The UFP should have dedicated ground forces

[The Rock]

I know the Star Trek video games are not canon, but the Star Trek: Elite Force games were about a group of Starfleet "soldiers" called the Havoc team. Really, really cool games (there were two of them) and I highly suggest you try 'em out if you haven't played them yet.

 

[ntypical]

Daedalus I would have to believe that the ground forces would HAVE to be major players in any conflict of that type. I can not see it anyother way for the reasons stated. Even if the SF forces had all the gear you spoke of in your last post, the enemy would not be required to directly engage them to cause serious harm.

Babaganoosh, there are also several books that feature the SFMC, and several dozen ST sims that have SFMC attachments on board the ships (mine included).

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ I once saw one of the SFMC (fan organization)'s webpages that had uniforms on it. Their fulldress uniform is WICKED cool: it's like the ones in ST II through VI, but in black. I think there's also a black version of the Insurrection dress uniforms.

 

[ntypical]

This?

Yeah there are several sites out there that have set uniforms and such. My board uses a mix of several types.

 

[Sisu]

As the Federation is usually not at war, and space superiority is the deciding factor in Federation history, then why bother with big ground forces?

I've often wondered why planets like Betazed fell so quickly - it could be throughout the Federation there is no active ground force, they depend solely on StarFleet for protection.

So the Dominion, with their massive amounts of disposable and totally loyal Jem'Hadar troops would a) need to have space superiority and b) deployment technology to simply overrun any Federation planet.

Thus the Federation was at a disadvantage with the Dominion. Perhaps this will change the future of StarFleet planning, with a dedicated marine arm. But if the Federation hasn't needed it for 180 years, it would make sense not to have a strong marine presence prior to DS9.

 

[ntypical]

I disagree, just like with us. In times of peace we will downsize our military forces, then build them up prior to, or during the fight. But you would never totally remove them. That just does not make sense. Kind of like the old saying. Better to have em and not need em, than need em and not have em. I would think that the Federation would be smart enough to see this.

 

[timmy84]

Alisium said:

timmy84 said:

Alisium said:

Nardpuncher said:
My little Treksplanation was that the MACOs were eventually absorbed into Starfleet and that all Starfleet personnel are well trained in combat of all sorts. Kinda like navy SEALs mixed with astronauts!

That's just not feesable.

There is so much work that goes into maintaining a group of proficient warfighters. They just wouldn't have time to be a full time anything else as well.

You just can't have semi-annual infantry training.

So, the reserves and national guard are not feasible?

Anyway, I think the simplest answer is probably the right one. Starfleet Security provides the bulk of the 'Starfleet Infantry' corps. Since the Federation is almost never in a state of war, and it seems most conflicts are resolved in space since planetary invasions are large, expensive endeavors, this corps is not standing.

With the advent of holodeck technology especially. Security wouldn't need to be rotated off a ship to receive combat training.

Of course, during the Klingon border conflict and Dominion War Starfleet organized its security forces into larger units. We saw them twice. Plus, we saw that Earth itself had enough Security personnel prior to the war to enforce martial law across the entire planet.

Starfleet infantry exist, but not in the way some may hope.

Big difference.

The Reserves and National gaurd train monthy and will spend one or two months training intensly before they go to war. And once they get their they "augment" active forces. They arn't being asked to be the whole kit and kaboodle. If that were feesable we wouldn't even have active forces.

Also, we take reservist and national guardsmen from civilian jobs. That does not affect the functionabilty of any active duty component.

You cannot take Starfleet members who are already vital to Starfleet in one job and send them off to war in another without affecting Starfleet's ability to do work.

As I said, the Starfleet security forces can train all the time on the holodeck. And pre-world war 2, the state militias (the national guard before the cold war) and reserves were relied on allot more. The only reason why the US maintained a standing army was because of the constant threat of war, and now we are just used to having one.

And it depends on where these forces are on how important they are to Starfleet's overall mission. Several thousand security offices could be spared from their duties on the far side of the Federation to fight the Dominion. Just look at today's conflict. I live in Washington and when our largest Guard deployment happened Iraq, they were armored personnel given rifles and left the tanks here. The Pentagon has even started rotating Airmen into infantry training for deployment to Iraq. Their jobs aren't as useful.

