears in any of Enterprise' earlier combat situations, notably in "Silent Enemy" and "Fight or Flight."

Indeed, and both Tucker and Reed express anguish over that. But it's Archer's Way, since he's hell-bent on commanding the Calypso; his military personnel are in a distinct minority, not really even represented on the bridge (where the CO is a butterfly catcher, the de facto and later de jure XO is a Vulcan politruk, and the helmsman is a deep ranger with a civilian space background).

Yet there definitely is a combat crew on board, no matter how partial. Reed knows his way around torpedoes and pulse guns; Tucker knows how to put together a phase cannon, even if it's a new model. And the corridors are filled with red-striped personnel wielding heavy pulse rifles (sometimes fitted with phase beam "overbarrels") whenever needed.

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.

Huh? The decision was purely political, made regardless of the engineering reality. The crew (read: Reed) bitched and moaned about leaving dock in a half-built vessel, but Archer expected a milk run with major political dividends, and Starfleet Command demanded a quick launch before Kaang perished or the Klingons came looking for him.

The ship wasn't particularly equipped for exploration, either. She was equipped for a ferry mission cum maiden voyage cum propulsive shakedown, and a bit poorly at that.

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.

Sure, the MACOs might have their own pilots for things analogous to transports and choppers, if such things existed in ENT. Those weren't aboard NX-01, though, so we can't tell. But USMC does not operate combat vessels, and does deploy aboard ships owned by USN and operated by USN (or USNS) personnel. Again, the MACO force would seem like a perfect analogy - only without the petty jealousy that makes the Navy rather than the Marines operate SEALs. (The MACO force has a very SEAL-like nature, except that it clearly is not part of Starfleet.)

Which, you forget, is supposed to be very poorly armed and is referred to as a "survey ship."

Good point about the latter. For the former, most USMC means of transit are essentially unarmed. The only offensive weaponry of any potency comes from the USMC air arm; the ships that deliver this arm, as well as the beaching forces, only carry rudimentary anti-aircraft defenses. Which is quite logical since USMC is not a navy.

There's nothing in the MACOs that implies a a dependence or relation to Starfleet in any way.

The relation is explicitly denied in the show. The dependence is explicitly shown: their ass does ride on Starfleet equipment.

Whether it could ride elsewhere and elsehow in other situations is unknown. What is known is that the MACOs we see are said to be garrisoned on Earth surface exclusively. Which is sort of natural, since even if there was a MACO garrison on Proxima Centauri II or something, this wouldn't be the one assigned to Archer's expedition.

On a treknological level, the use of MACOs in Marine-like fashion across interstellar distances strikes me as an impossibility. Transit times of several years aren't conductive of operations like that. If Earth ever wanted to fight an infantry battle far away from home, it would probably use the classic "naval infantry" approach: in addition to the small shipboard specialist complement of Marines, it would arm the naval personnel with infantry weapons and send them planetside. (Not that this would be any less futile than shipping Marines from across the interstellar gulf. It would just be the less implausible way to go if Earth did want to make that futile gesture.)

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.

Naah. If they had ships of any sort, your argument about them needing to get their space legs would cut. They simply don't get to deploy to space all that often, is all. Much like a classic paratrooper who might get to jump just twice: the first time to see if he can, the second time to the battlefield. Or then much like a combat pilot who gets to fly only when his nation can afford the fuel, which isn't often. I can't imagine Earth having much of a credible space military no matter what, simply because Earth is technologically backward, lacks the wealth, and isn't majorly involved in interstellar affairs anyway. But Earth would still try, just like the poor nations of this world aspire to have militaries (and like they do not aspire to have comparable exploratory-scientific forces, because they can only afford one of the two).

If that were the case, Archer, Gardner and Hernandez wouldn't have referred to them as "the military."

Why not? If the division goes between Starfleet and Military, and is analogous to today's Navy vs. Army, the (sometimes good-natured) mutual hatred would be there no matter whether a Navy radar officer would meet a regular Army grunt, or a SEAL would face a Ranger.

And you know this how? For all we know there are eight million MACOs in the Solar System.

Possible - but the US Army doesn't consist of eight million Rangers. Earth would send its elite forces to assist Archer, not its general recruits.

It's just IMHO, but yes, I do feel the MACO force is something other than Earth's primary surface combat force (if Earth has such a thing to begin with). Again on treknological grounds: surface forces seem completely useless for a planet like ENT Earth, when starships reign supreme over the battlefield. It might be different if the infantry had credible futuristic weapons and protection, something comparable to the (lamentably never-seen) battlefield shielding of the TNG era. But such things clearly don't exist in the ENT Earth environment.

Certainly seems more likely than having an army of Starfleet red shirts whose principle representative (Malcolm) measures up poorly even by MACO standards.

Oh, I'm definitely not trying to say that Starfleet shipboard combat crews are Earth's principal ground combat force, either! I just postulate a further separate force, or actually more probably dozens of those, given that the Royal Navy still persists...

But Archer's "combat crew" consists entirely of Malcolm and, to a lesser extent, Travis.

Despite the ship leaving port half-completed, the combat crew is definitely more extensive than that. Tucker knows how to build and operate shipboard weaponry. Those redshirts know which end of a plasma rifle spits out the balls of death. Combat damage gets repaired, and targeting scanners get aligned and do lock the arsenal of the ship to the weak spots of the enemy. MACO personnel do not attempt to play with Reed's toys any more than Marines would try to fire the guns of their naval rides.

Just to reiterate my position:

1) Starfleet is Earth's principal space combat force
2) Archer's ship is highly atypical in that force, having an intended mission of deep space exploration
3) Archer himself is atypical, a test pilot cum explorer without combat experience in a force that otherwise lives in a universe ripe with military challenges
4) Earth has to be able to meet those challenges somehow, but certainly isn't a military superpower; its combat prowess is comparable to that of the Nigerian navy at best, but that's only to be expected
4) Archer's ship is hobbled for the first two seasons due to leaving port half-completed
5) Yet some of the atypical aspects of Archer's exploits apparently do become part of the UFP Starfleet, even when most of the heritage comes from the more or less purely military UESF

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Newtype_A]

Timo said:

Again, the comparison to the Coast Guard is apt.

Agreed. But a Coast Guard is a combat force...

In the United States, yes. In most counties it isn't, and in some countries is even a PRIVATE organization. The nature of coast guards around the world in general means that they tend to be some of the most versatile maritime organizations in existence. The U.S. Coast Guard is arguably the most heavily armed of these groups, which is pretty amazing when you consider that signifigant number of USCG vessels aren't armed at all.

More to the point: no nation no Earth has a coast guard but not a navy. Plenty of nations have a coast guard and crappy, meaningless, token navy, but they all recognize the difference between the Coast Guard and "those guys we call when the bad guys try to invade us." And even in the case of the USCG, when German U-boats were sinknig ships in New York Harbor, they called the Navy, not the coast guard.

Timo said:
The UFP Starfleet seems to derive directly from the UESF, which in turn is not an "armed NASA" as much as it is either a US Coast Guard or then a weakling Navy of some non-powerful nation (there being little difference between the latter two).

Well, there is one important difference: the weakling navy of a "non-powerful nation" is distinguished from the COAST GUARD of that same nation, in that the navy is armed with weapons and equipment enough for coastal defense, while the coast guard is armed with weapons and equipment enough for search and rescue, law enforcement (which usually incldues anti-piracy), research and exploration. It's the difference between a two hudnred foot boat armed with Exocets and Otobredas, and a two hundred foot boat armed with a 30mm cannon, a helicopter, a winch, a speedboat and a platform for rescue divers (for additional firepower, give RPGs to the lookouts).

Timo said:

He is just VERY familiar with the differences between them.

What differences? Reed only ever says he knows people like Hayes and his MACOs because he has grown up in a military family.

For starters, the fact that he has to explain this fact to T'pol who, despite being extremely familiar with Starfleet, is not at all familiar with the mindset of men like major Hayes or Malcolm's military relatives.

Actually, Hayes' attitude is far more revealing than Malcolm's. He seems to be convinced that Malcolm's security force isn't nearly as competent as the MACOs are, which Malcolm for some reason takes offense too. Unfortunately, Hayes is basically correct, which calls into question whether or not Malcolm really IS serving in the presence fo "men like that" in Starfleet.

Timo said:

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.

Just goes to show that any UESF ship save NX-01 is a prime recipient of top-notch military equipment.

That doesn't follow. You can install an otobreda and torpedo launcher on fishing boat with a little modification, and an exocet launcgher with a little more modification. Enterprise went to space with the equivalent of the former, and was upgraded to the latter (photonic torpedoes) after the Xindi attack. Photonic torpedoes, as it happens, do not appear to be prototype weapons, yet Enterprise has to have two new launchers installed just to use them. So it sort of follows that the ship really IS an exploration vessel that keeps getting new weapnons installed as things get more and more dangerous.

Timo said:

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.

Reed had no problem with figuring out anything.

That's my point. He shouldn't have HAD to figure it out in the first place, and the changes he made were relatively intuitive and logical. Having to implement them AT ALL testifies that nobody else in Starfleet put any thought into the matter BEFORE Enterprise' mission.

Timo said:

...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.

Untrue. The subject is introduced by Reed with

Reed: "I've been thinking about a ship wide emergency alert. Something a bit more comprehensive than battle stations."

To which Archer immediately replies: "I appreciate your concern, Malcolm, but this isn't a warship."

And Malcolm's reply: "That's obvious, Sir."

Remember, the effects of the singularity drove the senior officers to become obsessed with whatever menial concern happened to be on their mind at the time. Reed, as a military-minded person, threw himself into military-minded things. Archer threw himself into his speech, Trip threw himself into the chair. But even in his obsessive militaristic lunacy, Reed recognizes that Enterprise is clearly NOT a warship.

And it doesn't change the fact that, despite having been in combat nearly a dozen times prior to this, no one on the ship has ever CALLED for "battle stations." Again, it was smoething Reed suggseted they implement for the ship, but would do all that and so much more (since it could be used in situations of extreme danger that didn't neccesarily imply combat).

Timo said:
Yet there definitely is a combat crew on board, no matter how partial. Reed knows his way around torpedoes and pulse guns; Tucker knows how to put together a phase cannon, even if it's a new model. And the corridors are filled with red-striped personnel wielding heavy pulse rifles (sometimes fitted with phase beam "overbarrels") whenever needed.

Combat CREW, yes. This hardly makes Starfleet a combat organization, since even after the Xindi threat, their most powerful ship is STILL under the command of a glorified space tourist despite the last-minute weapons upgrades. So when you look up one day and see a cutter from the Singapore coast guard roll by and notice fifteen guys on deck with M-16s and Oerliknos, you know they're here for combat (probably hunting pirates). That boat might have a Captain on board, plus an executive officer, and may or may not even have an Admiral riding shotgun. But if you see an Anchor on the flag and not a red star, you know you're not looknig at a Singaporean warship.

At least the MACOs were kind enough to put the word "military" right there in the name so their actual function is plainly obvious. As far as they measure up to Starfleet redshirts, they're a formidable combat force. If Starfleet put as much emphasis into combat as the MACOs, their ships would more closely resemble their Klingon counterparts than anything else in Trek history. And since both the Xindi threat and potential hostilities with the Romulans are still pending by the time Enterprise went off the air, I hold the possibility that for every lightly armed, reluctantly-agressive Starfleet ship, there is at least one MACO battlewagon on exercises near Jupiter station. It would be fascinating to see what kind of gears and proceedures a gun-heavy warship would include, but only briefly; after all, they wouldn't get a whole lot of exploring done in that case.

Timo said:
Huh? The decision was purely political, made regardless of the engineering reality.

Well, no. Enterprise was launched from the Warp Five facility orbittnig Earth. The phase cannons were supposed to have been installed at Jupiter Station, which may or may not have actually involved Starfleet personnel. It is at least knowable that combat was not foremost on Starfleet's mind when the ship was launched, else the weapons would have been installed at the same time as the sensors. As it stands, though, somehow Starfleet got around to installing the transporter and three shuttlepods before anybody ever started on the weapons, save a token plasma cannon sufficient to fight off a space boomer. Even their targetting scanners hadn't been tested yet.

In short, if anyone other than Reed even cared about the weapons, they weren't involved in the decision-making process for the ship's construction. So the people who make decisions related to Starfleet's most advanced ship don't care much about combat. What does that tell you about Starfleet's priorities?

Timo said:
The ship wasn't particularly equipped for exploration, either...

Except she had sensors, probes, decontamination chamber, shuttlepods, transporter, science labs, and all neccesary scientific personal except the doctor and communications officer present and acconted for. More to the point: having completed his remarkably violent and nearly disasterous milk run, Archer decides to go ahead and begin the mission anyway without returning for his weapons. Starfleet agrees with this decision and doesn't order him back.

That's the equivalent of sending the Nautilus under the North Pole without its torpedoes installed. This reflects relative ambivalence towards combat; the 23rd century Enterprise left port on an extreme emergency in much the same condition, EXCEPT with its prototype weapons having already been installed, aligned, tested and approved.

Timo said:

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.

Sure, the MACOs might have their own pilots for things analogous to transports and choppers, if such things existed in ENT. Those weren't aboard NX-01, though, so we can't tell. But USMC does not operate combat vessels, and does deploy aboard ships owned by USN and operated by USN (or USNS) personnel.

Neither dose the Chinese navy; technically, the Navy is (or until recently, was) under the command of the People's Liberation Army Ground Forces in a support role, which means Navy personnel operate what are essentially Army warships.

On the other hand, there's nothing that implise the MACOs as being related to Starfleet at all. It's the "Military Assault Command Organization," not "Starfleet Marines," and implies the ability to perform military assaults without specifying whether it is a ground, air or sea assault. Archer only asked for a single squad of MACOs, which means they either couldn't spare any, or he didn't expect to be taking no the entire Xindi space fleet and was still hoping to talk his way out of a war.

Timo said:

There's nothing in the MACOs that implies a a dependence or relation to Starfleet in any way.

The relation is explicitly denied in the show. The dependence is explicitly shown: their ass does ride on Starfleet equipment.

Well, no. Starfleet didn't send the MACOs to deal with the Xindi. It sent Archer, and Archer asked for the MACOs to ride shotgun. If Starfleet wanted the MACOs to deal with the problem, they could (and would) have replaced Archer's entire crew, or at least the bulk of Malcolm's security force. And if United Earth decided to cut Starfleet out of the loop entirely, they could (and would) have confiscated the Warp Five engine from Columbia and put it on a MACO ship to kick the snot out of the Xindi.

Timo said:
What is known is that the MACOs we see are said to be garrisoned on Earth surface exclusively...

You're forgetting Jupiter Station, where Hayes and his crew apparently trained, and even spent enough time there to come up with a completely new training program.

Timo said:
On a treknological level, the use of MACOs in Marine-like fashion across interstellar distances strikes me as an impossibility.

Right, which I do believe leads an extra bit of credibility to the MACOs having their own fleet. They are, after all, MUCH better at combat than Starfleet, having spent a lot more time thinknig about it and preparing for it. If United Earth understood the need to have people on hand who are still superb at ground combat, what are the odds that they didn't do the same for FLEET combat? Surely the MACOs spend less time thinking about hand-to-hand/infantry combat than they do about ship-to-ship battles.

Hence the question of when exactly Starfleet had time to develop photonic torpedoes. They didn't get a sample from the Klingon ship, and the Vulcans probably didn't lend a hand there. You suppose it's something ELSE the Macos were toying with at Jupiter station?

Timo said:
Naah. If they had ships of any sort, your argument about them needing to get their space legs would cut. They simply don't get to deploy to space all that often, is all.

Well, they're the infantry branch, not the space forces. Archer asked for an assault force, not a specialist in ship-to-ship combat. By the time he got back to Earth in "Home" he had apparently changed his mind in that regard, recomendnig a MACO for a BRIDGE position. Very doubtful he would have recomended someone to Captain Hernandez who had no experience in space combat, seeing how expertise was exactly what he felt she needed.

Timo said:
I can't imagine Earth having much of a credible space military no matter what, simply because Earth is technologically backward, lacks the wealth, and isn't majorly involved in interstellar affairs anyway. But Earth would still try, just like the poor nations of this world aspire to have militaries (and like they do not aspire to have comparable exploratory-scientific forces, because they can only afford one of the two).

Where do you get the idea of Earth being poor? Seems like money isn't really an issue for them, given the relatievly high standard of living for its inhabitants. Lacking technology is a given, though Earth is shown to be the fastest growing space farers in the sector even BEFORE Enterprise left port. They could EASILY afford separate military and exploration branches. Whether they could afford them after expandnig to police the entire Federation is another question entirely. Probably, that's why the MACOs and Starfleet were eventually roled into one.

Timo said:

If that were the case, Archer, Gardner and Hernandez wouldn't have referred to them as "the military."

Why not? If the division goes between Starfleet and Military, and is analogous to today's Navy vs. Army

No, it's analogous to "military vs. police" or "military vs. coast guard" or "military vs. space program" or "military vs. arctic research team" etc. At best, military vs. paramilitary, which is the same as saying military vs. police.

If it was just a matter of branches OF the miltiary, Gardner wouldn't have made that distinction. The MACOs are "the military" and Starfleet, at that point, isn't.

Remember, the U.S. Coast Guard--which is now part of the U.S. military--was formed from the marriage of two non-military organizations, one of which (The U.S. Revenue Cutter Service) was a LAW ENFORCEMENT agency in name and deed, despite the fact that it actually DID engage in combat in every single American war.

Timo said:

And you know this how? For all we know there are eight million MACOs in the Solar System.

Possible - but the US Army doesn't consist of eight million Rangers.

That's because the U.S. army doesn't need eight million rangers. The regular army is fully capable of engaging in combat against anyone, any time anywhere, because that's their job.

In the 22nd century, combat isn't very high on the list of Starfleet's priorities. But the MACOs exist, so it must be pretty high on SOMEONE's list to create a whole organization jus for that.

Timo said:

But Archer's "combat crew" consists entirely of Malcolm and, to a lesser extent, Travis.

Despite the ship leaving port half-completed, the combat crew is definitely more extensive than that. Tucker knows how to build and operate shipboard weaponry...

Tucker, for some reason, demonstrates the ability to build and operate just about everything. He apparently has training as a carpenter too, considernig the amount of effort he devoted to fixing Archer's chair.

Timo said:
Those redshirts know which end of a plasma rifle spits out the balls of death.

But not enough to know how to make those balls of death hit their target, apparently.


