Yevetha
Commodore
We had seen cardassian tanks in Day of The Vipers.
Why are basic infantry tactics almost never employed in Star Trek?
- Thread starter awiltz2
- Start date
We had seen cardassian tanks in Day of The Vipers.
Could they have? For all we know, upon seeing the gas cloud they could have just stared at it and said "what the hell?" Then it would have moved in and killed them anyway.
Besides, Mr Leslie managed to get resurrected after being killed by that thing, for all we know, so were the others
The studio can only afford to bring so many actors in.
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There's no such episode; it's a novel.
Meaning that things are frequently done because it's a TV show meant to entertain more than military experts and scientists. This also extends to people (usually the main characters) being able to dodge phaser/disruptor blasts, starships waging battle close enough to fit on a TV screen, sound effects in space, and dramatic music at key moments.
For true realism, we'd have to throw 96% of Trek out the window.
An away team could cover more ground with a vehicle of some kind vs. going every where on foot.
This assumes that your capital ship isn't tied up engaging their capital ship. TOS shuttles were never observed with transporters, but this is an oversight/limitation corrected by the TNG era.
In all cases and in all eras, except when the plot really depends on it, you can't beam through shields.
Again, assuming she isn't tied up engaging enemy capital ships.
IRL battleships can serve as artillery platforms in an antitank capacity, and generally the existence of antitank weapons hasn't stopped tanks from being built.
Starfleet rarely ANTICIPATES it, despite how often it seems to happen.Because there was no anticipation of encountering inhabitations? Unlike with Starfleet.
OTOH, I think Starfleet has a tendency to assume that most of the aliens they encounter will be either poorly armed or relatively peaceful, or both. It seems to be a pretty safe assumption 90% of the time. Safer, actually, if they're using their TAS shield belts.
That's what shuttlecraft are for. Assuming there even is a need to "cover more ground" in a world where your tricorder can probably pinpoint whatever it is you're looking for from a mile away (as can your starship, which beamed you down a quarter mile away from it in the first place).
The considerably better question here -- one I haven't seen asked -- is why a ship with a crew of 400 would routinely make due with a single six-man landing party to scout an entire planet. Maybe it's like Mass Effect where there's only ever a single interesting thing on any particular planet, but I like to think that the whole time Kirk and Spock and McCoy and three redshirts are down on the surface, usually there's fifty other guys on another continent five hundred miles away doing a geological survey and nobody talks about them because they're boring.
First of all, battleships no longer exist, and even when they did, they were rarely used in an antitank capacity. Naval gunnery just isn't that accurate, nor can they reach that far inland to support a major land battle; shore bombardment is more of a "bombard the fuck out of them until they get scared and hide" affair. Naval air power, maybe... in this case, shuttlecraft armed with phasers.
Second of all, often enough when an away team gets stranded without support from their vessel (e.g. "Arena" or "Errand of Mercy") they immediately resort to guerrilla tactics until someone can arrive to beam them out. I think if they were up against somebody who had tanks or air support, they'd probably spend most of their time hiding and/or jamming their enemy's sensors.
First of all, I chose battleships because that's the closest real world analog available to using the Enterprise to attack tanks (capital ship vs. mechanized infantry). Second of all, you ignored the main point of the sentence, which I repeat: "generally the existence of antitank weapons hasn't stopped tanks from being built".
Note: Before Iowa class battleships were retired, they were used to launch cruise missiles, and did so in Desert Storm, though I'm not certain whether they engaged tank formations in this manner.
However as the power of antitank weapons has increased the armies of the world have demphasized their armored forces and have chosen more mobile platforms over heavy armor needed for shock effect. If a stealthy grunt can be assured of a tank killing weapon, which I am assuming hand phasers can do then why have a tank? They will be withdrawn just as the armored warriors gave up their chain and plate armor when technology changed.