Plus, if we look at the size of Starfleet's deployment in the beginning of the war, each starship sending 30 of its security personnel into planetary action would deploy 6,000 officers rapidly. While not allot, its not nothing.

Put I still think that its simply Starfleet Security forces act as infantry and exist in larger numbers then we think. Lets not forget Starfleet Command was able to deploy thousands of officers across Earth to enforce martial law.

 

[Timo]

This should probably be divided in two: the things we know, and the things we desire.

We know the Federation fights ground battles, so it has ground troops. We would like to see some.

We know Starfleet fights ground battles for the Federation, with troops that answer to naval ranks and wear special uniforms, as seen in two DS9 episodes. We would like to learn whether these are the famed Federation ground troops, or whether a separate, parallel ground fighting organization also exists.

We hear Starfleet called a "joint service" and see all sorts of forces - naval, ground, airborne, underwater - act under the command of its officers. We yearn to learn the proper names of the sub-branches or the potential parallel organizations. We also wish to get an idea of the actual command arrangements between the different branches, not just the improvised, exceptional scenarios we see in the two DS9 episodes.

We know both Starfleet personnel and these mysterious naval-ranked ground fighters operate the same sort of weaponry: phaser rifles, photon grenades, personal shields (some seen, some only mentioned). We would like to see the full range of equipment, and get some idea of whether this is sufficient for fighting a realistic ground battle.

We hear of ground battles a lot. The ones we see are small scale, at most platoon against platoon exchanging direct small arms fire and very limited indirect fire. We would like to find out if other types of ground battle even exist, or whether some future technology makes all other kinds of battle unfeasible.

We know there was a guy called "Colonel West" in Starfleet naval uniform with Vice Admiral rank pins. We want to know whether his oddball form of address indicates some sort of a special military branch, possibly associated with non-naval things, or whether the guy's full name simply is Archibald Cornell-West.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Timo said:
We know Starfleet fights ground battles for the Federation, with troops that answer to naval ranks

I always thought those guys were a special case, sort of like Starfleet's answer to the Navy SEALs.

I still think it doesn't make sense to have ground troops with naval ranks. It just doesn't work that way. That's the entire reason we have ranks like Major, Colonel, General, etc. - that's what ground forces are supposed to have. And there's more evidence that Starfleet does have them (Colonel West - and no, I don't think 'Colonel' is his name ) than not.

As for Colonel West's uniform: Meh. The costume department probably wouldn't want to come up with a uniform that would only be worn once and never again. If ENT had existed at that point, they'd probably have given him a MACO uniform (it is entirely possible that MACOS still exist at this point).

ntypical said:
Babaganoosh, there are also several books that feature the SFMC

Really? As in, licensed fictional Trek novels? Which ones?

 

[Unicron]

^ To be fair, though, one could argue that the rank scheme had been simplified by the Trek era. Modern branches do use different terminology, but the actual ranks and positions are more or less the same in terms of equivalents.

 

[royalfan5]

Perhaps, Colonel West was only a Kentucky Colonel like Colonel Sanders, and while every one called him that, he had an actual Naval Rank?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Necronomicon said:
^ To be fair, though, one could argue that the rank scheme had been simplified by the Trek era.

This seems simple enough to me. Just have one Starfleet, but have those with Naval ranks to run the ships, and those with Ground ranks to be ground troops. Nothing overly complex about that. The Canadian military, for example, is run like this. They don't have separate branches - they're one big "super-service". But their ships are crewed with people with Navy ranks, and the ground troops have 'ground' ranks. No reason Starfleet couldn't do that.


About all Starfleet would really need to do is maybe one or two rank names could be changed to avoid confusion...like the High Guard in Andromeda, their name for a Marine (or as they call it, "Lancer Corps") captain is "Brevet Major". But apart from that, it seems fairly cut and dried.