In short, preator has it right. Starfleet was at best a pseudo-military that probably only SUPPLEMENTED the fleet arm of the MACOs in combat, like the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service, which could and did engage in combat until it was reorganized as part of the U.S. armed services in the Coast Guard. Once Earth got a feel for the number of annoyingly xenophobic aliens were sitting on their border, Starfleet merged with the MACOs, assimilated their expertise in combat and equipment, and later probably absorbed the Andorian and Vulcan fleets as well to form the Federation Starfleet: paramilitary, better armed, better trained, and (as Kirk demonstrates repaetedly) MUCH better in a fight.

 

[Timo]

I'm afraid I don't get the basis of your argument.

You say the MACOs are the defenders of Earth, when we have never seen them engage in battle against enemy starships. You say Starfleet isn't, when they are the guys and girls who do engage in such battle.

I'm all for saying that the MACOs are an important branch of Earth's defenses when it comes to special ops, and perhaps even large-scale ground combat if that remains a mode of operations for Earth's defense forces. In that, they could be the Marines, or the Rangers, and just possibly a somewhat sidetracked and archaic Army.

But I see no merit in trying to argue that they are the Navy as well. Starfleet is, having demonstrated ownership and mastery of the most potent combat ships witnessed in Earth hands. In ship combat, the MACOs are either utter amateurs or slackers, since they never lift a finger against Earth's shipboard enemies.

It thus seems only natural that there would be branch rivalry between the Starfleet/Navy and the MACO/Marines. The former would argue they are doing all the meaningful stuff, defending against real foes and not just preparing to defend against future ones, scouting out when the latter just sit tight. The latter would justly belittle the warrior prowess of the former personnel, and take great pride in their training therein, and possibly in their glorious history as well.

All this requires of us is to accept that "military" means Army as opposed to Navy, not Army as opposed to the Peace Corps. Like it indeed did for a while in 1700s - early 1800s English.

Enterprise was launched from the Warp Five facility orbittnig Earth. The phase cannons were supposed to have been installed at Jupiter Station, which may or may not have actually involved Starfleet personnel. It is at least knowable that combat was not foremost on Starfleet's mind when the ship was launched, else the weapons would have been installed at the same time as the sensors. As it stands, though, somehow Starfleet got around to installing the transporter and three shuttlepods before anybody ever started on the weapons, save a token plasma cannon sufficient to fight off a space boomer. Even their targetting scanners hadn't been tested yet.

In short, if anyone other than Reed even cared about the weapons, they weren't involved in the decision-making process for the ship's construction. So the people who make decisions related to Starfleet's most advanced ship don't care much about combat. What does that tell you about Starfleet's priorities?

I don't get this argument, either. Of course the ship was constructed piecemeal - that's how the mightiest warships are built today (and yesterday), too. And Jupiter Station, a likely Starfleet installation that on another occasion is said to be capable of refurbishing the ship's engines, is never referred to as having a connection to the MACOs or any other organization, is just as logical a place for installing the guns as, say, Earth or Mars or some secret asteroid. Starfleet is in control of the Sol system and operates everywhere within.

NX-01 is Starfleet's most advanced ship the same way the Sea Shadow is the Navy's. She's not Starfleet's most potent warship, nor intended as such originally, because she is only slated to receive three phase cannon while obviously capable of receiving more. We don't know if she's theoretically more combat-capable than the older Intrepid type that is only seen in combat duty, but we should not confuse theory with practice. Starfleet has priorities regarding NX-01, but they are not Starfleet's only priorities, nor do they tell the whole story about Starfleet's aims and responsibilities. The goals of the Sea Shadow program certainly don't characterize USN very well, either.

Did you get the "MACOs at Jupiter Station" bit from the reference to the Janus Loop training, perhaps? (Janus could point to the moon of Saturn, but not to Jupiter...) This is interesting as such, because our brave MACOs always refer to their training in terms of shadow boxing. The unit sent out against the Xindi has no known combat experience, no bragging about "bug hunts", yet supposedly isn't an expendable bottom-of-the-barrel unit such as how the one in Aliens came out looking like.

Not that this would majorly affect the discussion about the roles of Starfleet and MACO, but it's interesting nevertheless to think that a frontline unit of Earth's infantry/special forces as of the 2150s has no combat experience worth mentioning - mainly in comparison with the fact that Archer prior to his mission lacks it, too, but accumulates plenty during his theoretically non-aggressive, threat-avoiding mission.

Why does Forrest think of the peaceful MACO force in terms of "military", as opposed to his own hard-fighting Starfleet? Again, I suggest equating "military" with Army, as opposed to Navy. Neither Forrest nor any of the other users of that word states or implies that this "military" would be more aggressive than Starfleet, more armed, more combat-ready. They are always just the "military", and as such somehow automatically the enemies of Starfleet. A perfect analogy for the nonsensical branch rivalry of today"!

Where do you get the idea of Earth being poor? Seems like money isn't really an issue for them, given the relatievly high standard of living for its inhabitants.

The US had a relatively high standard of living, too, yet couldn't afford Apollo. While I acknowledge the lack of technology as the main reason for Starfleet's impotency, I must argue that if Earth had sufficient funds, it could field its low-tech starships in sufficient numbers to do the things it is not doing in ENT: protecting the Boomers against piracy, mainly. The failure by Earth to act against piracy stems from the lack of numbers, not lack of armament tech or skill: we see the low-tech weapons and Starfleet tactics perform quite well both times the pirates are challenged, "Fortunate Son" and "Horizon".

Of course, the lack of numbers could be due to foreign or domestic politics rather than simple economics as well. Appeasement of Vulcans must be a major factor in those politics. But your earlier mention of Vulcan defending Earth militarily makes me wonder if we have any evidence of such a thing. Vulcan's protection seems to be purely political, and indeed when that defense fails in "Broken Bow", there is no mention of the possibility of combat against the spectre of "a squadron of Warbirds".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[aridas sofia]

The US had a relatively high standard of living, too, yet couldn't afford Apollo.

That is a rather broad and unsupportable statement. Could the U.S. "afford" Apollo -- at about 4.5% of the Federal budget -- at a time when defense accounted for ten times that percentage? Or, to look at it from another vantage, is it accurate to say the U.S. "couldn't afford" something when the country maintained its place as the world's pre-eminent military and economic power over the course of the following generation, and the living standards of its population continued to improve?

At 45% of the budget, it is more accurate to question the deficit spending needed to pay for defense during the Vietnam era than to question the relatively small portion allocated to Apollo. The negative economic impact of that spending was profound, but even so, short in duration.

 

[Timo]

This, I guess, is just what I meant. The political entity in question would decide whether it can afford Moon shots or starships on the basis of how necessary those were for its survival, success and supremacy. Apollo wasn't all that important after the first success; and starships might not be valid investments for Earth in the early 22nd century. Let's say a fifty-capital-ship Starfleet took those 4.5% of Earth's product to maintain; the money might better be spent by adding them to the 49.5% used on entertainment and propaganda, to keep the populance happy, as long as Vulcan diplomats kept military threats away and trade revenue lost to pirates did not unduly inconvenience anybody.

We know Starfleet wanted a bigger role in defense and exploration. We know Vulcans held them back. We don't quite know how the parties in between, such as Earth treasury or Starfleet's human civilian oversight, viewed the issue. But the feeling I get is that all humans would have wanted to invest more in this, and thus have to have been limited financially somehow or they would have had those fifty starships out there already.

Timo Saloniemi

Timo Saloniemi

 

[REMMandel]

Of course, any time you devolve into material from ENT you're just begging from trouble. Inconsistencies, inconsistencies ... Plus, it's a demonstrable human trait that if we want something bad enough, we'll do anything it takes to get it, no matter what the cost or effort. Like Apollo. Like Buran, too. ^_^

I'm with NewType_A on this one, and it happens to be the same approach I took in my efforts. The Starfleet we know in the 23rd and 24th centuries had its origins in the old Terran Starfleet (UESF). It was largely a regional (Sol System) force until the exploration agencies (UESPA, ISA, whatever) stumbled across REAL aliens. Hostile ones ... over six feet tall, with red fur and nice pointy teeth and claws. Thought humans tasted well with honey mustard sauce. The Kzin neatly answer that "kick in the complacency" argument. Hence the rapid expansion of the Terran Star Fleet to combat the Kzin and its overshadowing and eventual swallowing of UESPA. Most of the other cultures allowed the Terran Starfleet to shoulder the burden of the fighting because of, ummm, "humanity's natural qualities." A bit of a fudge there, admittedly, but no worse than anything else we've seen on screen. After the Earth-Kzin Wars, you suddenly have a very large Terran Starfleet that has essentially taken over the patrol and defense duties of an extremely large volume of space -- the Local Group, plus whatever systems were gained from the Kzin (which I call the New Territories). You need SOMETHING to police all of that, and using the Terran Starfleet was a natural. Nobody else had a fleet that big. This idea also allows for the Vulcans, Andorians, etc. to keep their "regional" fleets for a time, at least until the UFP Starfleet is founded. Since Starfleet had essentially swallowed UESPA, then it now had a dual role in the post-war era: defense AND exploration. Which got priority depended on whatever political leaders dictated Starfleet's priorities at the time. You see this later in TOS and the TOS movies, where Starfleet kinda swings from exploration to defense. Later, by the start of TNG, it had swung back to exploration again, then back to defense in DS9, and so on.

That also helps explain why the Starfleet of "today" is so Terrocentric. It started as a Terran organization. It's "naval traditions," so to speak, would retain that heritage. Later changes/modifications would have only added onto that Terran base. That's how I see it starting, anyway. As for the Marines (MACOs in ENT), they would have developed in parallel along the same lines.

Ah, but I digress. I'm actually trying to make sense out of something that doesn't, per canon, plus I'm trying to reconcile ENT with TAS. That works about as well as mixing dogs and cats. Literally.

-_^

 

[Newtype_A]

Timo said:
I'm afraid I don't get the basis of your argument.

You say the MACOs are the defenders of Earth, when we have never seen them engage in battle against enemy starships. You say Starfleet isn't, when they are the guys and girls who do engage in such battle.

I'm all for saying that the MACOs are an important branch of Earth's defenses when it comes to special ops, and perhaps even large-scale ground combat if that remains a mode of operations for Earth's defense forces. In that, they could be the Marines, or the Rangers, and just possibly a somewhat sidetracked and archaic Army.

But I see no merit in trying to argue that they are the Navy as well. Starfleet is, having demonstrated ownership and mastery of the most potent combat ships witnessed in Earth hands. In ship combat, the MACOs are either utter amateurs or slackers, since they never lift a finger against Earth's shipboard enemies.

The basis is fourfold
1) The cutting edge of Starfleet technology in the 22nd century (NX-01 and its crew) performs horrendously in combat--including ground combat--throughout its first dozen or so engagements, at least until its personnel catches up to the learning curve.
2) The MACOs demonstrate a remarkably proficiency in combat the very first time we see them in action, and fairly consistently throughout latter appearances.
3) The stated purpose of said vessel is exploration; it is explicitly referred to as being NOT a warship, and lacks pre-existing procedures that would be expected from a combat vessel.
4) Maybe most importantly: it is established in DIALOG that there is some meaningful difference between Starfleet and "the military." At this point in time, only one Earth organization is referred to as such, and that is the Military Assault Command Organization.

From this and other clues throughout the series I conclude that Starfleet is not an organization that has spent much time or energy thinking about combat. Indications are that combat is a priority for Starfleet only insofar as the defense of their exploration vessels and possibly protecting civilians within range of Earth (i.e. protecting boomers out to a certain distance).

Again, taking issue that we've only ever seen Starfleet ships in combat sort of glosses over the fact that Star Trek is not and has never been about a MACO starship named Enterprise. Nor, for that matter, was it about an Andorian battle cruiser named Kumari; indeed, the only reason we know the Andorians HAD a military is because they had occasion to open fire on Our Heroes.

It's the logic behind it that doesn't add up. The very existence of the MACOs obliterates the excuse of anti-militarism which, in the past, MIGHT have explained why Starfleet refuses to be called a military. Nobody on Earth seems particularly uncomfortable with the existence of the MACOs; Starfleet is uncomfortable, however, with having to USE them, because (if Hernandez, Archer and Gardner's statements are to be believed) they're not used to thinking of their job as military in nature. And if Starfleet doesn't think that way, then who does?

Even if you're obsessed with the notion of the MACOs as some sort of small, elite special ops group, there is still little support for Starfleet as Earth's first, last, or only line of defense against invasion. At least one other organization (the Royal Navy) was also mentioned. From this, you could conclude that the Royal Air Force ALSO still exists, from which you could easily conclude that the militaries of every nation on Earth still exist as national guard units, and may or may not operate THEIR own starships as well. Once you go down that road, you get to the inescapable conclusion: Earth still has traditional military organizations, similar to the MACOs, who put a greater emphasis on defense than exploration. This not only makes Starfleet redundant in that department, but it also neatly explains why Starfleet (at least in the 22nd century) haven't taken the matter all that seriously.

Timo said:
It thus seems only natural that there would be branch rivalry between the Starfleet/Navy and the MACO/Marines.

Again, there's nothing to indicate the MACOs are in any way similar to the Marines, since they're never described as a branch of Starfleet or in any way related to Starfleet.

Timo said:
All this requires of us is to accept that "military" means Army as opposed to Navy, not Army as opposed to the Peace Corps.

A distinction which is clearly arbitrary, such that the MODERN connotation of military is meant in every case it is used, especially in "Home" where Archer is recommending a MACO for the tactical position. If it was just a matter of "army vs. Navy," then a MACO would be entirely useless at tactical; like putting a Marine sniper at the fire control panel of a submarine.

Archer makes this recommendation because that at least one branch of the MACOs has people far more proficient in space combat than Starfleet's armory officers. There's no concievable reason why the MACOs would have such people UNLESS their aims and responsibilities did, in fact, include space combat. Therefore, THE combat-oriented organization of the 22nd century is the Military Assault Command Organization. The only thing that remains debatable about this reality is just how BIG the organization actually is, whether they have five ships or fifty, whether they're torpedo boats or battle cruisers. One way or the other, they definitely have them.

Timo said:

Enterprise was launched from the Warp Five facility orbittnig Earth. The phase cannons were supposed to have been installed at Jupiter Station, which may or may not have actually involved Starfleet personnel. It is at least knowable that combat was not foremost on Starfleet's mind when the ship was launched, else the weapons would have been installed at the same time as the sensors. As it stands, though, somehow Starfleet got around to installing the transporter and three shuttlepods before anybody ever started on the weapons, save a token plasma cannon sufficient to fight off a space boomer. Even their targetting scanners hadn't been tested yet.

In short, if anyone other than Reed even cared about the weapons, they weren't involved in the decision-making process for the ship's construction. So the people who make decisions related to Starfleet's most advanced ship don't care much about combat. What does that tell you about Starfleet's priorities?

I don't get this argument, either. Of course the ship was constructed piecemeal - that's how the mightiest warships are built today (and yesterday), too.

But they're not DEPLOYED that way, Timo. A ship that goes out to sea with half of its equipment not installed doesn't STAY at sea for any period of time, and certainly doesn't go out and continue its patrol anyway as if the other half of its ship fitting is a paint job and some tinsel it doesn't need anyway. With its weapons load still incomplete, sensors out of adjustment, etc, the ONLY reason it would be allowed to continue on its mission is if Starfleet concluded that tactical systems just weren't that important and Enterprise could get along fine without them. A COMBAT organization making decisions like that would practically negate its own existence in the process. And notice that neither Archer nor Malcolm showed any interest whatsoever in installing the phasers until AFTER the Silent Enemy started harassing them... combat-oriented indeed!

Timo said:
And Jupiter Station, a likely Starfleet installation that on another occasion is said to be capable of refurbishing the ship's engines, is never referred to as having a connection to the MACOs or any other organization...

But is never said to be a Starfleet installation either. Major Hayes did train there, after all, so it could just as easily be a civilian space station. Either way, the point being that Enterprise was made totally flight ready in a facility that didn't actually have--at time--the ability to ARM it. You have to wonder what sort of combat-oriented organization has its most advanced ship home ported in a place that doesn't have the ability to service its primary weapons.

Timo said:
NX-01 is Starfleet's most advanced ship the same way the Sea Shadow is the Navy's.

An EXCELLENT comparison, considering Sea Shadow--which was never designed to carry weapons--has never been deployed on any actual mission for any period of time. Because the U.S. Navy is a combat-oriented force, there aren't a whole lot of missions for ships that are incapable of actually going into combat.

The closest thing the U.S. Navy ever built to the NX-class was USS Albacore, which was built without any torpedo tubes or any of the necessary equipment to use them had they been installed; that ship was classified as an auxiliary vessel and was never meant for front line duty. Enterprise, however, is about as front-line as it gets, and yet was allowed to continue on its mission without its main weapons having been installed at all.

Timo said:
She's not Starfleet's most potent warship...

She's not a warship AT ALL. Archer's own words, Malcolm's agreement. And even twelve cannons on board would not have changed that reality.

Timo said:
Starfleet has priorities regarding NX-01, but they are not Starfleet's only priorities, nor do they tell the whole story about Starfleet's aims and responsibilities. The goals of the Sea Shadow program certainly don't characterize USN very well, either.

Actually, they do. The Sea Shadow is designed to test the ability to evade enemy radar and close the distance to other ships without being detected. For the trekiverse, it's the equivalent of a shuttlecraft with a cloaking device installed. How Sea Shadow (and for that matter, Albacore) were actually used says even more about the USN: they're very interested in the ability to rapidly approach other ships without them knowing about it. Furthermore: the fact that neither vessel was ever forwardly deployed says even more: something about them (notably, the lack of weapons) makes them unsuitable for front line duty.

You follow the same logic for Starfleet. How Enterprise was used says ALOT for Starfleet's priorities. It says their primary aims and responsibilities are scientific and engineering research, space exploration, and interstellar relations. It says that combat is at best a secondary responsibility of Starfleet, and by no means a mission priority even for their most advanced ship that is supposed to embody the cutting edge of Starfleet's mission.

Timo said:
Why does Forrest think of the peaceful MACO force in terms of "military", as opposed to his own hard-fighting Starfleet?

Literally, because the MACOs are the military. Generally, because "hard fighting" is hardly the word that applies to Starfleet, since even those MACOs whom you inexplicably claim have no combat experience of any kind STILL perform better on their very first action than Malcolm's security team with a year of live fire experience.

