Was there compulary service during the Dominion War?
- Thread starter Danoz
- Start date
McCoy needs to learn to read his contracts, or get a lawyer to do it for him.
Well that was something I never quite bought, since it seems that by the 24th Century officers could be quite old before they "retired". Look at Picard and some of the others we've seen around. I suppose maybe McCoy didn't "fully retire" ie: Leave the Service. And just said "I'll see ya around." and went off to his private practice.
But I think in some ways you really don't need to have a major conscription plan in the 24th Century, when a previous poster suggested, you just have more automated stuff to replace crew. In fact, I'd be surprised if there were a lot of officers and enlisted around simply to provide "presence". You don't need a starship with 200 people on board when you're doing an all out offensive where you may not come back, or your ship may not be worth saving after it. So really other than maybe boarding parties and repair teams, most of the fleet probably ran on skeleton crews. And trained personnel, ie; specialists and the like would be in short supply since they were probably the primary crew aboard certain ships. You had enough grunts you probably even had enough basically trained people around, but the real specialists and experts were in short supply. The people that can get a job done by themselves.
But I think in some ways you really don't need to have a major conscription plan in the 24th Century, when a previous poster suggested, you just have more automated stuff to replace crew. In fact, I'd be surprised if there were a lot of officers and enlisted around simply to provide "presence". You don't need a starship with 200 people on board when you're doing an all out offensive where you may not come back, or your ship may not be worth saving after it. So really other than maybe boarding parties and repair teams, most of the fleet probably ran on skeleton crews. And trained personnel, ie; specialists and the like would be in short supply since they were probably the primary crew aboard certain ships. You had enough grunts you probably even had enough basically trained people around, but the real specialists and experts were in short supply. The people that can get a job done by themselves.
The draft question is certainly an interesting one, but I wonder if the view and reality of war would be a lot more different when using space ships. I mean I think its obvious there were ground battles on some planets, but the size of the casualties list were certainly large.....but.....
In "The Changing Face of Evil" Demar specifically stated that over 7,000,000 million Cardassians had died since the Cardassia joined the Dominion. Frankly I was a little surprised with how small that number was. It just seems like it should have been larger. Cardassia certainly had a huge body count when all was said and done, but up till "The Changing Face of Evil" there casualties seemed rather small....
Jason
In "The Changing Face of Evil" Demar specifically stated that over 7,000,000 million Cardassians had died since the Cardassia joined the Dominion. Frankly I was a little surprised with how small that number was. It just seems like it should have been larger. Cardassia certainly had a huge body count when all was said and done, but up till "The Changing Face of Evil" there casualties seemed rather small....
Jason
Could there be a larger problem, one other that conscription? I may be changing topics, so please forgive me. In a Federation crushing war, couldn't there be the problem of desertion from not only the conscripts but of the regular Starfleet personnel? As home planets become endangered or deemed undefensible, or not strategically important and abandoned to enemy forces; couldn't this also lead to mass defection from Starfleet?
Let's say an Intrepid, Galaxy, Sovereign and few other starships are maned by personnel that are primarily or even entirelly by one species (say a water breathing species) and their world is demmed to be left to enemy forces; couldn't this lead to a defection by this species to protect their home world and abondon Starfleet?
Let's say an Intrepid, Galaxy, Sovereign and few other starships are maned by personnel that are primarily or even entirelly by one species (say a water breathing species) and their world is demmed to be left to enemy forces; couldn't this lead to a defection by this species to protect their home world and abondon Starfleet?
It's a good question. On the one hand, conscription is already out-dated - modern militaries are generally better off with smaller numbers of highly trained and motivated personnel, rather than clogging things up with conscripts of varying quality.
On the other hand, we see massive fleets, that we didn't see hanging around earlier, and no mention of reserves. There can't be enough semi-retired Fleet personnel, can there? Are there reserve fleets, which don't show up earlier when Earth is threatened because they're stationed at Remote Tiny Planetoid 364, so they can only respond to prolonged crisis situations?
On the gripping hand, the UFP must have a population in the tens of trillions, or more. I don't know how they train everyone so fast - the holodecks might help - but even with a small proportion of that population clamoring to enlist, they would never need conscription to crew fleets vastly larger than those we see, and build armies much larger than we see.
On the other hand, we see massive fleets, that we didn't see hanging around earlier, and no mention of reserves. There can't be enough semi-retired Fleet personnel, can there? Are there reserve fleets, which don't show up earlier when Earth is threatened because they're stationed at Remote Tiny Planetoid 364, so they can only respond to prolonged crisis situations?