They did see it coming: three-man patrols covered 360 degrees of vision (although why they didn't look up for a cloud beats me), and when the cloud did attack, one of the three saw it approaching the other two. He just hesitated with firing, probably chiefly because it's pretty difficult to decide where to aim in a cloud that is attacking your fellow troopers by enveloping them! The terrain certainly offered the cloud enough cover to sneak up to the three-man patrols despite them keeping efficient visual watch.
They had seven people to use, and could spare two for a recce team. The two "wandered off" under Spock's orders in tight formation, seeking high ground so that they could find out what potentially threatening force made the strange noise. And that force struck from the cover of dense mist with a missile weapon. I don't see how the fight could have gone differently with "tactics" being used - although the use of tricorders would have made a world of difference, had those not been rendered inoperable by the weird Murasaki phenomenon.
How quaint.
Tanks make little sense in the Trek context unless they are flying tanks. Inability to fly would seem to be a crippling handicap in terms of firing angles, mobility and speed of deployment. Especially if the tank is too big to be quickly transported, it must have its own means of rapid motion, which essentially means it becomes a shielded and armed shuttlecraft. Which we have seen in operation in Trek all right.
Not planetwide shields, not unless they are the planets of super-advanced aliens.
Starfleet is capable of shielding individual buildings and installations, and probably has city-sized shields or else the damage from e.g. the Breen raid on Starfleet HQ in the Dominion War would have been much more like the aftermath of a nuclear attack today and much less like the aftermath of a tactical bombing run in 1939. But whenever our heroes encounter planetwide forcefields, cloaking fields or whatever, they gape in awe. Now, a transporter-blocking field was erected over the entire Elba II planetoid in TOS "Whom Gods Destroy", but it was not credited with any weapon-blocking abilities, and in any case Elba might have been a fairly small rock.
...The fun thing is, there doesn't seem to be a limitation against beaming out through shields. No mention is made of such in any episode or movie, and beam-outs do occur every now and then without the shields being dropped. Indeed, in the very first episode to introduce the concept of "no beaming through shields", TOS "A Taste of Armageddon", a beam-out through shields is performed without comment!
Agreed that the landing parties virtually never come under attack, and security teams are included in the parties for roles other than the stopping of attacks.
However, the TAS shield belts were transparent to weapons. A phaser on stun was not hindered by them in "Slaver Weapon", and crushing mechanical force was barely being held at bay in "Beyond the Farthest Star" while more concentrated mechanical force in the form of punches and wrestling grips easily penetrated in "Pirates of Orion".
The belt doesn't appear to be the Starfleet equivalent to today's US Army flak jackets - it appears to be the futuristic version of the US Army raincoat!
Timo Saloniemi
I know it's all entertainment, but in an episode like " the siege of AR 558", this type of thinking is unavoidable.
Don't use a rapid fire rifle against the enemy. Use a rifle that fires a single beam instead. And let the enemy charge upon you and overwhelm you within minutes, lol.
And don't use your own grenades or mines either. Let the enemy do that.
Ironic, but you have to wonder if a 20 th century infantry squad could have fought off the Jem Hadar better compared to the Starfleet one.
Don't use a rapid fire rifle against the enemy. Use a rifle that fires a single beam instead. And let the enemy charge upon you and overwhelm you within minutes, lol.
And don't use your own grenades or mines either. Let the enemy do that.
Ironic, but you have to wonder if a 20 th century infantry squad could have fought off the Jem Hadar better compared to the Starfleet one.
We are perhaps fortunate in only having this single episode actually describing ground combat in Star Trek. Other episodes such as "Nor the Battle to the Strong" have carefully kept the camera away from the actual combat action, only depicting those elements of battle that are easily dramatized in terms of the characters and settings available.
