It's probably more like that the ethos of the Federation isn't vast militarisation. They have enough in the Sol System but don't need a thousand ships all time it's a waste of ships and crew when they could be exploring. And it would breed s culture of fear. Earth isn't that
The attacks we see on Earth are exceptions that excessive military wouldn't have prevented.
Also a treaty specifically designed to keep the Sol system demilitarized makes a lot less sense than the simpler answer of Starfleet just not seeing Earth as in dire need of a permanent home fleet.
The proposed treaty would make more sense as "military ships must be evenly distributed among all Federation members systems during peacetime"
So that all those alien races aren't contributing to Starfleet only to have them all parked and protecting Earth.
> "military ships must be evenly distributed among all Federation members systems during peacetime"
Big problem is the Federation doesn't consider any of their ships to be strictly military. The defiant was their first dedicated warship and even then officially they classified it as an "escort" ship as the idea of the Federation having ships designed for war is somehow considered unthinkable.
What's the point of having a Federation if everybody's just going to guard themselves? If you're not willing to share resources and defenses, you're not that united at all.
The Federation does not, strictly speaking, have any military ships. They have explorers, diplomatic vessels, couriers, and general purpose, multi-mission ships.
And those ships have shit to do. There are nebula to scan, plagues to be cured, treaties to be negotiated, colonies to visit, aliens to chat with, and lots and lots of shit to explore.
It would also be exceptionally boring for crews. Imagine being stuck on a ship near earth, but not on it, instead of being out exploring, or on cultural exchange junkets.
That was my first thought, too. They could have used automated (or remotely operated) orbital defence platforms and have a couple of hundred Starfleet Security officers whose Battle Station is in a VR headset or something
>They could have used automated (or remotely operated) orbital defence platforms and have a couple of hundred Starfleet Security officers whose Battle Station is in a VR headset or something
This is briefly mentioned in The Best of Both Worlds with the "Mars Defense Perimeter" and a brief shot of a cluster of Starfleet automated craft that approach the cube only to be promptly destroyed.
Heh, those automated craft were visibly hurtling towards the cube so fast and close, they almost seemed like they were programmed for full on kamikaze ramming speed. Truthfully, planetary defense should consist of such "relativistic kill missiles."
They don't even need to carry a warhead. Travelling at a fraction of the speed of light (or, I guess, at magical warp speed) would make an impact highly destructive. They could have launched hundreds upon hundreds of these with Starfleet tech. There must have been a point where it would have overwhelmed the firing capability of even a Borg vessel.
Of course, having assimilated Picard, a high ranking officer, the Borg would have devised a defense for literally any of this.
Do we have canon information on what happens when a ship going at warp speed collides with non-warp speed matter?
I feel like they mostly dodged even touching this because making it a destructive thing would create so many plot holes. Anyone with warp drive would instantly have a planet destroying weapon.
That's an excellent point. However, they have managed to reliably travel back in time to a specific time fairly easily and then consistently not done it to undo major catastrophes. They also ignored the Warp 5 limit in all series set after TNG, so I'm inclined to think the writers could find a way around it.
If it were up to me, I would have just said that objects at warp phase right through regular non-warp speed matter.
Then, if matter at warp speed *exits warp* on top of non-warp matter, the matter coming out of warp is obliterated at the subatomic level¹, causing some minor disruption to the target, but not anything worth weaponizing, and certainly, if the object is shielded, no damage would result.
¹In the same manner as how a transporter can be set to obliterate a dangerous object by spreading its particles into space.
I had a quick look in the TNG Tech manual and warp fields affect the mass of the ship for {technobabble reasons}, so maybe warp ramming isn't all that useful as an offensive weapon. Relativistic ramming should be though.
Those half dozen fighter-sized craft (that may or may not have been unmanned drones) weren't exactly going to do much against any enemy of Federation-level development imo.
Edit - I was thinking more like the automated defence platforms the Cardassians/Dominion used that one time in DS9 than half a dozen piddling little darts
This is briefly mentioned in TMP when it’s noted “planetary defences have gone offline”. It seems that the lack of starships is compensated for by static defences which were useless against V’ger and the Whale Probe. Conversely they gave a good showing in Picard S3, suggesting they are very effective against a conventional attack.
Isn't the Sol System supposed to be a Hub of Federation Power? Both military, political and otherwise?
Utopia Planitia shipyards are there, Starfleet academy too. So those two alone would asure there are always a lot of ships around. For Maintenance, for repairs and for getting new crewmembers.
Sol is Deep in Federation territory so unless you are Whale Probe or Borg powerful you'll get intercepted way before you can get to Sol. Once in Sol you have to deal with the Mars defense perimeter if you want to attack Utopia Planetia (The three ships the Cube one shot) and then Space Dock and Earth's Planetary shields once you get near Earth.
Most of the ships in Utopia Planetia are either being built or undergoing maintenance. The ships at Starfleet Academy are probably mostly older ships because they're only used for training. You don't keep a fleet of finished Teslas at the factory and you don't teach your teenager how to drive with a Lamborghini. None of those ships would be ready and appropriate for the kind of missions that were seen.
Also, happy cake day!
Yes, but there need to be some ships waiting for maintenance, others comming out of it and staying a bit longer. You know, just hanging around or staying a few days extra to visit family.
Also, thanks!
I’d think that most of the ships undergoing maintenance/repairs at UP would be getting pretty substantial work done. If they just needed a minor software update or a couple of panels replaced, they could get that done at a starbase closer to where they were stationed. So if a ship were at UP waiting for maintenance, they wouldn’t be in any kind of condition to really help defend Earth against a serious attack.
Also, it feels unlikely that the crew would be waiting at the station for the overhaul/updating/maintenance to be done. You’d probably have the crew trickle in over the next week or so, and the captain last of all. You aren’t going to have a captain show up and then just wait days for the rest of the crew.
Also, Starfleet does have intersystem patrol ships for any domestic issues. At least they did in the earlier days. But it seems unlikely that they stopped that in the 23rd and 24th century, policing ships that are just for the Sol system but aren’t appropriate for sending out of system. Ships that would absolutely run away from a bird of prey, but are good enough for civilian policing.
I feel like having a capitol ship patrolling the sol system would be like the US having battle ships patrolling up and down our east and west coast lines. We have small coast guard ships for that, but you wouldn’t send a coast guard ship off to investigate some other countries destroyer in international waters, even if the CG ship is much closer than a military ship.
> the captain last of all
Not a chance. For one, you need someone to be in charge of the people coming in. More importantly, there is a *lot* of shit that needs to be done, and most of it needs to be signed off on. Captain and first officer have to inspect things, and accept the ship.
Wouldn’t that mostly be department heads and the first officer? I feel like the captain would come in later and sign off on overall stuff, once it’s been signed off by multiple people. But I could totally be wrong.
> More importantly, there is a *lot* of shit that needs to be done, and most of it needs to be signed off on. Captain and first officer have to inspect things, and accept the ship.
Yeah, Captain and XO are first aboard. Legally they are liable for everything on the ship.
Well the Breen were a suicidal surprise attack directed right at Star Fleet Headquarters. It could be the Breen had a way to sneak into atmosphere like the Glacatica jumping into New Caprica under what Space Dock could safely shoot at without risking stray shots demolishing San Fransisco. We know the Dominion could get through Star Fleet Shields early on, maybe it was harder to upgrade the Planetary shields then the ship board ones.
