Why the Resistance to Starfleet as a Military?

[Crazy Eddie]

Anyway, let's examine the occasions when Starfleet actually "dropped everything" and committed all of its resources to a defensive operations.

There is the Dominion War, and there there's... um...

Er...

"Dropped everything" doesn't have to mean Starfleet comitted all it's resources.

No, just most of them. If defense is that big of a priority it would take precedence over deep space exploration more often than not. I cannot, on the other hand, think of any better reason why so few Starfleet vessels would be available in the presence of an existential threat like the Borg or V'ger. In the Dominion War we find out they have HUNDREDS of ships in Starfleet... where the hell are they during TNG?

Off exploring the galaxy, obviously. Strategic readiness is just not one of their priorities except in the event of... well, ARMAGEDDON.

Seriously, a simple question. If Starfleet had to choose between ordering the only ship available to explore some nebulae and ordering it to race to the border to fight off an alien incursion, which one would it choose?

That depends. How valuable is the nebula and how dangerous are the aliens? Just so we can make this an apples-apples comparison.

Of course in 11 star trek movies, David is the only character who ever uses the word "military" in a sentence, let alone in reference to Starfleet.

And no one contradicts him.

Just as one contradicts Kruge when he calls Genesis "the ultimate weapon."

"That's not a duck! It just has a beak and some feathers and quacks a lot!"

It walks on four legs and has hair; it's not a mutated duck, it's a platypus.

Pardon me, but where has it ever been claimed that Starfleet's greater priority lies one way or the other?

From The Measure of a Man: "Your Honour, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life."

From Peak Performance: "Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration."

Hell, we had a carbon copy of this very same discussion in "First Contact" didn't we?

KROLA: You have lied since the moment of your capture and I believe you are lying now, Commander.
RIKER: No. We're here on a mission of peace.
KROLA: Such noble creatures. Why do peaceful people develop such lethal weapons? Or do you still insist it's just a toy?
(Krola fires the phaser at an instrument stand)
KROLA: An interesting toy, to be sure.
RIKER: It's only used for defense.

It's not hard to understand that Starfleet looks like a military to ALOT of people. Starfleet officers make a great many of what you would consider excuses as to why it isn't what it looks like. But I believe them, because the show is ABOUT them, and if I can't take their word for it when they try to characterize themselves, I might as well be watching Star Wars.

 

[BillJ]

Hell, we had a carbon copy of this very same discussion in "First Contact" didn't we?

KROLA: You have lied since the moment of your capture and I believe you are lying now, Commander.
RIKER: No. We're here on a mission of peace.
KROLA: Such noble creatures. Why do peaceful people develop such lethal weapons? Or do you still insist it's just a toy?
(Krola fires the phaser at an instrument stand)
KROLA: An interesting toy, to be sure.
RIKER: It's only used for defense.

It's not hard to understand that Starfleet looks like a military to ALOT of people. Starfleet officers make a great many of what you would consider excuses as to why it isn't what it looks like. But I believe them, because the show is ABOUT them, and if I can't take their word for it when they try to characterize themselves, I might as well be watching Star Wars.

What exactly would you tell Krola if you were in Riker's position? "Yeah, Bitch! With that little toy I can burn your whole city down!"

To be honest I've only heard one person state that the Federation Starfleet isn't the military and that is Picard in Peak Performance. Wonder if he still thought Starfleet wasn't the military in Star Trek: First Contact as he was pumping Ensign Lynch full of bullets?

 

[JB2005]

Hell, we had a carbon copy of this very same discussion in "First Contact" didn't we?

KROLA: You have lied since the moment of your capture and I believe you are lying now, Commander.
RIKER: No. We're here on a mission of peace.
KROLA: Such noble creatures. Why do peaceful people develop such lethal weapons? Or do you still insist it's just a toy?
(Krola fires the phaser at an instrument stand)
KROLA: An interesting toy, to be sure.
RIKER: It's only used for defense.

It's not hard to understand that Starfleet looks like a military to ALOT of people. Starfleet officers make a great many of what you would consider excuses as to why it isn't what it looks like. But I believe them, because the show is ABOUT them, and if I can't take their word for it when they try to characterize themselves, I might as well be watching Star Wars.

What exactly would you tell Krola if you were in Riker's position? "Yeah, Bitch! With that little toy I can burn your whole city down!"

To be honest I've only heard one person state that the Federation Starfleet isn't the military and that is Picard in Peak Performance. Wonder if he still thought Starfleet wasn't the military in Star Trek: First Contact as he was pumping Ensign Lynch full of bullets?

I would love if he was thinking exactly that as he was doing it!

 

[Crazy Eddie]

]
That's not a confusion, Sci. The primary purpose of a military organization is national defense against other countries, or more specifically, other countries' militaries.

Actually, no, it's against any outside threat to the state and its interests.

Provided that threat is embodied in belligerent governments or organizations, sure. But this, again, is their PRIMARY role; supporting protection of the state from other non-military threats (diseases, natural disasters, famine, etc) are all secondary roles. Some militaries include venture capital and corporate management among their secondary roles, but everyone understands what the military is MAINLY for.

It can be when necessary. You can't simply dismiss that aspect of Starfleet because it doesn't suit you.

It suits me just fine, and I have never dismissed it at any time in this thread. I have said again and again that it is Starfleet's secondary mission role behind its founding directive as an exploration agency.

NO, actually it is a case of you taking a few lines of dialog and giving them more clout than the actual actions the organization takes.

You and I clearly have different views as to how to interpret those actions, which is fine. The thing is, between the two conflicting viewpoints I have your word, and I have the word of Jonathan Archer. What reason do I have to accept your interpretation and disbelief his?

As for legality, that is a big definer for a military force as far as defining it's legal right to exist and to legally take military actions, which is something Starfleet would need.

But we know that Starfleet DOESN'T need it, because as it was able to operate for a number of years--and even engage in pitched battles--without it. The reason they don't need it is not entirely clear, but it would seem obvious that legal precedent has changed dramatically over two centuries of world war, first contact with an alien civilization and the total end of war, hunger, poverty and disease on Planet Earth.

That is entirely a subjective interpretation and there has been nothing on screen to ever establish this. So again, it comes down to what Starfleet actually does.