Timo said:
Neither Forrest nor any of the other users of that word states or implies that this "military" would be more aggressive than Starfleet, more armed, more combat-ready.

Archer does EXACTLY that when he explains why he requested a squad be deployed aboard Enterprise, and later, when he recommends a MACO for Hernandez' tactical officer. The exact is that he DOES think they are are more "aggressive," or better armed, or more combat ready, or all of the above. What else could he possibly have wanted them for? Superior diplomatic skills?

Timo said:
They are always just the "military", and as such somehow automatically the enemies of Starfleet...

That would be a valid statement, if GARDNER was the one who asked the MACOs to be assigned there and Archer was the one who complained about "military on board." Again, it was vice versa: Archer asked for them because he knows they're much better at fighting than Starfleet, and due to the Xindi threat, THIS time out, he actually expects to get into a fight or two.

Timo said:

Where do you get the idea of Earth being poor? Seems like money isn't really an issue for them, given the relatievly high standard of living for its inhabitants.

The US had a relatively high standard of living, too, yet couldn't afford Apollo.

If that were true, Apollo never would have launched. But they COULD afford it, so it did.

Apollo wasn't canceled because somebody "couldn't afford" it, it was canceled because it had already accomplished its goal (beat the Russians to the moon) and American politicians lacked the political will to support it further.

Timo said:While I acknowledge the lack of technology as the main reason for Starfleet's impotency, I must argue that if Earth had sufficient funds, it could field its low-tech starships in sufficient numbers to do the things it is not doing in ENT: protecting the Boomers against piracy, mainly.

But they ARE protecting them from piracy. Just not out beyond the limits of Earth controlled space, at least as explained in "Fortunate Son" where the existence of a warp-five engine makes it possible for boomers to make freight runs in weeks instead of decades. Starfleet could afford to protect them out two or three light years, but not the duration of the trip, since that would mean building an entire vessel whose sole purpose is to escort a boomer to and from its destination. If they actually had the will or the logistics for that, then the Warp-5 program would only be about the fortieth Starfleet vessel to probe interstellar space.

Timo said:
The failure by Earth to act against piracy stems from the lack of numbers

No, it is EXACTLY on account of the lack of technology. In the days before replicators were invented, the ship can only store a finite quantity of supplies and fuel on board. Boomers can make the trip because they have ample space and small crews and don't mind spending their entire lifetimes in transit between stars. Starfleet ships aren't designed for long-duration voyages; they couldn't protect Boomers over long distances if they wanted to.

Of course, if Starfleet's main combative ability is limited to law enforcement in and around Earth's immediate area, that explains it even more. Beyond "international waters" outside Earth's sphere of influence, they fall under somebody else's umbrella anyway, and the best they can hope for is to limp to a nearby Earth colony that may or may not have a MACO contingent.


We rehash the basis of my argument, it really boils down to the fact that Starfleet's best and brightest on Enterprise perform terribly in combat the first (and second, and third, and fourth...) time they're forced to perform, even when they start to get better, they're STILL not as good at it as The Military Assault Command Organization, whom three senior Starfleet crewmen refer to simply as "the military." I don't think it could be more obvious than that: you've got a guy who keeps loosing fights and doesn't get that much better at it, and then you've got a guy who is an EXCELLENT fighter from a get go, and the weaker guy calls him "the military." To conclude that BOTH of these men are, in fact, combat officers would require some highly tortured logic; it's like watching an eight-year-old wandering around a college campus and concluding that he's some kind of transfer student.

 

[Timo]

It seems to me that reasons 1 and 3 would cancel out: we follow the adventures of the one Starfleet vessel that explicitly isn't built for combat and is considered unique (and can thus easily be argued to be unique because it is not built for combat). As regards 2, the rest of Starfleet makes just as good a first impression in combat as the MACO contingent does.

The MACO organization can of course be argued to be Earth's principal combat organization. Or the Royal Navy could be that, with both MACO and UESF some sort of minor players. But none of that makes the slightest dramatic sense - the MACO troops are shown to be ground forces, and the Royal Navy is said to operate in, on and under water even in the 22nd century. UESF is the one organization that is presented to us as the space combat force of Earth.

It seems... I don't know, extraneous to the show to dream up the existence of MACO starships or Royal Navy space cruisers or whatnot, when that's not what TPTB are showing us. They are showing us combat starships in UESF hands, and in UESF hands only. Writer intent for this once isn't some obscure line in a script that never gets expressed on air. Writer intent is a blatant "See and hear, UESF does the space battles for Earth" audiovisual experience.

So it still leaves me confused as to why it should be argued that Starfleet isn't that combat force, and some other organization secretly is. It makes perfect sense to have one force for starship fighting, another for infantry-level stuff, and possibly a couple of force components more for the niche environments of atmospheres, oceans, and possibly urban environments or forests or gas giants or cyberspaces or whatever is important for 22nd century wars.

(As an aside in that respect, why would my use of the USMC not be appropriate for describing the MACO organization? I see no practical connection between the USMC and the USN, except that they both cheer for the same nation; the same would be true of the MACO/UESF pair. To argue that USMC is a branch of the USN is just facetious nowadays... But if you wish, you can always substitute US Army in place of USMC in the previous arguments, and think back to the Pacific war where the Army's ass, chiefly, was the one riding in Navy equipment.)

THE combat-oriented organization of the 22nd century is the Military Assault Command Organization.

That's my biggest beef with your approach. Why should Earth have just one, "THE", organization? You yourself argue that Earth is teeming with assorted old combat organizations. The Royal Navy of the future clearly is everything you want from a military organization: a place full of soldiery people that make Reed feel at home in the middle of MACOs. And clearly the RN is separate from MACO, too. Why should we argue any differently for the relationship between UESF and MACO?

...especially in "Home" where Archer is recommending a MACO for the tactical position. If it was just a matter of "army vs. Navy," then a MACO would be entirely useless at tactical; like putting a Marine sniper at the fire control panel of a submarine.

Umm, Archer wanted somebody with "field experience", and then said he'd recommend a whole squad of them - a squad that would obviously have infantry combat as its deployment mode, just like in the Expanse. Not difficult to think in terms of putting a Marine in charge specifically because his ground combat experience is valued; Marine or Army officers could indeed take a comparable position in amphibious operations where the Navy might be out of depth (often literally ) and its mission subjugated to that of the Marines or Army. Of course the Navy would hate that sort of thing, but it would be necessary for the greater good. And Archer would be one to see the value of ground troops operating from a starship and having a say in how the ship operates, quite possibly the first to do so.

Certainly there is little in the scene to suggest that Hernandez would be resentful of yielding responsibility to "the big brother" or "the grown-ups"; if anything, she looks down at the military. Which, I suppose, is a natural thing for a Space Navy officer to do.

A ship that goes out to sea with half of its equipment not installed doesn't STAY at sea for any period of time, and certainly doesn't go out and continue its patrol anyway as if the other half of its ship fitting is a paint job and some tinsel it doesn't need anyway.

Aren't you arguing against yourself here, trying to convince me that the heavy guns were always intended to be big part of the NX-01?

Not to worry, I have a different objection here anyway. What we see in ENT S1-2 is exceptional circumstances all around - the very point of the show to begin with. Nothing is impossible for them, even if today's warships might not sail out that way for those several weeks that are the analogy of two years in Trek timescales (remember how small Earth's oceans are, versus the current speed of ships and density of ports).

But then again, they very well might. Several ship types in modern navies have sailed for years if not decades awaiting for their main armament to be designed, let alone installed. NX-01 clearly had "placeholder" weapons available, namely those plasma guns that never fire a shot after the first phase guns are installed. (Intriguingly, they might never have been removed, either: their apparent "Broken Bow" gunports, on the dorsal superstructure bow, are the only two that are not shown firing phase beams later on.)

She's not a warship AT ALL. Archer's own words, Malcolm's agreement. And even twelve cannons on board would not have changed that reality.

Uh, actually they do. For S3-4, NX-01 clearly is Earth's most potent warship, diverted from her designed role to perform a different one. And all it takes is to get all gun sockets fitted with phase cannon, and to have the skipper grow up.

If we explored things today in high speed jets, the same could easily happen. The fastest research jet out there would also make for the deadliest warplane, all the more so if already equipped with a powerful research radar and lots of hardpoints originally included either for research gear or then for quantity-over-quality second-rate self-defense weapons.

How Enterprise was used says ALOT for Starfleet's priorities. It says their primary aims and responsibilities are scientific and engineering research, space exploration, and interstellar relations. It says that combat is at best a secondary responsibility of Starfleet, and by no means a mission priority even for their most advanced ship that is supposed to embody the cutting edge of Starfleet's mission.

How do you get that out of ENT?

What we see there is an aggressively operating reconnaissance starship whose skipper has instructions and incentive to show the Vulcans the full extent of human derring-do. She's supposed to stay out of combat, yes - but so is a sniper fifty kilometers behind enemy lines. That doesn't mean the sniper would represent a force of pacifist hiding specialists who only roam the battlefield in ghillie suits to spot birds and pick mushrooms.

That's just one way to interpret the ship, out of dozens possible. Similarly, the Sea Shadow can be seen in a number of different ways. But we can "cheat" with interpreting the Sea Shadow because we know the aims of the USN already. When interpreting NX-01, we can't do that - the argument that she shows a noncombatant Starfleet when one reads between the lines is no more valid as such than the one that she shows an aggressively combative UESF.

The important thing is that the whole show is about NX-01 being unique. We have to read between the lines when it comes to NX-01, then (such as realizing that "battle stations" is established UESF parlance). But we don't have to do any such guessing when we see the rest of Starfleet in action - the folks that do the only witnessed space combat on Earth's behalf, and do it right the first time around.

Archer does EXACTLY that when he explains why he requested a squad be deployed aboard Enterprise, and later, when he recommends a MACO for Hernandez' tactical officer. The exact is that he DOES think they are are more "aggressive," or better armed, or more combat ready, or all of the above. What else could he possibly have wanted them for? Superior diplomatic skills?

Hmm. You state what Archer thinks, without relying on the actual dialogue. Then you say this must be true because you can't think of any alternate explanation.

Yet the alternatives are not hard to come by. It's pretty obvious to me what this Navy captain would want the Marines aboard his ships for: ground combat. That's the gist of my argument here overall! Earth's defenses are multi-branched, just like the national defenses today and yesterday, and much for the same reasons. There are different realms of war for which different branches are required. And it makes no sense to send infantrymen or special forces to fight the ship-to-ship battles (except when it comes to boarding action), or sailors to sally across the trenches.

That's how it's shown: a separate starship combat force is shown in starship combat, and a separate ground combat force is shown in ground combat, and both loathe the other whenever the borders of these territories grow fuzzy.

The MACOs aren't better at "fighting". They are better at ground combat. They have never distinguished themselves in space combat. The UESF has. That's shown. Why second-guess?

Apollo wasn't canceled because somebody "couldn't afford" it, it was canceled because it had already accomplished its goal (beat the Russians to the moon) and American politicians lacked the political will to support it further.

Which is exactly what I mean. Earth can afford to build the starships we see. The US could afford a handful of Apollo missions. The starships we see could eradicate piracy if built in sufficient numbers. Apollo could have explored the moon if built in sufficient numbers. But Earth settled for something less, seeing what a giant leap it would have been in quantitative and financial terms to go from a token fleet to an effective one. And the US bailed out of Apollo because getting any real scientific return from it would have meant an investment far more massive than the one that scored the limited political goals.

No, it is EXACTLY on account of the lack of technology. In the days before replicators were invented, the ship can only store a finite quantity of supplies and fuel on board. Boomers can make the trip because they have ample space and small crews and don't mind spending their entire lifetimes in transit between stars. Starfleet ships aren't designed for long-duration voyages; they couldn't protect Boomers over long distances if they wanted to.

What a load of bull. Uh, I mean, what a splendidly creative thought construct!

We have absolutely no evidence that the life support capabilities of Starfleet's space combat vessels would be any different from those of the Boomer ships. Nor is a Boomer ship any roomier than the NX-01 by quick comparison of volume vs. stated crew count. We have never heard of an endurance limit for a Starfleet combat vessel, and indeed all the known types are shown to be capable of the same sort of interstellar transit in "Twilight".

Apart from dramatic reasons, the only known reason we don't see a Boomer ship escorted by one of Starfleet's combat vessels is because Earth accepts piracy. It can afford it, as per "Horizon"; it apparently cannot afford to fight it, though. That's pretty much a repeat of the Mediterranean piracy precedent where the young USN played the heroic part that Archer's new and improved Starfleet hopes to play.

(Of course, it's also interesting that the Mayweathers don't look at MACO for protection, but at Starfleet. And you can't argue that this is because the MACO wasn't invented yet by "Horizon", because in the Trek reality it was. )

We rehash the basis of my argument, it really boils down to the fact that Starfleet's best and brightest on Enterprise perform terribly in combat the first (and second, and third, and fourth...) time they're forced to perform, even when they start to get better, they're STILL not as good at it as The Military Assault Command Organization

How could you tell? The MACO has never performed.

Space combat, that is. They have done ground combat and corridor fighting, in which they best the Starfleet shipboard security forces.

That pretty much pulls the carpet from under your argument, unless you evoke some fantasies about how the MACO does all these cool things off camera, and how they would do them so much better than UESF does it on camera if we just could see it somehow. As seen, MACO is solely a ground combat force, just as UESF is solely a space combat one. And in light of what is seen, it makes perfect sense to associate this future-fictional division of expertise with the future-fictional division of designations "Starfleet" and "military".

Which, of course, isn't purely future-fictional. "Military" did refer to ground combat forces explicitly, as opposed to naval forces, basically all the way from the inception of this English word till the beginning of the 19th century.

And having the English language revert to the original usage in the Trek universe is no less likely than the use of words like "fleet" and "ship" to describe spacecraft.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Newtype_A]

Timo said:
It seems to me that reasons 1 and 3 would cancel out: we follow the adventures of the one Starfleet vessel that explicitly isn't built for combat and is considered unique (and can thus easily be argued to be unique because it is not built for combat). As regards 2, the rest of Starfleet makes just as good a first impression in combat as the MACO contingent does.

Not as such, given that the only time we see them in combat they catch the Bird of Prey by surprise and outnumber it more than four to one. Still more relevantly is the fact that only the Intrepid is actually shown to really BE a Starfleet vessel to begin with.

Timo said:
UESF is the one organization that is presented to us as the space combat force of Earth.

Once again: it isn't PRESENTED as being a combat force in any way shape or form. It is, in fact, PRESENTED as being an exploration force that maintains the ability to defend itself when attacked. This presentation is fairly transparent, in much the same way the Boomers are presented as a group of civilian cargo haulers who maintain the ability to defend themselves against pirates. This presentation would not change even if Duras' ship had been chased away by a mob of J-clas sstarships.

Timo said:
It seems... I don't know, extraneous to the show to dream up the existence of MACO starships or Royal Navy space cruisers or whatnot, when that's not what TPTB are showing us.

Well, yes and no. TPTB are showing us a ship called Enterprise whose primary mission is exploration. It belongs to an organization called Earth Starfleet, whose primary purpose is ALSO exploration. It would be equally extraneous to dream up the existence of the 2154 Denver Broncos; after all, Starfleet officers have never been shown to have any football training, but that doesn't mean football isn't a required course at Starfleet Academy. HOWEVER, in the event that we happen to see Starfleet officers meet the 2154 Denver Broncos on a football field somewhere, watch them get creamed 48 to nothing, and then listen to some of those starfleet officers refer to the Broncos as "the football team," what are we to conclude other than the fact that Starfleet is NOT a football team and isn't particularly well trained at football? From there, you get to the conclusion that if Earth has a football team, it probably isn't Starfleet.

Extraneous? Sure. No more, though, than dreaming up the existence of the Lake Armstrong Police Department or the Martian Colonial Government. You can either pin a multiplicity of aims and responsibilities on a single organization that has demonstrated little proficiency in them, OR you can posit the existence of a specialist organization that includes those aims and responsibilities. Either way, the primary aims of Starfleet are well known: to explore new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. No such organization could ever accurately be called a "combat force"; it is an AUXILIARY function at best, an "occupational hazard" at worst.

Timo said:
So it still leaves me confused as to why it should be argued that Starfleet isn't that combat force, and some other organization secretly is.

Because there are no secrets to be considered. Starfleet doesn't pretend to be an exploration force just to hide the fact that it's a battle fleet any more than the MACOs pretend to be a Military Assault Command Organization just to hide the fact that it's a glorified SWAT team. I think we can take both organizations at face value: Starfleet's aims and responsibilities revolve around peaceful exploration and scientific research. The MACO's aims and responsibilities revolve around kicking ass and taking names. One of these groups is a combat force that occasionally devotes itself to peaceful missions, like any recognizable military. The other is called "Starfleet."

Timo said:
As an aside in that respect, why would my use of the USMC not be appropriate for describing the MACO organization?

Because the Marine Corps is, in terms of origin and in function, a type of Naval Infantry (and in most countries, are actually CALLED Naval Infantry). They are ship-borne soldiers who either defend their vessels from attack or boarding, or embark on land FROM those ships for offensive operations.

There is nothing in the MACOs that implies them as being strictly infantry, nor is there any indication that they are limited to ship-borne operations. They are the "Military Assault Command Organization,"; that first word is "Military," not "Starfleet" (SACO) or "Infantry" (IACO) or even "Marines" (MACO again!). By definition, this would mean the MACOs are tasked with conducting or at least coordinating ALL military operations for the whole of United Earth, and there is no dependency on Starfleet even remotely implied here.

And again, there's the dialog issue. Whatever you think of "Army vs. Navy," there's no precedent anywhere for naval officers referring to Marines as "the military." Such an officer is either very confused, or playing some sort of joke.

Timo said:

...especially in "Home" where Archer is recommending a MACO for the tactical position. If it was just a matter of "army vs. Navy," then a MACO would be entirely useless at tactical; like putting a Marine sniper at the fire control panel of a submarine.

Umm, Archer wanted somebody with "field experience", and then said he'd recommend a whole squad of them - a squad that would obviously have infantry combat as its deployment mode, just like in the Expanse. Not difficult to think in terms of putting a Marine in charge specifically because his ground combat experience is valued...

Oh, that's not what he said, farm boy.

ERIKA: So, did you get a chance to look 'em over?
ARCHER: Look what over?
ERIKA: My senior officer candidates. Any suggestions for Tactical?
ARCHER: You may want to find someone with more field experience, a MACO.
ERIKA: I'm not sure how I feel about a military officer on the Bridge.
ARCHER: If I were you, I'd talk to General Casey about assigning an entire squad.