 

[jayrath]

Good lord. It's StarFLEET. Fleet, like a navy. The mission is not to go out and explore new . . . ground.

 

[Unicron]

There's certainly no reason the Feds couldn't do that. My point was simply that having different terms for what is essentially the same rank in different branches of the modern military is redundant.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

But that's the thing - it's not the same rank. An OF-9 would be an Admiral (in the Navy) but a General (in the Army, Marines, etc.). Those ranks may be at the same 'level' but they don't do anywhere near the same things. Admirals command ships; Generals command ground troops. That's just what those ranks are for. Ditto for all the ranks under them.

 

[serdogthehound]

Starfleet could be a unifted force which often use single rank system as was the case in Canada after unifcation into a single Armed Force. For about 10 year there the use of only Army style ranks was in place so that Ship were command by Major, Lieutenant colonel and Colonel instead of the naval style rank. This was hated and therefore ended but there no reason that Starfleet could not have done the same only as the fleet is the main body it would go the other way

 

[Timo]

Also, "a General does different things from an Admiral" is not a very strong argument when a General usually also does different things from a General.

Unlike the historical origins of the ranks, there is no absolute, direct correspondence between rank and position today. You can't tell a line officer's position by his or her rank any more, and you can only tell a flag officer's position by his or her rank if you are intimately familiar with what the scheme happens to be that decade, or that year, or even that month.

So there is IMHO no reason to have "separate" army ranks for ground troops when they in fact are not separate. Each and every army rank has its exact counterpart in a naval rank.

As for "The Siege of AR-558", the ground forces are said to have been commanded by a Captain, and after his death, by a Commander. After the Commander died, a Lieutenant took charge. This progression suggests that the Captain was a naval rank as well, not an army one. The matter of whether Lieutenant Larkin's rank was army or navy remains in doubt, although her collar pips probably support the latter (it's too damn dark to really see them in the screencaps ). But the fact that there were two Colonel-level officers in original command for this relatively small force of 150 troops does suggest that this was indeed a "special ops team" of sorts.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ntypical]

Not exactly (I may be stretching a bit here). You say that because of the high ranking OICs that they were likely SOF forces. I propose this.

During one of my deployments, my team was attached to DevGru. Our Team lead was a Very junior Major (he had been promoted but not reassigned yet). But because we were working jointly with DevGru there were also Sailors with us. There was a LtCmdr in charge of one of their teams (they were filling a different role). It could have gone like that. And because of the area they were working the Captain was in charge because the Captain (O-3) would have been the SME (even though junior to the Commander O-5), when he died the Commander (who was there in the same capacity but filling a different role) took over.

We can what if this subject to death. But it seems that we all agree that SF did in fact have ground forces.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

ntypical said:But it seems that we all agree that SF did in fact have ground forces.

Definitely.

Whatever they're called, whatever rank system they use, they must exist.

I'll repeat, though: I don't think they're called anything special. They are still just plain 'Starfleet'. Just Starfleet personnel who happen to fight instead of explore. And this is not a hobby; they must be permanent ground troops. They can't just devote *part* of their time to ground combat - it's all or nothing. That's just the way it works.

And I also think they use ground ranks; it doesn't make sense to me that they wouldn't.
Starfleet is a combined service, of course, we've heard about that already, but that doesn't mean ground-pounders can't have their own ranks. (As I already pointed out, the Canadian armed forces are also a combined service, yet they have 'sea' ranks for their ship crews. They tried having only one rank system and it didn't work. So I doubt it'd work for Starfleet either!)

 

[jayrath]

For better or worse, I strongly doubt Gene Roddenberry envisioned Starfleet marines.

If there's trouble on a planet, it's for the planet to take care of. Even if the Prime Directive does not apply, surely the intent is not closed off once a civilization joins Starfleet.

I do not see Starfleet as an occupying force, or ground-based peace keepers, and certainly not as conquerers.

This is a complete misunderstanding of what Star Trek is all about. Yes, if it were all "real," there must be such forces. But then we might as well also throw out the entire vision of a positve future as well. I prefer the fantasy of a better tomorrow.