Except the quotes I sited from "The Measure of a Man" and "Peak Performance" where Picard flat out SAYS it; in the latter reference, like his 22nd century counterpart, he specifically says "Starfleet is not a military organization."

I'll grant that it may very well be a subjective interpretation of Starfleet's nature. So is YOUR subjective interpretation more accurate than Jean Luc Picard's?

If that was the case, weaponry would not be as powerful or plentiful on mainline Starfleet ships because there simply wouldn't be as much emphasis on weaponry.

There ISN'T that much emphasis on weaponry. In point of fact we never got to see what "emphasis on weaponry" looked like until we saw the Defiant. Even the vaunted Galaxy class carries an armament that would be a better match for a warship one third her size; that, supposedly, is the entire point of being able to separate the saucer in the first place, so that the entire non-combatant section of the ship can wait it out from the sidelines until the drive section has neutralized the threat.

Were Galaxy designed for combat, it would have been significantly smaller, with far better compartmentalization and less expenditure on creature comforts and scientific equipment (and would almost certainly have a much smaller number of windows). Which is another reason, BTW, I think the Abramsverse Starfleet is probably a genuine military organization.

Actually nothing much was said on the matter. From all appearances, the MACOS were more like the SEALs than a full blown military, even if they also sucked at what they did.

And from all dialog, they WERE the military. Again, why should I believe you and disbelieve Archer, Forrest and Hernandez?

I'm not. Historically the military has always taken on an exploratory role, which means that these actions are not mutually exclusive.

And you again fall back to "actions speak louder than words" as an excuse to ignore the words. "Military" is a word, not an action; it is a word that has a specific meaning with a specific definition that is defined in legal and political precedent, and Starfleet, by its own admission, does not fit that definition.

But you know more about Starfleet than Jean Luc Picard does? How does that figure?

You also seem to be forgetting that the Air Force has developed its own space shuttle in preparation for the current orbiter's retirement.

Actually, the X-37 was develoepd by NASA; the Air Force repurposed it into essentially a glorified spy satellite with return capability. Likewise, the Space Shuttle flew not less than fourteen missions on behalf of the Department of Defense in the 1980s and early 90s: that's the military flying their equipment on a NASA space craft.

That is a situation virtually unprecedented in human history: the military has to borrow ships and equipment from the space agency in order to conduct its defense mission. That has never happened before, because national defense has always been so high on every nation's priorities that they have to make sure they have the best warships money can buy with the latest weapons and the most effective tactics. But space is different: all of the best space ships belong to exploration agencies, and the few military innitiatives to develop their own craft (the Soviet Almaz, The Air Force's "Manned Orbital Laboratory") were all shelved when the military realized they had better things to do and most of the things they wanted to do in space could be done by robots anyway.

And speaking of history, you realize that prior to the treaty being signed that limited the militarization of space, that the Air Force was starting to do the same kind of research that NASA would eventually take over, right?

No, because they never stopped doing that kind of research in the first place. Where do you think all those nifty anti-ICBM weapons came from?

To the larger point, there's a reason the Air Force never got into space exploration, and that's this: 90% of all activities in space serve no MILITARY objective. Simultaneously, those activities are mind-bogglingly expensive, and the military isn't in the habit of (in some cases, literally) shooting money into space just to say they're doing some exploring. That's why the M.O.L. was canceled, it's why the Soviets never got anywhere with Almaz, it's why the most effective Russian spy satellites were all based on the Vostok one space capsule. Because the military never GOES OUT OF ITS WAY to explore space.

In terms of planetary defense, they don't really need to. Do you honestly believe you can mount more photon torpedoes on a starship than you can on a planetary surface? Do you think the phaser banks carried by Starfleet are as powerful as the ones around Federation Headquarters? Do you think it would take anything less than a humongous aramada--or at least a Borg cube--to breach the deflector shields protecting Earth's major cities?

I for one do not. And for the same reasons I don't think NASA is responsible for America's ICBM stockpile, I don't think Starfleet is responsible for the Federation's planetary defenses.

A war with Cardassia is mentioned during TNG's run, having taken place some time prior to the series

Well, some time prior to Season 4. We find out later that the demilitarized zone is actually such a recent development that it hasn't even been implemented yet and there are many colonists still trying to sort it all out.

You seem to be forgetting the "and its interests" part.

Which would make it an offensive action, not a defensive one. Rather identical to the Enterprise' actions in the Delphic Expanse a hundred years earlier: the actions of a vessel that did not belong to the military.

It certainly looks that way to me. In any case it appears that you are mincing words; it seems evident that you feel that a military cannot also fill an exploratory role...

I repeat: I didn't say it can't. I said--when it comes to Star Trek--it isn't.

In any case, you still have not answered my original question.

I answered it completely, three times now. Much like Star Trek dialog, it doesn't cease to exist just because it makes you uncomfortable.

 

[JB2005]

I'm amazed no one has mentioned yet the fact that Switzerland has an army...they're a military. No one denies this, when was the last time they acted like it?

 

[YARN]

Of course in 11 star trek movies, David is the only character who ever uses the word "military" in a sentence, let alone in reference to Starfleet. In the same span, he is also the only person who has ever voiced any serious misgivings about Starfleet's intentions. I suppose you think that's just a coincidence...

In the Man Trap

CRATER: One might think that you had more important duties than harassing people, Captain.
KIRK: I have, Professor. Believe me, I have. Where is Mrs. Crater? I want to talk to her, too.
CRATER: Captain, you can't just beam down here and bully us, and interfere with our work.
KIRK: Mrs. Crater. I won't ask again.
CRATER: Possibly at the other diggings. We don't keep military logs.

This line implies that Kirk does keep military logs. But why else would he do this unless... ...he was in the military

You don't get a lot of references to the military in TOS, but there are countless references to "the service".

From Tomorrow is Yesterday

CHRISTOPHER: Must have taken quite a lot to build a ship like this.
KIRK: There are only twelve like it in the fleet.
CHRISTOPHER: I see. Did the Navy
KIRK: We're a combined service, Captain. Our authority is the United Earth Space Probe Agency.

