The Top Major Screw ups & Mistakes Of The Dominon War?

Hi everybody....

One thing I have noticed after watching DS9 is that a LOT of mistakes where made by both sides during the Dominion war, which cost that particular side a victory or a lost battle that they otherwise could have won.
What are the top major mistakes both sides made during the war?

I'll list a few right now, but I'm sure they are a lot more to add, feel free.

1. On the Dominion's Side- Failure to use the cloaking technology they must have captured from either the Romulan/Cardassian invasion fleet, or the small Bird of Prey that Dukat still had when he joined the Dominion fleet.

I think everyone was sure the Dominion would have gotten hold of cloaking technology and used it - the episodes always seemed to give that spooky feeling about it too. Yet there seemed to be no evidence the Dominion used cloaking technology at all even when it seemed to provide a great advantage to them. Major FUBAR

The argument against: Maybe cloaking technology has a built in tampering device making it extrememly hard for anyone to pry into it and understand how to use it.

The other is that maybe jem hadar ships simply aren't comaptible with them.

 

I disagree somewhat about the cloaking tech. The Dominion had superior tech to all 3 AQ powers, so they prolly wouldn't have any probs adapting their knowledge shrouding into ship tech.

That really wasn't the Jems MO. The weren't sneaky-they come at you from the front and dared you beat head to head. If the Doms had used cloaking tech, the war would have ended early and Weyoun would have a had the Fed's president seat.

 

Hi Photon, good point the Dominion could have a thing against using cloaking technology for those reasons.. But..That's exactly the point. They didn't use it, and failed to take an advantage of a technology that could have defeated the Federation Alliance. The Federation and the Klingons however, used it against the Dominion every chance they got- and succeeded at times..

 

^ Erm...don't some of those Jem'Hadar vessels in the earlier episodes featuring them sort of decloak? I thought they did that a few times....kinda just appear out of thin air.

Or thin space.

Or whatever.

I agree that it wasn't used to their advantage later on. But I thought for sure that in some of those early encounters with the Jem'Hadar, the ships came out of nowhere.....

 

This is what I meant by some episodes giving a 'spooky' feeling of jem hadar ships just appearing out of nowhere... you just got that feeling.. but as far I know, it was never stated or shown that the jem hadar de cloaked ... I think with episodes like "Homefront" and "Purgatory's Shadow" the possibility was mentioned, but later proved false.

It seems strange that the Jem hadar were designed with personal cloaking abilities, but yet reject the idea of using it on their ships!

 

I think they just make use of phenomena.
Cloaks are ridiculously over rated- they use a ton of power that could be devoted to warp, shields etc, and they aren't fool-proof- there are plenty of methods to see through them, and the Dominion is able to, so why bother? They don't do so much of sneak attacks as hurling huge numbers that overwhelm the enemy.

And mistakes are made on all sides in all wars. It gave the war a realistic feel.
Everyone made several errors- the enemy had issues- minefield, white shortage, etc for the Dominion, a myriad of things for the Feds.
I'm still kicking Dukat for giving the Dominion a foothold, the Federation for not mining the wormhole sooner, Weyoun for wasting his time with the mines instead of just piling a ton of resources into ships, soldiers and White- which they did to some extent, but still. The Romulans were idiots for not protecting the AQ given their botched preemptive strike, and every power that signed the non-agression pact (I'll excuse Bajor) should have something sort of punishment for cowardice and stupidity- did they think if the Dominion won they'd be Scott free?

 

Obviously, the big mistake on the UFP and friends side was not sending the character shielded E-E and its crew straight to Cardassia Prime and end the war with their DEM-powers.

On a slightly more serious note, a grave error (for everybody) was not continuously purging (violently or otherwise) the strategic and tactical planning staff. Especially their tactical planning staff. Those battles we saw on the show could not be considered inspirations for solemn remembrance of the fallen or songs commemorating heroic deeds. More like they'd be perfect as black-humoured comedic plays.

 

The Dominion should have fired that wormhole-alien-nuking beam into the wormhole and nuked all the wormhole aliens.

The Dominion should have made Dukat get off his butt and get the minefield down, or replaced him immediately with someone who would, instead of goofing off and leaving it up for months.