I have a photographic memory, I see words.

Archer is specifically recommending a MACO for a BRIDGE position, the tactical station that, on Enterprise, is manned by Lieutenant Reed. He says a MACO would have battlefield experience that a Starfleet officer wouldn't. How could this be possible unless the MACOs had in their possession some number of armed starships and fought some number of live fire engagements against enemies? Again, if they're strictly an infantry force, then a MACO would be a useless choice for Tactical in any case; Hernandez would have to send him to Starfleet Academy for four years just to get him up to speed.

Timo said:
Certainly there is little in the scene to suggest that Hernandez would be resentful of yielding responsibility to "the big brother" or "the grown-ups"; if anything, she looks down at the military.

There's no indication of that either. She says she's uncomfortable with it, not that she's too good for it. Archer reflects on her earlier mindset:

ARCHER: Things have changed since Enterprise left Spacedock. You'll spend a lot of your time boldly going into battle.
ERIKA: Don't you think you're being a little cynical?

CYNICAL is the operative word here. Hernandez is still hung up on Starfleet's primary mission of peaceful exploration and scientific research. The entire idea of Starfleet working in tandem with the military makes her uncomfortable. If both Starfleet and the MACOs were BOTH military, this mindset would make no sense at all. Even the "rivalry" between Jarheads and Squids is mostly fraternal in nature, nothing at all that would ever generate discomfort in the latter.

Timo said:

She's not a warship AT ALL. Archer's own words, Malcolm's agreement. And even twelve cannons on board would not have changed that reality.

Uh, actually they do. For S3-4, NX-01 clearly is Earth's most potent warship, diverted from her designed role to perform a different one...

No, Enterprise is not a warship because it was not designed to function in that capacity. Even its heavier armament--which in any case consists only of a pair of photon torpedo tubes--doesn't change this much:

DEGRA: We've never been able to gain access to one. These scans are remarkably detailed for a military vessel.
ARCHER: Enterprise was designed to be a ship of exploration.
DEGRA: If we're successful, it will be again.

And remembering the scene, I recal Archer getting all embarassed when Degra refers to his ship as a "military vessel." Come the end of the Xindi threat, it's business as usual anyway.

As for "most potent warship," this strikes me as a somewhat laughable claim since Enterprise barely survived an encounter with a Rigelian interceptor without having to be saved by the Augment's bird of prey. The weapon upgrades from "The Expanse" undoubtedly made a difference, yet Enterprise is STILL not a warship despite these upgrades, having been designed (and subsequently, still used) as a ship of exploration.

Timo said:
And all it takes is to get all gun sockets fitted with phase cannon, and to have the skipper grow up.

Bolted-on guns and a grumpy captain do not a warship make.

Timo said:
If we explored things today in high speed jets, the same could easily happen. The fastest research jet out there would also make for the deadliest warplane...

Incorrect. The fastest research aircraft in the world right now is the Space Shuttle, which as it happens was designed with military applications in mind. It has never been used in that capacity, and would be far more poorly suited to that capacity compared to a purely military space craft. Likewise, the SR-71 Blackbird--the fastest conventional jet aircraft in the world--was so poorly suited to combat roles that the prototype was occasionally destroyed by its own weapons, forcing the aircraft to a life of mundane surveillance work. The X-1 rocketplane would have made a horrifically inefficient combat aircraft, as would most of the X planes right up to through some of the prototypes that were actually designed to test military applications.

The common trend here that needs to be emphasized is this: combat--and the equipment, systems and training that make combat feasible--are mind-bogglingly complicated. They take up alot of space, time, and energy to perfect, to the point that most ships designed to function primarily as combatants find it difficult to do much else other than transport supplies, people and equipment from point A to point B. Any exploration vessel that was worth its salt would have to force its combat systems into a secondary role just to keep its exploration mission feasible, because scientific equipment and analysis takes up almost as much resources as combat (unless, of course, you have a ship the size of the Galaxy Class and you can basically have two ships in one).

Degra says as much in the line I quoted above. Military vessels are sometimes used for survey missions, but then, there's a reason why Coast Guard icebreakers and scientific research vessels don't usually have extensive weapon systems installed.

I would suggest that Enterprise' weapons package is relatively light even by Earth standards. Not just light, fairly unimportant to boot, since they didn't even bother to install their main weapons until they'd already been in space for a couple of months.

Timo said:

How Enterprise was used says ALOT for Starfleet's priorities. It says their primary aims and responsibilities are scientific and engineering research, space exploration, and interstellar relations. It says that combat is at best a secondary responsibility of Starfleet, and by no means a mission priority even for their most advanced ship that is supposed to embody the cutting edge of Starfleet's mission.

How do you get that out of ENT?

What we see there is an aggressively operating reconnaissance starship...

Then you need to point out where, at any point in ENT, any Starfleet officer ever described Enterprise as an "aggressively operating reconnaissance starship."

Again, I don't understand this drive to read between the lines at the expense of the obvious. Why should we assume Starfleet is a battle fleet that pretends to be an exploration group? There's no indication they are anything other than what they claim to be: they're not exploring the galaxy trying to collect "intelligence" on potential enemies or anything of the sort, they're out there trying to explore strange new worlds and make peaceful contact with their neighbors. Hell, only Malcolm even hints at having any sort of intelligence interest in Earth's neighbors, and then only because it happens to be his pet hobby.

Timo said:
The important thing is that the whole show is about NX-01 being unique. We have to read between the lines when it comes to NX-01, then (such as realizing that "battle stations" is established UESF parlance).

Reading between the lines is fine, just not at the expense of the obvious. If the ship goes into battle eight times and nobody ever bothers to utter the phrase "battle stations" on any of those occasions, then it's plainly clear that it isn't standard procedure on the ship yet.

Timo said:
But we don't have to do any such guessing when we see the rest of Starfleet in action - the folks that do the only witnessed space combat on Earth's behalf, and do it right the first time around.

You're forgetting the boomers again, whom we have TWICE seen engaging in direct head-to-head combat on Earth's behalf. Are you going to suggest the Boomers are ALSO a combat force that merely pretends to be a group of civilian cargo haulers?

Timo said:
Yet the alternatives are not hard to come by. It's pretty obvious to me what this Navy captain would want the Marines aboard his ships for: ground combat.

Except the MACOs are not the Marines. Malcolm's security force is the closest thing Starfleet has to marines. Archer wants the MACOs because he's going on a mission that specifically requires going into combat, so he wants people who are specifically trained for combat (because Starfleet officers are not).

I've already explained the recomendation for Hernandez's tactical. It's not a Navy Captain recommending a Marine, it's a Scientist recommending a soldier.

Timo said:

Apollo wasn't canceled because somebody "couldn't afford" it, it was canceled because it had already accomplished its goal (beat the Russians to the moon) and American politicians lacked the political will to support it further.

Which is exactly what I mean. Earth can afford to build the starships we see. The US could afford a handful of Apollo missions. The starships we see could eradicate piracy if built in sufficient numbers.

Of course they could. But Starfleet didn't use Enterprise to protect Boomers from pirates, did it? Instead, it sent Enterprise galloping around the galaxy on a mission of exploration. Columbia wasn't put on those missions either; Starfleet pretty much left the Boomers to fend for themselves, and even when it developed the technology to keep up with them, didn't care enough to do anything about it.

It's not about being able to AFFORD the Warp-Five project anyway. In Fortunate Son, it's suggested that even the Boomers will have to upgrade to a Warp Five engine just to stay in business. Earth only builds two NX-class ships in as many years, which is nowhere near enough to eradicate piracy or defend the Solar System, but PLENTY sufficient for scientific research and exploration.

So if Earth lacks the political will to spend all their money on warp five starships, what ARE they spending their money on? The same thing that drew attention away from the Apollo program?

Timo said:
We have absolutely no evidence that the life support capabilities of Starfleet's space combat vessels would be any different from those of the Boomer ships.

I would agree with that, except fact that Boomers actually DO make trips that last dozens of years and Starfleet ships don't, and for some reason never did prior to NX-01. The entire premise of the Warp Five engine is that it makes deep space exploration feasible for the first time. There's no way this could be possible unless exploration was INFEASIBLE prior to this, and there is no reason this would be the case unless Starfleet (the group that does the exploring) didn't have ships that were capable of probing into deep space at the slow speeds they were limited to.

Indeed, it would seem that Boomers only have enough provisions for a one-way trip and have to resupply at their destination on the other side. If they had enough for a round-trip trajectory, then Starfleet would have sent an expedition to Terra Nova decades before Enterprise ever launched.

Timo said:
Nor is a Boomer ship any roomier than the NX-01 by quick comparison of volume vs. stated crew count.

At least until you take into account the nearly two hundred meters worth of cargo pods attached to it.

Timo said:We have never heard of an endurance limit for a Starfleet combat vessel

And we never hear of Starfleet ships ever called "combat vessels" so you're going to have to back that one up with something.

Timo said:
Of course, it's also interesting that the Mayweathers don't look at MACO for protection, but at Starfleet.

Actually, they didn't look to Starfleet for protection either. They pretty much solved their own problem, as seems to be standard procedure on Boomers.

Timo said:

We rehash the basis of my argument, it really boils down to the fact that Starfleet's best and brightest on Enterprise perform terribly in combat the first (and second, and third, and fourth...) time they're forced to perform, even when they start to get better, they're STILL not as good at it as The Military Assault Command Organization

How could you tell? The MACO has never performed.

Comparing them in ground combat, it's perfectly evident at a glance. And then there's the fact that Archer thinks the MACOs know enough about space combat to recommend one for Hernandez's tactical station (on the BRIDGE of all places). Clearly, Archer knows something we don't: that some MACOs have experience in space combat. Make your own speculations as to why that might be, but don't discount the possibility that the two Arrowhead ships that accompanied the Intrepid were, in fact, crewed by MACOs.

Timo said:
Which, of course, isn't purely future-fictional. "Military" did refer to ground combat forces explicitly, as opposed to naval forces, basically all the way from the inception of this English word till the beginning of the 19th century.

And if you look back in history, I'm pretty sure you're going to find that, for Naval forces until that point, not all seaborne combatants actually WERE part of a country's standing military. Most of the fighters in Queen Anne's War, for example, were themselves mercenaries who fought for their particular side only because they were paid to. It wasn't until the 19th century when the British empire actually formed its naval forces into a formal military branch and excluded civilian participation that the distinction became meaningless (especially as other navies began to follow suit).

So if you want to argue that Starfleet is a navy in the same sense as the privateer quasi-military sea forces of the 17th and 18th centuries, I'm all for that, since it means Starfleet may actually be a branch of the United Earth Space Probe Agency and Jonathan Archer has stock options. Understand, though, that this would again mean Starfleet is not Earth's primary combat force, since the distinction would literally mean that "the space navy" is not part of the military and is, in fact, an armed private contractor for the United Earth Government.

But I don't think this is accurate anyway. The U.S. Cutter Service wasn't part of the military either, although it did answer directly to the Department of the Treasury, did fight alongside the Navy, and did operate lightly-armed vessels that were relatively advanced compared to their naval counterparts.

 

[Timo]

Okay, point by point again, although we are still arguing the big picture and not the details.

Not as such, given that the only time we see them in combat they catch the Bird of Prey by surprise and outnumber it more than four to one. Still more relevantly is the fact that only the Intrepid is actually shown to really BE a Starfleet vessel to begin with.

I would not attach anything negative to the fact that Starfleet overwhelmed its enemy here. The organization would be much more of a loser if it only managed to deploy one ship...

And it would be odd to the extreme to have the largest (and arguably most powerful) vessel speak on behalf of the combat formation if she were the only vessel in the task force from the "pretending" combat organization UESF, while the other two came from the "real" combat organization (MACO, RN etc).

So I'd say the point still stands that UESF scored a classic space combat victory there, while MACO has never done such a thing.

Once again: it isn't PRESENTED as being a combat force in any way shape or form. It is, in fact, PRESENTED as being an exploration force that maintains the ability to defend itself when attacked.

That's a matter of opinion, and not something I can argue beyond again pointing out the previous datapoints: NX-01 is the only known explorer in the organization, and the other ships readily partake in space combat with as much competence as anybody on Earth can offer.

It belongs to an organization called Earth Starfleet, whose primary purpose is ALSO exploration.

How do you figure? We've never seen or heard of them exploring anything. They are all gushed up on the thought of doing it for the first time with NX-01. Their heraldry doesn't even say "Ex Astris, Scientia" yet...

Starfleet's aims and responsibilities revolve around peaceful exploration and scientific research. The MACO's aims and responsibilities revolve around kicking ass and taking names.

That still leaves Earth short of a space combat force. After all, no MACO has ever shown the slightest inclination to fighting space battles. To burden that job on them would be like asking the US Army to sink the Bismarck. They might MacGyver some sort of an operation involving their tools of trade, but that would be the weakest possible response the United States could send against the warship.

If the MACO force has space combat capabilities, they are secret as far as ENT is concerned. The hardware and skill are equally invisible in the show, the organization and mission unvoiced. Mere ass-kickingness doesn't suffice, or else the primary combat force of the United States would be the WWF.

By definition, this would mean the MACOs are tasked with conducting or at least coordinating ALL military operations for the whole of United Earth

Like Bank of America is in charge of all monetary affairs in the US? I think you read way too much into a cute acronym. (An acronym that in any case suggests that these folks concentrate on "military assault", which is a narrow slice of what a combat force does today or would be expected to do tomorrow.)

...and there is no dependency on Starfleet even remotely implied her.

Nor is there any dependency for the USMC on the USN, which is why I consider the comparison apt. No dependency, that is, unless the Marines wish to perform an amphibious assault (an increasingly rare opportunity nowadays), in which case they depend on USN for transportation and part of fire support. The exact same thing was shown to be true of the MACO force aboard NX-01.

Granted that this was the first time a MACO contingent shipped aboard a warp five vessel, and that such a vessel was dictated by the mission profile and explicitly wasn't available anywhere outside Starfleet. Could we thus argue special circumstances going against standard MACO mode of operations? Not really. It remains a practical fact that a warp five starship is needed for all interstellar ground assault operations, and that any preceding MACO deployments of this sort aboard any vessel would be tactically unviable.

Whatever you think of "Army vs. Navy," there's no precedent anywhere for naval officers referring to Marines as "the military."

Umm, I rather doubt that. In fact, as far as I can tell, such nomenclature would be standard in the 17th-18th century Royal Navy: at that time, the Royal Marines really were Army units stacked aboard ships (as opposed to the later concept of Naval Infantry, which is sailors ushered ashore to fight), and the standard word for land army was indeed "military", as opposed to "navy". The special word "Marines" would only be invented for the 18th century, at which time "military" still was synonymous with "land army".

It's just a question of whether 22nd century Starfleet would be pre-Hornblowerish or not in this respect. Given all the anachronisms or retro terminology in Trek, I wouldn't wonder a bit if that were the case.

Archer is specifically recommending a MACO for a BRIDGE position, the tactical station that, on Enterprise, is manned by Lieutenant Reed. He says a MACO would have battlefield experience that a Starfleet officer wouldn't. How could this be possible unless the MACOs had in their possession some number of armed starships and fought some number of live fire engagements against enemies?

Quite simply, the MACO would have experience on the battlefield. Space navy officers would have none of that, of course, not operating on battlefields.

No, Enterprise is not a warship because it was not designed to function in that capacity.

That's counterfactual even if perhaps somehow semantically defensible. She is a warship because she superbly performs the job of one. You could just as well argue that a certain make of car cannot be a police cruiser because it wasn't designed as one. And you would be making no sense there, either.

For S3-4, NX-01 is the best combat vessel Earth has to offer, and indeed the combat vessel Earth does offer. Or then these putative MACO warships are captained by cowards who hide under their beds at the beep of the intercom, mortally fearing that they might get orders to actually deploy their vessels.

Bolted-on guns and a grumpy captain do not a warship make.

Sure they do. You don't seem to appreciate the fact that "warship" is a relative term. The Mary Rose was one, despite being unable to offer any resistance to the meekest combat vessel of the early 20th century. In that century, she would best be employed as a pleasure yacht. But if you try to argue that she was a pleasure yacht, you draw nothing but ridicule.

NX-01 began as an exceptional UESF ship in that she was the first to explore deep space. She became the last, best hope for victory on S3, and continued as Earth's foremost combat vessel on S4. That's what was shown, stated and overall documented in the episodes of ENT.

Incorrect. The fastest research aircraft in the world right now is the Space Shuttle, which as it happens was designed with military applications in mind.

Aww, come on, that's facetious. I was speaking about jet aircraft in the putative world where everything hasn't already been explored by foot and ship. The best exploration ships served as templates for combat vessels before specialization set in; the best exploration jets would enjoy the same crucial advantages in that putative world.

Are you going to suggest the Boomers are ALSO a combat force that merely pretends to be a group of civilian cargo haulers?

Of course they are. They have to be.

They are clearly Earth's outermost exploration and combat force until the maiden voyage of NX-01. They are also its foremost mercantile and diplomatic envoys. And they are one more item in pointing out the utter fallacy of your position in claiming that Earth should only have one military organization. We know it has several, and we see and hear them operating in different niches of the Earth dominion. And the one force that operates in the not-too-deep outer space is Starfleet.

I would agree with that, except fact that Boomers actually DO make trips that last dozens of years and Starfleet ships don't, and for some reason never did prior to NX-01. The entire premise of the Warp Five engine is that it makes deep space exploration feasible for the first time. There's no way this could be possible unless exploration was INFEASIBLE prior to this, and there is no reason this would be the case unless Starfleet (the group that does the exploring) didn't have ships that were capable of probing into deep space at the slow speeds they were limited to.

Trade is viable at those slow speeds (although it is strange that trade in the Trek universe is viable at all, but we should take the demand for alien goods for granted for now). Military expeditions would not be, since they would feature the concept of response time. As for exploration, why send warships to do it? If UESF is Earth's space combat force, as I maintain, then it naturally follows that it wouldn't send its vessels to exploration errands that would take them years away from the star systems they needed to protect. NX-01 would at worst be weeks away, as we saw at the S2/3 threshold.

Boomers would be enough of an exploration force for Earth at first - escpecially when the Vulcans would frown on exploration-expansion attempts. There are good reasons why the Elizabethian leaders didn't send out their "formal" navies to do privateering. Earth would not have much logical incentive in sending out waves of "formally kosher" explorers, either, being such a subjugated political entity (at least in their own eyes) facing so many constraints.