Notice that Kirk does not refute the idea of Starfleet being associated with one branch of military service, but rather indicates that it is many services wrapped into one. Now we can debate about whether this means "scientific" service as well, but Kirk does not reject the idea that Starfleet is military here.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Besides, Carol Marcus' mental faculties aren't in question, and she defends Starfleet in the very next line of dialog. Doesn't it seem reasonable that if Starfleet were not considered a military, or "the Federation military" or what have you, that she would have corrected David on that point, rather than just pointing out that they have kept the peace?

I had assumed until fairly recently that the word "military" had become a pejorative term in the 23rd century, especially given the background of Earth's prior history and the Post Atomic Horror described in Encounter at Farpoint. Planetary demilitarization would have been one of the requisites for the "end of war" often described on Earth; the only people who would have opposed this process would have been deeply entrenched in the military-industrial complex and found ways to sabotage peace efforts just to keep their profits up.

A few years ago, though, I spent some time talking with some ex-navy buddies of mine from college and came to understand that most countries don't actually have all-encompassing military-industrial complexes that bribe the fuck out of their legislatures to get what they want. Military dictatorships are well understood as "military gone wrong." It's only when your military starts doing crazy shit and telling you it's for your own good that anti-militarism becomes a coherent concept, and that seems to be where David's coming from in his comments.

And... actually, maybe it's just been too long since I watched ST 2&3, but on what basis do you question his grasp of facts? His judgment, absolutely, but his perception of the realities around him?

Because the first thing he does when he sees Kirk beam down is try and stab him in the back, assuming that HE went up to Regula-1 and killed all his friends. Half a minute later the entire party is now held at gunpoint by both the Captain and First officer of the Reliant who then proceed to have a very menacing conversation with one very menacing individual on their comm channel.

And what does David do? He rushes Kirk. Like it really never occured to him that someone OTHER than Starfleet might be trying to steal the Genesis Device. As far as he's concerned, everything about this situation only vindicates his antipathy for Starfleet... right up until the moment Terrel vaporizes himself and a ceti-eel crawls out of Chekov's brain.

What? No it wasn't. How do you figure that? (Unless you are talking specifically about pre-UFP Earth Starfleet, in which case I withdraw this response since I can't comment one way or the other).

I mean originally Earth Starfleet, but the general practice seems to be the same in its Federation counterpart. The weapons are intended to defend the ship; the PLANET seems to be perfectly capable of defending itself.

So the very existence of this fallback measure to keep the crew and any onboard civs safe means that the Ent-D/Galaxy class is incapable of acting in defense of the UFP as a whole when it is threatened?

I didn't say "incapable." I said the--which is a rather enormous design consideration for a ship this size--was included in order to facilitate its mission for peaceful exploration. In essence, this feature was intended to ensure the survival of the Enterprise' crew, it was NOT intended to aid in the defense of Federation worlds.

And so it's rather interesting that it wound up being used in exactly this capacity in Best of Both Worlds. We know, because we've been told many times, that under NORMAL circumstances, saucer separation is not a battle tactic, but a SURVIVAL tactic.

The only purpose of an ejection system in a military fighter plane is to keep the pilot safe if his plane is crippled in mid-air...

So imagine a plane equipped with ejector seats for the pilot's wife and kids and the three astronomers he has riding in the back seat. You gotta wonder what kind of deranged fighter pilot would take his wife and kids on Combat Air Patrol with him (other than, say, Max Jeinus) unless he's on an otherwise peaceful mission and doesn't expect to be in combat most of the time.

Every time a full-scale war breaks out or a hostile power threatens the UFP as a whole.

What do you mean "every time?" It's only happened ONCE, in a war of such massive scale and at such enormous stakes that the Federation actually allied itself with the Romulan Empire and even resorted to biological warfare just to have a chance at winning? This is like looking at World War-II and saying "Every time full-scale war breaks out, we wind up with gasoline rations."

The implications have ALWAYS been that anything on the level of the Dominion War would be fought by Starfleet.

As with the Borg example: anything on the level of the Dominion War would be fought by EVERYONE. Starfleet, the MACOs, the Mars Defense Force, the NYPD, the Charleston Yacht Club, The National Society of Harry Mudd Impersonators, even the Millennium Falcon.

And certainly, if you look at conflicts - large or small - that the US has been involved in via its military in, say, the last thirty years or so, not even close to every one of them have been a full-scale war with a formal declaration by any involved party.

In point of fact, none of them were declared by us, and therefore under all conventional definitions would have been illegal.

Which is another reason why I think the whole "lawful combatant" issue probably faded into irrelevancy by the 22nd century, and the Federation doesn't really care WHO fights the war, just as long as they're winning.

Real-life militaries don't engage in the type of smaller-scale defense missions you are talking about here?

Yes... the thing is, in our world, they're the ONLY ones that do, and exploration agencies do not. This is not the case in Star Trek, as we know for a fact that Earth Starfleet was NOT a military and yet still engaged in combat. Thus in the future, the military no longer has a monopoly on armed conflict. I'm not really sure why anyone would expect it would, except maybe for personal preference.

Besides, to your overall point here: If a single United States cruise liner - not operated by the government, but by a US based tour company and carrying US citizens - is out in the Atlantic and runs into some kind of serious, life-threatening trouble, and US military forces respond, then those particular military forces are not, at that moment, "defending the US". So I fail to see what that distinction proves.

The better question is, if the crew of that United States cruise liner fights off a band of pirates with its onboard weaponry, then for some reason chase those pirates down, kill them all and sink their boats, is that cruise liner acting as a military force?

Starfleet assumes the role of national defense, when situations requiring such come up.

Yes. And it is not the only role Starfleet HAS to fulfill. It also has to support science missions for the Federation, and they still go out of their way to perform those missions even in the middle of a war as devastating as the Dominion conflict.

No one else has ever been seen to take that role.

No one else would be expected to since the show is not actually about them. We've never seen an openly homosexual human character either, but we assume they must exist somewhere.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

To be honest I've only heard one person state that the Federation Starfleet isn't the military and that is Picard in Peak Performance. Wonder if he still thought Starfleet wasn't the military in Star Trek: First Contact as he was pumping Ensign Lynch full of bullets?

Actually I believe he was thinking, in order of occurrence:
1. Ya know, I should probably go and replicate a few dozen of these babies for the security teams.
2. EEEAAAAATTTTT TTTTHHHHIIIIIISSSSS!!!!!!!111!!!!!!
3. Wow that was fun... what am I supposed to do again? Something about a replicator? Eh, I'll remember later.