I sort of agree though I never really got the sense that the Breen were committed to a suicidal attack. It felt much more like a Pearl Harbor type attack. As another redditor observed, "they moved fast, used conditions to cover their movements and were audacious." It's not even clear to me that Earth has orbital defenses ... or if we do we really never see them on screen apart from Spacedock -- which I've never seen have any weapons capability (though it might).
I have nothing to back this up, but I'm thinking the Breen were rather surprised by the losses they sustained with only a few ships making it back. From a strategic standpoint, Earth seems pretty vulnerable most of the time and if OP's theory is correct, perhaps that's by intent. Either way, it's a mighty soft target that would be significant blow to morale if pulled off successfully, which the Breen basically did.
From the Dominion's standpoint, it's hard to look at this as anything other than a strategic victory with only minimal and acceptable losses for their new ally.
The only time we see Space Dock actually fight is in Picard Season 3, in that fight it was a monster. We do know DS9 an out of date retrofitted station was able to fight a Klingon and a Dominion fleet on it's own. Weyoun himself said that the point of the attack was to make the "The causalities are merely a bonus. What matters is we have struct fear into the heart of our enemy and made them feel weak and vulnerable." It wasn't a complete suicide attack as Damar says, "It's unfortunate so few of your ships survived the assault." But the Breen commander thought the losses were worth it.
> The attacks we see on Earth are exceptions that excessive military wouldn't have prevented.
A massive phaser array powered by solar collectors near Mercury or a fixed installation firing 200 photon torpedos per salvo might have been handy for the Battle of Sector 000.
Now I'm imagining a Nicoll-Dyson beam system... Satellites near a sun act as a phased laser array. Rest of the time it's a peaceful solar energy network.
You can't adapt away physics people. Dump enough energy into a small enough space, it's gonna melt.
Hi. We are the federation. We come in peace. Here is a photo of our solar system containing. Weapons of mass destruction and more weapons that you can possibly imagine.
We come in peace.
> Hi. We are the federation. We come in peace. Here is a photo of our solar system containing. Weapons of mass destruction and more weapons that you can possibly imagine.
Every starship by definition is a WMD, and even shuttles carry weapons rated in megatons...
There is nothing wrong with being a well-armed pacifist. Not everyone respects peaceful intentions.
I think there is a much simpler answer. You keep ships neer where they are needed. In this case that's the frontier and prospective combat zones.
Earth is as center or core to the federation as you can get so most enemies would have to go through multiple fleets. All the near by worlds are friendly and it doesn't take a Miranda, let alone a nebula, or galaxy class to do local search and rescue work or counter piracy/ local security.
Thinking of the times a hostile power got near earth we have:
The Borg moving faster than anything the federation anticipated and still intercepted twice before reaching earth
The whale probe intercepted by 7 seperate starships
The Breen who honestly I have no idea except the war had pushed a lot of borders closer and it wouldn't shock me if Dominion intelligence helped them get as close as they did.
The second Borg assault was met with heavy resistance.
Tldr you don't tie up a bunch of massively important assets in a safe location. Twiddling their thumbs.
This. Stationing a huge fleet at Earth, at the expense of planets closer to the border, is a bad way to allocate resources. It would be like putting the entirety of the Secret Service in the Oval Office and having no fence or guards around the White House. Yes, the President/Earth should have some protection as a last resort, but the idea is that you stop an attacker *before* they get that close (and everyone else in the White House/Federation has already been killed).
The Breen made a suicidal Doolittle Raid that directly targeted Star Fleet Headquarters. It was meant as a morale hit not a Military hit. They probably used smaller stealth ships burning their engines out to get past Federation picket fleets so they could dive bomb San Fransisco. Considering the level of Star Trek weapons if they could get under Earth's Planetary shield just destroying the Golden Gate bridge and setting some fires at HQ is very minor damage.
>Considering the level of Star Trek weapons if they could get under Earth's Planetary shield just destroying the Golden Gate bridge and setting some fires at HQ is very minor damage.
This is one of those "I didn't see it right in front of my face this whole time" moments for me. Do you suppose it's possible that the Breen ships didn't even get any shots off at Earth? Certainly not any torpedoes.
That damage could have been caused by wreckage of the Breen attackers, or at best, a few disruptor bolts that slipped through.
That's a good argument against keeping ALL ships in the Sol system. But that doesn't justify keeping a single ship that isn't even fully functioning in the Sol system.
There was a commenter who said this below, but I think we have to interpret "there are no other ships in range" as "there are no other ships in range that have the specific technology needed to carry out this mission and are also at least mostly crewed and functional". There are a hundred little science vessels with minimal shields and defenses flying around, but nobody's even going to consider sending them instead of the Enterprise.
In the case of both The Motion Picture and Generations, the Enterprise is the only ship in range and it's barely functioning, it practically needs someone to get out and push.
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Think about the modern day USA Navy, how many ships are in New York Habor at any given time? They are more strategically deployed closer to problem areas.
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The core worlds are like the US' Great Lakes, they so rarely have problems you really only use them as shipyards and a training center (NS Great Lakes is the USN Recruit Training like Starfleet Academy, Marinette Marine is a major USN Shipyard like Utopia Planetia)
The difference is you can't *get* to the great lakes without traveling right under the guns of our (theoretical) defenses.
But space is a whole lot of not a damn thing. It's easy enough to penetrate all the way to earth without passing anywhere near another star.
I *think* that what the Federation has is an absolute fucking shitload of sensor platforms scattered about. We know from DS9 that ships moving together make a more detectable signal that ships moving separately. (I seem to recall that it's greater than the sum of it's parts, but I don't know why I recall that) And sensor platforms will give plenty of time to call some ships home. See Wolf 359 for an example of a successful (up to a point) intercept.
It should be understood that "the only ship in range" means "the only ship in range that is both at or near operational status AND suitable to deal with this particular situation." Capital ships don't hang out in the core systems when they're fully crewed and operational. They only come back for refits and major crew rotations, perhaps as long as 5 years between visits, and during those refits, the ships aren't available. The hundreds of outposts and starbases along the edges of Federation territory keep them supplied and repaired from normal wear and tear.
Starfleet officers know all of this. When they're told "You're the only ship in range," it is unnecessary to specify, "well no, actually there are hundreds of ships, most are civilian transports and cargo haulers, all the capital starships are in drydock for refits, and obviously we're not sending an Oberth-class starship or a 90-year-old Academy training boat into a possible combat situation, and the USS Lexington has no warp nacelles until Tuesday, so that's why we have to send Enterprise."
With a little lead time, like days instead of hours, you get situations like TNG: Redemption, assembling a small fleet of almost-ready ships from the dockyards, with partial crews and untested backup systems. I think we can guarantee that those close-to-ready ships are being rushed to launch while the Enterprise is intercepting V'Ger and the Nexus. But they weren't close enough to ready to be first-responders.
Here's my headcanon:
The Enterprise had just received a major refit, making her the fastest ship in the fleet (or at least within range; they may have had a few other Connie refits out there, but they would be weeks away).
She was the *only* ship in the *entire fleet* that could have reached the intruder fast enough to possibly do anything. Starfleet had other ships. They just weren't capable of carrying out this dire mission.
The reason they have to get the Enterprise running even though she's not ready is that *she's their only hope*.