I don't necessarily want to categorically deny the concept of "primary combat force" for the ENT-era Earth, but that is always one option. I rather prefer the model where the UE government does have a force that in most areas outperforms "private" competition: UESF for space combat, and just possibly for exploration (through its UESPA subsection/affiliate), the organization that fields the MACO for ground combat and/or general home defense (it's a bit unlikely that an outfit calling itself MACO would be its own master), and quite possibly other organizations specializing in the other niches of warfare.

MACO is a cool acronym, that much has to be admitted (especially with the shark symbolism). But the name inevitably evokes things like SAC, TAC or MAC: "commands" or divisions under a broader organization, much like the later Starfleet has "commands" or divisions for exploration, terraforming and whatnot. Earth might well have a defense force for which Military Assault Command is but one division - and Starfleet Command is another.

Now there's some semantical logic at last. Sure, the "Operations" part suggest an even narrower subset of the "Military Assault" subset, but that's not a big problem. Starfleet Command might have an Operations branch as well, just without a cool acronym to its name and thus no incentive to push the full name. (So Archer would be of SCO formally, as opposed to SCLogistics or SCAccounting.)

If the ship goes into battle eight times and nobody ever bothers to utter the phrase "battle stations" on any of those occasions, then it's plainly clear that it isn't standard procedure on the ship yet.

No contest there. That's my standard position: NX-01 was not a combat vessel, and as such a highly atypical example of Starfleet operations, considering that Reed and Archer readily agreed that "battle stations" were preexisting Starfleet procedure.

I've already explained the recomendation for Hernandez's tactical. It's not a Navy Captain recommending a Marine, it's a Scientist recommending a soldier.

And I simply denounce that theory. A confrontation between Navy and Army (or Marine, or Military, or MACO, whichever the name of the day) is at least as workable a theory for all those instances as the idea that the people in Starfleet uniform who fire the biggest guns Earth has to offer are scientists with a combat hobby.

Mind you, there's nothing wrong as such for having a "primary combat force" whose personnel do combat as a hobby. That's how most of the world's combat forces have operated throughout history, on the average. The profession of the full-time soldier is an aberration in that long history (which is nice enough, as it implies that war isn't a full-time phenomenon on Earth after all), and often far from the most efficient combat force possible.

Earth in the 22nd century might have a full-time professional space combat force. Then again, it might not. Whether or not it needs one, it is still a new player, a practical infant in the game played by big, burly grown-ups. The nascent United States didn't have a naval force for the first decades of its existence, either - nor much of a military. The newborn Germany managed to do without a navy for an equally long time, in the middle of a fierce naval escalation contest between its enemies.

So if you want to argue that Starfleet is a navy in the same sense as the privateer quasi-military sea forces of the 17th and 18th centuries, I'm all for that, since it means Starfleet may actually be a branch of the United Earth Space Probe Agency and Jonathan Archer has stock options. Understand, though, that this would again mean Starfleet is not Earth's primary combat force, since the distinction would literally mean that "the space navy" is not part of the military and is, in fact, an armed private contractor for the United Earth Government.

You seem to be getting your analogies confused: why would this putative universe (or any arbitrary universe) have a "primary combat force"? Factually, the multitude of those armed private contractors put together used to be the "primary combat force" back then...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Newtype_A]

Timo said:
it would be odd to the extreme to have the largest (and arguably most powerful) vessel speak on behalf of the combat formation if she were the only vessel in the task force from the "pretending" combat organization UESF, while the other two came from the "real" combat organization (MACO, RN etc).

Why? Enterprise was a Starfleet ship, Intrepid was a Starfleet ship. Stands to reason the Starfleet ship approaching Earth would be greeted by the commander of another Starfleet ship whether the two smaller vessels in formation are MACOs or not.

Timo said:

It belongs to an organization called Earth Starfleet, whose primary purpose is ALSO exploration.

How do you figure? We've never seen or heard of them exploring anything.

We've never heard of them DOING anything either, except testing the Warp-Five engine, exploring the North Pole in shuttlecraft and conducting search and rescue operations around the solar system. All of this as a bakcdrop to Starfleet's own literature and self-description, in which they refer to THEMSELVES as an exploratory force, and even the Starfleet symbol has the phrase Ad Astra Per Aspera which is pretty much the NASA motto rearranged, which is fitting since Earth Starfleet's logo is clearly based on the NASA logo, AND they use the names of NASA orbiters for the warp five program.

Exploration is the prerogative here, and they make no secret of it.

Timo said:

Starfleet's aims and responsibilities revolve around peaceful exploration and scientific research. The MACO's aims and responsibilities revolve around kicking ass and taking names.

That still leaves Earth short of a space combat force.

See, once again, Archer recomending a MACO for Captain Hernandez' tactical station. Clearly, they DO have some profficiency in space combat, unless of course Archer was trying to get Hernandez killed.

Timo said:

By definition, this would mean the MACOs are tasked with conducting or at least coordinating ALL military operations for the whole of United Earth

Like Bank of America is in charge of all monetary affairs in the US?

No, like the "National Aeronautics and Space Administration" is, by definition, under the authority of the national government. Like the Federal Aviation Administration is responsible for coordinating aviation at the Federal Level. Like the U.S. Coast Guard is responsible for guarding the coasts of the United States. Like the Federal Emergency Management Agency is responsible for coordinating all emergency response activities... and so on.

It's right there in the name: the Military Assault Command Organization. It is the Organization whose job it is to Command the Military during Assaults.

Timo said:

...and there is no dependency on Starfleet even remotely implied her.

Nor is there any dependency for the USMC on the USN

Other than the fact that the Marines are technically a branch of the Navy, you are correct. Of Course, it's Earth Starfleet, not AMERICAN Starfleet, so you'll have to explain why everyone else on the planet decided to use America's weird naval traditions, employing Naval Infantry that has nothing to do with the Navy.

Timo said:

Whatever you think of "Army vs. Navy," there's no precedent anywhere for naval officers referring to Marines as "the military."

Umm, I rather doubt that.

Doubt it all you want, but you're never going to find a naval officer who doesn't think he's part of the military but that the Marine contingent on his ship IS. You can't have it both ways: if you think Starfleet is borrowing from the military traditions of its predecessors, then they simply have NOT reverted back to the days of privateers and quasi-military naval forces.

Timo said:

Archer is specifically recommending a MACO for a BRIDGE position, the tactical station that, on Enterprise, is manned by Lieutenant Reed. He says a MACO would have battlefield experience that a Starfleet officer wouldn't. How could this be possible unless the MACOs had in their possession some number of armed starships and fought some number of live fire engagements against enemies?

Quite simply, the MACO would have experience on the battlefield. Space navy officers would have none of that, of course, not operating on battlefields.

Then why did he recomend a MACO for the TACTICAL position, since by your own theory MACOs shouldn't have any experience whatsoever in space combat?

Timo said:

No, Enterprise is not a warship because it was not designed to function in that capacity.

That's counterfactual

That's canon, because it was stated in dialog. Archer said it, Malcolm confirmed it. Enterprise is not a warship and was not designed to function as such. Nuff said.

Timo said:

Bolted-on guns and a grumpy captain do not a warship make.

Sure they do.

No, they don't. Being built specifically for combat DOES make a warship. The ABILITY to use the ship for operations in time of war doesn't make it a warship either; I will AGAIN point you to the example of the U.S. Cutter Service in the 19th century, which participated in every single American war ever fought (until the early 20th century) yet never operated anything that could be called a "warship." It's possible to convert ships INTO warships by massive overhaul and specialization, but that specialization is where the definition kicks in: a ship whose purpose is to engage in combat.

Enterprise does not become a warship just because it's armed. It WOULD become a warship if its scientific and exploratory capability was sacrificed in favor of tactical capabilities.

Timo said:
The best exploration ships served as templates for combat vessels before specialization set in

Incorrect. The best exploration ships have NEVER been used in combat, because the best exploration ships are specialized for exploration first and foremost. That's why most military icebreakers are relatively poorly armed and usually have only a token defensive capability. The best exploration jets in the world, by the same token, have never EVER been used in direct combat, and most of their pilots are smart enough not to have any illusions to the contrary.

Timo said:

Are you going to suggest the Boomers are ALSO a combat force that merely pretends to be a group of civilian cargo haulers?

Of course they are. They have to be.

They are clearly Earth's outermost exploration and combat force until the maiden voyage of NX-01...

No, Timo. The Boomers are cargo haulers. PERIOD. That's what they are, that's what they claim to be, that's how they conduct their business. What they HAVE to do to make decade-long freight runs and still survive doesn't change their purpose: to haul a few thousand tons of freight from HERE to THERE.

The Boomers are not a combat force. They are not an exploration force. They are not a military organization. Hell, they're not even an ORGANIZATION. The Boomers are an industry; what they do and how they operate are incidental factors of that industry.

So it is, also, with Starfleet. They're very transparrent about who they are or what they do. Going beyond that would involve a fair amount of fan fiction (such as when one envisions that Enterprise is REALLY doing long-range reconaisance of potential enemies in a military capacity ) but not alot of logic, at least not from what is seen on the show.

Timo said:

If the ship goes into battle eight times and nobody ever bothers to utter the phrase "battle stations" on any of those occasions, then it's plainly clear that it isn't standard procedure on the ship yet.

No contest there. That's my standard position: NX-01 was not a combat vessel, and as such a highly atypical example of Starfleet operations

That would only apply for the ship. The CREW shouldn't need to reinvent the wheel just to put the ship back on combat readiness, especially if they have half as much experience as they would seem to have.

On the other hand, given the fact that the Warp-Five engine prototype was tested on a glorified rocketplane, it's possible that Starfleet only has a half dozen ships in its entire fleet anyway. If Earth Starfleet is TPTB's version of 22nd century NASA (which it very much appears to be) then Enterprise is a warp-five space shuttle, the Boomers are those plucky but low-tech cosmonauts, and they really have never been in space much before this anyway.

Which sort of rules them out as a combat force to begin with, since Starfleet would be too small and too inexperienced to make any serious preparations for combat. Think of the difference between NASA and Air Force space initiatives, for example.

Timo said:

I've already explained the recomendation for Hernandez's tactical. It's not a Navy Captain recommending a Marine, it's a Scientist recommending a soldier.

And I simply denounce that theory. A confrontation between Navy and Army (or Marine, or Military, or MACO, whichever the name of the day) is at least as workable a theory for all those instances

What confrontation? Archer is recomending a MACO for her TACTICAL officer. You know, the guy who fires torpedoes, arms phasers, polarizes the hull plating, etc. Why would he recommend someone for that position--on the grounds of "field experience"--someone who should by definition not have ANY experience in doing those things? It's like recommending an Army Ranger who's never been on a plane before to pilot the space shuttle, based on his piloting experience.

Timo said:
You seem to be getting your analogies confused: why would this putative universe (or any arbitrary universe) have a "primary combat force"? Factually, the multitude of those armed private contractors put together used to be the "primary combat force" back then...

And there's a reason they're not anymore: Governments discovered that building ships that specialize in combat--rather than well-armed Merchant ships that can fight when you pay them too--made naval forces FAR more effective. The industrial revolution sped up the process dramatically: specialization put the privateers out of business, since no general-purpose vessel could compete with a specialty-built warship in battle, nor could it compete with an unarmed, specialty-built freighter in the industry. Specialization is a result of competition, and the more advanced your technology, the harder it is to do a certain thing well, the fewer things you're able to do at all.

Starfleet is a general-purpose fleet only insofar as it is able to sometimes divert from its SPECIALTY, which is space exploration and research. They do pretty well, but they are by no means Earth's primary combat force, because a primary combat force is, by definition, the force whose primary aims and responsibilities is combat. Such an organization may exist on Earth, but in the mid 22nd century, it isn't Starfleet.

 

[Timo]

Why? Enterprise was a Starfleet ship, Intrepid was a Starfleet ship. Stands to reason the Starfleet ship approaching Earth would be greeted by the commander of another Starfleet ship whether the two smaller vessels in formation are MACOs or not.

Okay, let's say then that some other space combat organization besides Starfleet was also in operation back in the early 2150s, and flew its ships in formation with Starfleet combat vessels.

Seems like a wholly unnecessary complication to me, but OTOH there is some allure to the idea that the ships with lifting bodies would belong to an organization specializing in the kind of warfare that involves planetary surfaces (be it home system defense, planetary assault or something else altogether).

It would be nice to get some substantiation to this, though. We are not really given any reason to think that the two lesser vessels in that fight would not belong to UESF. And nothing changes the fact that the lead combatant in that fight was a Starfleet vessel commanded by a Starfleet captain.

It's right there in the name: the Military Assault Command Organization. It is the Organization whose job it is to Command the Military during Assaults.

Which, as I wrote, is a somewhat narrow mission profile and obviously excludes for example the combat engagement in "The Expanse".

Certainly being in charge of Military Assault does not equate being in charge of the Military, any more than today's Military Sealift Command is in charge of the US armed forces.

If we really want to read things into these names, it logically follows that Military Assault Command and Starfleet Command are analogous rungs on some organizatory ladder, tasked with two different things. This doesn't mean they would be tightly entangled with each other in that organization, of course. Nor would the umbrella organization be any sort of an über-fighting force; more probably, it would simply be the government's Ministry or Department of Defense (or War, or Safety, or whatever doubletalk is fashionable at the time), with a command structure akin to Joint Chiefs of Staff, irrelevant to the day-to-day activities of Starfleet and Military.

Of Course, it's Earth Starfleet, not AMERICAN Starfleet, so you'll have to explain why everyone else on the planet decided to use America's weird naval traditions, employing Naval Infantry that has nothing to do with the Navy.

I thought that arguing that ENT must percetly match 21st century US was your job?

Anyway, to describe the shipboard infantry we see in ENT as "Marines" is for all practical purposes congruent with the concept of Marines in today's military organizations. Trivialities in adminstrative structures are not the point of the analogy: the mode of deployment and the operational relationship between the specialist branches is.

Doubt it all you want, but you're never going to find a naval officer who doesn't think he's part of the military but that the Marine contingent on his ship IS.

"Never say never" is particularly apt on this occasion. I already explained that I'd find that officer easily enough if I went to the 1600s or the 1700s. If you want to be stuck in the 21st century, feel free. But Star Trek isn't.

Okay, I understand the underlying point here: the writers who wrote "military" in ENT were thinking in 2000s terms and tried to portray the UESF as a civilian organization. But those writers were outvoted by the bunch that showed UESF acting as the de facto leading space combat force of Earth, without peer at short and medium ranges, even if out of its depth at the fringes where the Boomers operated.

Trek is rife with such things: writers briefly saying something that goes against what is shown, and everything still trundling along just fine because what was said can easily be understood in a way that fits the greater context. There's this myth about Roddenberry not wanting to portray a classic military force in space, too, even though this is what was deliberately written, shown and aspired towards in TOS. The minor divergences from that in a couple of episodes can easily be interpreted to match the greater volume of data.

That's canon, because it was stated in dialog. Archer said it, Malcolm confirmed it. Enterprise is not a warship and was not designed to function as such. Nuff said.

Agreed that she wasn't designed to function as such. But neither was the Jervis Bay, one of the most celebrated warships of the early Battle of the Atlantic.

And no matter how much the characters lie or delude themselves, warship is what NX-01 is on seasons 3 and 4 (in addition to remaining an exploration vessel as well, for all of two episodes: "Observer Effect" and "Bound"). Although in fact they don't lie or delude themselves: the references to NX-01 not being a warship are confined to the first two seasons.

Being built specifically for combat DOES make a warship. The ABILITY to use the ship for operations in time of war doesn't make it a warship either

That's a highly personal semantic interpretation of yours. NX-01 was utilized by the de facto naval combat force of United Earth in acts of combat, and was clearly the most potent vessel at Earth's possession for performing that task. That makes her not just a warship, but the warship. Everything else is just verbal obfuscation - and more damningly, obfuscation that you alone, not the ENT characters, partake in. None of the heroes try to pretend that their ride isn't a combat vessel in the last two seasons. The conversation between Archer and Degra emphasizes that, with Archer resigned to the fact that the ship has moved beyond her originally intended destiny.

Incorrect. The best exploration ships have NEVER been used in combat, because the best exploration ships are specialized for exploration first and foremost. That's why most military icebreakers are relatively poorly armed and usually have only a token defensive capability.

Again you seem to have temporal tunnel vision. The best exploration vessels from 500 to 1000 years ago were by definition the best "deep ocean" combat ships, outperforming the overspecialized coastal warfare units of their time in terms of weapon-carrying capabilities. Before the advent of gunpowder, it was important to carry large boarding crews, and the exploration designs were superb in that respect - not as good troop carriers as the most overbloated cargo ships were, perhaps, but the best possible compromise if the intention was to deploy a naval fighting force across any considerable distance, rather than merely across the English Channel. With the advent of cannon, the explorer designs were adopted as the most stable platforms, again discounting fringe designs such as coastal galleys that could not provide control of seas.

It is in this sense that NX-01 becomes the superior tool of warfare. A warp 1.1 monitor trundling around Sol in small circles, behind sixteen meters of polarized armor, might best NX-01 in a phase gun fight - but NX-01 would still rule space in every relevant respect. As she is shown doing, and the putative monitor never is.

The Boomers are not a combat force. They are not an exploration force. They are not a military organization. Hell, they're not even an ORGANIZATION. The Boomers are an industry; what they do and how they operate are incidental factors of that industry.

That's like saying that Marco Polo or Columbus were not gathering military intelligence, or Francis Drake was not practicing piracy.

Sure, these individuals, groups or organizations may not have been dedicated to a particular task. But in the complete absence of competitors, even their smallest contribution would make them the de facto leaders in said task. The Boomers would be "the law of the West" when called to be, quite regardless of whether the officials of Earth approved or not. They would be explorers just as much as Lewis and Clark, despite lacking a presidential signature (and the UE government would in fact be smart to give such a signature to these people when clearly lacking alternate means to perform exploration, diplomacy and power projection out there).

That would only apply for the ship. The CREW shouldn't need to reinvent the wheel just to put the ship back on combat readiness, especially if they have half as much experience as they would seem to have.

But they aren't reinventing the wheel. Reed always carries it in his pocket (or then he's just happy to see the new phase guns). It's just that Archer left port without a combat crew, and without those phase guns for the crew to fire. The linguists, shakedown engineers and foreign observers aboard are not to be expected to bitch and moan about Archer's failure to use military slang. Reed and his folks are - and they do. It just takes this Strange Spatial Anomaly for Reed to go to the mental state where he wants to defy his CO on a major policy issue.

