Wolf 359 vs Dominion War

[Paul Weaver]

Was just a conflict perhaps? The Feds saw it more like the Afghanistan conflict, sure it was a nasty little fight and they lost people and the odd ship in nasty circumstances, but it was not the existential battle they face with the Dominion later.

Yes. There were a fair few conflicts in the early-mid 24th century, Cardassians, Tzenkethi, Sheliak, Talarians, however nothing that we know of hit the core systems (specifically Earth) between the Whale Probe of 2286 and the Borg at Wolf 359 in 2367. Post 359 again nothing that the average chef on earth would be concerned with (despite an ongoing war with the Klingons) until a couple of shapeshifters made some noise by bombing the Antwerp Conference in 2372, which killed 27 people (mostly diplomated - a massive event apparently despite 27 people being killed every day on normal starfleet away teams), and the establishment decided to use that to grab power. Amazing what 4 people and a lot of fear can cause.

DS9 in the mid-late 90s was a good foreshadowing of the US a decade later.

A few years later of course and the Breen managed to shock Earth some more with an attack on the Golden Gate bridge, and Betazed was sacrificed (a whole fleet on a "training exercise" in the middle of a war?) to ensure continuing support for the war. Galactic Politics, and the view from home, by this point had moved on a long way since the idealised days of the 2360s, where the Federation's battles were out of site, out of mind, and information on them could be tightly controlled.

The parallels between the dominion war, which moved from a cold war with isolated scuffles into a hot war with millions dead, and the Klingons, which moved from a cold war with isolated scuffles to avoiding a hot war thanks to Kirk and co in 2293 is striking.

 

[Timo]

a couple of shapeshifters made some noise by bombing the Antwerp Conference in 2372

Or then Admiral Leyton's cohorts did all the bombing. It would serve their interests nicely (do away with useless peaceniks, incite ire and fear), whereas whether it would serve the Dominion in any way is debatable (a couple of dozen diplomats can always be found, and the evil strike would solidify the alliance between the negotiation partners where no amount of talk could).

nothing that we know of hit the core systems (specifically Earth) between the Whale Probe of 2286 and the Borg at Wolf 359 in 2367

One wonders how many strikes against major worlds other than Earth take place in general... Vulcan almost got hit in "Unification", but that's about it. Don't such strikes make news in the human community of which most of the heroes are part?

Then again, we have no idea what makes news, if the fact that the Federation is at war (say, with the Cardassians) does not! For all we know, Vulcan is threatened by space monsters, domestic dissidents with the means to make stars go kaboom, and mighty fleets of warships every second decade, and Andor likewise.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bad Thoughts]

So. Much. Over-interpretation.

 

[kkt]

Bombing a conference doesn't seem like Leyton or his cohort's style. Turn the lights off, yes; bomb Federation civilians, no. Leyton didn't turn violent until the Defiant was coming to expose his plot, and even then his most trusted co-conspirator refused to carry out his orders.

 

[DonIago]

Yeah, I got the impression that even most of the people following his orders weren't aware of his endgame.

 

[Paradise City]

Leighton is a sincere guy, well intentioned and patriotically minded. But he's also wrongheaded. He has a certain logic of his own.

He's not a fire breathing cartoon figure as a certain Starfleet Admiral in a certain film of some repute was portrayed. Leighton is a plausible figure who does plausible things and that's why he's a compelling - and an unnerving figure.

 

[Tim Thomason]

One wonders how many strikes against major worlds other than Earth take place in general... Vulcan almost got hit in "Unification", but that's about it. Don't such strikes make news in the human community of which most of the heroes are part?

Then again, we have no idea what makes news, if the fact that the Federation is at war (say, with the Cardassians) does not! For all we know, Vulcan is threatened by space monsters, domestic dissidents with the means to make stars go kaboom, and mighty fleets of warships every second decade, and Andor likewise.

Timo Saloniemi

Yep. Denobula was ravaged by the Talarians in 2352, rogue Klingons were responsible for the destruction of Spacedock in 2305, and a resurgent Suliban Cabal destroyed Andoria's gas giant in 2378 (did that not get mentioned in Nemesis?).

Also, the original Orion Syndicate was wiped out by the Dowd, a space amoeba swallowed Deep Space Station K-7, and the common cold gained sentience and has taken over the Coridan system.

 

[anotherdemon]

I figure an enemy vessel slicing through a fleet of more than likely well known vessels with ease, is quite a bit different than what we see in the fleet actions against the Dominion, where the parity is far better between combatants (barring a couple of outliers with Odyssey early on and Breen near the end).

It was good old slugging matches in the Dominion War compared to a kid stomping on ants, with the former being built up over time, and the Federation would be mentally prepared for it.