The Dominion should have invaded DS9 out of the blue constantly (like in The Jem'Hadar) with Jemmy Kamikaze squads and massacred as many people as possible, which would be almost everyone pretty much.

The Dominion should have nuked Earth when it was defenseless just because it wasn't what the Feds wanted them to do, and because it would make the Feds cry like babies.

The Dominion should have fought to the last man as promised and not respected the female Founder's insane decision to surrender which she made after she descended into insanity.

The Dominion should have had more Weyoun Cloning Facilities, but I suspect really they do and that erroneous comment can also be attributed to female Founder going insane.

 

Mistakes all across the board, the Dominion's mistakes 9 to the Federation's few so far.

Let's face it, no matter how you cut it, the Dominion messsed up big time by not using that technology when they had a chance to.

Best counter argument for this one so far: is that the Jem Hadar or Founders style of combat from the Gamma Quadrant didn't believe in stealth cloaking and simply disgarded the idea.

Maybe that's why they had to breed a new strain of Jem Hadar designed for 'combat in the Alpha Quadrant' .

For the Federation's FUBAR- kv1at3485's point,

1. The Enterprise E being kept patrolling the Romulan border during the entire war.

The ship was designed to be the most advanced in the fleet, which meant advanced fighting ability, and enough fire power to defeat a Borg sphere, yet Starfleet keeps the new flagship far away from the battles where it was definetly needed. Even when the Breen energy weapon decapacitated so many of their ships.

As a result, starfleet lost many ships, and many battles and almost came close to losing on a few occassions.

 

Why did Starfleet bother curing their Founder plague?

 

No where in the show did the even mentioned the Enterprise-E let alone that it might be at the Rom border.

Plus we know that patrolling the Romulan border didn't protect Starfleet ships from the Dominion, several ship - most notably the USS Cairo was lost to attacks they suspected were committed by the Dominion being allowed to jump over Rom borders to give the Fed a bloody nose.

 

Section 31 was responsible for the Founder's Disease. Not Starfleet in general. It was a covert op within Section 31.

Once Bashir discovered what Section 31 did, he brought it out in the open and 'called a space a spade'. Meaning that what it REALLY was was genocide.

That's why they stopped it. On moral grounds.

 

A point on the cloaking tech. The Dominion had complete control of the Gamma quadrent and had no need to cloak their ships. Once they got hold of it they would have either had to coerce a Romulan(unlikely) to help adapt it to their ships or have one of their own scientists on some planet distant from the battle figure it out from scratch and attach it to their ships. I am sure that in order to keep the tech relatively in their hand you cant just replicate a cloaking device it must be built. There was not enough time in our story to get this done.

A mistake by the Federation was not arming the Bajoran sector to the teeth. Ah well DS9 is there they can handle it. Oops whats that fleet coming through the wormhole?

 

the biggest mistake the Dominion made was to go up against The Sisko!

 

And because the Jem'Hadar would fight to the death without the express order of a Founder to stop.

This is, apparently, why Section 31 developed a cure in the first place. Contrary to Bashir's analysis, which I interpret as extreme optimism (which fortunately panned out), just because you develop a biological weapon does not automatically correlate to there being a cure. Especially when that biological weapon cannot, under any circumstances, harm you--only a completely biologically dissimilar enemy. There might not have been a cure to the morphogenic virus at all, maybe not even a possible one.

If mere revenge, in the form of genocide, had been Section 31's goal in developing the virus, there was absolutely no need for there to have been a cure. Certainly no need to go to the expense of developing one, or risking the possibility of a security breach (possibly Bashir-related) that would deliver it to the Founders. But genocide was not their goal. It was clearly being used as a bargaining chip, and a big one.

The real question about the morphogenic virus is why Section 31 didn't announce (through roundabout means of course) their involvement and the existence of a cure, and why the Federation didn't attempt to negotiate with it before so many Federation citizens and allies lost their lives in what were, in retrospect, useless conventional battles.

So that's a huge mistake you can mark in the Federation column.