It's not just the ship that is special. It's also the captain, the mission, and the subsection of crew aboard that are special.

What confrontation? Archer is recomending a MACO for her TACTICAL officer. You know, the guy who fires torpedoes, arms phasers, polarizes the hull plating, etc. Why would he recommend someone for that position--on the grounds of "field experience"--someone who should by definition not have ANY experience in doing those things? It's like recommending an Army Ranger who's never been on a plane before to pilot the space shuttle, based on his piloting experience.

Ah, you missed the semantic point I was trying to make? "Field experience" is what a ground trooper would indeed have, and a space fighter would not. When the fighting is going to take place on the field rather than in space, a personnel policy change is certainly due.

Also, pay attention to how Archer proceeds to suggesting that a "squad" be sent. A squad would do squat in space combat, there only being so many buttons to push for firing the phase guns. But a squad doing what the MACO force is always shown doing (and never shown doing anything else) - that is, fighting the infantry/Marine/special forces fight - would be a smart addition to the complement in light of Archer's recent and groundbreaking experiences.

Sure, you can argue that the first MACO they speak about will do a job different from that of the suggested MACO squad. But it's equally possible to put a MACO in command of a starship's tactical abilities for the purposes of turning the starship into a MACO support platform - a role in which a starship recently excelled, and saved the Earth doing so.

The MACO were brought aboard originally because they had a special role to play, a special ability to offer. That ability was not space combat, or else a MACO officer would have been put in Reed's place there and then. Or indeed Archer would have been kicked out in favor of one of those invisible MACO combat veteran starship captains.

We clearly saw what that special ability really was. It was the thing today done by the Marines, yesterday by the Military. It was the thing that called for rugged plasma rifles and sniper scopes; night vision goggles, camouflage suits and bravado; throat microphones and the ability to use terrain; and also knowing how enemy infantry might use the terrain.

It's an amazingly perfect analogy, really: Marines of yore would at times even be placed in command of a naval vessel's lighter artillery pieces for the purposes of coastal assault, with the understanding that they possessed the special expertise valuable in this task.

And there's a reason they're not anymore...

I challenge the relevancy of today to the discussion of a fictional tomorrow on two grounds:

1) We already know thousands of years of history, and should be smart enough to see that few things have reached the pinnacle of their evolution. What is considered efficient today may well cease to be so on short notice. When mercenary armies are making a strong comeback, when the principal strategic doctrine of the past fifty years is declared completely outdated because of a palace coup in one nation, and when the most important modern warship is a corvette intended to operate in shallow waters, the second most important being a shore bombardment destroyer, it is all the more obvious that the truths of today won't carry to tomorrow.

2) We are speaking of Star Trek here. This is a show that specifically and deliberately takes place at a time other than ours - or more exactly, at multiple times other than ours, even when those multiple times are written by people rooted in the same today. Furthermore, it explicitly draws inspiration from yet other times, recycling the allure of preceding fiction on Hornblower's Royal Navy, the Wagon Trails and the Frontier, the Great War and the Even Greater One... When the show dares to be different, our reaction should not be "that's unrealistic because it is different". It should be "wow, now what interesting implications does this difference have?".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Newtype_A]

Timo said:
If we really want to read things into these names, it logically follows that Military Assault Command and Starfleet Command are analogous rungs on some organizatory ladder, tasked with two different things.

Bingo. Both are probably divisions Earth Aerospace Administration or something, and would likewise run in parallel with the Earth Cargo Authority. The MACOs are the combative/defensive branch, Starfleet is the research/exploration branch, Earth Cargo Services are the commercial and freight branch. I'm sure they're interlinked in some way, much the way the Navy is interlinked with the Air Force is interlinked with NASA. In this case, though, the Military is not the umbrella in which all three of them operate.

Timo said:

Of Course, it's Earth Starfleet, not AMERICAN Starfleet, so you'll have to explain why everyone else on the planet decided to use America's weird naval traditions, employing Naval Infantry that has nothing to do with the Navy.

I thought that arguing that ENT must percetly match 21st century US was your job?

Nope. Just the progression from 20th and 21st century development, which would include not just U.S. Naval traditions, but to a much larger degree, space flight and aviation traditions.

Timo said:
Anyway, to describe the shipboard infantry we see in ENT as "Marines" is for all practical purposes congruent with the concept of Marines in today's military organizations. Trivialities in adminstrative structures are not the point of the analogy: the mode of deployment and the operational relationship between the specialist branches is.

Exactly. And Starfleet already HAS a specialist branch whose focus is (generally) combat and defense. It's called "Starfleet Security," and would seem to include Malcolm Reed and the Warp-Five redshirts. It also so happens that these Security forces are NOT considered to be "military" as such in the way that the MACOs are.

Timo said:

Doubt it all you want, but you're never going to find a naval officer who doesn't think he's part of the military but that the Marine contingent on his ship IS.

"Never say never" is particularly apt on this occasion. I already explained that I'd find that officer easily enough if I went to the 1600s or the 1700s.

Then go there and find that officer. I have no objection.

Timo said:If you want to be stuck in the 21st century, feel free. But Star Trek isn't.

Right. Star Trek is stuck in the 22nd century, NOT the 17th century. History has a tendency to move forward based on what was established previously; in this case, Earth Starfleet has less than a century between its organization and what we would consider "modern" organizations today. Some of those organizations seem to still be in existence; the Royal Navy, for example, which Malcolm explicitly refers to as a military organization.

So it's clear that Earth Starfleet isn't borrowing word useage from the late 17th century, and therefore, it makes no sense to interpret their words in that context.

Timo said:
Okay, I understand the underlying point here: the writers who wrote "military" in ENT were thinking in 2000s terms and tried to portray the UESF as a civilian organization. But those writers were outvoted by the bunch that showed UESF acting as the de facto leading space combat force...

What bunch was that, exactly? Fanon doesn't get a vote.

Timo said:

That's canon, because it was stated in dialog. Archer said it, Malcolm confirmed it. Enterprise is not a warship and was not designed to function as such. Nuff said.

Agreed that she wasn't designed to function as such. But neither was the Jervis Bay, one of the most celebrated warships of the early Battle of the Atlantic.

Which is an EXCELLENT example, since HMS Jervis Bay was an "Armed Merchant Cruiser" (I have only rarely heard it called a "warship") and was essentially blown out of the water by a German heavy cruiser that WAS, in fact, a warship.

And I don't believe for one minute the crew of the Jervis Bay had any illusions about being on board a warship. If they did, they didn't survive the pounding by the Admiral Scheer. Enterprise' crew had no such illusions either.

Timo said:

Being built specifically for combat DOES make a warship. The ABILITY to use the ship for operations in time of war doesn't make it a warship either

That's a highly personal semantic interpretation of yours.

No, it's an interpretation from history. Every "warship" for the last one hundred and fifty years has been PURPOSE built for a combat role. It is increasingly rare to find vessels pushed into front line combat that were originally built for something else. Even the armed merchant cruisers of the two world wars were merely convoy escorts designed to compensate for the lack of REAL warships; a stopgap, in other words.

More telling, the converse is just as true: very few purpose-built warships are converted to civilian use these days, mostly because such hulls are very poorly suited to other uses and have little value in civilian maritime operations.

Timo said:NX-01 was utilized by the de facto naval combat force of United Earth in acts of combat, and was clearly the most potent vessel at Earth's possession for performing that task.

Stretching again. NX-01 was used by Starfleet as a long-range exploration vessel; most of the combat it DID perform was defensive in nature, or incidental in some other capacity. For example: the Augment Crisis, where Enterprise performed in a law enforcement capacity, or even in The Expanse where Enterprise was simply chased across the galaxy by Duras' squadron.

The ability to engage in combat does not make a warship, since there are thousands of reasons why someone would want to equip their ship with combat systems other than the purpose of actually fighting wars. At least in Enterprise' case, they're nice enough to give us the reason: the only reason the ship even HAS weapons is to defend itself from attack, and the only reason it bothers to install those weapons is when it becomes clear it needs to use them.

Timo said:

Incorrect. The best exploration ships have NEVER been used in combat, because the best exploration ships are specialized for exploration first and foremost. That's why most military icebreakers are relatively poorly armed and usually have only a token defensive capability.

Again you seem to have temporal tunnel vision. The best exploration vessels from 500 to 1000 years ago were by definition the best "deep ocean" combat ships

And if Enterprise was a deep ocean exploration vessel from 500 to 1000 years ago, that would mean something. But it isn't. It belongs to an organization whose origins could well be less than eighty years in OUR FUTURE, an organization that has few reasons in any case to draw parallels to Naval tradition and every reason to draw on SPACE FLIGHT traditions (which, in the latter case, they obviously did, given that they choose to test their new warp engine on a single-seat vehicle instead of loading it on an existing space craft).

Timo said:

The Boomers are not a combat force. They are not an exploration force. They are not a military organization. Hell, they're not even an ORGANIZATION. The Boomers are an industry; what they do and how they operate are incidental factors of that industry.

That's like saying that Marco Polo or Columbus were not gathering military intelligence, or Francis Drake was not practicing piracy.

No, it's like saying the Teamsters are not invading Canada, or the AFL-CIO is not a leftist terrorist organization. You can judge an organization--or a person--by what they do. Columbus conquered Hispaniola and reduced its people to slavery; Francis Drake opened fire on and boarded a bunch of ships. Their actions speak for their behavior.

The Boomers hauled thousands of tons of freight to and from distant planets that wanted them. They also fought off the various pirates who attacked them. They did not explore deep space and they certainly did not conduct military operations on behalf of Earth.

Timo said:

That would only apply for the ship. The CREW shouldn't need to reinvent the wheel just to put the ship back on combat readiness, especially if they have half as much experience as they would seem to have.

But they aren't reinventing the wheel. Reed always carries it in his pocket (or then he's just happy to see the new phase guns).

Yes. REED does. Nobody else on the ship seems to know anything about it. This is at least consistent with the idea that only members of the Security division on starships really give a damn one way or the other about combat. This largely excludes Archer, at least so far as he is the ship's commanding officer and only needs to know enough about combat to coordinate the tactical guys who are good at that sort of thing.

This still leaves Combat very far from the top of the list of Starfleet priorities, given their lack of readiness when they left port.

Timo said:

What confrontation? Archer is recomending a MACO for her TACTICAL officer. You know, the guy who fires torpedoes, arms phasers, polarizes the hull plating, etc. Why would he recommend someone for that position--on the grounds of "field experience"--someone who should by definition not have ANY experience in doing those things? It's like recommending an Army Ranger who's never been on a plane before to pilot the space shuttle, based on his piloting experience.

Ah, you missed the semantic point I was trying to make? "Field experience" is what a ground trooper would indeed have, and a space fighter would not.

I got that point exactly. I'm pointing out that Archer is clearly NOT talking about ground combat, because the "Tactical Officer" is a bridge officer who needs to have proficiency in space combat as well as ground. If they were talking about "Chief of Security" or "Away Team Leader" or something to that effect, it would be different. But if it is true--as you suggest--that MACOs have experience of any kind in space combat, then Archer's recommendation is purely nonsensical. A MACO, even WITH field experience, would have to leave the Organization, join Starfleet Academy, go through four years of training to become proficient in space combat procedures and tactics before Hernandez could even CONSIDER him for the position.

But he's recommending a MACO for the tactical position on the bridge, based on field experience. Meaning the MACO has enough experience to do the job well without requiring any additional training.

Timo said:
Also, pay attention to how Archer proceeds to suggesting that a "squad" be sent.

Yeah. He's answering her complaint about "military on the bridge." It's to the effect that space is an exceedingly dangerous place, and Hernandez is going to have to get used to the idea of "boldly going into combat" if she wants to survive. He makes this suggestion because the MACOs--being a combat organization--have training and equipment Starfleet--being not an exploration organization--doesn't. The high-powered rifles, night vision, body armor, marksmanship, hand-to-hand fighting skills, and so on. By the time Earth Starfleet combines with the MACOs to become a peacekeeping force with a more combative orientation, no doubt Starfleet security will inherit their proficiency and training. This does not appear to happen until at least the formation of the United Federation of Planets.

Timo said:
1) We already know thousands of years of history, and should be smart enough to see that few things have reached the pinnacle of their evolution. What is considered efficient today may well cease to be so on short notice. When mercenary armies are making a strong comeback, when the principal strategic doctrine of the past fifty years is declared completely outdated because of a palace coup in one nation, and when the most important modern warship is a corvette intended to operate in shallow waters, the second most important being a shore bombardment destroyer, it is all the more obvious that the truths of today won't carry to tomorrow.

Indeed, it's true that the world is constantly changing as new situations arise. Yet, the one thing history never does is move BACKWARDS. It repeats itself, of course, but never by bringing back the old, in old terms, using old methods, in old places with old means. The old is simply repeated in the new, not as a COPY of the old, but by analogy.

You see, the trend of specialization is a one-way street: once someone creates a specialist combat-only force in a standing army, then his competitors have to do the same to keep from getting rolled. A civilization that de-specializes and expands an organization to do more things in more places can only survive so long until it runs into somebody else with a sharper blade, and then it is either destroyed, or narrows its organizational aims to keep up. If Earth Starfleet has other aims and responsibilities other than exploration, they're not their PRIMARY responsibilities in any way shape or form; that honor goes to the MACOs, whose primary aims are (obviously) combat.

Timo said:
2) We are speaking of Star Trek here. This is a show that specifically and deliberately takes place at a time other than ours - or more exactly, at multiple times other than ours, even when those multiple times are written by people rooted in the same today. Furthermore, it explicitly draws inspiration from yet other times, recycling the allure of preceding fiction on Hornblower's Royal Navy, the Wagon Trails and the Frontier, the Great War and the Even Greater One... When the show dares to be different, our reaction should not be "that's unrealistic because it is different". It should be "wow, now what interesting implications does this difference have?"

All true. Which is why I never assume Starfleet is a purely military organization just because they have ships, weapons and a rank structure. It seems to be(and probably is) an outgrowth of NASA or the ESA. From that, you get all kinds of wonderful thought experiments, not in the least of which is what the Space Shuttle would look like if Near Earth Orbit was filled with armed space stations manned by people with a craving for ceramic tiles. Would they mount a 20mm gun in the cargo bay? Would its seven-man crew begin to include a guy whose job is "security officer" and carries a Colt .45? And if so, would this change the mission of the space shuttle, and how would NASA grapple with these new realities in relation to its OWN mission statement?

 

[Timo]

Both are probably divisions Earth Aerospace Administration or something, and would likewise run in parallel with the Earth Cargo Authority.

Yes, it's difficult to see how this would not be true.

The MACOs are the combative/defensive branch, Starfleet is the research/exploration branch

That's where we have two different interpretations, neither of them directly flowing from the acronyms, both arguable from it.

In today's parlance, different "commands" wouldn't separate the executive organs of a government into military and nonmilitary ones. Rather, there would be commands dedicated to the different aspects of the killing thing, and then those dedicated to logistics, accounting, and perhaps exploration when in support of the killing thing. Sub-organizations doing logistics, accounting and exploration not related to the killing thing would not be mere commands under an overall military umbrella.

In that sense, I feel it is much more natural to assume that Starfleet Command and Military Assault Command are both organizations specializing in killing, among other things of course.

Just the progression from 20th and 21st century development, which would include not just U.S. Naval traditions, but to a much larger degree, space flight and aviation traditions.

Yet those traditions seem severely lacking, as the Trek space environment is so exotic. The example about arming the space shuttle against ceramics thieves is a nice one; we know something about the pseudohistory preceding ENT to figure out the challenges and opportunities that affected the evolution of the UESF, and to perform similar thought experiments.

However, what we have in ENT is the UESF as a given, an organization with certain demonstrable qualities. So our interpretation of the pseudohistory will have to have deliberation towards the desired endpoint.

Certainly it should be remembered that military traditions readily fly out of the window when they lose wars. WWI saw the end of many such traditions when they came close to humiliating the British Empire. We have to figure out what the nascent space combat force of a recently devastated planet suffering from a justified inferiority complex would look like, and which traditions it would uphold, which abandon. Certainly we would expect to catch it in a state of unreadiness, with many of its organizations untested and ill equipped for the threat environment that so far has not been engaged.

And Starfleet already HAS a specialist branch whose focus is (generally) combat and defense. It's called "Starfleet Security," and would seem to include Malcolm Reed and the Warp-Five redshirts.

Actually, just the opposite would seem to be true. In the ENT timeframe, Starfleet Security is the organization dispatching Commander Collins to investigate the mugging of Phlox in "Affliction". This organization is never mentioned as operating aboard starships, and when Collins introduces herself as representing it, Reed is present and specifically is not said to come from the same organization. The situation would more or less demand mentioning that Reed is from SF Security if that were the case.

The job of SFSec in ENT as described seems akin to that of Military Police. Today, MP forces may be found aboard ships in internal security duties; they compete with Marines there in the historical sense. But if a noncombat vessel in naval service is to sail out today, it's highly unlikely that either MPs or Marines would be aboard. If the ship is tasked with some exceptional combat mission, then the latter are the likelier choice.

Certainly it is far from established that Reed's force, never mind Starfleet Security, would be the only element of Starfleet interested in combat. Suggesting that Reed is the counterpart of a TOS internal security redshirt like Giotto or Garrovick, as opposed to a TOS main gun operator goldshirt like Sulu or Tomlinson, is just plain silly.

Then go there and find that officer. I have no objection.

Har, har. You provide the time machine.

Are you trying to claim that you disagree with the fact that "military" and "navy" were opposing terms basically until the end of the Victorian times? Or that you don't believe that the infantry combat forces aboard ships after boarding had ceased to be the primary means of naval combat did not come from the "military" of the time? Reading up on the history of the Royal Marines should clear up these things.

in this case, Earth Starfleet has less than a century between its organization and what we would consider "modern" organizations today. Some of those organizations seem to still be in existence; the Royal Navy, for example, which Malcolm explicitly refers to as a military organization.

But the Royal Navy stays afloat. The UE Starfleet is a novel service for a novel environment, much like the air forces were in the early 20th century. Certain traditions would indeed be dropped in disgust when formulating such radically new organizations. Certain others, indifferent to the performance of the organization, would be retained. And interservices rivalry would be assured to continue in some form or another.

