I'm not sure if this post should be on the DS9 section or here, but here goes. Drones have become a part of war today. That made me think of DS9. There are cases where drones would seem to have been a better choice to attack. In DS9 the Federation – Klingon – Romulan alliance attacks a planet surrounded with weapon platforms. Thinking about drones, it makes little sense to send thousands of people on board starship in an attempt to destroy them. Why not attack remotely? Instead we see starships blown into pieces. Were those ”droneships”? I guess not, it just seems silly after watching a documentary in 2018 about drones and their capabilities and then ships full of people flying in the middle of weapon platforms and getting ripped into pieces. People on board exploration ships makes sense, not on a warship in the 24th century...
Drones seem to be fine against soft targets. But we see that size matters: even swarm after swarm of fightercraft was powerless to as much as dent a single Cardassian warship in "Sacrifice of Angels", and their only achievement (and intended task) was just to irritate the Cardassians into striking back. Big drones would seem to be the way to go. We see them in "Message in a Bottle", with two carried on a smallish command ship (and wisely taking care of the bulk of propulsion, too). But big drones must be awfully expensive. If Starfleet for some reason sees a need for crewed starships, then the cost-effective way is to use them for the fighting tasks as well. Timo Saloniemi
But, as far as we could tell, those were crewed suicide craft - sort of the worst of both worlds. Which should be no surprise if the drone force on Altamid were originally intended for mining or somesuch, rather than warfare. ST:B (once again re-)establishes ramming as a valid battle tactic in the Trek universe, this being just a competition between two Structural Integrity Fields and the bigger one apparently not winning hands down. The ability to launch a million kinetic missiles does not strike me as a breakthrough in the art of war, though. Krall used those because they were the hammer he had, and everybody is a nail. But Starfleet probably wouldn't bother to build the otherwise useless missiles in such an absurd quantity. Where do we see drones in Trek? Let's only count those at the approximate UFP level of tech. 1) Massive, starship-sized drones are experimental in "Message in a Bottle". The experiment is a success. 2) Massive, starship-sized drones are experimental in "The Ultimate Computer". The experiment is a failure, despite the drone being highly effective in combat. 3) Compact hovering drones work well against unprotected "infantry" in ST:Insurrection, seemingly operating autonomously in searching for, tracking and eliminating their targets. 4) Immobile or barely mobile drones use beam weapons for planetary defense in "Conundrum" and "Tears of the Prophets". The former is a failure, due to weak guns and weak shielding; the latter is a massacre until an atypical weakness, a rare centralized resource, is exploited. One might infer that this is the very reason small numbers of starships are useless for attacking a major planet - and, conversely, that it's a matter of size and power so that a single strong vessel (be it the E-D, a Cube or V'Ger) can overwhelm a weak drone swarm after all. Beyond that, we only see drones used for pure recce, or as decoys. But we never witness major planetside battles, where light hovering drones might be prevalent. And the couple of disasters in DS9 where a major fleet of starships is cut to pieces, "Tears" and the Breen attack at Earth, might directly establish the reason why we see so few of those types of attack, with drones ruling supreme over that type of battlefield. Perhaps the RNZ of TOS era was also defended by drones, with key crewed fortresses for control? Yorktown had fortresses with windows, and surface turrets, but no small freefloaters doing anything visible, perhaps suggesting more primitive tech than in the 24th century. Timo Saloniemi
...Was it crewed? Was the Whale Probe? Starfleet sensor scans apparently didn't work too well in either case. Heck, they couldn't even tell the Borg Cube had a crew in "Q Who?". Timo Saloniemi
In the novels it's said that drone warfare has been banned on Earth since the end of the WWIII, and that ban was extended to the rest of the Federation when it was founded.
Which apparently isn't true in the "real" Trek universe, which has the aforementioned starship-sized drones at least. And Abramsverse, long after the founding of the Federation, revels in drone fighting. If one did want to believe in a drone ban (with complex exceptions to allow for the onscreen drones), one might still wish to hear it commented upon when our heroes run across combat drones in, say, "Arsenal of Freedom", ST:INS or even "Business as Usual". Timo Saloniemi
I wonder would that ban apply when you're faced with an enemy from another side of the quadrant (Dominion) who might not even know such ban exists. And even if they did, aren't Dominion ships drones in their own way, filled with warriors created to fight, totally expendable. EDIT - This is a late addition, but doesn't affect the message itself: The enemy mentioned above is not from the other side of the quadrant but from another side of the galaxy.
Drones should be more effective than the show ever portrayed them as being. But that's not good drama.
What makes drones good today? They are more expensive than piloted vehicles, and less capable overall, but they save lives. Or, in peacetime, salaries. Manufacturers make wild promises of superior performance, though - the most readily attainable goal would be persistence beyond human endurance, the next perhaps high maneuverability or other propulsive performance for not having to mind the well-being or mass of a pilot aboard. But in Trek, having mass or people aboard is not a factor: just crank up your IDFs and SIFs, and the bigger your ship, the more oomph you have for those. If your Galaxy turns on a dime and outaccelerates a photon torpedo, "slimming her down" into a drone can't be performance-driven. I can see Trek using drones for saving lives, but for improving effectiveness? Probably not. Timo Saloniemi
It opens up the question: why send out manned starships when probes or drones would be a safer option?
Drones would be safer in warfare. But crews would be the better way to avoid warfare - both in terms of the crews being better at diplomacy (not the games theory sort where every move must be maximally selfish and alienation of the competition is expected), and of the crews being hostages to reduce the eagerness for engaging in war. Ultimately, the point of Starfleet isn't to bring back knowledge from the stars, no matter what their motto says. It's to take people to the stars and let them rule over those. Robotic expansion is no better than Klingon expansion from the human point of view - it's "them" going there and not "us". And even if the drone civilization doesn't become the enemy, it is inherently more vulnerable than the crewed version, in that all sorts of Ferengi riffraff can steal or destroy bits of it with little concern for political repercussions, while touching on UFP wetware means war... Why offer thy neighbor a plastic limb of weakness when a firm, warm handgrip would radiate confidence and determination? Timo Saloniemi
That is why I said "a drone in their own way", the Jem'Hadar crew is a product created to operate that ship just as a phaser is created to fire at enemy ships. That Jem'Hadar crew is basically part of the programming of the ship. Depends how you look at it.
No, we've seen that the Jem Hadar engage in independent thought. That why they're born addicted to the white, because they're not programmable.
This debate could go on and on... Some might say that the fact that they're addicted to the white makes them a part of the programming, designed so by the Founders and so on, but I guess there's no point debating over that.
Drones are only less capable now because we haven’t reached a tipping point in AI yet. You don’t think a thousand drones slightly less intelligent than Data would be more effective than humans?
Well, my take on the lack of drones in war is that Starfleet has banned them due to some sort of Geneva Convention-like regulation. Starfleet could use all sorts of horrendously brutal, callous, and efficient methods to get ahead during battle, but they don't, because it's simply immoral or unfair.
...Which would be exactly how things work in our reality, with specific weapons systems arbitrarily declared "immoral or unfair" mainly on the basis of the declaring party being unable to afford them. Timo Saloniemi