On the gripping hand, the UFP must have a population in the tens of trillions, or more. I don't know how they train everyone so fast - the holodecks might help - but even with a small proportion of that population clamoring to enlist, they would never need conscription to crew fleets vastly larger than those we see, and build armies much larger than we see.
The dominion war didn't last long enought for a "DRAFT" to have any effect, certainly in terms of ship board service. The major active portion of the war less than two years. Untrained connon fodder wouldn't help the federation.
T'Girl
During the american civil when area of the united states were over run by confederate forces, the union units from those parts of the country didn't desert, if anything they fought harder. You save your family's lives by fighting the enemy, not helping the enemy thru quiting.
We're told that by the 24th century people have multiple careers and people have much longer live spands, fleet veterans could exsist by the hundreds of millions. Re-activating them might be done in only weeks or months, getting them up to speed on any advancements since they left.
T'Girl
But the problem did happen to the Confederate Army late in the American Civil War. LINK. The problem being that the Confederates saw they were losing the War or thinking it would never end. The fighting men left and went back home to protect and find their loved ones as Union Armies marched through the South. So I think desertion would have been quite possible, if the Federation hadn't turned things around. Or if the Federation were on the losing end, like they were in Yesterdays Enterprise.
Given the difference in population and industry, the south had only the slimmest of chances. When they didn't win in the first few years, they weren't going to.
There is a lot about the Betazoids and their charactor we just don't know. From TNG we've met four? Only the Troi's have we come to know well, an emotional people certainly, their mental abilities give them a mind set that seperates them from the rest of the races. I'm not even sure Deanna would stay at her post, or maybe just her.
The Federation isn't one people, they have all that lovely diversity. So the response would differ community by community. After september 11, in some places young men filled the parking lots outside recuitment offices, in other cities the local governments wouldn't allow them to open.
I come from a military family - going to skip this one.
T'Girl
What, no ninety-day wonders in Starfleet..?
The training of a USN sailor takes something like six months today, right? Nations with mandatory military service, like mine, tend to do it in six to twelve months, although some prefer to retain the personnel in "training" for several years, for various reasons. I'm sure Starfleet could manage it in three months or less, by only taking in people who already possess most of the needed skills (there would be millions if not billions of those available).
It would take a long, long war for Starfleet to run out of "easy" draftees, and to be forced to start to train the sort of people who require more than three months of education to be useful...
Timo Saloniemi
--- If you could operate a private civilian spacecraft, the basic controls on a shuttlecraft would be the same. Same for control console, sensor and such. Some would on the other hand be specialized, but you're pulling people out of a technological society.
Part of a long basic training and tech school process is to give prople time to make the intellectual transition to the fact they are in fact going to be killing other people, something a civilized society frowns upon.
True, and that is my point. The Federation had a limited window to win the war. As Jadzia pointed out, they needed a victory "a big one." Had the Prophets not intervened and stopped the Dominion Fleet from coming through the Wormhole, the Federation and Klingons were done. The Alliance could have fallen apart as the Klingons went to protect Qo'noS, and Starfleet could have fallen apart as different species went to look after their own.
The TNG episode "The Survivors" mentioned something along these lines. The dowd (or however you spelled it) stated that during the invasion he "chose not to fight" Picard responded by saying "and that is your protected right".
Also as has been mentioned drafted troops are as a rule far less effective than trained volunteers. I can only imagine this would be even more true in the realm of space warfare. (Don't think you can learn warp mechanics in a 4 week boot.)
Nice work; you know your Trek.
Hmm...that certainly speaks, at least, to the idea of "conscientious objector" status as a legal concept in Federation law. But the legality of the draft itself? I don't know.
True, but it does show that even if they had resorted to a draft during the Dominion war it would have been of little use. They could perhaps have crewed production facilities and perhaps even transport ships using such a system. But it would not have produced a sizable increase in combat troops, as those willing would likely have already enlisted.
That would depend, I expect, on what legal criteria would be required to satisfy the legal definition of "conscientious objector."
I am not totally sure this is can be used as a universal discounting of the draft for Starfleet argument. Don't get me wrong, I think the writers of DS9 didn't mention it specifically for a reason.
Even within US history, the draft did not apply to everyone. For example, if someone fell out of the age range of the draft (In the Civil War I believe people well into their 40s were drafted, not sure what the age was during Vietnam) their age status would "protect" them.
Just putting this out there for discussion.
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