Given how the troops kept checking the power packs of their guns, something our heroes basically never do, it would seem likely that they were low on ammo. That only happened once AFAIK, with Captain Tracey of "Omega Glory" fame running his phasers dry in defeating thousands of troops, so the folks defending the captured Dominion installation could have been in dire straits indeed. It wouldn't be a question of throwing caution aside for stopping this final enemy sally - it would be a question of deciding whether this was the final sally, or just #36 in a continuum of sallies that were slowly and steadily depleting the resources of the defenders.
The best way to fight in a siege is to hold your fire...
Grenades would probably have been among the first things exhausted in the prolonged siege.
An isolated 20th century infantry squad runs completely out of ammo after two days of battle, tops. Granted that the Starfleet force was (originally) more like a company, which would have greater centralized ammo reserves. Yet Sisko would not have found any WWII or Vietnam era fighting units alive down there if arriving after the regulatory 90 days, let alone after the five months that actually had passed.
Timo Saloniemi
From my memory ( I could be wrong) it seemed the infantry's main problems were mental and stress issues, more than a supplies/energy one.
Although the part about running out of ammo is certainly true.
I think rapid pulse setting wouldn't have used any more power than a continuous beam setting. It would have been more convenient for that situation, IMO.
I mean even some well placed, sneak attacks with a few rocket launchers into that Jem Hadar column would have helped. (Fed technology could have boosted the explosive power, I'm sure)
The Jem Hadar were basically just charging through the front entrance in the cavern. Maybe, just maybe, if they all had rapid fire rifles pointed at them, they seriously could have cut down the lot of them.
And this is assuming they got through any well placed mines. If they couldn't get through, they knew better than to keep charging through them.
It's like the modern weapons and tactics they used, if anything, seemed to hampered them a bit and were impractical.
Although the part about running out of ammo is certainly true.
I think rapid pulse setting wouldn't have used any more power than a continuous beam setting. It would have been more convenient for that situation, IMO.
I mean even some well placed, sneak attacks with a few rocket launchers into that Jem Hadar column would have helped. (Fed technology could have boosted the explosive power, I'm sure)
The Jem Hadar were basically just charging through the front entrance in the cavern. Maybe, just maybe, if they all had rapid fire rifles pointed at them, they seriously could have cut down the lot of them.
And this is assuming they got through any well placed mines. If they couldn't get through, they knew better than to keep charging through them.
It's like the modern weapons and tactics they used, if anything, seemed to hampered them a bit and were impractical.
Yevetha
Commodore
What makes you think somebody can take out a tank with phaser?
This?
http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x08/futuresend1_321.jpg
http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x08/futuresend1_322.jpg
Well, the ones that charged the heroes were indeed the survivors of a walk through a minefield...
Timo Saloniemi
http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x08/futuresend1_321.jpg
http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x08/futuresend1_322.jpg
Well, the ones that charged the heroes were indeed the survivors of a walk through a minefield...
Timo Saloniemi
Passive armor as an alloy or composite capable of challenging Starfleet makes sense only if it can resist phaser fire.
For example, it might be unusually dense (i.e., denser than uranium), perhaps composed of one or more hypothetical Star Trek elements above our periodic table. From TOS: By Any Other Name, [http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/50.htm]:
Certain organisms proved resistant to phaser fire. For example, the Horta was resistant to phaser-1, and we didn't hear of it containing any exotic elements. The rock creatures in TAS: Mudd's Passion didn't mind a little phaser-2. However, being alive, maybe their skins weren't quite so passive as an alloy or composite material.
Besides, armor doesn't need to be foolproof. It just needs to incur opportunity cost on the other side, forcing them to apply and expend heavy ordnance or to concentrate firepower to defeat it. In a war of attrition, it only needs to do either or both of these things enough to offset its cost, where enough is defined as being more cost effective than any other alternative, including building more unarmored or different kinds of units altogether.
Ergo, since we don't see passive armor generally deployed, then it's because it's too expensive and isn't effective enough. However, that doesn't mean it's not used in special circumstances.