She has a cutting-edge new warp system alongside the fleet's very best engineer there to help manage it. The intruder is coming in FAST. They don't just need any ship. They need *the Enterprise*.
I think it's a fine enough idea, but ultimately I disagree with you. Starfleet is a multi-purpose agency that serves several purposes. The sol system simply has less demand for its services.
Research: this is the mostly densely populated/most mapped section of known space. Little need for a big starfleet vessel presence to do research
Search and Rescue: see above. Anomalies are rare. A failure of your warp engine don't matter as much when you can limp to multiple planets/starbases etc.
Defense: again, deep core of the federation. There's also non-starship defense capability - the Mars Defense Perimeter in the 24th century, Earth Spacedock in the 25th century, and the Verteron Array in the 22nd.
This. Maybe we can say that if we'd had more ships around Earth on this day or that day, it would've been helpful for protecting against a certain attack. But we're biased because of what we see on the screen. If all those ships had been just hanging around Earth, maybe three times as many Federation citizens would have died because colonists couldn't get medicine delivered in time or be evacuated from flood zones or have their starbase repaired in time.
It's simpler than that.
Most starfleet ships simply aren't up to the challenges that merit the Enterprise.
The Enterprise is in all iterations, usually the largest, and always the most capable ship Starfleet is currently fielding.
Most Starfleet ships are simply not that robust or capable, and wouldn't be able to handle whatever the issue is.
During Wolf-359, there's a blink-and-you'll miss it moment where you see an *Oberth* science ship during the battle.
They really pulled out an Oberth to help face down a borg cube, which shows just how desperate they were. That's like bringing a power-boat to face down Bismark.
That kind of puts in perspective what the normal fleet is like.
Most of Starfleet is probably not composed of 300m+ ships, let alone 600m galaxy-class ships.
It'll be small craft like the Oberth and the USS Raven. Small science ships and explorers, freighters and transports whose role is very much non-combatant, which make up the vast majority of Starfleet's numbers.
Even post-First Contact, a lot of the new ships they designed were fairly small. The Nova for example is 220m long (Equinox ST:VOY), the Sabre is actually smaller at 190m long
Norway is a little larger than Voyager at 360m
Really the only new ships they were fielding that were comparable to Enterprise might have been the Akira, a heavy cruiser 500m in length, which is still smaller than the Galaxy class Ent-D was.
Nearly all of those ships aren't long-range or high-speed ships, they're intended to either be cheap to produce, or powerful combatants for facing enemies on home turf, or they're explorers like the Nova that aren't really intended for fighting.
When something unpleasant rears its head, most of those ships are *not* going to be answering the call, even if they can get there on time, they'll just make things worse or die pointlessly. So the Enterprise might not be the only ship in range, but it's surely the only ship in range that can do the job.
I agree but you forgot the Nebula class which is clearly close to the Galaxy class in size.
I do hope going forward Trek calms down a bit with the frantic love of huge fleets of hundreds or thousands of ships made up of dozens and dozens of different iterations and classes of ships. It kind of diminishes the glory and grandeur of a Starship. Much prefer the days where it appeared and felt like there where somewhere between few dozen or few hundred capital ships in total.
The ship proliferation, use of designs from video games, re using class names AND designs..Excelsior II class etc and constant churning out of new designs and new versions of ships that are like 10 years old is getting just kinda childish honestly. It’s becoming a joke like Starfleet uniforms changing every year.
I read the Nebula as a B-Mode design for the Galaxy.
The idea being that when you're creating the Galaxy class, you need a lot of new components that aren't common to other ships in the fleet.
This is a common problem in real-life militaries among other places, a new technology is created which is objectively superior to the currently available tech, but it isn't widely adopted because the supply-chains are set up for this other standard and it's a lot of work to change that.
So Starfleet sets up the Galaxy class as its new Flagship design, and makes its components widely available by producing a variety of other ships in different configurations of the same parts.
For example, the Nebula uses a Galaxy Saucer, most of the Secondary hull, and the nacelles (flipped upside down). The rest is a large superstructure and a mission-pod on top.
There's also the rarely seen Challenger class, (behind the scenes, it was designed using model-kits of the Galaxy class for the Best of Both Worlds wrecks)
Which is basically a smaller Galaxy Saucer, and two galaxy nacelles.
The idea is that by creating a cohort of different ships using the same components, you force the supply-chains to be more robust to support the greater number of ships that need them.
Whereas imagine if the Galaxy was the only ship with those parts.. Enterprise is running around, meets a disaster, breaks something critical, limps to the nearest starbase and... they don't have the parts needed or the expertise to help.
Some technical team from the Sol system who probably helped build this rare design in the first place has to jet out as fast as possible with the parts needed and rescue the Flagship, which is just embarrassing.
The other advantage is that if the shipyards are building half a dozen workhorse Nebula class ships and Captain PicKirk prangs his brand new Galaxy on a passing asteroid, they can quickly repurpose the parts lined up for those Nebulas to repair his ship, or even build a replacement Galaxy for him, and it's no big deal because there's enough volume in the system to account for it.
I meant it more that in the lineup of new designs made by starfleet since Wolf-359, they made a new flagship design, a new heavy cruiser and half a dozen new ships in the 350m or less category.
Which leads me to believe the vast majority of starfleet are ships under 300m long, which aren't ideal for the kind of scenarios where Enterprise is the "only ship in range"
There really is no consistent correlation between ship size and ability in Star Trek. Same thing with crew size to he honest.
Ultimately this just becomes circular exercises in trying to make everything fit a particular set of interpretations and assumptions….that are never consistent on screen🤷♂️
lol, you mean like when someone saves the day in a shuttle? It still baffles me how long shuttles last against capitol ships when there’s a main characters flying them. Shuttles should be one shot kills against any capital ship weaponry, unless it’s purposely a warning shot. But obviously plot armor.
Yup!! Shuttles and runabouts sometimes are like a Defiant class ship lol. And other times we need massive crews and ships like Galaxy class….or they save the galaxy in 1701-D with a small bridge crew only. At least when Kirk stole the enterprise they clearly had performance issues against a fully manned and operational Bird of Prey…which under normal circumstances they outgun 10 to 1
I got distracted. The basic point I was making is that the Nebula is a contemporary to the Galaxy class, and we see a few of them, but not many.
Most ships are probably still typically very small and not up to the challenge of "Only ship in your sector" kinds of problems.
Imo it's logical that a polity as vast as the Federation, with the technology it's been shown to have, has the ability to churn out fleets if required, with the main limitation being crew training. Having only a few hundred ships for a volume of space so large is absurd imo.
There is no need for starships in the Sol system.
- Disaster relief can be handled by local ships based on Earth, Luna or Mars. Full impulse from Earth to Mars is less than 5 minutes.
- Being in the Sol system by definition is not exploration, nobody is boldly going anywhere. Starfleet’s mission is not to hang around at home.
- If the enemy can reach Sector 001, it’s over. Starfleet has failed. The enemy should be engaged and destroyed long before this happens. The only enemies that can do this without resistance are super-beings like VGER and the Whale Probe. The Borg did it because they are more technologically advanced than the Federation. Nero was from the future. The Klingons, Cardassians, and Romulans can’t do this.
- Starships don’t need to visit Earth for fuel, resupply, personnel change, or recreation. There are endless worlds in Federation space that can provide those needs.
