Why didn't the Federation Alliance......

[All Seeing Eye]

........... use subspace weaponry against the Dominion? or vice versa even?

In wartime of the scale of the Dominion war where victory was almost certainly considered impossible wouldn't the 3 major powers whom signed the subspace weapon ban treaty allow a temporary freezing of the treaty and allow the use of subspace weapons??

Entire Dominion fleets could have been annihilated via the detonation of subspace weapons.

I would have thought the Dominion would not have any reason to ban their use and would have used them. The war could have been over much more quickly.

On a separate note (saving myself from starting another thread) why didn't the Breen when they reached Earth wipe out Earths Sun with a Trilithium torpedo? or why didn't the Breen hit Earth with subspace weaponry?

 

[nx1701g]

^ I always imagined that Soran's Trilithium Weapon was something that was unique and only he'd developed (which was why he was using it to control Lursa and B'Etor).

As for the Federation not using subspace weaponry it was probably because the Federation were always meant to be the good guys in the conflict and the Dominion the bad. If the Federation Alliance started to use weapons that were considered illegal suddenly people may not think of them as being so benevolent a group. Plus it is entirely possible that Starfleet may have deemed them unnecessary risks because of their unpredictable natures. Starfleet could, possibly, destroy themselves via the subspace weaponry and make whole areas of space uninhabitable (like the sector where Omega was detonated).

But, all in all, it was probably something along the lines that it made the Federation look too evil and not be the good guys.

 

[TeutonicNights]

The dominion would simply switch to Subspace weapons as well, maybe outproduce the Feds and a short-time advantage turns into a huge problem in the long run.

Remember the Son'a, which were allies to the Doms, aready had those weapons. Also remember those weapons were old tech and hadalready been banned at Khitomer, in Kirk's time. The Dominion should have no problem making them.
The gimped combat in the Siege of AR whatever is another hint that strict conventions exist (or that the episode doesn't quite work)-.

That still doesn't explain the trilithium bomb.Maybe after the incident, there were negotiations between the Feds and the Dominion, and the Dominion agreed to not use trilithium bombs anymore, while they got something from the Feds in return.
The trilitium device was at least a relatively new weapons, so it might make sense those weren't included in any intial arrangement or convention.

 

[Jono]

The subspace weapon we saw in Insurrection couldn't even destroy one ship, so maybe these weapons aren't particularly useful against moving targets.

The Dominion while the bad guys and willing to wipe out the populations of planets did still seemed to want to rule over conquered territory rather than just wipe out all life in their path.

The other issue with subspace weapons could be that their use, while it might destroy a fleet or sterlise a planet a lot of tech utilises subspace. Subspace sensors, communications (the main form of ftl comms) and even warp drive might all be rendered useless in the areas the weapons were used.

Take the omega molecule for example, it is probably the most powerful weapon known to the Federation and I guess you could call it a subspace weapon. Use it, you might stop the Dominion invasion but end all warp travel and communications for possibly forever.

As for the Changeling Bashir bomb. It was an exotic mix of elements, maybe it wouldn't have destroyed the star but rather just caused some sort of eruption similar to what Martok and co did to the Monac star. I think we only have the theorising of the "good guys" as to what the Founder was up to, he didn't go classic villian and broadcast his master plan over subspace radio only to be foiled/unmasked and say, "I would have got away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids and their pesky Trill symbiont!"

 

[Timo]

When subspace weapons were used in ST:INS, the one thing mentioned about them was that they were tricky. Probably too unreliable to be used as true weapons of war... Either in the sense of killing their users just as often as their targets, or in the sense of having uncontrollable scope of effect, from a firecracker to a galaxy-swallowing monster.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Xerxes1979]

blowing up stars is very easy and doesn't require Soran's design

The Enterprise-D blew one up in "Half A Life"

Since most alpha quadrant space empires seem to be built around inhabitted star systems the Dominion War was never realistic as portrayed.

The Federation had access to thousands of Klingon cloak capable ships and even if a few system were destroyed those systems could have had huge impacts if they were centers of government or Ketrecel White production sites.

 

[-Brett-]

The one time we saw subspace weapons being used, they weren't all that impressive. Maybe the cost-benefit analysis didn't add up. Maybe a couple hundred good old fashioned photon torpedoes could do the same job for less.

 

[JarodRussell]

Because the Federation are the good guys. Good guys don't use illegal weaponry. Which is why they always have a hard time fighting against bad guys, who naturally don't care.

 

[DWF]

I would've loved to have seen the doomsday machine used against the Dominion, it would've lasted for long before they figured out how to stop it, but it still would've been fun to their reaction to it.

 

[Timo]

The Enterprise-D blew one up in "Half A Life"

But only because the star was special, susceptible to that sort of "attack". Most stars wouldn't be.

The Federation had access to thousands of Klingon cloak capable ships and even if a few system were destroyed those systems could have had huge impacts if they were centers of government or Ketrecel White production sites.

The Dominion had two types of countermeasures to cloaks: point blank range (only a few kilometers) antiproton beams, and some sort of a very long range (dozens of lightyears) sensor, later destroyed by Dax in "Behind the Lines". So there would have been problems with large scale cloaked attack.

However, we did see smaller scale penetrations work just fine. So it should have been possible to reach at least some Dominion-held star systems. But we also saw what could be achieved by such penetrations, which was, essentially nothing. Presumably, nova-bombing is very difficult to do: the best that could be hoped for would have been flare-bombing, which they did in "Shadows and Symbols". Efficient against spaceborne shipyards at close range (a hundred million kilometers, or less than one AU), but apparently quite difficult to achieve. And even there, they needed to find a suitable magnetic instability to exploit; not every star would be that cooperative.

I'd argue that the major Trek players are on the threshold of discovering a practial means of nova-bombing, but haven't crossed that threshold yet. Once they do, they'll probably use nova-bombs a couple of times in war, and then discover that they are not practicable - that there is no point in utterly destroying that which you merely wish to control. In the 25th century, there may be a balance of terror between nova-bomb-toting players. In the 24th, there's no such thing yet, because nova-bombs are only available for the more advanced species that seldom cooperate with our main players.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Xerxes1979]

The Dominion had two types of countermeasures to cloaks: point blank range (only a few kilometers) antiproton beams, and some sort of a very long range (dozens of lightyears) sensor, later destroyed by Dax in "Behind the Lines". So there would have been problems with large scale cloaked attack.


Timo Saloniemi

Interphasic cloak baby! Federation and or Romulan science > Dominion