You would think they would have retrofitted DS9?

[Infern0]

At the start of the show I understand that it was out in the sticks and so the best they could do was to have O'Brian jury-rig the station to keep it working, and it all had outdated Cardassian tech, as visable in the set design.

But considering DS9 became one of the most important strategic assets in the Alpha Quad rent wouldn't you think that Starfleet would have sent a bucket-load of engineers to completely overhaul the station and get it up to date with cutting edge starfleet tech?

I know they overhauled the weapons systems, but seriously, is it realistic that 7 years in, they were still using Cardassian technology and equipment instead of Federation kit?

It's like having the flagship of the US navy run by Windows XP!

 

[BillJ]

If it works, why change it?

Besides, the Bajorans were probably more comfortable using Cardassian tech considering they had been subjugated by them for fifty years. And it is a Bajoran station.

 

[horatio83]

Exchanging all the guts of a station like Deep Space Nine is anything but easy or cheap. It would probably takes months or years to do it and in the meantime you'd have to relocate a lot of people. Hard to imagine Quark being fine with his business closed for a few days and hard to imagine that the Bajorans who are after all the owners of the station would be too happy about the Feds converting their station. Furthermore the station would be vulnerable during the refit.
The benefits of all this are fairly limited. The only thing that mattered during the war was to improve the weapons and shields.

 

[StarMan]

It's an interesting question. DS9 and the Bajoran Sector had little strategic value at the beginning. The wormhole was a game changer, one which - in hindsight - ought to have prompted a substantially higher investment by Starfleet and The Federation than what was seen on screen. Also, DS9 became the AQ's sentinel against God-only-knows (and we know what God-only-knows turned out to be). Bearing this in mind it doesn't make a good case for sticking with an antiquated, run down Alien station for your Interstellar Civilization's first line of defense. Given the enormity of Federation resources, throwing together a brand spanking new hub in the sector shouldn't have been a big deal.

 

[Timo]

The station did become a capable gunnery outpost eventually, dealing with the Klingon invasion with relative ease. Sabotage prevented it from stopping the Dominion invasion; thereafter, first the minefield and the the Prophetary blockade rendered the station wholly irrelevant as a gunnery outpost. A forward command and supply point for starfleets made sense; a full-fledged naval base would not have, as the location was still within easy striking range of Cardassian-Dominion forces.

Improving the station's trading potential probably did take place during the early years. Much of that would have simply consisted of getting the Cardassian infrastructure repaired, though, as the station was quite oversized for its original UFP/Bajoran role - the amount of freight and other goods going through the station would have been a fraction of the ore, loot and supplies the Cardassians hauled in and out during the occupation.

Being oversized would help with retrofitting, though: Quark would have thousands of cubic meters to relocate into if his bar needed to be closed down for some reason...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MacLeod]

Perhaps Starfleet was thinking long term, they fully expected Bajor to be admitted to the Federation. So perhaps when that occured they would build a Starfleet design starbase.

So they expended only the resources that where needed to keep the station operational.

 

[arch101]

I would imagine that, if we had the impossible 20th anniversary reunion TV film or mini, that the station would be substantially upgraded and altered with Federation technology by this time. I haven't read any of the continuation books. Has the station been changed or upgraded in those?

 

[Lyon_Wonder]

I figure starfleet was limited on what changes they could undertake to incorporate Federation technology since DS9 was technically a Bajoran station and they were there under the invitation of the Bajoran government. Like the previous poster said, DS9's weapons were upgraded to make the station easier to defend against attacks.

And if starfleet did some upgrades in ops, they were undone since Sisko trashed DS9's systems in ops just before the Dominion occupied the station at the end of S5, which the Cardassians and Dominion had to replace with presumably more Cardassian tech. I assume there was some federation tech in ops by s5, otherwise Sisko wouldn't have much reason to destroy the equipment.

I think any really comprehensive upgrades and major refitting of DS9 had to wait until after Bajor joined the Federation, which would finally make DS9 an official federation starbase instead of the sharing arrangement Bajor and starfleet had throughout the series.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

They couldn't change anything else since Cardassian tech didn't mix with Federation tech very well. The only other thing they could have done would have been to build a whole new outpost.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think any really comprehensive upgrades and major refitting of DS9 had to wait until after Bajor joined the Federation, which would finally make DS9 an official federation starbase instead of the sharing arrangement Bajor and starfleet had throughout the series.

There were a few times in the show in which DS9 was referred to onscreen as a Federation starbase.

But back to the OP, I remember reading a TV & radio industry magazine around '92 and there was an early promotional foldout for DS9 there. It had a totally different logo than the one that would be eventually used for the series (it used the Starfleet emblem in lieu of the letter "A"), but because the design of the station was still being finalized at the time, the promo used an image of Spacedock One instead.

I could see DS9 eventually being replaced by a spacedock station once Bajor enters the Federation, but quite a few years down the road.

 

[T'Girl]

There were a few times in the show in which DS9 was referred to onscreen as a Federation starbase.

I think that was like having a US Naval Base in Japan, there was a Starfleet starbase located inside of Bajorian DS9.

While the station itself was Bajorian, the weapons systems (and other things) were the property of Starfleet.

Kind of the same way Quark owned the furnishings in his bar, they didn't belong to the Bajorians, even though they were in a Bajorian station.