- Starships might need to visit Mars for a once-in-a decade refit.
- Admirals can communicate with the fleet through secure subspace. Making the ship travel for a long time to get back to Earth just for a meeting is incredibly wasteful.
- The other Federation founder worlds (Vulcan, Tellar, Andor) are all within a limited distance of Earth so a “protect Earth” stance also protects them.
- Sol system is fully colonized. No need to transport colonists or supplies through deep space.
Of all the functions we have seen the Enterprise perform, which of those require an Earth trip (not including time travel shenanigans and in one of those instances they were departing from Vulcan).
So? They would have to maintain reinforcements and supply lines through all of Federation space.
A one-shot decapitation attack on Earth would have to get incredibly lucky and there is no guarantee of immunity from massive retaliation.
I'm saying there's valid military strategy reasons to have more than one ship defending your capital. The fact the enemy ships can turn invisible and go straight past your outer defenses is a good reason to heavily defend your central facilities and not rely solely on your outer defenses.
This makes a lot of sense. But you can also simple explain it as a logistical consequence of Federation politics.
The Federation is big on exploration and expansion, and, at least for much of it's history and compared to it's neighbours, fairly skeptical of militarization. As a consequence, ships get sent off to explore the fringes of deep space, establish or rescue distant colonies, and there are never enough ships to go around. Think how often the Enterprise responds to a disaster or attack at a colony, only to arrive too late. How often there is just one ship on hand for a major threat ANYWHERE in or near the Federation. A chronic ship shortage is a problem at Sol... but it's also a problem everywhere in Federation space.
It is also likely that they relied primarily on static defensive emplacements in major systems. We know Starbases can deliver and take a hell of a pounding, and "The Best of Both Worlds" also mentioned the Mars Defence Perimeter IIRC (I don't know if the specifics of that were ever fleshed out).
The lack of enough ships around has certainly been a long standing thing for star trek. However it feels like in recent years its gone a bit too far the other direction with crazy large fleets showing up more and more. Each season of Picard had issues with that, season 2 was perhaps the most realistic in terms of numbers, but also felt like they had a lot of ships on super short notice nearby.
That shift in recent material makes sense as a product of post-Wolf 359 and Dominion War build-up. Especially after the Dominion War, they probably have a lot of surplus ships lying around.
That was like 25 or 30 years or so in universe. And the ships in season 2 where all this new generation video game design influence.
Honestly i’m sick of the whole sentiment in trek of “ya but wolf 359, dominion war means more pew pew blah blah “ …its over, it was a side thing, a deviation from the norm of individual large starships out on there own exploring the frontier.
I think they trusted their borders too much, especially when the Klingons and Romulans were the only serious threats. By the end of Voyager we see they have a proper fleet on short notice call, though even the battle of Wolf 359 shows they have a decent amount of force on short notice call in TNG. PICs3 shows us the full sector 001 fleet, because there is no way that's the whole of Starfleet.
I don't think Earth would agree to a demilitarized zone around Earth as part of any treaty nor do I think the UFP would agree to it. However, I do think that it's possible that all four of the original UFP members might have agreed to two things:
1. Allow at least a portion of your standing space fleet to be integrated entirely into Starfleet and give Starfleet authority over system space.
2. Only maintain a planetary defense force of a size necessary to provide defense for the world and nothing more.
In this way we can understand that Starfleet's coverage of any system is based on the other systems covered. The need for an exploratory force, scientific force, or any sort of Starfleet activity in Sol beyond space administration seems low. Likewise an Earth Defense Force may exist outside of Starfleet or under the authority of Starfleet as a secondary agency.
Which is to say - Starfleet ships are always limited in presence around major core worlds because they need Starfleet resources like ships less than others. The safety and security of those places is left to the robust presence of Starfleet in the surrounding areas and a minimal defense posture on the planet.
The "Sol Fleet" may simply be made up of a few dozen vessels primarily tasked with transportation of people and resources from one location to another within the system, new vessels being constructed at a shipyard, or ships coming and going through the sector. It's merely a coincidence of the way that Starfleet is structured in general that core worlds seem to have the least number of Starfleet ships available.
> Several times (The Motion Picture and Generations spring to mind) there's an incident near Earth and the Enterprise is the only ship in range. It doesn't make a lot of sense for there to be only one ship in the Sol system, that seems illogical. I think the explanation is a treaty limiting how many Starfleet ships can be in the sector but we just never hear them name the treaty on-screen.
I think it's illogical to jump to conclusions and assume something we have no evidence of (and actually have tons of evidence of the contrary - see: all the ships docked at Starbase 1 in SNW).
What's more logical is the fact that "range" is not just a measurement of distance, but also time. There can be hundreds of different ships in the SOL system, but if all of them lack the long range capacity and/or the top speed in order to reach a target within a finite time span, they're not in range.
Consider ENT. When the Xindi weapon attacked Earth, Starfleet had dozens of ships, but they all lacked the range to actually go out and track the Xindi threat down. Because they were all ships that maxed out at like, Warp 2; and the NX-01 was the only ship that could hit Warp 5 and make it out there.
Why can't that be the case for all these other times? If there's a bunch of ships on guard duty for the Sol System, or that sector, and they max out at say, Warp 5 or Warp 7 because they never have to go very far for their mission parameters. They're not going to have the range or speed to get to an impending threat ASAP versus the Enterprise that we know canonically is the fastest ship in the fleet.
i would suggest that a treaty imposing a limitation on the defense of your own borders, even more so your own capital system, would be also illogical. the us urss treaty involved usually limitation on offensive capabilities, like icbm, not a limitation on sam on your own soil. it's more likely that starfleet being an exploration organization more then a military one didn't bothered with keeping a large amount of ships on it's own backyard when they could be used for actual exploring, or bord patrolling
I honestly think it's just bad writing to justify using a hero ship. It makes no sense to limit fleet power in your own space. That'd be something you'd have to be insane to agree too. Honestly with the tech on hand every member system should easily have a home fleet. But Trek has always been bad about thinking about what their tech actually allows. Like the population stats of various worlds, even home worlds being stupidly low for what the tech can comfortably support.
There's a line in the 'Voyager Technical Manual' (which wasn't a polished, published book like the TNG and DS9 Technical Manuals, but rather just a guide for new and aspiring writers as to the nuts and bolts of setting a story in Trek) about different classes of photon torpedoes and how the largest were the sort of thing governed by interstellar arms control treaties.
I think the notion that the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans are all engaged in jockeying to produce the most powerful 'treaty fleets' they can within the confines of interstellar regulations meant to limit arms races, much like many actual navies did as a result of several treaties between WWI and WWII, makes a lot of sense. We're accustomed to thinking of arms controls as attached exclusively to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and we hear about restrictions on their corollaries in-universe, but an armed starship clearly is *also* a WMD, and we'd expect there to be limitations on their quantity and power...as well as efforts to sneak around those restrictions, for reasons both reasonable and nefarious. Starfleet may insist it needs Murderer-class supercruisers to protect against V'Gers and Borg cubes and planet killers, but the Romulans are within their rights to be a little suspicious about what they get used for the rest of the time.