 

[Vincent Law]

Provided that threat is embodied in belligerent governments or organizations, sure.

No, any threat.

But this, again, is their PRIMARY role; supporting protection of the state from other non-military threats (diseases, natural disasters, famine, etc) are all secondary roles. Some militaries include venture capital and corporate management among their secondary roles, but everyone understands what the military is MAINLY for.

They are simply roles. You seem to be obsessing over the issue of "primary" vs. "secondary," but this is a non-issue, especially when it comes to Starfleet being a military.

It suits me just fine, and I have never dismissed it at any time in this thread. I have said again and again that it is Starfleet's secondary mission role behind its founding directive as an exploration agency.

Really? Because it seems to me that you have constantly maligned Starfleet's role in defense and insisted that it is simply a peaceful civilian exploratory organization, which apparently defends the Federation in its spare time.

You and I clearly have different views as to how to interpret those actions, which is fine. The thing is, between the two conflicting viewpoints I have your word, and I have the word of Jonathan Archer. What reason do I have to accept your interpretation and disbelief his?

And I have the word of Kirk, O'Brien, and Sisko at the very least, as well as all the other things that can be seen about Starfleet itself on screen, not to mention all the actions we've seen Starfleet take. As for Archer, all I should have to mention is the gazelle speech, but really almost everything that Captain Archer said tended to be either hypocritical or stupid.

But we know that Starfleet DOESN'T need it, because as it was able to operate for a number of years--and even engage in pitched battles--without it. The reason they don't need it is not entirely clear, but it would seem obvious that legal precedent has changed dramatically over two centuries of world war, first contact with an alien civilization and the total end of war, hunger, poverty and disease on Planet Earth.

I've seen nothing that suggests that Starfleet doesn't operate according to some legal authority granted to it and possibly agreed upon by other governments in the interstellar community. The ban on using cloaking technology being one aspect of that.

Except the quotes I sited from "The Measure of a Man" and "Peak Performance" where Picard flat out SAYS it; in the latter reference, like his 22nd century counterpart, he specifically says "Starfleet is not a military organization."

He also claims to be French when he's clearly British. He's also one of very few characters to ever make that claim. And again, it comes back to what Starfleet actually does and what it acts like. When it comes to believing a character and what I can see for myself, I'm going to go with what I can see. It's not my fault that a few of the writers can't keep things straight.

I'll grant that it may very well be a subjective interpretation of Starfleet's nature. So is YOUR subjective interpretation more accurate than Jean Luc Picard's?

Yes. For one, I'm a real person, my screen name notwithstanding.

There ISN'T that much emphasis on weaponry. In point of fact we never got to see what "emphasis on weaponry" looked like until we saw the Defiant. Even the vaunted Galaxy class carries an armament that would be a better match for a warship one third her size; that, supposedly, is the entire point of being able to separate the saucer in the first place, so that the entire non-combatant section of the ship can wait it out from the sidelines until the drive section has neutralized the threat.

Actually most of Starfleet's ships seemed to have been comparably armed to their Klingon and Romulan counterparts, at least in a one-on-one fight. It only seems to be a problem when there are more than one enemy ship's ganging up on it, which is true of any warship. The Galaxy class was particularly well armed, and is often listed as being among the most powerful ships around. The Enterprise actually managed to deal out significant damage to a Borg cube during its first encounter with one. If weaponry was not emphasized as much, then the majority of Starfleet sips would probably be something along the lines of the Oberth class, which during TNG's run we typically saw being operated by civilian organizations which were not related to Starfleet.

Were Galaxy designed for combat, it would have been significantly smaller, with far better compartmentalization and less expenditure on creature comforts and scientific equipment (and would almost certainly have a much smaller number of windows). Which is another reason, BTW, I think the Abramsverse Starfleet is probably a genuine military organization.

USAF bases tend to make efforts to make their personnel comfortable rather than being strictly utilitarian, but then this is why all the other service branches tend to make fun of them. But regardless of what they might say, the USAF is still a branch of the military.

And from all dialog, they WERE the military. Again, why should I believe you and disbelieve Archer, Forrest and Hernandez?

Because the people who wrote their dialog were idiots.

And you again fall back to "actions speak louder than words" as an excuse to ignore the words. "Military" is a word, not an action; it is a word that has a specific meaning with a specific definition that is defined in legal and political precedent, and Starfleet, by its own admission, does not fit that definition.

Only according to a few characters whose dialog was written by idiots. By everything that can be seen, Starfleet is a military.

But you know more about Starfleet than Jean Luc Picard does? How does that figure?

I'm a real person. I also have experience with the military.

Actually, the X-37 was develoepd by NASA; the Air Force repurposed it into essentially a glorified spy satellite with return capability. Likewise, the Space Shuttle flew not less than fourteen missions on behalf of the Department of Defense in the 1980s and early 90s: that's the military flying their equipment on a NASA space craft.

It's been a DoD project since 2004, and it was developed so the Air Force could do some things that their standard launch platforms couldn't do, because the Space Shuttle wouldn't be around to do it anymore. It's also only used the shuttle because it didn't have another option, which is why they've been pursuing something like this for quite some time now. It wouldn't surprise me if a larger craft was already under development, because the X-37 isn't going to be nearly large enough for some applications. It also doesn't change any of the other historical factoids I mentioned, nor does it in any way make an effective argument against Starfleet's status as a military.

That is a situation virtually unprecedented in human history: the military has to borrow ships and equipment from the space agency in order to conduct its defense mission. That has never happened before, because national defense has always been so high on every nation's priorities that they have to make sure they have the best warships money can buy with the latest weapons and the most effective tactics. But space is different: all of the best space ships belong to exploration agencies, and the few military innitiatives to develop their own craft (the Soviet Almaz, The Air Force's "Manned Orbital Laboratory") were all shelved when the military realized they had better things to do and most of the things they wanted to do in space could be done by robots anyway.

Treaties forbidding the militarization of space will do that, which is also why military presence in space has been kept very limited.

No, because they never stopped doing that kind of research in the first place. Where do you think all those nifty anti-ICBM weapons came from?

And this is an argument against Starfleet being a military how?