 

[C.E. Evans]

There were a few times in the show in which DS9 was referred to onscreen as a Federation starbase.

I think that was like having a US Naval Base in Japan, there was a Starfleet starbase located inside of Bajorian DS9.

While the station itself was Bajorian, the weapons systems (and other things) were the property of Starfleet.

A Federation starbase operating within the sovereingty of another nation. It could be the reason for a "Deep Space" designation rather than a standard Federation starbase designation like "Starbase 519."

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

DS9 was a Bajoran station administered by Starfleet, so it would be up to the Bajoran government and militia to request such an overhaul.

There would also be issues with replacing Cardassian tech with Starfleet, as there was an episode where O'Brien mentioned the difficulties of trying to make the two compatable. He also said about wanting to completely gut the computer system and rebuild it but that would take months of painstaking work (and we never did find out if he managed to get it done or not).

Also with the amount of down time that would be needed for changes to tech and/or cosmetic alterations to the station itself, it would be impractical for a strategically important base, which would need to be operational to handle traffic to and from the wormhole and then later for the war.

As was said before, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

[Photon]

SF had apparently done a small retrofit for the photon launcher(s) after the takeover of the station just before Emissary. I doubt that the shields were 100% Cardassian but the photons could have done some damage to Gul Jasad's ships, if they'd been fired not to frighten

 

[Timo]

I'm not sure if the launchers had been modified much. One characteristic of torpedo launch systems in the Trek universe is that they can take a wide variety of ammo, and Cardassian systems might well accept UFP torps; perhaps Starfleet had merely repaired one of the sabotaged Cardassian launchers and left a small supply of torps for Sisko to test-launch it with?

Then again, DS9 is the only Cardassian military asset known to be capable of firing torpedoes. The warships only fire beams (except in "Ensign Ro", where bolts the same color as the old Cardassian beams are seen: http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s5/5x03/ensignro275.jpg )...

Speaking of beams, those may have been installed by Starfleet: DS9 has definite Starfleet-style strips on the weapon pylons, whereas Cardassian ships have no strips and sport a series of small pyramids instead.

Of course, if we take a close look at the station in the flashbacks that show it in the original Cardassian guise, or in alternate universes, the strips are still there and there are no pyramid emitters to be seen. But perhaps we can overlook that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Photon]

I'm not sure if the launchers had been modified much. One characteristic of torpedo launch systems in the Trek universe is that they can take a wide variety of ammo, and Cardassian systems might well accept UFP torps; perhaps Starfleet had merely repaired one of the sabotaged Cardassian launchers and left a small supply of torps for Sisko to test-launch it with?

Then again, DS9 is the only Cardassian military asset known to be capable of firing torpedoes. The warships only fire beams (except in "Ensign Ro", where bolts the same color as the old Cardassian beams are seen: http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s5/5x03/ensignro275.jpg )...

Speaking of beams, those may have been installed by Starfleet: DS9 has definite Starfleet-style strips on the weapon pylons, whereas Cardassian ships have no strips and sport a series of small pyramids instead.

Of course, if we take a close look at the station in the flashbacks that show it in the original Cardassian guise, or in alternate universes, the strips are still there and there are no pyramid emitters to be seen. But perhaps we can overlook that.

Timo Saloniemi

We agree. Now about the shield emitters. I miss-typed. I blv the shields on Emissary DS9 were all Cardassian. Just don't think SF had time to do that major of an overhaul of the major defense systems.

 

[funkylovemonkey]

I think one of the problems they might have faced in doing a total system overhaul is how quickly DS9 became an important military installation. It went from being a backwater to one of the most important stations in the galaxy virtually overnight. Because of that it would have been problematic taking the entire station offline for months or even years. If you consider how long it takes to build a starship, a retrofit the scale of DS9 (which is significantly larger then a starship) could easily take years to rip out the old Cardassian technology and then replace it with Starfleet technology. Major retrofits are often more expensive and more time consuming then just building something new to replace it. That would be even more difficult because a lot of Starfleet technology is designed to be modular (like bridges that could be popped off and replaced fairly quickly), so any new technology for DS9 would have to be completely fabricated from scratch. When you think about it that way, it makes sense that they would just upgrade the weapons and defensive systems on top of existing systems; a full refit could leave the station dangerously vulnerable at a time when the Dominion was becoming more and more aggressive.

 

[Damask]

Starfleet couldn't even got power supplys on their own ships to work with each other (see Voyager and it's Holodecks). Only so many miracles O'Brien could do.

 

[MrJ]

I would imagine that, if we had the impossible 20th anniversary reunion TV film or mini, that the station would be substantially upgraded and altered with Federation technology by this time. I haven't read any of the continuation books. Has the station been changed or upgraded in those?

It has, right after the Dominion War the station had a full over haul, all the Cardasian computers and displays were replaced with Starfleet ones and LCARS screens. At the same time the new Defiant had a refit to make it equal to the old one. However, while both the Defiant and DS9s systems were down Jem'hadar ships came out of the Wormhole and shot up the place. Lots of people died, including the stations science officer and the Starfleet first officer/Defiant captain.

So probably the reason why Starfleet never refitted the Station during the 7 years we saw in the show was to prevent that exact thing from happening.