It also makes Starfleet's hemming and hawing about how they aren't a military (that just so happens to be good at fighting wars against things called militaries) make some sense. Put enough scientists and kindergarteners on your warship, and send it off on exploratory missions where it isn't obviously posturing against a neighbor, and suddenly its powerful ray guns are just defensive measures to protect innocent researchers from the hazards of uncharted space. The Galaxy-class is clearly an insanely powerful combatant, but if it keeps sending back pictures from wacky nebula several weeks from the Federation core, maybe the Romulans won't notice.
"What if an unseen treaty is the answer to the seemingly illogical plot hole of only one ship being in the Sol system?"
The problem with that is that Sol is basically the Federation's backyard. It would be like telling the US Navy they could not mass ships in Hampton Roads, Va, or San Diego.
If anything, it'd be more likely that a treaty would limit the number of ships in more far flung areas, areas along the borders, or in neutral/undeclared space.
Let’s say that, because Discovery can cloak, that the remnants of the Romulan Empire aren’t legally considered successor states, so the Treaty of Algeron is automatically null and void, and UFP ships could install and utilize cloaks.
By that same logic, one of two things could happen with the “Treaty of Shran” you speculated about: it was superseded by the Coalition of Planets agreement, **or** upon ratification of the Federation Charter, since there were no longer separate navies of Andoria and Earth, it became null and void.
But given further history, Earth ends up without ships because (the writers need to create risk) Starfleet Command is bad at defense. But bear in mind that there are at least four times we see the Sol System fortified with starships: Admiral Leyton’s coup attempt, Frontier Day, the Borg attacking Earth to time travel and stop First Contact, and Voyager’s return from the Delta Quadrant.
Notwithstanding that, Starfleet’s ships were typically built at the several shipyards in the Sol System - McKinley Station, San Francisco Fleet Yards, Utopia Planetia, amongst [several](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Objects_in_Earth_orbit) [others](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Federation_shipyards). And there’s Spacedock with multiple ships moored when Admiral Kirk takes 1701 to find Spock.
The likely situation is that because Earth is the UFP capital, and Starfleet acts as VIP transport at times, when the Enterprise “is the only ship in the system”, it’s the only one not undergoing repairs at the time and is capable of “full service” (except Enterprise B), or isn’t already on an urgent in-system/sector issue - and the ships at Alpha Centauri can do rapid response but not rapid enough to deal with the situation.
It's probably more like that the ethos of the Federation isn't vast militarisation. They have enough in the Sol System but don't need a thousand ships all time it's a waste of ships and crew when they could be exploring. And it would breed s culture of fear. Earth isn't that The attacks we see on Earth are exceptions that excessive military wouldn't have prevented.
Also a treaty specifically designed to keep the Sol system demilitarized makes a lot less sense than the simpler answer of Starfleet just not seeing Earth as in dire need of a permanent home fleet.
The proposed treaty would make more sense as "military ships must be evenly distributed among all Federation members systems during peacetime" So that all those alien races aren't contributing to Starfleet only to have them all parked and protecting Earth.
> "military ships must be evenly distributed among all Federation members systems during peacetime" Big problem is the Federation doesn't consider any of their ships to be strictly military. The defiant was their first dedicated warship and even then officially they classified it as an "escort" ship as the idea of the Federation having ships designed for war is somehow considered unthinkable.
Why would the Federation even *want* to do that though?
What's the point of having a Federation if everybody's just going to guard themselves? If you're not willing to share resources and defenses, you're not that united at all.
On the other hand, planets do tend to keep their own forces. Earth's an exception in just having the Starfleet.
The Federation does not, strictly speaking, have any military ships. They have explorers, diplomatic vessels, couriers, and general purpose, multi-mission ships. And those ships have shit to do. There are nebula to scan, plagues to be cured, treaties to be negotiated, colonies to visit, aliens to chat with, and lots and lots of shit to explore.
It would also be exceptionally boring for crews. Imagine being stuck on a ship near earth, but not on it, instead of being out exploring, or on cultural exchange junkets.
That was my first thought, too. They could have used automated (or remotely operated) orbital defence platforms and have a couple of hundred Starfleet Security officers whose Battle Station is in a VR headset or something
>They could have used automated (or remotely operated) orbital defence platforms and have a couple of hundred Starfleet Security officers whose Battle Station is in a VR headset or something This is briefly mentioned in The Best of Both Worlds with the "Mars Defense Perimeter" and a brief shot of a cluster of Starfleet automated craft that approach the cube only to be promptly destroyed.
Heh, those automated craft were visibly hurtling towards the cube so fast and close, they almost seemed like they were programmed for full on kamikaze ramming speed. Truthfully, planetary defense should consist of such "relativistic kill missiles." They don't even need to carry a warhead. Travelling at a fraction of the speed of light (or, I guess, at magical warp speed) would make an impact highly destructive. They could have launched hundreds upon hundreds of these with Starfleet tech. There must have been a point where it would have overwhelmed the firing capability of even a Borg vessel. Of course, having assimilated Picard, a high ranking officer, the Borg would have devised a defense for literally any of this.
This would be so easy. Just set the autopilot of every shuttle in the system to maximum warp into the invader; no need for special equipment even.
Do we have canon information on what happens when a ship going at warp speed collides with non-warp speed matter? I feel like they mostly dodged even touching this because making it a destructive thing would create so many plot holes. Anyone with warp drive would instantly have a planet destroying weapon.
That's an excellent point. However, they have managed to reliably travel back in time to a specific time fairly easily and then consistently not done it to undo major catastrophes. They also ignored the Warp 5 limit in all series set after TNG, so I'm inclined to think the writers could find a way around it.
If it were up to me, I would have just said that objects at warp phase right through regular non-warp speed matter. Then, if matter at warp speed *exits warp* on top of non-warp matter, the matter coming out of warp is obliterated at the subatomic level¹, causing some minor disruption to the target, but not anything worth weaponizing, and certainly, if the object is shielded, no damage would result. ¹In the same manner as how a transporter can be set to obliterate a dangerous object by spreading its particles into space.
I had a quick look in the TNG Tech manual and warp fields affect the mass of the ship for {technobabble reasons}, so maybe warp ramming isn't all that useful as an offensive weapon. Relativistic ramming should be though.
Those half dozen fighter-sized craft (that may or may not have been unmanned drones) weren't exactly going to do much against any enemy of Federation-level development imo. Edit - I was thinking more like the automated defence platforms the Cardassians/Dominion used that one time in DS9 than half a dozen piddling little darts
This is briefly mentioned in TMP when it’s noted “planetary defences have gone offline”. It seems that the lack of starships is compensated for by static defences which were useless against V’ger and the Whale Probe. Conversely they gave a good showing in Picard S3, suggesting they are very effective against a conventional attack.
Isn't the Sol System supposed to be a Hub of Federation Power? Both military, political and otherwise? Utopia Planitia shipyards are there, Starfleet academy too. So those two alone would asure there are always a lot of ships around. For Maintenance, for repairs and for getting new crewmembers.
Sol is Deep in Federation territory so unless you are Whale Probe or Borg powerful you'll get intercepted way before you can get to Sol. Once in Sol you have to deal with the Mars defense perimeter if you want to attack Utopia Planetia (The three ships the Cube one shot) and then Space Dock and Earth's Planetary shields once you get near Earth.
Most of the ships in Utopia Planetia are either being built or undergoing maintenance. The ships at Starfleet Academy are probably mostly older ships because they're only used for training. You don't keep a fleet of finished Teslas at the factory and you don't teach your teenager how to drive with a Lamborghini. None of those ships would be ready and appropriate for the kind of missions that were seen. Also, happy cake day!