 

[tharpdevenport]

In the battle of Wolf 359, the Federation lost 39 ships and it was such a shocking and devastating loss. Later, Commander Shelby mentioned 'Having the Fleet back up within a year'

However, During the Dominion War, scores of ships are destroyed in every battle. At least 50 Federations Ships - if not a lot more - were lost at the First Battle of Chin'toka Alone. (311 total between Federation, Klingon and Romulan)

I know from a production standpoint - they just had more of an ability to make the space battles bigger, but is there any in universe explanation or theories on why 39 ships is such a devastating and crippling loss, but later on, there are suddenly enough ships to have two to three times that number destroyed in every battle?

If I had to make an educated guess based upon passed coments in the spin-off series TNG[/I] and D.S.9., I'd say perhaps it is something like this:

The "fleet" isn't that big as we tend to thing it was, TNG time. There were likely medical ships, transport ships, deep-space exploration vessels, and then your typical Starfleet vessel, like an Excelsior-class or Galaxy-class vessel. Everything else was not in service; take for example Geordi noting the Soyuz-class ship hasn't been in service in over 80 years. We assume every ship made not destroyed or lost, is still in service. I think it's likely some simply are no longer is service or are decommishioned. Combine that with ships simply too far out to have engaged in Wolf 359 in the short-time they had to aseemble one, and I think we ended up with whiel a sizable chunk of the fleet, not necessarily all of it, but enough to cause a major blow (other ships may be transports and what not, not battle-ready fleet vessels).

However, after Wolf 359, production was rampt up (especially if we consider the ships registry numbers are an indication, since they went to somewhere in the 70000's in the series) and the fleet re-enforced. Then the encounters in D.S.9. apparently didn't give them enough time and I think Starfleet simply paniced and re-commishioned older vessels like Miranda-class (and smiliar looking classes), a bunch of Excelsior-class vessels, to augment what they had put into service.

It's clear, however, if you take Voyager as a source of fact (I wouldn't), that they learned their lesson by not only continuing production but developing a tactical assault vessel like the U.S.S. Prometheus.

 

[Paradise City]

Yeah. It's like America. The US had forces the equivalent of Portugal or some strange stat like that during the interwar period. Then they got plunged into war, factories and shipyards sprouted up everywhere, pumped out serious quantities of hardware and suddenly the US is the most heavily armed state on the planet.

It is interesting to see how cocky Riker and Picard are in that 2nd season wargames episode. That's pure Roddenberry shining through.

 

[Timo]

Why would Starfleet ramp up production of ships in wartime? The worst that could happen if they didn't would be for the Federation to welcome new overlords. But if Starfleet fails to ramp up production of ships in peacetime, there will be no ship to stop Dr. Mannheim from terminating causality, to prevent Lazarus from terminating all existence, to dissuade Soran from steering the Nexus with nova bombs, to be there before Q gets too bored...

Starfleet needs ships. If it has the capacity to ramp up, the time for that is when there are no military threats in brewing, avoiding a situation where escalation might upset somebody and incite bloodbath.

production was rampt up (especially if we consider the ships registry numbers are an indication, since they went to somewhere in the 70000's in the series)

But the thing is, we know for a fact that no ships with obvious "wartime" registry numbers ever appeared on screen. The third-highest number ever seen, NCC-74656, belonged to a ship with a known prewar launch date. Her sister ship was NCC-74705. And the winner, the only ship indicated in dialogue to have been built during the war, really stands out from the lot.

OTOH, certain ships with 7XXXX-range registries predate TNG altogether...

If there was wartime production, it must have been in defiance of perceived "registry rules", or then pure chance kept us from seeing any of the ships with high registries.

suddenly the US is the most heavily armed state on the planet

But the UFP seemed to enjoy that status in peacetime, and lost it in the war. For a century, nobody dared challenge the UFP for anything more than petty border squabbles, not until the Dominion came and weakened Starfleet - and suddenly Klingons and Romulans got their spines straight again.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Paradise City]

But the UFP seemed to enjoy that status in peacetime, and lost it in the war. For a century, nobody dared challenge the UFP for anything more than petty border squabbles, not until the Dominion came and weakened Starfleet - and suddenly Klingons and Romulans got their spines straight again.

Timo Saloniemi

There seems to have been a dramatic shift in the balance of power with the explosion of Praxis, peace treaty or no. The fact that the Romulans hid away after the Tomed Incident seems to support that the Federation became the undisputed power presumably using that ascendancy to take to the max the ethos that they proclaim and prefer with the ordering of an unprecedented range of exploration and scientific programs whilst defence tumbles down the priority list.

So the Feds won an air of invincibility someway respected by all. But as time progressed they became complacent, questions of defence were neglected and the fleet became stagnant content in giving old ships refits. And we arrive into the TNG era with the fleet being composed of some very geriatric ships. Various elderly Miranda, Excelsior, Oberth even Constellation class ships doing the rounds. Most of whom were seen knocking about in the TOS movie era.