To the larger point, there's a reason the Air Force never got into space exploration, and that's this: 90% of all activities in space serve no MILITARY objective.

Actually that treaty had a big part in it. This also isn't to say that there never would be a more traditionally military objective beyond simple exploration and research, particularly say if Earth was unified and realized that it was but one of many players in the galaxy.

In terms of planetary defense, they don't really need to. Do you honestly believe you can mount more photon torpedoes on a starship than you can on a planetary surface? Do you think the phaser banks carried by Starfleet are as powerful as the ones around Federation Headquarters? Do you think it would take anything less than a humongous aramada--or at least a Borg cube--to breach the deflector shields protecting Earth's major cities?

Do you honestly think that in the world we saw presented in Star Trek that militaries are bound to their home planet's surface? As for what can breach shields we never saw mentioned, I'd say that the Breen apparently found a way to do so. And really that illustrates that the idea is to stop the enemy as far away from home as you can, which would mean a spaceborne military, like Starfleet.

I don't think Starfleet is responsible for the Federation's planetary defenses.

Except that this has been shown and said to be the case.

Well, some time prior to Season 4. We find out later that the demilitarized zone is actually such a recent development that it hasn't even been implemented yet and there are many colonists still trying to sort it all out.

No, sometime prior to the series. O'Brien fought in it while serving on another ship. No solid date was established, but it was obviously supposed to have been some time prior to the series.

Which would make it an offensive action, not a defensive one.

No, it would still be defense, as it literally is in defense of those interests, in this case being territorial interests. The way you describe it, it seems that you only think of the military as being something more akin to a militia.

Rather identical to the Enterprise' actions in the Delphic Expanse a hundred years earlier: the actions of a vessel that did not belong to the military.

The mission into the Delphic Expanse was a military action taken in defense of United Earth, and by then Starfleet was already looking and acting like a military, regardless of what a few characters might have said. Even then Starfleet was a military.

I repeat: I didn't say it can't. I said--when it comes to Star Trek--it isn't.

To begin with, you have no real basis for this statement beyond a few lines of dialog, which for some reason you hold up over centuries of historical precedent as well as modern military definitions which all hold Starfleet to be a military. And yet all of your argument has been directed towards saying that Starfleet cannot be both an exploratory organization and a military. The tone and the direction of your argument has clearly been toward that end, and when I or others point out that these are not mutually exclusive roles, you simply fall back on making a statement what has no real basis.

I answered it completely, three times now. Much like Star Trek dialog, it doesn't cease to exist just because it makes you uncomfortable.

No, you have not answered my question, and I am forced to wonder what about my question is so difficult to answer. You clearly have difficulty with the idea that Starfleet is a military. Simply stating that it isn't, is not an answer to the question of why you don't like the idea of Starfleet being a military.

 

[YARN]

for not being a duck, it sure in the hell quacks like one.

I think that we should reject self-characterizations/designation on the part of Starfleet characters.

A prostitute can object to the word "hooker" and insist that s/he is an "escort" or "host/hostess" but that does not mean that the prostitute isn't a prostitute. If we respected the absolute right of others to designate the language by which outsiders refer to them, then every terrorist could claim, with fear of challenge or repudiation, to be a "freedom fighter."

Another reason why we should reject self-characterization/designation on the part of Starfleet, is that we don't live in their world. We live in our own world and speak our own language. Suppose that we learn that the Lakota word for woman is "winyan". Would this mean that we would be committing some sort of category error if we refer to adult Lakota females (when speaking English amongst our English speaking friends) as "woman" (our word) instead
of "winyan" (their word)?

When we are speaking of Star Trek we must keep in mind that we are (perforce) speaking of it in our own ordinary language, in our own world.

The question, therefore, is not whether Picard (once!) denies that Starfleet is a military, but rather when we look at Starfleet from an folk-anthropological perspective their organization meets the criteria WE use to assess whether the word military applies.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Really? Because it seems to me that you have constantly maligned Starfleet's role in defense...

No, I have said it is their secondary role and is not the mission for which Starfleet was originally created. How you go from that to "maligning" their defense role is beyond me.

As for Archer, all I should have to mention is the gazelle speech, but really almost everything that Captain Archer said tended to be either hypocritical or stupid.

Right, dialog only matters when it SUPPORTS your theory. When it doesn't, it's hypocritical and stupid.

I've seen nothing that suggests that Starfleet doesn't operate according to some legal authority granted to it and possibly agreed upon by other governments in the interstellar community. The ban on using cloaking technology being one aspect of that.

Indeed. The issue is whether or not that legal authority fits the definition of "military." According to Picard, it doesn't.

He's also one of very few characters to ever make that claim. And again, it comes back to what Starfleet actually does and what it acts like.

And two pages ago I summarized clearly that this entire debate boils down to actions vs. words. I once again repeat that ACTIONS do not define the military, WORDS do. You yourself just said that the issue of primary vs. secondary role is a non-issue... do you want to amend your position to "Actions speak louder than words... unless they say something I disagree with"?

Yes. For one, I'm a real person, my screen name notwithstanding.

That's the problem: Starfleet is NOT a real organization. There are no objective facts available other than those presented to us in canon. One of those facts was presented by Jean Luc Picard: Starfleet is not a military organization.

You prefer to ignore it, obviously, but that doesn't mean it'll just go away.

Because the people who wrote their dialog were idiots.

I should believe you're smarter than them because....?

I'm a real person. I also have experience with the military.

While I'm totally sure that's true, how much experience do you have with Starfleet?

It's been a DoD project since 2004, and it was developed so the Air Force could do some things that their standard launch platforms couldn't do, because the Space Shuttle wouldn't be around to do it anymore.

Let's be clear on this: it was developed by NASA originally to give the Air Force a reusable spaceplane design that could do what the shuttle was NO LONGER ALLOWED to do after the Challenger accident. The program languished for years under NASA development, making slow but steady progress, until the Air Force decided they wanted to develop it into a flight article. NASA handed over the designs, the test craft, the wind tunnel data and all the test materials, and the X-37B was the result.

Absent the Challenger disaster--or at least, the evaporation of political will that came with it--the X-37B would have been unnecessary; the Air Force flew more than a dozen military payloads on the shuttle and would have continued to fly them to the present day if not for the hamstring safety regulations imposed on the program.