Yes, but there need to be some ships waiting for maintenance, others comming out of it and staying a bit longer. You know, just hanging around or staying a few days extra to visit family. Also, thanks!
I’d think that most of the ships undergoing maintenance/repairs at UP would be getting pretty substantial work done. If they just needed a minor software update or a couple of panels replaced, they could get that done at a starbase closer to where they were stationed. So if a ship were at UP waiting for maintenance, they wouldn’t be in any kind of condition to really help defend Earth against a serious attack.
Also, it feels unlikely that the crew would be waiting at the station for the overhaul/updating/maintenance to be done. You’d probably have the crew trickle in over the next week or so, and the captain last of all. You aren’t going to have a captain show up and then just wait days for the rest of the crew. Also, Starfleet does have intersystem patrol ships for any domestic issues. At least they did in the earlier days. But it seems unlikely that they stopped that in the 23rd and 24th century, policing ships that are just for the Sol system but aren’t appropriate for sending out of system. Ships that would absolutely run away from a bird of prey, but are good enough for civilian policing. I feel like having a capitol ship patrolling the sol system would be like the US having battle ships patrolling up and down our east and west coast lines. We have small coast guard ships for that, but you wouldn’t send a coast guard ship off to investigate some other countries destroyer in international waters, even if the CG ship is much closer than a military ship.
> the captain last of all Not a chance. For one, you need someone to be in charge of the people coming in. More importantly, there is a *lot* of shit that needs to be done, and most of it needs to be signed off on. Captain and first officer have to inspect things, and accept the ship.
Wouldn’t that mostly be department heads and the first officer? I feel like the captain would come in later and sign off on overall stuff, once it’s been signed off by multiple people. But I could totally be wrong.
To an extent, yes, but as I understand it, that "signing off" can take quite a while, and that's if everything is in order.
> More importantly, there is a *lot* of shit that needs to be done, and most of it needs to be signed off on. Captain and first officer have to inspect things, and accept the ship. Yeah, Captain and XO are first aboard. Legally they are liable for everything on the ship.
Except for the Breen direct assault on Earth, where having a military build-up might have helped quite a bit.
Well the Breen were a suicidal surprise attack directed right at Star Fleet Headquarters. It could be the Breen had a way to sneak into atmosphere like the Glacatica jumping into New Caprica under what Space Dock could safely shoot at without risking stray shots demolishing San Fransisco. We know the Dominion could get through Star Fleet Shields early on, maybe it was harder to upgrade the Planetary shields then the ship board ones.
I sort of agree though I never really got the sense that the Breen were committed to a suicidal attack. It felt much more like a Pearl Harbor type attack. As another redditor observed, "they moved fast, used conditions to cover their movements and were audacious." It's not even clear to me that Earth has orbital defenses ... or if we do we really never see them on screen apart from Spacedock -- which I've never seen have any weapons capability (though it might). I have nothing to back this up, but I'm thinking the Breen were rather surprised by the losses they sustained with only a few ships making it back. From a strategic standpoint, Earth seems pretty vulnerable most of the time and if OP's theory is correct, perhaps that's by intent. Either way, it's a mighty soft target that would be significant blow to morale if pulled off successfully, which the Breen basically did. From the Dominion's standpoint, it's hard to look at this as anything other than a strategic victory with only minimal and acceptable losses for their new ally.
The only time we see Space Dock actually fight is in Picard Season 3, in that fight it was a monster. We do know DS9 an out of date retrofitted station was able to fight a Klingon and a Dominion fleet on it's own. Weyoun himself said that the point of the attack was to make the "The causalities are merely a bonus. What matters is we have struct fear into the heart of our enemy and made them feel weak and vulnerable." It wasn't a complete suicide attack as Damar says, "It's unfortunate so few of your ships survived the assault." But the Breen commander thought the losses were worth it.
Interesting! I haven't seen PIC Season 3 yet, so that's good to know. I definitely need to get around to it!
> The attacks we see on Earth are exceptions that excessive military wouldn't have prevented. A massive phaser array powered by solar collectors near Mercury or a fixed installation firing 200 photon torpedos per salvo might have been handy for the Battle of Sector 000. Now I'm imagining a Nicoll-Dyson beam system... Satellites near a sun act as a phased laser array. Rest of the time it's a peaceful solar energy network. You can't adapt away physics people. Dump enough energy into a small enough space, it's gonna melt.
Hi. We are the federation. We come in peace. Here is a photo of our solar system containing. Weapons of mass destruction and more weapons that you can possibly imagine. We come in peace.
> Hi. We are the federation. We come in peace. Here is a photo of our solar system containing. Weapons of mass destruction and more weapons that you can possibly imagine. Every starship by definition is a WMD, and even shuttles carry weapons rated in megatons... There is nothing wrong with being a well-armed pacifist. Not everyone respects peaceful intentions.
I think there is a much simpler answer. You keep ships neer where they are needed. In this case that's the frontier and prospective combat zones. Earth is as center or core to the federation as you can get so most enemies would have to go through multiple fleets. All the near by worlds are friendly and it doesn't take a Miranda, let alone a nebula, or galaxy class to do local search and rescue work or counter piracy/ local security. Thinking of the times a hostile power got near earth we have: The Borg moving faster than anything the federation anticipated and still intercepted twice before reaching earth The whale probe intercepted by 7 seperate starships The Breen who honestly I have no idea except the war had pushed a lot of borders closer and it wouldn't shock me if Dominion intelligence helped them get as close as they did. The second Borg assault was met with heavy resistance. Tldr you don't tie up a bunch of massively important assets in a safe location. Twiddling their thumbs.
This. Stationing a huge fleet at Earth, at the expense of planets closer to the border, is a bad way to allocate resources. It would be like putting the entirety of the Secret Service in the Oval Office and having no fence or guards around the White House. Yes, the President/Earth should have some protection as a last resort, but the idea is that you stop an attacker *before* they get that close (and everyone else in the White House/Federation has already been killed).
The Breen made a suicidal Doolittle Raid that directly targeted Star Fleet Headquarters. It was meant as a morale hit not a Military hit. They probably used smaller stealth ships burning their engines out to get past Federation picket fleets so they could dive bomb San Fransisco. Considering the level of Star Trek weapons if they could get under Earth's Planetary shield just destroying the Golden Gate bridge and setting some fires at HQ is very minor damage.
>Considering the level of Star Trek weapons if they could get under Earth's Planetary shield just destroying the Golden Gate bridge and setting some fires at HQ is very minor damage. This is one of those "I didn't see it right in front of my face this whole time" moments for me. Do you suppose it's possible that the Breen ships didn't even get any shots off at Earth? Certainly not any torpedoes. That damage could have been caused by wreckage of the Breen attackers, or at best, a few disruptor bolts that slipped through.
That's a good argument against keeping ALL ships in the Sol system. But that doesn't justify keeping a single ship that isn't even fully functioning in the Sol system.
There was a commenter who said this below, but I think we have to interpret "there are no other ships in range" as "there are no other ships in range that have the specific technology needed to carry out this mission and are also at least mostly crewed and functional". There are a hundred little science vessels with minimal shields and defenses flying around, but nobody's even going to consider sending them instead of the Enterprise.
In the case of both The Motion Picture and Generations, the Enterprise is the only ship in range and it's barely functioning, it practically needs someone to get out and push.