One might surmise it's the Cardassians that were the first reasonable power to test that "air of invincibility" on a prolonged basis and found that they made headway. It takes a long time for there to be a peace treaty between the two and the one agreed upon is quite a tough one. One might also surmise that the Galaxy class emerged as they did with the firepower that they had in response to the unsettling incursions of the Cardassians. Perhaps the Romulans were looking on and viewed the Feds vulnerability as an opportunity to revamp their fleet and the hardware they come out with is very powerful indeed, apparently able to beat the best the Feds have, even with the Galaxy class.

Riker's and Picard's very high handed remarks in the 2nd season sceptical of the utility of "war games" are the very last vestiges of an attitude and era where Starfleet had the confidence to devote itself almost entirely to exploration. From then on, issues of defence occupy an ever larger place within Starfleet's field of vision.

 

[Timo]

On the other hand, the legacy hardware doesn't disappear even after several years of war, so while modern shipbuilding might have been called for, it apparently didn't do much good... Or then the old ships were found to be good enough after all, there being little evidence to the contrary.

Were the Cardassians ever a military threat? A Constellation class ship once was forced to flee them, but by the time the war with them concluded, a Starfleet skipper saying "Ooh, it tickles!" at those purple death rays of theirs would be greatly exaggerating. That doesn't mean it couldn't have been politically and strategically damned inconvenient for a significant part of Starfleet to stand there and be tickled. But a "weakened" Starfleet bitching and moaning theatrically about the Borg losses was a threat preventing Cardassia from going to war again; that "weakening" was supposedly over within a year, after which a single Galaxy class vessel again struck utter terror at whole fleets of Cardassia's finest.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Paradise City]

The momentum of building cutting edge ships would also improve the quality of refits. 'Legacy ships' aren't defective as such; they are adequate. But you need more than 'adequate' to remain a first rate power. You need to start turning over fresh designs and new ships to keep parity with rivals, particularly those rivals who are solely defence orientated with their fleets, like, well, almost everyone else.

It is interesting the era of Federation history that Galaxy class ships make their entrance in. It does seem to be introduced at a threshold between a peaceful confident yet complacent Federation and a more insecure, defence orientated one. Galaxy class ships are almost uniquely luxurious in their furnishings and they have families perhaps suggesting a soaring confidence in their scientific, exploratory and diplomatic purposes. And the attitudes of the crews as articulated by Riker and Picard in that 2nd season episode are very strident and disparaging in respect to the value of something as innocuous as war games.

And yet the brass do seem to look over their shoulder a little and this is reflected in arming the Galaxy class with a uniquely potent arsenal. And the Galaxy class ship then goes on to easily confront a Cardassian ship and its cousin the Nebula class captained by the traumatised Maxwell tears into CU space apparently amazing the Cardassians themselves.

Of course, it all see-saws back as the Cardassians recover their composure sufficiently and are bold enough to attempt to annex an entire sector in Chain of Command.

But my point is this: the Cardassians may not be a huge threat but that they remain incorrigible and this may alert Starfleet that other powers may sense blood and all this compels Starfleet to implement a new defence doctrine in the form of a few potent Galaxy class ships but only a few initially to make an assertive statement of intent that they are not to be trifled with. It's the borg of course that drives a more radical overhaul of the fleet and drives production up and then the urgency of the Dominion threat that is sufficient to ensure production skyrockets.

It's interesting how all the emphasis between exploration and defence waxes and wanes with Roddenberry's influence. Roddenberry loses his influence after the "life, Jim, but not as we know it" TMP film that's premised on exploration with all those comfortable uniforms to be replaced by a more militaristic uniform regime with David Marcus expressing hostility towards Starfleet as something of militaristic institution.

Roddenberry regains his influence with TNG and we get extraordinary speeches eulogising the utopian elements of Starfleet and Riker and Picard being scandalised by some war games. Within a few years of GR's sickness and death the franchise is given over to multi episode arcs featuring apocalyptic high intensity space battles where themes of exploration are just one part of a much larger ensemble and the ships like the Sovereign and Intrepid classes give off quite a militaristic vibe.

 

[DonIago]

Regarding the notion that Starfleet should be building more ships in peacetime...

I'm reminded of when I was the person primarily responsible for training new employees where I worked. I had a discussion with my manager about the fact that we seemed to be in a relatively quiet period and it would be a good time to hire someone and get them trained, so that when things stopped being quiet we'd have additional manpower.

My manager pointed out that the owner of the company was unlikely to hire another set of hands while we couldn't make the argument that we actually needed another set of hands. Personally he agreed with me that it made more sense to hire someone when I had the time available to train them rather than when I had a huge workload of my own, he just didn't think he'd be able to sway the owner with that logic.

So I can see quite easily why the UFP would ramp up starship production during wartime rather than peacetime.

Peacetime: We have all the ships we need for everything we're doing, so why spend our resources making more?

Wartime: We're losing ships in huge numbers; we need more right now!!!

It's just like the way in some companies, if you don't spend your entire budget, it may be reduced in the future...because you've just demonstrated that you don't need the amount you previously had.