So it's clear that Earth Starfleet isn't borrowing word useage from the late 17th century

But it explicitly is, using commands such as "helm to starboard". Some modern services have done away with such illogical ballast, for example the USN going for "right rudder". Much antique terminology still persists, and will continue to persist in the 24th century UFP Starfleet. And much modern effort of moving away from that is going to be negated in the Trek future.

What bunch was that, exactly? Fanon doesn't get a vote.

The writers who wrote all those episodes where UESF takes care of Earth's space combat needs and nobody else (beside the Boomers) does.

The about four references to "Starfleet might not be the principal organization for industrialized killing in space" are outvoted by the hundreds of phase gun blasts delivered by NX-01 against dozens of Earth enemies. If the characters claim they are not Earth's valiant soldier defenders, they are lying.

Now it's easy to see why somebody like Picard would lie about what he is. Kirk wouldn't need to, yet/any more. But Archer, Forrest and their ilk would be new to the game, serving an Earth that apparently has never fought in space before. And as said often enough, the NX-01 project was a political step as much as a technological, scientific or military one, and probably much more so - so the propaganda around it would be of great importance as well.

Which is an EXCELLENT example, since HMS Jervis Bay was an "Armed Merchant Cruiser" (I have only rarely heard it called a "warship") and was essentially blown out of the water by a German heavy cruiser that WAS, in fact, a warship.

Indeed. Some warships win, others lose. It doesn't require victory to be a warship. All it requires is war.

Enterprise' crew had no such illusions either.

Why would they need illusions? Their vessel in S3-4 was victorious in combat, blowing up enemies of peer level or higher left and right. Vulcans trembled in their robes and Andorian antennae drooped in respect when NX-01 tore apart enemy vessels. NX-01, originally designed as an exploration vessel, was the most powerful warship fighting for Earth by the third season (along with the somewhat upgunned NX-02, of course).

That's all there in plain sight. Semantics and propaganda won't change the fact that NX-01 transcended her original design goals. It's utterly ridiculous to claim that she wouldn't be a warship more potent relatively than Admiral Scheer ever was. Ridiculous for us, and ridiculous for the characters.

And the point is that the characters don't make such claims. At first, they quote the design intent of the ship. By S3, they lament what she has been forced to become. By S4, no pretentious mention is made that the vessel would be an exploration vessel as opposed to being a warship. Instead, she is both - and apparently outperforms all competition of more specialized sort in both games.

It's a fundamentally silly idea that jacks of all trades cannot trump aces anyway. The E-D can outhaul any Boomer freighter, outpace any racing boat from the 22nd century, and outgun the heaviest Starfleet or Klingon battleship of the era. That's because she is of superior build and technology. And so is NX-01, even if by a narrower margin.

Every "warship" for the last one hundred and fifty years has been PURPOSE built for a combat role.

Not really (cf for example the gunboats that decided the outcome of the fight for Mesopotamia in WWI, or the fate of the Mississippi in the Civil War), but that's not the point. The point is that the past 150 years represent evolution in a specific environment. That's not gonna be translated to space combat either in our reality or in the Trek one. Things are necessarily going to start all anew there in many respects, and the scenario of installing a 20mm cannon on the space shuttle is in fact among the most realistic.

the converse is just as true: very few purpose-built warships are converted to civilian use these days

That's not the relevant converse, though. That converse would be the fact that many purpose-built warships no longer are warships. It is their relative combat capabilities that count, and ships from the past are often outdone by ships from the present. (Not always, though, as a battleship from WWII would still outfight modern opposition in her kind of fight.)

NX-01 became the one-eyed king among the blind, much like the utterly ridiculous first ironclads thrown together from spare parts ruled over the refined combat specialist vessels of their day. That happened, and cannot be denied unless the very events of ENT themselves are denied.

the only reason the ship even HAS weapons is to defend itself from attack, and the only reason it bothers to install those weapons is when it becomes clear it needs to use them.

...In essence the very same thing that happened to exploration vessels of yore, after which they quickly evolved to the dominant naval combat ships of yore.

It still baffles me what we are arguing about here, really. You seem to wish that MACO were the space combat force of Earth, yet the fact remains that they never ever ever do any space combat. What NX-01 does is the closest thing that ever comes to space combat, and by all rights should thus be called by that name (you don't let a mugger slip a mugging charge just because he did less damage than Mike Tyson). And that's not just camera bias: if MACO were fighting naval battles elsewhere, this would get explicit mention even when the camera is focused on Archer's attempts at sorting out a messed-up shore leave on Risa.

As you point out, "real" space combat is darn rare in the 2150s Earth dominion. If somebody else were doing it, it would be all across the newsscreens.

The Boomers hauled thousands of tons of freight to and from distant planets that wanted them. They also fought off the various pirates who attacked them. They did not explore deep space and they certainly did not conduct military operations on behalf of Earth.

Factually, they did. Their military operations directly benefited/harmed Earth, much like Drake's piracy benefited/harmed England. Their exploration of trade contacts and close encounters with three-somethinged female lifeforms expanded Earth's sphere of knowledge, more so than any other known agency or force, just like merchant sailors of yore did.

What did the MACO do? Train at the Janus Loop. What did Starfleet do? Chafe against its Vulcan chains, support assorted operations on Earth and Mars, and build ships capable of defeating Klingon warships. There were de facto forces working on behalf of Earth in the ENT and pre-ENT periods, and each demonstrated certain roles, some narrow and specific, others diverse and somewhat fuzzy. The evidence on who did what still comes down to UESF = anything to do with government starships, MACO = training for the kind of work we saw in S3, Boomers = a bit of everything in true frontiersman style.

This still leaves Combat very far from the top of the list of Starfleet priorities, given their lack of readiness when they left port.

...As only regards NX-01's originally intended exceptional mission and the provisions thereto. What would you make of the preparations for the launch of Vanguard 1, a US Navy operation? That the Navy doesn't give a damn about arming its units, or establishing a security perimeter around its operations, or involving combat veterans in its top team working on its top project?

The Navy got things like Polaris out of Vanguard. The Navy didn't need to install defensive .50-cals on Vanguard to get that.

By the time Earth Starfleet combines with the MACOs to become a peacekeeping force with a more combative orientation, no doubt Starfleet security will inherit their proficiency and training.

Heh. Since by TOS, Starfleet shipboard armed troops are back to UESF shipboard armed troops standards or way below, I don't see any particular benefit from this line of thought.

Sure, it looks cool when people in camouflage gear and hauling M-203s under their carbines charge in to arrest the Russian spy who is stealing their warship's precious neutrons. But it's not what this warship needs for defense. And MACO troops are not an improvement over starship security forces in defending the ship, as they themselves readily acknowledge in "The Xindi".

You see, the trend of specialization is a one-way street: once someone creates a specialist combat-only force in a standing army, then his competitors have to do the same to keep from getting rolled.

But that is explicitly false. Standing armies lost to conscript ones in WWII. Specialist units were defeated by undifferentiated ones, making it doubtful whether the investment in their training and the few flashy victories they achieved were worth it all. Earlier on, the preindustrially armed peasant suddenly defeated and humiliated the professional knight, utterly reversing a centuries-long trend.

The jump from Earth to space is likely to be even greater than the jump from preindustrial to industrial killing, or from the knight or samurai to the pikeman or fusilier. I would expect most if not all relevant trends to be reversed if (not when) armed and crewed conflict leaps to space.

And even if following a trend were the smart thing to do, there is no reason to think that Earth in fact or fiction would do so. What we have is the ENT UESF and MACO forces as given; how they came there is subordinate to the dictated outcome.

If Earth Starfleet has other aims and responsibilities other than exploration, they're not their PRIMARY responsibilities in any way shape or form; that honor goes to the MACOs, whose primary aims are (obviously) combat.

Okay, I could accept that much. It still doesn't affect one iota the observed situation where UESF, with its halfhearted commitment to space combat, is the principal (and damn nearly sole) space combat force of Earth, while the MACO force, with its 100% commitment to being badass, plays no known role in space combat.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Newtype_A]

Timo said:
In today's parlance, different "commands" wouldn't separate the executive organs of a government into military and nonmilitary ones. Rather, there would be commands dedicated to the different aspects of the killing thing, and then those dedicated to logistics, accounting, and perhaps exploration when in support of the killing thing. Sub-organizations doing logistics, accounting and exploration not related to the killing thing would not be mere commands under an overall military umbrella.

Not sure where you're getting this from, exactly. The FAA isn't a "command" that handles different aspects of the killing thing, neither is NASA. That's the Air Force's job. That's because the air force is a military organization and answers to the Department of Defense. The FAA answers to the Department of transportation, and NASA answers directly to Congress.

So in today's parlance, different departments DO separate military from nonmilitary aviation and space flight.

Timo said:
In that sense, I feel it is much more natural to assume that Starfleet Command and Military Assault Command are both organizations specializing in killing, among other things of course.

I would too, if only I was willing to ignore the fact that Starfleet clearly does NOT specialize in killing and instead specializes in scientific research and space exploration. It's more than the fact that they're not particularly good at it, it's a matter of priorities involved in the building and deployment of their ships, the quality of their tactics and procedures, the allocation of resources (like the warp-five engine) on things that have virtually no military value.

Timo said:
what we have in ENT is the UESF as a given, an organization with certain demonstrable qualities. So our interpretation of the pseudohistory will have to have deliberation towards the desired endpoint.

Certainly it should be remembered that military traditions readily fly out of the window when they lose wars. WWI saw the end of many such traditions when they came close to humiliating the British Empire. We have to figure out what the nascent space combat force of a recently devastated planet suffering from a justified inferiority complex would look like, and which traditions it would uphold, which abandon. Certainly we would expect to catch it in a state of unreadiness, with many of its organizations untested and ill equipped for the threat environment that so far has not been engaged.

Actually, if you're using WWI as an example, you would see the exact opposite. The British Empire began to develop completely new tactics after the debacle of the Battle of Jutland, and other nations--the Japanese Empire and the Germans, for example--came to develop completely new ones in record time that ultimately changed the shape of naval warfare as we know it. It hardly produced a state of unreadiness in ANY of the states that survived either war; if anything, the lessons of those wars taught what to do and what not to do.

Two things are telling for ENT's universe. First is the fact that they choose to name their warp five ships after old NASA orbiters. Their symbol resembles NASA's symbol, their uniforms have a different mission patch for each ship, and Enterprise spends a good amount of time doing things like laying out subspace transceivers, looking for inhabited worlds, planting flags and footprints, etc. Starfleet certainly believes it's descended from NASA or something similar, which makes plenty of sense. The other thing we know, however, is that the Third World War did involve a fair amount of space-based weapons, and quite possibly a number of space-based combat actions. At least to the point that Lilly immediately mistook the Borg attack on their launch facility to be an ECON space craft firing at them from orbit (and no, she did NOT mistake it for some sort of turbojet gunship; Liully's smart enough to know better). It seems even after the devastation after World War-III, Earth had some experience with space combat and would have had plenty of time to theorize and test the possible tactics of combat on a larger scale, especially in the years after the Phoenix broke the light barrier.

Timo said:

And Starfleet already HAS a specialist branch whose focus is (generally) combat and defense. It's called "Starfleet Security," and would seem to include Malcolm Reed and the Warp-Five redshirts.

Actually, just the opposite would seem to be true. In the ENT timeframe, Starfleet Security is the organization dispatching Commander Collins to investigate the mugging of Phlox in "Affliction". This organization is never mentioned as operating aboard starships, and when Collins introduces herself as representing it, Reed is present and specifically is not said to come from the same organization. The situation would more or less demand mentioning that Reed is from SF Security if that were the case.

Seemed quite clear to me they were part of the same division of Starfleet, just different departments. Collins was an investigator, Reed as an armory officer. Either way, Reed's "security teams" are the closest thing Enterprise has to Naval Infantry, a trend which persists for hundreds of years after Starfleet assimilates the MACOs.

Timo said:
Certainly it is far from established that Reed's force, never mind Starfleet Security, would be the only element of Starfleet interested in combat. Suggesting that Reed is the counterpart of a TOS internal security redshirt like Giotto or Garrovick, as opposed to a TOS main gun operator goldshirt like Sulu or Tomlinson, is just plain silly.

But that's exactly what Reed IS, Timo, considering that, considering Garrovick is referred to as "the security duty officer," which is already half of Malcolm's job. I again remind you of the fact that Archer considers a MACO to be a better choice for the tactical position than a Starfleet armory officer; quite probably, the OTHER half of Malcolm's job description is something Starfleet does not yet emphasize at the academy, and won't until Starfleet is taken over by the Federation Council and combined with the MACOs. In that case, the roll of "armory officer" is refined to include just the ship's crew-served weapons systems, and ship-to-ship ordinance enters the command division.

Then again, it may have happened even sooner than that, since Captain Hernandez has a "tactical officer" where Archer's crew has the armory officer doing double duty.

Timo said:
Are you trying to claim that you disagree with the fact that "military" and "navy" were opposing terms basically until the end of the Victorian times?

No, I'm claiming that pre-Victorian times are gone, and will never be back. THANK GOD!

Timo said:

in this case, Earth Starfleet has less than a century between its organization and what we would consider "modern" organizations today. Some of those organizations seem to still be in existence; the Royal Navy, for example, which Malcolm explicitly refers to as a military organization.

But the Royal Navy stays afloat.

Right. All the more reason for Earth Starfleet to borrow traditions WE still use than traditions that even the Royal Navy would call weird and archaic.

Timo said:And interservices rivalry would be assured to continue in some form or another.

And there's nothing to indicate rivalry between Starfleet and the MACOs. Oh, there's plenty of rivalry between Malcolm and Hayes, and to a much lesser extent between Security and Hayes' squad. THAT is the sort of rivalry common to different branches of military organizations, and in that case it's fitting. Macolm's security forces are literally Starfleet's combat force; starfleet AS A WHOLE is not a combat force, since two thirds of its organizational structure, at that time, is not combat-oriented. It's only Kirk's day, when half the command division is in charge of tactical systems, that we can say for sure this has changed.

Timo said:

So it's clear that Earth Starfleet isn't borrowing word useage from the late 17th century

But it explicitly is, using commands such as "helm to starboard".

Since most navies use those terms right up to the present day, the usage is still contemporary. The disctinction between "military" and "navy," however, is currently alien to every nation that HAS a navy, and most of those that don't.

Timo said:
The about four references to "Starfleet might not be the principal organization for industrialized killing in space" are outvoted by the hundreds of phase gun blasts delivered by NX-01 against dozens of Earth enemies.

Let's be clear on this: Enterprise delivered phaser blasts to ENTERPRISE's enemies. This distinction is important, because the ship only occasionally engaged in combat explicitly on Earth's behalf and most often in its own self defense. This holds true for all three shooting engagements with the Klingons, all engagements with the Suliban, the Tholians, the Tellarites, and so forth. It is only against the Xindi that Enterprise explicitly acts on Earth's behalf, and this in time of emergency when it's the only ship fast enough to make the trip, on a mission that everyone else thinks is a fool's errand.

I've said it before: bolted on weapons and a grumpy captain do not a warship make. Neither, for that matter, does the willingness to USE those weapons.

Timo said:If the characters claim they are not Earth's valiant soldier defenders, they are lying.

If I shoot a man who is trying to blow up a commuter train, and then claim that I am not a soldier, you can rest assured I am telling the truth. I'm not wearing a soldier's uniform, I don't have a soldier's commission or legal powers. The uniform I'm wearing is that of the guy they hired to keep idiots with bombs off the trains; as I am, so I claim to be.

Starfleet claims to be an organization focussed on peaceful exploration and scientific research. They have a division of officers whose job it is to protect their ships and stations from aggressive action. I believe they are exactly what they say they are, because they're in a better position to know than I am.

Timo said:

Which is an EXCELLENT example, since HMS Jervis Bay was an "Armed Merchant Cruiser" (I have only rarely heard it called a "warship") and was essentially blown out of the water by a German heavy cruiser that WAS, in fact, a warship.

Indeed. Some warships win, others lose. It doesn't require victory to be a warship. All it requires is war.

Well, it requires specialization. Jervis Bay was a merchant vessel pulling double duty as a warship. You'll find very few history books that refer to the Jervis Bay as something more than it was: an armed merchant vessel.

Enterprise goes down in history the same way: an armed exploration cruiser. In the same way that Jervis Bay is never described as a "tactical assault ship" or "combat cruiser" or "pocket battleship" or "combat escort ship" or such catchy phrasework, you'll find even fewer Starfleet ships referred to as "combat vessels." That's not what they were built for, and it's not what their crews are trained for.

Timo said:
That's all there in plain sight. Semantics and propaganda won't change the fact that NX-01 transcended her original design goals.

Never said it did. But Enterprise didn't ABANDON those goals either, and therefore retained its original primary function: scientific research and exploration.

Timo said:It's utterly ridiculous to claim that she wouldn't be a warship more potent relatively than Admiral Scheer ever was.

Hardly. Admiral Scheer was built from the keel-up to destroy other ships. Its systems, accommodations, training and capabilities were all built with that primary function in mind. Admiral Scheer was NOT built as a long range exploration ship with two holes in the deck where a single-barrel 5-inch gun could be installed by the crew using elbow grease and sweat.

To that end, the 22nd century equivalent of the Admiral Scheer would look nothing at all like NX-01. You're looking for a vessel with a dozen 900 gigajoule phaser cannons, integrated targeting sensors and a dedicated fire control center to coordinate them all. You're looking for a ship whose sensors are just precise enough to track multiple targets over long ranges, give their course and speed with enough resolution to intercept them with weapons. You're looking for a ship that doesn't have science labs, doesn't have equipment sufficient to measure astrophysical or geological phenomena in any detail, and is fairly poorly equipped to explore new worlds or seek out new life forms. You're looking for a ship that was built, from the keel up, with combat in mind.

You're NOT looking for NX-01, a ship that (as Malcolm explained in Silent Enemy) was designed to carry three phase cannons and a battery of torpedoes just powerful enough to scratch a Klingon scout ship's paint.

Timo said:
It's a fundamentally silly idea that jacks of all trades cannot trump aces anyway. The E-D can outhaul any Boomer freighter, outpace any racing boat from the 22nd century, and outgun the heaviest Starfleet or Klingon battleship of the era...

This is demonstrably false. Enterprise-D hardly out gunned Klingon heavyhitters like the Negh'Var, and was at best an even match for the Romulan D'Deridex and Klingon Vorcha class vessels. It has never demonstrated the ability to "out haul" its freighter counterparts, or "out pace any racing boat" either.