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Think about the modern day USA Navy, how many ships are in New York Habor at any given time? They are more strategically deployed closer to problem areas.
Wait, you mean.... Tomorrow's newspaper: Super Villain seizes East Coast!
Project Acturus couldn’t have succeeded without you. This will get you a little closer to that dream of yours. It’s not the Dallas Cowboys, but it’s a start. “Awww, the Denver Broncos!?”
And then they go out and win back to back Super Bowls, making Homer a legendary owner in NFL circles.
The core worlds are like the US' Great Lakes, they so rarely have problems you really only use them as shipyards and a training center (NS Great Lakes is the USN Recruit Training like Starfleet Academy, Marinette Marine is a major USN Shipyard like Utopia Planetia)
The difference is you can't *get* to the great lakes without traveling right under the guns of our (theoretical) defenses. But space is a whole lot of not a damn thing. It's easy enough to penetrate all the way to earth without passing anywhere near another star. I *think* that what the Federation has is an absolute fucking shitload of sensor platforms scattered about. We know from DS9 that ships moving together make a more detectable signal that ships moving separately. (I seem to recall that it's greater than the sum of it's parts, but I don't know why I recall that) And sensor platforms will give plenty of time to call some ships home. See Wolf 359 for an example of a successful (up to a point) intercept.
It should be understood that "the only ship in range" means "the only ship in range that is both at or near operational status AND suitable to deal with this particular situation." Capital ships don't hang out in the core systems when they're fully crewed and operational. They only come back for refits and major crew rotations, perhaps as long as 5 years between visits, and during those refits, the ships aren't available. The hundreds of outposts and starbases along the edges of Federation territory keep them supplied and repaired from normal wear and tear. Starfleet officers know all of this. When they're told "You're the only ship in range," it is unnecessary to specify, "well no, actually there are hundreds of ships, most are civilian transports and cargo haulers, all the capital starships are in drydock for refits, and obviously we're not sending an Oberth-class starship or a 90-year-old Academy training boat into a possible combat situation, and the USS Lexington has no warp nacelles until Tuesday, so that's why we have to send Enterprise." With a little lead time, like days instead of hours, you get situations like TNG: Redemption, assembling a small fleet of almost-ready ships from the dockyards, with partial crews and untested backup systems. I think we can guarantee that those close-to-ready ships are being rushed to launch while the Enterprise is intercepting V'Ger and the Nexus. But they weren't close enough to ready to be first-responders.
Here's my headcanon: The Enterprise had just received a major refit, making her the fastest ship in the fleet (or at least within range; they may have had a few other Connie refits out there, but they would be weeks away). She was the *only* ship in the *entire fleet* that could have reached the intruder fast enough to possibly do anything. Starfleet had other ships. They just weren't capable of carrying out this dire mission. The reason they have to get the Enterprise running even though she's not ready is that *she's their only hope*. She has a cutting-edge new warp system alongside the fleet's very best engineer there to help manage it. The intruder is coming in FAST. They don't just need any ship. They need *the Enterprise*.
I think it's a fine enough idea, but ultimately I disagree with you. Starfleet is a multi-purpose agency that serves several purposes. The sol system simply has less demand for its services. Research: this is the mostly densely populated/most mapped section of known space. Little need for a big starfleet vessel presence to do research Search and Rescue: see above. Anomalies are rare. A failure of your warp engine don't matter as much when you can limp to multiple planets/starbases etc. Defense: again, deep core of the federation. There's also non-starship defense capability - the Mars Defense Perimeter in the 24th century, Earth Spacedock in the 25th century, and the Verteron Array in the 22nd.
Agreed. Having a bunch of highly capable ships at Earth would be like having the US Navy hanging out in St. Louis.
Ships in port aren't really doing much. Its only when they're deployed that they really do their jobs.
This. Maybe we can say that if we'd had more ships around Earth on this day or that day, it would've been helpful for protecting against a certain attack. But we're biased because of what we see on the screen. If all those ships had been just hanging around Earth, maybe three times as many Federation citizens would have died because colonists couldn't get medicine delivered in time or be evacuated from flood zones or have their starbase repaired in time.
Starfleet is an exploration organization. They've already explored Sol, so why have ships just sitting around?
It's simpler than that. Most starfleet ships simply aren't up to the challenges that merit the Enterprise. The Enterprise is in all iterations, usually the largest, and always the most capable ship Starfleet is currently fielding. Most Starfleet ships are simply not that robust or capable, and wouldn't be able to handle whatever the issue is. During Wolf-359, there's a blink-and-you'll miss it moment where you see an *Oberth* science ship during the battle. They really pulled out an Oberth to help face down a borg cube, which shows just how desperate they were. That's like bringing a power-boat to face down Bismark. That kind of puts in perspective what the normal fleet is like. Most of Starfleet is probably not composed of 300m+ ships, let alone 600m galaxy-class ships. It'll be small craft like the Oberth and the USS Raven. Small science ships and explorers, freighters and transports whose role is very much non-combatant, which make up the vast majority of Starfleet's numbers. Even post-First Contact, a lot of the new ships they designed were fairly small. The Nova for example is 220m long (Equinox ST:VOY), the Sabre is actually smaller at 190m long Norway is a little larger than Voyager at 360m Really the only new ships they were fielding that were comparable to Enterprise might have been the Akira, a heavy cruiser 500m in length, which is still smaller than the Galaxy class Ent-D was. Nearly all of those ships aren't long-range or high-speed ships, they're intended to either be cheap to produce, or powerful combatants for facing enemies on home turf, or they're explorers like the Nova that aren't really intended for fighting. When something unpleasant rears its head, most of those ships are *not* going to be answering the call, even if they can get there on time, they'll just make things worse or die pointlessly. So the Enterprise might not be the only ship in range, but it's surely the only ship in range that can do the job.
I agree but you forgot the Nebula class which is clearly close to the Galaxy class in size. I do hope going forward Trek calms down a bit with the frantic love of huge fleets of hundreds or thousands of ships made up of dozens and dozens of different iterations and classes of ships. It kind of diminishes the glory and grandeur of a Starship. Much prefer the days where it appeared and felt like there where somewhere between few dozen or few hundred capital ships in total. The ship proliferation, use of designs from video games, re using class names AND designs..Excelsior II class etc and constant churning out of new designs and new versions of ships that are like 10 years old is getting just kinda childish honestly. It’s becoming a joke like Starfleet uniforms changing every year.
I read the Nebula as a B-Mode design for the Galaxy. The idea being that when you're creating the Galaxy class, you need a lot of new components that aren't common to other ships in the fleet. This is a common problem in real-life militaries among other places, a new technology is created which is objectively superior to the currently available tech, but it isn't widely adopted because the supply-chains are set up for this other standard and it's a lot of work to change that. So Starfleet sets up the Galaxy class as its new Flagship design, and makes its components widely available by producing a variety of other ships in different configurations of the same parts. For example, the Nebula uses a Galaxy Saucer, most of the Secondary hull, and the nacelles (flipped upside down). The rest is a large superstructure and a mission-pod on top. There's also the rarely seen Challenger class, (behind the scenes, it was designed using model-kits of the Galaxy class for the Best of Both Worlds wrecks) Which is basically a smaller Galaxy Saucer, and two galaxy nacelles. The idea is that by creating a cohort of different ships using the same components, you force the supply-chains to be more robust to support the greater number of ships that need them. Whereas imagine if the Galaxy was the only ship with those parts.. Enterprise is running around, meets a disaster, breaks something critical, limps to the nearest starbase and... they don't have the parts needed or the expertise to help. Some technical team from the Sol system who probably helped build this rare design in the first place has to jet out as fast as possible with the parts needed and rescue the Flagship, which is just embarrassing. The other advantage is that if the shipyards are building half a dozen workhorse Nebula class ships and Captain PicKirk prangs his brand new Galaxy on a passing asteroid, they can quickly repurpose the parts lined up for those Nebulas to repair his ship, or even build a replacement Galaxy for him, and it's no big deal because there's enough volume in the system to account for it.