It's also only used the shuttle because it didn't have another option

Don't forget that NASA let the Air Force monkey around with the shuttles design in the first place to make it compatible with a set of exotic military missions it wound up never performing. Essentially, the shuttle WAS their first option; it simply ceased to be adequate when safety regulations and high operating costs suddenly went through the roof after Challenger and the Air Force resorted to the EELV family--the Atlas and Delta rockets maintained by ULA--to accomplish its defense missions. The X-37B is just the latest development in that saga, and it's legacy NASA hardware.

nor does it in any way make an effective argument against Starfleet's status as a military.

Except for the rather annoying fact that space agencies have always been able to conduct military missions without actually BEING part of the military.

And this is an argument against Starfleet being a military how?

Because NASA didn't develop ICBMs, and wouldn't be tasked with deploying them if Earth were suddenly invaded by Zentraedi hordes. That would be a mission of pure nation defense, for which purpose we have created The Military.

Do you honestly think that in the world we saw presented in Star Trek that militaries are bound to their home planet's surface?

Frankly, yes. Though admittedly I may simply be playing way too much Halo-3, I'm of the opinion lately that "interplanetary war" is a rather incoherent and illogical concept, because there is there's nothing BETWEEN planets worth fighting over. Wars are fought over territory, over resources, over strategic locations near enemy installations that may compromise future works over territory and resources. In other words, wars are fought for the control of planets.

The role of the military in all this will be to land on a planet and take physical possession of it away from the enemy, or prevent them from doing the same to you. Orbital bombardment won't accomplish this for some reason (either because glassing an entire planet is strategically self-defeating, or because ground-based defenses have a certain comparable advantage) which means you need ground troops, air power, sea power, close air support, electronic warfare support, etc etc. Starfleet can do some of these things in a pinch, but whatever its legal definition, it is a STARfleet, it's intended to operate mainly IN SPACE.

So I cannot help but believe there is and MUST BE a parallel organization specifically oriented for ground (or at the very least "low altitude") combat. Because despite the fact that Starfleet CAN perform in a ground combat role--we've seen them do it often enough--they are not particularly good at it, and the Federation wouldn't exist today if it were purely up to them.

In the 22nd century, the ground combat role is CLEARLY filled by the MACOs. Whether that organization still exists in the 24th century is anyone's guess, but if we're to take Enterprise as precedent for later centuries--and we're clearly meant to--then the Federation Starfleet would now exist in parallel to a military organization. Say, the Federation Assault Landing Command Organization (FALCO). We've never seen them (or have we?) but by function and capability they would be the 24th century equivalent of Earth's MACOs.

And they WOULD be the military, because under normal circumstances while Starfleet would become involved in a logistics and strategic support role, the actual work of fighting and winning the war would be done on the ground, by the military.

As for what can breach shields we never saw mentioned, I'd say that the Breen apparently found a way to do so. And really that illustrates that the idea is to stop the enemy as far away from home as you can

Which, for reasons explained above, is logically impossible. You may be comfortable thinking of Starfleet as a space navy, but planets are not coastlines, and space is not an ocean. Starships can attack a planet from 360 degrees in every axis, and the only way to keep them at a distance is to establish a spherical perimeter. If that perimeter is ten light years in diameter (large enough to give you 24 hours warning of anything coming into the system) then your fleet is defending a perimeter with an area of 314 cubic light years.

That during WARTIME, when you're committing thousands of ships to the defense of your planet. During peacetime, an alien juggernaut comes screaming out of Klingon space and the only thing between it and Earth is a single starship that hasn't had a shakedown yet. If that had been a Klingon fleet instead of an emotionally disturbed space probe, they could have taken Enterprise thirty to one and then proceeded straight to Earth, unopposed by Starfleet.

So why didn't they? Because even in the ABSENCE of Starfleet, Earth's defenses are impervious to any conventional attack.

The mission into the Delphic Expanse was a military action taken in defense of United Earth, and by then Starfleet was already looking and acting like a military, regardless of what a few characters might have said. Even then Starfleet was a military.

As usual, you only care about dialog when it supports your theory... but it's still there, and it's still canon, whether you are comfortable with it or not.

To begin with, you have no real basis for this statement beyond a few lines of dialog, which for some reason you hold up over centuries of historical precedent

"Centuries" lol. We've only been exploring space for fifty years; doing ANYTHING in space is unprecedented.

All analogies aside, whether or not Starfleet is a military, it is definitely not a navy.

modern military definitions which all hold Starfleet to be a military.

Modern military definitions depend on legal precedent. Where's the Federation law that says Starfleet is their military organization?

No, you have not answered my question, and I am forced to wonder what about my question is so difficult to answer.

You asked the question: Why do you now insist that Starfleet can't be a military and carry out exploration and scientific research?

The answer was: "I have never claimed it CANNOT be a military that carries out exploration. I have said that it is NOT a military that carries out scientific research. Primarily because it is not a military.

Simply stating that it isn't, is not an answer to the question of why you don't like the idea of Starfleet being a military.

Perhaps you could first answer my question about why you haven't stopped beating your wife.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The question, therefore, is not whether Picard (once!) denies that Starfleet is a military, but rather when we look at Starfleet from an folk-anthropological perspective their organization meets the criteria WE use to assess whether the word military applies.

Which is another way of saying "I wanna call it a military, so let's just call it a military."

 

[Saito S]

Re: newtype_alpha's response about Carol not correcting David (not quoting your text here so I can keep this post from being too huge): eh, I guess I see what you're saying, I just don't agree with the interpretation.

Because the first thing he does when he sees Kirk beam down is try and stab him in the back (etc. etc...)

Conceded. David really was kind of off his rocker, wasn't he. I had forgotten about a lot of that, since it's just been a while since I saw TWOK.

The weapons are intended to defend the ship; the PLANET seems to be perfectly capable of defending itself.

Re: Federation Starfleet, I still don't see what this proves. Ok, so a planet can defend itself, with say, really huge torpedo launchers and phasers, and gonzo shields. There is no evidence in any of the first four Trek series that those defenses aren't often (if not always) manufactured, and/or deployed, and/or maintained, by Starfleet, and we know that in at least two instances in DS9 (my examples in my previous post), Starfleet was tasked with defending Earth and Betazed.