For example, it might be unusually dense (i.e., denser than uranium), perhaps composed of one or more hypothetical Star Trek elements above our periodic table. From TOS: By Any Other Name, [http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/50.htm]:
Unfortunately, we never hear of this stuff again, AFAIK.
Certain organisms proved resistant to phaser fire. For example, the Horta was resistant to phaser-1, and we didn't hear of it containing any exotic elements. The rock creatures in TAS: Mudd's Passion didn't mind a little phaser-2. However, being alive, maybe their skins weren't quite so passive as an alloy or composite material.
Besides, armor doesn't need to be foolproof. It just needs to incur opportunity cost on the other side, forcing them to apply and expend heavy ordnance or to concentrate firepower to defeat it. In a war of attrition, it only needs to do either or both of these things enough to offset its cost, where enough is defined as being more cost effective than any other alternative, including building more unarmored or different kinds of units altogether.
Ergo, since we don't see passive armor generally deployed, then it's because it's too expensive and isn't effective enough. However, that doesn't mean it's not used in special circumstances.
Speaking as a former US Army scout(cough, glorified infantryman) and Iraq combat veteran. Hugging walls is death, bullets follow walls. When moving you want to stay 6-12 inches off the walls. You do not peek around corners. You pie the corner with your weapon up and ready. You would never send a lone person ahead of the main body, no one ever moves alone in a threat environment. But yes, scouting ahead of the main body would be wise. As is keeping a rear guard.
But here is the thing. All modern military doctrine and tactics, all the training I received are based on a certain set of assumptions. An Earth-based environment, Earth level gravity. Human adversaries. Projectile weapons. You change any one of those four basic assumptions and everything changes. Why have a security force trained specifically in Human-centric tactics when there are hundreds or thousands of other threat profiles out there? It is inefficient.
I agree that Starfleet should use a lot more common sense, but seeing them using modern military room clearing techniques or tactical movements would be anarchistic and silly.
Well said. There is a constant struggle for dominance between defensive technologies and firepower. I received Javelin training in the Army. The Javelin is an anti-tank missile that uses a rather creative two-mode attack(Direct and Top). No tank in the world can stand against it. It is fairly lightweight, and I could train any of the posters in this thread how to use it in about 10 minutes. Once Javelin type weapons become more common(and cheap) on the battlefield the main battle tank is going to go the way of the dodo bird.
Or will it? The technological pendulum keeps on swinging. Israel and the US are both developing active defense systems to be placed on their MBTs which will destroy weapons like the Javelin before they hit their targets. If beam weapons and energy shields ever get added to the defensive systems of tanks the pendulum will have swung firmly back to tanks being the kings of the battlefield.
In Trek, it appears that firepower has largely won out over defensive technologies, until you reach starship level shields. But who knows, maybe quantum armor or some other advance would change everything.
These are valid points, certainly. But Star Trek combat in general takes place on Earth type worlds, with Earth type gravity, against alien, but human-ish, opponents. And though they used energy weapons, they are treated much as modern day bullet firing guns. When fired upon by someone in cover, the away team would typically have someone try to draw the opponents fire, whilst someone else attempts to out flank them. Given the capabilities of a Star Fleet phaser, why not simply disintegrate the opponents cover?
And as for modern day combat techniques seeming 'anarchistic' (I assume you mean anachronistic here. If I'm wrong, please explain further as I'm not sure what you mean in this context) and 'silly', well that would be in the eye of the beholder. To me, a group of highly trained personnel allowing themselves to be ambushed because no one was keeping a watch out is silly. Having them act like they know what they're doing is much better.
I agree though with your core idea here, that we can not know the tactics of the future. But in the same way Trek takes modern scientific ideas and extrapolates them to give a sense that 'this might happen', surely it can do the same with other areas of knowledge. As fiction, Trek need not be completely accurate. But details can add realism, if not reality. It can feel right, even if it isn't actually true. And that realism can help engage us, draw us in to the story. Which, ultimately, is the most important thing.
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