Here's the thing about specialization. Enterprise-D is the Starfleet equivalent of an aircraft carrier: lots of power, lots of space, lots of equipment, lots of room, lots of luxuries, lots of weapons. A ship of equal size that sacrificed luxuries and equipment in favor of weapons would be better armed. Sacrificing weapons could make it more luxurious. Sacrificing speed would give it more room for equipment or cargo or even more luxuries. In short, you end up with a ship that gets a solid C+ in every aspect of its design; it's just that a C for a galaxy is the equivalent of an A for a pair of Klingon torpedo boats.

Timo said:
The point is that the past 150 years represent evolution in a specific environment.

Right. The environment of industrialism, where the ascendancy of high technology has largely trumped other considerations such as pure strength of numbers. It's not just naval vessels, Timo, EVERY aspect of society since the industrial revolution has become more and more specialized to particular tasks. This is because, as tasks become more complicated, standards continue to rise, and the amount of resources required to be GOOD at any one task are increasing all the time. The only real way to compete in ever more complicated tasks is to break the task down into smaller problems and assigning specialists to deal with them.

As it is in maritime affairs, so it is in aviation, ground combat, manufacturing, chemistry, physics, politics, management, education, etc. We've evolved long past the days when one person can be fifteen different things to fifteen different people and still do all of those things competently. You can only be the jack of all trades in a world where there are no masters; where education and technology are readily available, the masters have the jacks for breakfast.

Timo said:
a battleship from WWII would still outfight modern opposition in her kind of fight.

Compare the ranges of the Iowa class' main gun to the range of any modern sea-skimming missile and I think you'll begin to sea the absurdity of that statement. Of course, if you upgraded the Iowa with those same weapons, the big guy has a fighting change.

Timo said:
NX-01 became the one-eyed king among the blind, much like the utterly ridiculous first ironclads thrown together from spare parts ruled over the refined combat specialist vessels of their day.

The difference is that the old ironclads WERE combat specialists. NX-01 was not.

Timo said:
Factually, they did. Their military operations directly benefited/harmed Earth, much like Drake's piracy benefited/harmed England. Their exploration of trade contacts and close encounters with three-somethinged female lifeforms expanded Earth's sphere of knowledge, more so than any other known agency or force, just like merchant sailors of yore did.

Of course they benefited Earth. But they did not conduct operations on Earth's behalf, but that of their OWN volition. The Boomers were privately owned and privately operated, not a force of exploration OR combat. What they did and what was in their job description differed only as far as the circumstances. But in the same way that a cop who helps deliver a baby is NOT a doctor, a Boomer who fights off pirates is not a soldier, nor is a boomer who discovers a planet populated by triboobs an explorer.

Timo said:There were de facto forces working on behalf of Earth...

And we're not talking about de facto forces here, or else the Klingon Military is a de facto tourist industry and Dr. Sung is a de facto political leader. We're not debating functions, political implications or precedents. We're talking about the AIMS AND RESPONSIBILITIES of starfleet. Particularly, Starfleet in the 22nd century. Whatever capacity the organization stumbled into, its AIMS AND RESPONSIBILITIES clearly did not revolve around combat. That claim to fame belongs to the MACOs, for whom combat is the primary focus of their entire existence. Since they do not specify what TYPE of combat, it's logical to assume (and even supported in "Home") that this includes space combat. This more than explains why Starfleet has better things to worry about, like exploring new worlds and boldly going.

Timo said:
...As only regards NX-01's originally intended exceptional mission and the provisions thereto. What would you make of the preparations for the launch of Vanguard 1, a US Navy operation?

Quite a bit, actually, since the launch vehicle, satellite, control and servicing facilities were all under armed guard with well-established procedures in the event of hostile action. The Mercury program had far less elaborate security arrangements, mostly because NASA was a civilian organization and the space flight program beyond that point had no explicit military applications.

Timo said:
The Navy got things like Polaris out of Vanguard. The Navy didn't need to install defensive .50-cals on Vanguard to get that.

They didn't need to. Vanguard originally WAS a weapon. The launch facility in this case--the analog to a starship launching a probe--was quite well defended against attack, by people who know how to repel attacks, and are trained in the art of repelling attack so they know exactly what to do and when to do it in the event they ARE attacked.

Of course, it's also worthy of note that all four of the Soviet "Almaz" space stations were armed with a 23mm cannon, except the last one which was equipped with a small missile launcher. And even that seems excessive given the scarcity of hostile encounters between space craft in Earth Orbit (that is to say, never).

Timo said:

By the time Earth Starfleet combines with the MACOs to become a peacekeeping force with a more combative orientation, no doubt Starfleet security will inherit their proficiency and training.

Heh. Since by TOS, Starfleet shipboard armed troops are back to UESF shipboard armed troops standards or way below, I don't see any particular benefit from this line of thought.

Nah. Matt Decker vs. Redshirt Number 5 still ranks up there among the best fist fights in Trek history

More than that, though, its an organizational thing. James Kirk sees nothing particularly odd about calling for battle drills and even encourages his security men to practice hand to hand combat. Doubtless not up to MACO standards, but they still make Malcolm's redshirts look like chicken farmers.

Timo said:

You see, the trend of specialization is a one-way street: once someone creates a specialist combat-only force in a standing army, then his competitors have to do the same to keep from getting rolled.

But that is explicitly false. Standing armies lost to conscript ones in WWII.

And the conscripts were trained to function as specialists in combat before they were sent to the front. That's the difference between a standing army and a general-purpose force: in the latter case, the farmers and peasants pick up shotguns and pitch forks to repel attacks, beat their plow sheers into swords to repel an attack. Even in the 17th century, this was already becoming scarce, as fighting prowess among commoners was more and more difficult to maintain without pressing them into more regular service.

Timo said:
The jump from Earth to space is likely to be even greater than the jump from preindustrial to industrial killing

No doubt. The amount of specialization required in manned space flight is already so great that very few nations are even capable of doing it, and even fewer private companies manage to pull it off.

Timo said:

If Earth Starfleet has other aims and responsibilities other than exploration, they're not their PRIMARY responsibilities in any way shape or form; that honor goes to the MACOs, whose primary aims are (obviously) combat.

Okay, I could accept that much. It still doesn't affect one iota the observed situation where UESF, with its halfhearted commitment to space combat, is the principal (and damn nearly sole) space combat force of Earth, while the MACO force, with its 100% commitment to being badass, plays no known role in space combat.

For one, I've already shown that Earth Starfleet seldom functions in that capacity anyway; Enterprise is only seen engaging in combat because she's in the right place at the right (or wrong) time. Second, it's again uncertain that the two ships accompanying intrepid were Starfleet and not MACO vessels, and ABSOLUTELY certain that some MACOs do have space combat experience, at least enough that Archer would recommend one for Hernandez's tactical officer.

 

[Timo]

So in today's parlance, different departments DO separate military from nonmilitary aviation and space flight.

Exactly. But they don't call them "commands" in that case. Those are sub-elements of the military branch, devoted to the sub-roles of the military (some of which may overlap with civilian ones).

So Military Assault Command and Starfleet Command would be more closely associated than Military Assault Command and Earth Cargo Authority, acronym-wise. And the putative Military Logistics Command and Starfleet Locistics Command (or then some sort of a combined Logistics Command for both) would be competing with the civilian ECA from within the military establishment.

It's more than the fact that they're not particularly good at it, it's a matter of priorities involved in the building and deployment of their ships, the quality of their tactics and procedures, the allocation of resources (like the warp-five engine) on things that have virtually no military value.

But those are essentially the same thing. The building and deployment of ships (of which NX-01 originally is an explorer, Arctic One is a survey transport, Sarajevo acts as a courier, Intrepid is seen in combat roles only, and the two delta ships are seen in combat only as well) seems good enough a fit for "a space combat force that is not particularly good at it". The tactics and procedures observed, both with the noncombatant and combatant vessels, also fit "a not particularly good combat force". And the Warp Five engine has immense military value, perhaps more so than anything else imaginable, yet is also a logical step for a "mediocre to poor military" in its quest for interstellar respectability.

Actually, if you're using WWI as an example, you would see the exact opposite.

Why would I use that? Earth did not fight the equivalent of WWI - as far as we know, it never fought a space war before ENT. It would in essence be as unprepared as the Royal Navy after the old wooden fleet became worthless and everybody started building ironclads without knowing which solutions would work and which would not. The first engagements would see those solutions tested, and deadly traditions dropped as the result (hopefully in time for the Romulan War).

ENT would not be preceded by a "WWI". ENT would be "WWI", in the sense of first testing an utterly unproven combat force.

Admittedly, WWIII and the 21st century would be factors in outdating some military traditions and introducing new ones. But its relevancy to space combat would be minimal (it being fought with the equivalent of wooden ships or leather canoes rather than ironclads), and its contribution to the combat readiness of UESF against interstellar threats nil.

It might have helped formulate MACO, though, assuming MACO is the kind of force that fights planetary battles.

As for UESF liking NASA homages... The Royal Navy names its survey ships after famous explorers and their famous vessels, while giving its combat vessels names steeped in combat history or patriotic geography. Surely UESF could go for a similar allocation of naming themes?

For that matter, Enterprise and Columbia could be space shuttle names, or then warship names. After all, the former was chosen as a space shuttle name only as an homage to a fictional ship that was named after famous warships (and did not have any real or fictional forebears in the exploration business, at least not until ENT). The other five orbiters were all named after exploration ships, yet we don't hear all those names in UESF service. We only hear Columbia, which is the name of a long line of deadly warships in USN (or RN) service. Or then the name of very famous high speed yachts, especially apt for a Warp Five ship.

I'd thus consider this "evidence" flimsy to the extreme, not only in the sense that writer intention could be countermanded with minimal effort, but in the sense that there was no verifiable writer intention.

Seemed quite clear to me they were part of the same division of Starfleet, just different departments. Collins was an investigator, Reed as an armory officer.

That goes completely against scene logic. Collins quotes membership in SF Security (no mention of any subsection thereof) as her authority for conducting the investigation. Reed is then introduced to her as a mere "Lieutenant", when it would be a major plot point that he enjoys the same authority as Collins.

Either way, Reed's "security teams" are the closest thing Enterprise has to Naval Infantry, a trend which persists for hundreds of years after Starfleet assimilates the MACOs.

Agreed. Now what significance do you see to this? Naval Infantry in the real world is one branch of an overall combat-oriented seagoing force, the one specializing in infantry combat ashore and aboard. It would be quite difficult to postulate a naval force that only does infantry combat (especially when we see its ships armed for ship-to-ship fights). Far more likely is the scenario where Starfleet can readily provide even its radically new exploration vessel with people trained in ship-to-ship command (Reed) and people trained in Naval Infantry tasks (the redshirts).

Captain Hernandez has a "tactical officer" where Archer's crew has the armory officer doing double duty.

This IMHO already invalidates much of the speculation on Reed's role. Combat vessels have separate tactical officers and armory officers (which is utterly logical and perfectly fitting of today's terminology). Exploration ships have people cross-trained or double-billeted for their combat roles. NX-01 shipped out for her milk run without a tactical officer because she only carried temporary weapons anyway - an armory officer filled all the relevant billets instead.

Garrovick or Giotto never fired a shipboard weapon in their (known) lives. Reed was the man tasked with maintaining and (perhaps exceptionally) operating the ship's weapons, and had at least as much proficiency in it as Sulu or Tomlinson.

I'm claiming that pre-Victorian times are gone, and will never be back. THANK GOD!

Yet we watch a TV show where anachronistic 1960s practices and terminology are commonplace in the 2260s, and 1980s anachronisms in the 2360s. Why should we ever argue that the old times won't return?

Just watch the Royal Navy again (it's a veritable three-ring act for trivia like this). For WWII, they resurrected absolutely absurd, antiquated naval terminology for use in an ill fitting concept by naming their all-new escort vessels "sloop", "corvette" and "frigate". They revigorated long-dead terminology that should have absolutely no place in the mid-20th century environment, and managed to make two-thirds of it stick so that even today we speak of corvettes and frigates in the RN WWII sense.

And there's nothing to indicate rivalry between Starfleet and the MACOs. Oh, there's plenty of rivalry between Malcolm and Hayes, and to a much lesser extent between Security and Hayes' squad. THAT is the sort of rivalry common to different branches of military organizations, and in that case it's fitting.

That's the very thing I was postulating as well. Except that Admiral Forrest also acknowledges it, much like flag officers of today would (it's a wonder 9/11 was the first time something exploded within the Pentagon!).

Starfleet claims to be an organization focussed on peaceful exploration and scientific research.

No, it does not.

"Starfleet claims" would require a person representative of Starfleet to make such a claim, and no person had made it. Only circumstantial evidence exists on the issue.

What "Starfleet claims" at best is that its personnel are in uneasy terms with the "military". When it comes to defending Earth in a time of spatial crisis large or small, Starfleet is who people go for, and Starfleet is the one providing the goods and services. It does that without verbally claiming anything, or denying anything. It simply does it.

If Starfleet is subway security, then Earth's space combat hinges on subway security. There is no known combat force "above" it. At best, there is the MACO support force "below" it, providing commando services when needed.

Jervis Bay was a merchant vessel pulling double duty as a warship.

Yet if that's the most potent combatant in your combat fleet, then she's a warship. Similarly, a Toyota with a .50-cal becomes a primary combat vehicle in a military that has no tanks or APCs.

In relative terms, NX-01 as ultimately armed was good enough to go against the Scheers and Bismarcks of the ENT universe. Any attempt to market her new self as a "non-warship" (which our heroes did not do, remind you) would be propaganda with the intent to confuse, and no naval historian would describe a vessel of that caliber as anything short of warship regardless of her origins.

Obviously, history does record CSS Virginia as an ironclad despite USS Merrimack having been a mere frigate...

...you'll find even fewer Starfleet ships referred to as "combat vessels."

Which is still more than the MACO ships called that way. (Well, it isn't because zero is not more than zero, but it is an even game, set and match anyway.)

That's not what they were built for, and it's not what their crews are trained for.

That statement still has no backing except for the single case of NX-01, which is an explicit exception to almost everything.

But Enterprise didn't ABANDON those goals either, and therefore retained its original primary function: scientific research and exploration.

Yup. Except that the original primary function now became a secondary function, or a shared primary function. There is no logic in thinking that additional capabilities would automatically diminish the capacity under discussion. Sure, the addition of a heavy gun on the deck of a luxury liner will diminish her usefulness in providing enjoyable holidays (and will warp her deck plates when fired), but the addition of guns to NX-01 gave her de facto combat vessel powers without diminishing her exploration potential; and the retention of that potential was not shown to diminish her combat potential in any discernible manner. If anything, it made her a more potent combatant, by providing her with exceptionally good sensors.

To that end, the 22nd century equivalent of the Admiral Scheer would look nothing at all like NX-01.

Incorrect, explicitly so. Klingon warships look exactly like that: they do not have a superior number or type of guns, or a superior armor, or a superior internal structure for combat resiliency or ammo handling. Xindi warships are little better. Nothing indicates those would be "compromise" vessels, anything less than the Bismarcks of their day.

NX-01 may look funny in the eyes of the Klingons, much like the Merrimack looked comical. Yet onscreen combat experience shows that the looks deceive.

This is demonstrably false. Enterprise-D hardly out gunned Klingon heavyhitters like the Negh'Var

When I said "ships of the era", I meant ENT era. E-D would have pwned those Klingon vessels. The point of which is to demonstrate that being a "compromise" ship has squat to do with combat potential. Only the absolute combat performance itself matters. A powerful compromise can outfight a weak specialist.

Which may be what happened vis-á-vis NX-01 and her adversaries. Or then NX-01 wasn't as much a compromise as you make her look like: her explorer qualifications may all have increased rather than diminished her combat potential, much like the resilient structure of an oil tanker makes her a formidable opponent in ship-to-ship combat.

Compare the ranges of the Iowa class' main gun to the range of any modern sea-skimming missile and I think you'll begin to sea the absurdity of that statement.

Umm, since a Harpoon won't sink the Iowa, and she is faster than the ship firing the Harpoon, and she has weapons that will sink that ship in an eyeblink, there's a good chance that she will still win. Specialization has drawbacks: it almost inevitably makes you vulnerable to anything except the one thing you specialize for.

But [boomers] did not conduct operations on Earth's behalf...

Nor did Drake. Which is why I see it fitting to argue that Star Trek Earth in the 2150s is closer to the real Earth's past than its present. When left to its own devices, it might not have needed to de-evolve to fit in. But when cast into the interstellar community, she became an immediate throwback, centuries out of date; she would have to resort to measures similar to those of the bygone eras to cope. De facto privateering would be but one of those.

Of course, it's also worthy of note that all four of the Soviet "Almaz" space stations were armed with a 23mm cannon

Umm, that's deep urban legend country.

And the conscripts were trained to function as specialists in combat before they were sent to the front.

Not really. In relative terms, the whole point of a conscript army is that it's trivially easy to fire a rifle. You couldn't have a conscript army of longbow archers and still hope to win wars; crossbows, blunderbusses and ultimately spray-and-pray assault rifles are steps in the process where lesser and lesser specialization is needed in order to have an efficient combat force.

Fighter pilots are today's specialists in the manner knights previously were. The troops out in the field are peasants to an ever-increasing degree - except in the "civilized" world, where a sudden and unexpected trend has started favoring drastic cuts in manpower, leading to specialization as a virtual side product.

For one, I've already shown that Earth Starfleet seldom functions in that capacity anyway; Enterprise is only seen engaging in combat because she's in the right place at the right (or wrong) time. Second, it's again uncertain that the two ships accompanying intrepid were Starfleet and not MACO vessels, and ABSOLUTELY certain that some MACOs do have space combat experience, at least enough that Archer would recommend one for Hernandez's tactical officer.

1) Everybody seldom functions in that capability in the 2150s Earth dominion. Earth is not at war in ENT. Except when she is, and then she sends out Starfleet.
2) Self-defense is the natural primary type of combat in the environment of the day, even for a combat specialist organization. Earth isn't out to conquer anybody.
3) Even if the Starfleet primary combatant had MACO wingmen, so what? The Intrepid fought well against a dedicated warship. The wingmen showed no superior capabilities. And there is no evidence they would have been anything but UESF.
4) MACO officers with the experience to man the Tactical position, an idea never considered before, now recommended by Captain Archer... Now on which recent assignment might these officers have gained that exceptional experience?

Timo Saloniemi