If Starfleet is a military, the (rather nice for the Feds) fact that planets happen to be good at defending themselves doesn't STOP Starfleet from being a military.

I didn't say "incapable." I said the--which is a rather enormous design consideration for a ship this size--was included in order to facilitate its mission for peaceful exploration. In essence, this feature was intended to ensure the survival of the Enterprise' crew, it was NOT intended to aid in the defense of Federation worlds.

Fine, remove "incapable" if that's not what you meant. My point still stands. You are essentially arguing that if they want the ship to be a military vessel, they shouldn't be adding extra features to it that are purely for crew safety and survival.

So imagine a plane equipped with ejector seats for the pilot's wife and kids and the three astronomers he has riding in the back seat. You gotta wonder what kind of deranged fighter pilot would take his wife and kids on Combat Air Patrol with him (other than, say, Max Jeinus) unless he's on an otherwise peaceful mission and doesn't expect to be in combat most of the time.

I would wonder, if not for the fact that I think the Ent-D (and other Galaxy-class ships) carrying scores of civilians and kiddies was one of the stupidest things in all of TNG. Basically I'm with Ron Moore on this one. With each additional time the ship was sent on a military mission, the problem with this concept just became more and more glaring. Seriously, "The Defector", "The Wounded", "The Survivors", to name a few... you do not send a non-military craft on those missions (and you certainly shouldn't be sending a craft jammed full of civs and younglings, regardless).

Besides, saucer separation is not somehow intended ONLY for the civilians; it's a safety measure that benefits officers, as well.

What do you mean "every time?" It's only happened ONCE, in a war of such massive scale and at such enormous stakes that the Federation actually allied itself with the Romulan Empire and even resorted to biological warfare just to have a chance at winning? This is like looking at World War-II and saying "Every time full-scale war breaks out, we wind up with gasoline rations."

I admit I didn't make this clear, but what I meant was theoretically. We've only seen one full-scale, long-term war on screen because (as I pointed out) it's a TV show, and the creators never felt the need to show us another war before or after. But the clear implication from every UFP-based Trek
show is that Starfleet fights the UFP's wars.

As with the Borg example: anything on the level of the Dominion War would be fought by EVERYONE. Starfleet, the MACOs, the Mars Defense Force, the NYPD, the Charleston Yacht Club, The National Society of Harry Mudd Impersonators, even the Millennium Falcon.

It wouldn't be fought by "everyone", except situationally. The Mars Defense Force (assuming that in the 23rd and 24th century, such an agency isn't part of Starfleet proper; there is no real evidence for or against) would only get involved if there was an attack on Mars. The NYPD would only get involved if New York were invaded by Jem'Hadar.
As for the Borg example... Putting aside the Falcon, since it was a joke, I don't see how this helps your argument, since in three major Borg engagements within the Federation (Wolf 359 in BoBW, the battle near Earth in FC, and near Earth again in "Endgame"), every single ship marshaled to fight the thing that we saw on screen was a Starfleet vessel.

In point of fact, none of them were declared by us, and therefore under all conventional definitions would have been illegal.

Which is another reason why I think the whole "lawful combatant" issue probably faded into irrelevancy by the 22nd century, and the Federation doesn't really care WHO fights the war, just as long as they're winning.

Doesn't seem that way to me at all based on TOS-VOY. There is nothing to suggest that the UFP does not empower Starfleet in the same way that the US Government empowers the US Military - legally and otherwise.

Enterprise may indeed contradict this; again, don't know, don't care. Earth Starfleet is not UFP Starfleet.

Yes... the thing is, in our world, they're the ONLY ones that do, and exploration agencies do not.

Real militaries do a lot of exploration, as has been pointed out. But regardless of that, when there is a serious threat, they drop everything else to defend their nation against it.

Starfleet does a lot of exploration, but regardless of that, when there is a serious threat, they drop everything else to defend their nation against it. They just place a higher emphasis on the exploration than real militaries do.

The better question is, if the crew of that United States cruise liner fights off a band of pirates with its onboard weaponry, then for some reason chase those pirates down, kill them all and sink their boats, is that cruise liner acting as a military force?

That's not even related to my original point (which you didn't address: you made a big deal out of many of Starfleet's individual military actions being not technically in defense of the UFP as a whole, and I pointed out that this is also true of the US military). The crew of a Starfleet vessel is not even remotely close to being analogous to the crew of the cruise liner in this example, in ANY way (save for "crew of a ship").

Yes. And it is not the only role Starfleet HAS to fulfill. It also has to support science missions for the Federation, and they still go out of their way to perform those missions even in the middle of a war as devastating as the Dominion conflict.

So? Multirole =!= not a military.

That example is weak. The captain's log makes it clear that for them to be studying this phenomena during wartime is somewhat unusual, and the "welcome change from months of combat duty" supports a theory that assignments like this are sometimes handed out as a way of giving crews a break (rather than just being rotated off the front line from time to time, crews can also be assigned to scientific/exploration missions during that downtime in order to help keep their spirits up). In addition, Worf's dialog even suggests that the results of this study could afford tactical advantages to Starfleet.

No one else would be expected to since the show is not actually about them. We've never seen an openly homosexual human character either, but we assume they must exist somewhere.

Enterprise went out of its way to show us the MACOs, so they didn't have a problem showing other combatants/potential heroes that weren't main characters. TNG had non-Starfleet scientists showing up every other week pursuing some amazing breakthrough that Starfleet hoped would be shared with them, so they had no problem showing non-main characters acting as the scientific "heroes" of the moment. Yet not once during TOS-VOY did we see any forces identified as NOT Starfleet fighting in defense of Federation interests.

I'm of the opinion lately that "interplanetary war" is a rather incoherent and illogical concept

Which is an opinion that others may disagree with. Clearly, most Trek writers do.

Starfleet can do some of these things in a pinch, but whatever its legal definition, it is a STARfleet, it's intended to operate mainly IN SPACE.

The Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians, Dominion, and others all operate large, powerful "space navies." Whether or not those powers also have specialized ground forces, they clearly consider the purely space-centric aspect of combat to be quite important. Are the space-going warfleets of those powers not a part of their larger "military"?

