Two pieces of technology from TNG....

[infinix]

I'm sure this has been discussed here before, but since I'm new, I'll bring it up again.

There were two pieces of technology from the TNG era that would've made a huge difference in the Dominion Wars. The first is the Phase Cloak from "Pegasus" and the second is the Dyson's Sphere from "Relics."

1. From the story writing perspective, I can understand why Phase Cloak was discarded. If the Federation were allowed to use it, it will destroy absolutely anybody and anything. (Phase cloak a few torpedoes, fly them into an enemy ship, de-cloak, detonate.)

But in terms of the story itself, it would seem like there wasn't any good reason why Federation would NOT use the technology. It would seem that both the Klingons and the Romulans would've loved to have that advantage during the war.

2. The Dyson's Sphere is a bit more straight forward. Data made a point that the material used to build the Dyson's Sphere was harder and stronger than what the Federation was using. I would've expected the Federation to use that thing as a mine and just strip it to build new star ships. But that was never brought up again.

I think even a passing line mentioned here or there would've been nice, especially since O'Brien served on the Enterprise during "Relics."

 

[TheGodBen]

For the phase-cloak question, that device was fairly big and probably wouldn't fit in a torpedo casing. Even if it did, it probably needed a lot of power to function, drawing power from the warp core, so I doubt a torpedo would have enough energy to run such a device.

As for the Dyson sphere, it is probably considered a priceless archaeological relic worthy of study, I doubt that the Federation would be inclined to tear it up. I'd even go so far as to say that it would probably be against the law to do so.

 

[infinix]

On the phase cloak, how about having small drone fighters packed with matter/anti-matter clusters with only enough power for navigation, propulsion, and the phase-cloak device?

On the Dyson's Sphere, I guess you are right about not tearing it up. But that thing is the size of a small solar system. There must have been part of the sphere that they could spare. At the least, Federation technology should have gotten a great boost off of it.

 

[Admiral Shran]

On the Dyson Sphere...

Even if the study of it greatly enhanced the Federation's technical knowledge and know-how, it would still take time for any new technology gained from it to be implemented on a fleet-wide scale.

For example, when Voyager returned home to the Alpha Quadrant they brought back technology from the future, as well as knowledge on how to build a quantum slip-stream drive (which was vastly superior to warp drive) and Borg technology. And yet, by the time of Nemesis, it doesn't appear that any of that "new-found" tech was being used by Starfleet.

 

[infinix]

The tech brought back by the future Janeway shouldn't count at all. Its one thing for one admiral to decide to break all time-travel rules, its entirely another for the entire Federation to decide that it is a good idea to use that technology.

If Federation wanted to use the future technology, they would have. It was already Federation-based tech and the crew of the Voyager was able to adapt it quickly and fairly easily. It is a good thing that we never saw those tech in the subsequent stories.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I agree that bringing up random episodes of TNG as possible assets to the war is a bit, well, nit-picky, so I usually don't do it, but ever since I saw Starship Mine, I always thought the barion sweep would make a great weapon somehow. It kills everything that's a live, but the ship is still perfectly intact!

 

[Too Much Fun]

I actually read a review of "Relics" once where the reviewer stated that he thought the Dyson Sphere would have come in handy against the Dominion. I'm not sure why, though. Was it indestructible? Would any ship in there be safe from the attacks of other ships, or would it be best utilized as a place to trap enemies since it's hard to keep the doors open (my memory of the episode is a bit fuzzy)?

 

[Solarbaby]

I actually read a review of "Relics" once where the reviewer stated that he thought the Dyson Sphere would have come in handy against the Dominion. I'm not sure why, though. Was it indestructible? Would any ship in there be safe from the attacks of other ships, or would it be best utilized as a place to trap enemies since it's hard to keep the doors open (my memory of the episode is a bit fuzzy)?

Well if it had weapons yes. It had an almost infinte power source (in comparison to life spans) to stave off any attack. Although its not mobile. So unless you brought the Dominion to the Sphere its a bit useless.

I actually made a back story for the creation of the Dyson Sphere. It's not in any detail yet- but there's a few ideas on how to weaponise it here http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=126845

 

[Jono]

Phase cloak would be off the table as it would have breached the Federation treaty with the Romulans, which would negate any chance of the Romulans joining the Federation and might force the Romulans to side with the Dominion.

 

[Arpy]

What ancient treasures do the powers find and then keep for themselves? Does Starfleet keep the dysonsphere? Do the Romulans keep an iconian gate? The Klingons some ancient protohumanoid planet killer?

 

[Solarbaby]

Who is to say that Starfleet informed the galaxy of the dyson sphere's existence? It was undiscovered until the enterprise found it. With the exception of Scotty's runabout.

 

[Xerxes1979]

How about the Federation's demonstrated ability to destroy suns?

Seems a few hundred "nova bombs" would have ended the war quick as jem'hedar vats and shipyards were blown into dust.

I guess at least one Cardie civilian is forceable detained in every Dominion star system as the Federation could have used its vast WMD knowledge to great effect.

Whatever happened to the soliton wave generator? That could have been turned into a weapon easily.

 

[Myasishchev]

I almost sort of wonder if there isn't an implicit or even explicit agreement to limit warfare in the Trek universe. I mean, you never hear of entire biospheres being destroyed in the DW, even though we know single starships have that ability.