As to why the Dominion didn't use cloaking devices, since their combat doctrine highly emphasized big fleet actions, maybe they were useless. I want to think it was established in TNG that a whole fleet of cloaked vessels were rather detectable, in comparison to a (still-not-quite-invisible) single ship. It can certainly be supposed that such a fleet could be detected, from subspace distortions and what have you. There are also questions of coordination to be considered when talking about a thousand ships operating under cloak and, presumably, radio silence.

 

The Dominion should have blasted all the escape pods after they destroyed the defiant.
Also if brean weapon was that good they should have just carried on till they got to earth not stopped while star fleet regrouped.

 

Haha... love it- though your Jemmie body count could get a bit high...

I really don't think a cloak would have helped, I think it would be an impediment- huge power drain for little. I think the AQ Jem'hadar were... a silly idea. Kinda ended up as comic relief. And ENT E did take part in the Dominion war... and according to the books, took a beating.

Wasn't that a trial though? So by the time they studied the data, the Klingons had a defense? Hmmm... interesting.

 

Pre-war mistakes by the UFP & Friends:

*Failing to secure the wormhole properly. IE: How did Dukat sneak past Sisko & Crew, cloaked or not, to wed Cardies to the Changeling Empire

*UFP, prior to Cardies joining Dominion, aggressively initiating & pushing for a treaty among ALL α & β Quadrant powers to regard ALL war-potential situations as Founder infiltration, sabotage & plotting. IE: Sisko's 1st mission as captain, among many others.

*Efficient wormhole sealing, which keeps the wormhole aliens safe.

*Bashir not curing/freeing the Jem'Hadar from ketracel white.

During the war:

*Failure of Worf & Dax in rescuing that Cardie who knew where all the Founders were on our side of the Milky Way & their skullduggery.

*Odo unable to return home with Weyoun 6 (the “Defective” anti-Dominion Weyoun).

*Odo not impersonating Femme-Odo more often.

*More usage of cloaked self-copying mines.

Why not encapsulate the entire Cardie solar system with them? If not ALL the Cardie borders?

Tough, a tall order, but they could've tried.

*Could the aid of the Crystalline Entity (probably foolish), Tin Man, &/or the Douwd have been negotiated?

How about dumping slimy Armus on Cardie Prime after the war began?

*Could the Doomsday Machine have been intelligently resurrected & used as the

Ultimate Bad Ass Threat vs the Dominion?

The D.M. could vaporize entire Jem'Hadar & Cardie fleets like a fly swatter coked up on steroids

*..........................????

 

^Apparently the DM could be stopped with one suicide, or even remote-controlled, Jem'Hadar warship.

I'd have liked to have seen a weaponized Armus though.

 

No need for Dukat to leave the AQ. He could have been approached by a Founder in the AQ.

They didn't do that when the Cardassian Detapa Council took over.

It would have freed those free Jem'Hadar but as soon as they were discovered they would have been labelled as traitors and just as with the Iconian device stealing jem'Hadar the Dominion would have set out to destroy them. Plus it was more about them freeing themselves from the Vorta's control not the Founders. The Founders could still order them about.

How is that a mistake? Odo was cornered and Weyoun made the decision to kill himself. If he didn't Odo would have died, the Changeling virus wouldn't have been cured and the Founders die leaving their Jem'Hadar and Vorta to push on with the war.

Do you know how many mines that would take? We're dealing with a 3d environment to surround a system let alone an entire empire.

It is also a time consuming effort. It took the Defiant over a day just to mine the small area in front of the wormhole. The minefield can't be activated when you set them up and the mines (and mine layers) would be easy targets while putting it together.

We only know of one Crystalline Entity and Starfleet killed it. The Tin Man wasn't an aggressive entity and it was off travelling somewhere and the Douwd ther Ent-D met was suffering some serious conscience issues over wiping out another species, doubt he would want to involve himself in a war.

What happens once its done? Or if it just takes a ship and goes off on its own without dealing with the Cardassians or Dominion?

It was fairly easily dealt with by just two ships from the 23rd century, not hard to see that the Dominion wouldn't figure out how to destroy/disable it. The Jem'Hadar would willingly fly into the maw and sacrifice their lives and ships to destroy it.