So I cannot help but believe there is and MUST BE a parallel organization specifically oriented for ground (or at the very least "low altitude") combat. Because despite the fact that Starfleet CAN perform in a ground combat role--we've seen them do it often enough--they are not particularly good at it, and the Federation wouldn't exist today if it were purely up to them.

I disagree. There is zero evidence for a wholly separate ground combat organization. So, in order to make it all fit together, one must either assume there WAS such an organization that we just never heard anything about, or just assume that some things don't go quite the way we saw on screen. i.e. Starfleet ground forces not being good enough to have defended the UFP all this time = if it were "real", they wouldn't BE that incompetent. This to me is no different than hand-waving away Data making a glaring mathematics error or the phasers coming out of the torpedo tube in TNG "Darmok." The show is written and produced by modern humans who make mistakes; if it were all real, there would be no writers and no producers, thus, some of those things just wouldn't happen that way.

I admit that not everyone can look at the show in the way I just described, and if one can't then this explanation does nothing for you. Still, the alternative is to assume the existence of a wholly separate, very important military body that we heard nothing about ever through four series and ten movies. Doesn't seem any less of a stretch to me.

In a similar vein, regarding Picard and Riker's "we're not a military" dialog in "Peak Performance": I personally think it's bollocks. Riker's assertion that tactical proficiency is a "minor province" in the makeup of a starship captain is a ludicrous notion (especially considering this ep is after "Q Who?"). Not only is it contradicted by the body of evidence found elsewhere in Trek, their attitudes in that scene were contradicted by the events later in the very same ep. Once the simulation is underway, it is OBVIOUS from facial expressions, tone and delivery of certain lines, and the overall atmosphere on both bridges that everyone is pretty into the exercise. Frankly, if they wanted the scenes of the actual battle drills to hold up Riker and Picard's earlier assertions that the whole thing was unnecessary and boorish, then the directing for the second half of the ep is abysmal, because it's clear that everyone involved is getting a big kick out of the whole thing (until the Ferengi show up and ruin it, that is).

In the 22nd century, the ground combat role is CLEARLY filled by the MACOs. Whether that organization still exists in the 24th century is anyone's guess, but if we're to take Enterprise as precedent for later centuries--and we're clearly meant to--then the Federation Starfleet would now exist in parallel to a military organization. Say, the Federation Assault Landing Command Organization (FALCO). We've never seen them (or have we?) but by function and capability they would be the 24th century equivalent of Earth's MACOs.

Others have chosen to engage with you on the issues unique to Enterprise, but again, I consider it irrelevant. Not just because I didn't like it, but because it was written after all the others, and I'm concerned with what the evidence for and against the UFP Starfleet being a military is within the shows that concern the UFP, AND because Earth Starfleet is not UFP Starfleet. And without Enterprise, I see no evidence within the canon body of TV and movies that in any way prove Starfleet is not a military (and, in fact, see a preponderance of evidence FOR it).

Perhaps you could first answer my question about why you haven't stopped beating your wife.

This wasn't directed at me, but what
the fuck.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Federation Starfleet would now exist in parallel to a military organization. Say, the Federation Assault Landing Command Organization (FALCO).

Do they yell "Rock Me Amadeus" before going into battle?

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXs93KbBCgY[/yt]

seriously though, we know Starfleet has ground troops, they talked about them in DS9 (and showed them in "Nor the Battle to the Strong"). What those troops are actually called, is anyone's guess. They could be in the regular Starfleet, they could be a separate organization entirely (the 'FALCOs' ), or as I prefer to call them - and yes, I'm well aware there is no overt evidence for an organization of this name, and I don't care, cuz I like the sound of it anyway - the Starfleet Marine Corps.

 

[AstroSmurf]

Simply stating that it isn't, is not an answer to the question of why you don't like the idea of Starfleet being a military.

Perhaps you could first answer my question about why you haven't stopped beating your wife.

Where did this come from? It was completely unnecessary and you have just earned an infraction for trolling. Comments to PM.

And Saito S please refrain from commenting in thread on something you find inappropriate. It does not help the situation. I would suggest hitting the "Notify Moderator" button or staying quiet.

To the rest of you, don't make a debate personal. If things get heated then I would suggest you walk away for a while.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Actually I don't think it was personal. I've heard that before - "Have you stopped beating your wife?" was intended as a logical problem, nothing more than that. It's only hypothetical. If you ask somebody that, how can they possibly answer it? If they say no, it implies that they still are beating their wife, and if they say yes, it implies that they *once* were.

It's intentionally badly worded to produce an effect; it's a loaded question, to the extreme. For someone who never beat their wife, the question can't be answered. So it seems like just an example of what a poorly worded question looks like. I don't think the poster seriously intended to ask it for real.

 

[AstroSmurf]

What part of comments to PM did you not understand? I would appreciate it if you would not disrupt and derail this thread with talk about an infraction.

 

[YARN]

The question, therefore, is not whether Picard (once!) denies that Starfleet is a military, but rather when we look at Starfleet from an folk-anthropological perspective their organization meets the criteria WE use to assess whether the word military applies.

Which is another way of saying "I wanna call it a military, so let's just call it a military."

Actually, it is the conclusion of an argument. I suggest that you deal with the analysis before summarily dismissing the conclusion.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

At the risk of being *extremely* nitpicky, perhaps Starfleet could be construed as not being a military simply because it's a navy? AFAIK, the word 'military', in the absolute strictest technical sense, applies to ground based organizations with the appropriate ranks (such as the Army and Marines). That's why you see phrases like "Military and Naval Science".

So in this sense, Starfleet isn't military, it's naval. Although it probably does not explain comments made by characters who are clearly biased anyway, such as Picard.

 

[BillJ]

At the risk of being *extremely* nitpicky, perhaps Starfleet could be construed as not being a military simply because it's a navy? AFAIK, the word 'military', in the absolute strictest technical sense, applies to ground based organizations with the appropriate ranks (such as the Army and Marines). That's why you see phrases like "Military and Naval Science".

So in this sense, Starfleet isn't military, it's naval. Although it probably does not explain comments made by characters who are clearly biased anyway, such as Picard.

Well... we know from Tomorrow is Yesterday that Starfleet is a combined force and from Deep Space Nine that they have ground forces. So I'm still inclined to believe that it is the military of the UFP. YMMV.