There's probably good reason to ignore planets (or suns!). Firstly, presumably star systems are exactly what the conqueror is after, and destroying them would deny them their prize.

Secondly, destroying populations would not actually affect the ability to continue the war (although they may affect the will to continue), since the space fleet would remain intact.

Thirdly, and corollary to that, they open up your own planets to reprisals, in much the same way we didn't nuke Beijing or Shanghai during our war with China and (indirectly) the Soviet Union.

Fourthly, it may be that even shitty governments like the Klingons', Romulans', or Dominion are still run by people with moral codes that prohibit or at least frown upon indiscriminate killing of billions.

Thus, even when the Breen actually break through and evidently have the ability to lay waste to the entire Earth, they focus instead on military targets in San Francisco with limited weapons designed for limited collateral damage. Enabrin Tain, on the other hand, is all about total war. Then again, the Great Link is a valid military target.

 

[AriesIV]

Uh Star Trek isn't about WMDs. That's Star WARS. Totally different franchise.

Star trek ain't about whipping your willy out and comparing it to the neighboring empires then CRUSHING the ones who don't "measure up." Its about finding common ground and a peaceful solution.

That's why there are villians like 31 and The Borg. One shows us that every Utopia has a dark spot and The Borg is that drunk neighbor that cannot be reasoned with at all ever.

 

[Myasishchev]

It doesn't matter what Trek's about, though. Everyone has weapons capable of destroying planets. Not just the Federation, but their enemies, and their less-scrupulous allies. So there must be some kind of explanation for an unwillingness to destroy planets, when the capability is there, and its possible military value obvious.

 

[The_Baroness]

The Phase Cloak was unstable and never worked properly. That's why the Pegasus was embedded in rock.

Not to mention as stated earlier, the Treaty of algeron expressly forbids the Federation from developing cloaking technology. For them to use it in a war would be a significiant breach of that and possibly enough to even send the Romulans, who already had a non-aggression pact with the Dominion, over to join them in the war.

 

[Timo]

To be sure, having the phase cloak would render the Romulans a non-issue. So they declare war over the issue? Bah, smite them. Exterminate them. Or (to keep up the image of the Feds as the good guys) just explain to them that if they don't cease and desist yesterday, the only pointy ears to survive would be those attached to calm and logical Vulcan heads, or those preserved in war museums. Then sign a new treaty that says that cloaking is perfectly okay but that from now on, Romulans must all crawl when meeting humans. And then return to the serious business of waging war with the Dominion.

I guess the Dyson sphere would be a useless asset in the Dominion war. Immobile and probably so advanced in construction that even the clever Feds would require centuries to make heads or tails of it. Ditto with how to build Doomsday Machines out of neutronium.

Cloaks are an ambiguous issue, as the Dominion apparently had long range sensors (the installation from "Behind the Lines") that largely negated large scale maneuvers under conventional cloaks, plus point blank systems (the antiproton beams) that made the most delicate close-in infiltration missions difficult. Between those two capabilities, there were holes for Klingon and Romulan ships to fly through, though. But we don't know whether the phase cloak would have been a workable new weapon against the Dominion when the enemy already appears to possess its own phase cloak (the mines from "Siege of AR-558") and may routinely operate technology meant to make phase-cloaked items visible to the enemy's own troops.

As for starkillers and novabombs, the Federation doesn't actually demonstrate possession of those. They barely manage to blow up a "special" star by accident in "Half a Life", and ignite another special, "dead" star in "Second Sight", but that's pretty much it; they struggle with containing or predicting, much less igniting supernovae in other episodes and movies. Novabombing with trilithium is big news to renegade Klingons and their Romulan allies in ST:GEN, too, and the secret apparently is taken by Soran to his fiery grave.

The Feds, or at least their Klingon allies, do know how to incite a star to flare. That might be a useful weapon against the planets that orbit the star; the flare from "Redemption pt II" didn't appear powerful enough for the job, but the one from "Shadows and Symbols" did (even if the quoted range was only 100,000,000 km, not far enough to hurt Earth if deployed against Sol). Then again, the "Shadows and Symbols" technique called for finding the right kind of magnetic instability first. We don't know if all stars would have those in sufficient abundance...

As for torching the atmosphere of a planet, "The Chase" style, or bombarding all cities to molten glass, "A Taste of Armageddon" style, that's what an unopposed single starship can do. DS9 shows that when opposed, a thousand starships may be too little for the job. Which is probably why starships are strategic weapons in the same sense WWI battleships were, and not in the same sense Cold War missiles were.

As for why there isn't more strategic destruction by other means (suitcase bombs containing irresistible bioweapons, say), that probably goes down to bushido rules. Whether those exist because all sides see the insanity of destroying planets in wars fought over the possession of planets, or because some sort of a big brother species frowns on it... Hard to tell. Certainly plenty of ancient realms have exerted their influence to the present of our heroes, even if from beyond their grave or from their equivalent of afterlife. They might do it subtly, too, tampering with mortal affairs enough that every attempt at polaric ion weapons or subspace weapons backfires too badly to be considered a viable means of waging war.

Timo Saloniemi