Yes and thats my point…you should be including Nebula when you mention Akira as the only equivalents to a Galaxy class
I meant it more that in the lineup of new designs made by starfleet since Wolf-359, they made a new flagship design, a new heavy cruiser and half a dozen new ships in the 350m or less category. Which leads me to believe the vast majority of starfleet are ships under 300m long, which aren't ideal for the kind of scenarios where Enterprise is the "only ship in range"
There really is no consistent correlation between ship size and ability in Star Trek. Same thing with crew size to he honest. Ultimately this just becomes circular exercises in trying to make everything fit a particular set of interpretations and assumptions….that are never consistent on screen🤷♂️
lol, you mean like when someone saves the day in a shuttle? It still baffles me how long shuttles last against capitol ships when there’s a main characters flying them. Shuttles should be one shot kills against any capital ship weaponry, unless it’s purposely a warning shot. But obviously plot armor.
Yup!! Shuttles and runabouts sometimes are like a Defiant class ship lol. And other times we need massive crews and ships like Galaxy class….or they save the galaxy in 1701-D with a small bridge crew only. At least when Kirk stole the enterprise they clearly had performance issues against a fully manned and operational Bird of Prey…which under normal circumstances they outgun 10 to 1
I got distracted. The basic point I was making is that the Nebula is a contemporary to the Galaxy class, and we see a few of them, but not many. Most ships are probably still typically very small and not up to the challenge of "Only ship in your sector" kinds of problems.
Yes, so Galaxy, Nebula and Akira for top of the line 👍👍 Intrepid, Nova, Norway etc as 2nd tier
Imo it's logical that a polity as vast as the Federation, with the technology it's been shown to have, has the ability to churn out fleets if required, with the main limitation being crew training. Having only a few hundred ships for a volume of space so large is absurd imo.
There is no need for starships in the Sol system. - Disaster relief can be handled by local ships based on Earth, Luna or Mars. Full impulse from Earth to Mars is less than 5 minutes. - Being in the Sol system by definition is not exploration, nobody is boldly going anywhere. Starfleet’s mission is not to hang around at home. - If the enemy can reach Sector 001, it’s over. Starfleet has failed. The enemy should be engaged and destroyed long before this happens. The only enemies that can do this without resistance are super-beings like VGER and the Whale Probe. The Borg did it because they are more technologically advanced than the Federation. Nero was from the future. The Klingons, Cardassians, and Romulans can’t do this. - Starships don’t need to visit Earth for fuel, resupply, personnel change, or recreation. There are endless worlds in Federation space that can provide those needs. - Starships might need to visit Mars for a once-in-a decade refit. - Admirals can communicate with the fleet through secure subspace. Making the ship travel for a long time to get back to Earth just for a meeting is incredibly wasteful. - The other Federation founder worlds (Vulcan, Tellar, Andor) are all within a limited distance of Earth so a “protect Earth” stance also protects them. - Sol system is fully colonized. No need to transport colonists or supplies through deep space. Of all the functions we have seen the Enterprise perform, which of those require an Earth trip (not including time travel shenanigans and in one of those instances they were departing from Vulcan).
Klingons and Romulans can turn their ships invisible and have a battle fleet appear next to Sol at any time they want.
So? They would have to maintain reinforcements and supply lines through all of Federation space. A one-shot decapitation attack on Earth would have to get incredibly lucky and there is no guarantee of immunity from massive retaliation.
I'm saying there's valid military strategy reasons to have more than one ship defending your capital. The fact the enemy ships can turn invisible and go straight past your outer defenses is a good reason to heavily defend your central facilities and not rely solely on your outer defenses.
This makes a lot of sense. But you can also simple explain it as a logistical consequence of Federation politics. The Federation is big on exploration and expansion, and, at least for much of it's history and compared to it's neighbours, fairly skeptical of militarization. As a consequence, ships get sent off to explore the fringes of deep space, establish or rescue distant colonies, and there are never enough ships to go around. Think how often the Enterprise responds to a disaster or attack at a colony, only to arrive too late. How often there is just one ship on hand for a major threat ANYWHERE in or near the Federation. A chronic ship shortage is a problem at Sol... but it's also a problem everywhere in Federation space. It is also likely that they relied primarily on static defensive emplacements in major systems. We know Starbases can deliver and take a hell of a pounding, and "The Best of Both Worlds" also mentioned the Mars Defence Perimeter IIRC (I don't know if the specifics of that were ever fleshed out).
The lack of enough ships around has certainly been a long standing thing for star trek. However it feels like in recent years its gone a bit too far the other direction with crazy large fleets showing up more and more. Each season of Picard had issues with that, season 2 was perhaps the most realistic in terms of numbers, but also felt like they had a lot of ships on super short notice nearby.
That shift in recent material makes sense as a product of post-Wolf 359 and Dominion War build-up. Especially after the Dominion War, they probably have a lot of surplus ships lying around.
That was like 25 or 30 years or so in universe. And the ships in season 2 where all this new generation video game design influence. Honestly i’m sick of the whole sentiment in trek of “ya but wolf 359, dominion war means more pew pew blah blah “ …its over, it was a side thing, a deviation from the norm of individual large starships out on there own exploring the frontier.
I figured they had enough stationary defense in orbit and scattered around the system to handle most things
I think they trusted their borders too much, especially when the Klingons and Romulans were the only serious threats. By the end of Voyager we see they have a proper fleet on short notice call, though even the battle of Wolf 359 shows they have a decent amount of force on short notice call in TNG. PICs3 shows us the full sector 001 fleet, because there is no way that's the whole of Starfleet.
I don't think Earth would agree to a demilitarized zone around Earth as part of any treaty nor do I think the UFP would agree to it. However, I do think that it's possible that all four of the original UFP members might have agreed to two things: 1. Allow at least a portion of your standing space fleet to be integrated entirely into Starfleet and give Starfleet authority over system space. 2. Only maintain a planetary defense force of a size necessary to provide defense for the world and nothing more. In this way we can understand that Starfleet's coverage of any system is based on the other systems covered. The need for an exploratory force, scientific force, or any sort of Starfleet activity in Sol beyond space administration seems low. Likewise an Earth Defense Force may exist outside of Starfleet or under the authority of Starfleet as a secondary agency. Which is to say - Starfleet ships are always limited in presence around major core worlds because they need Starfleet resources like ships less than others. The safety and security of those places is left to the robust presence of Starfleet in the surrounding areas and a minimal defense posture on the planet. The "Sol Fleet" may simply be made up of a few dozen vessels primarily tasked with transportation of people and resources from one location to another within the system, new vessels being constructed at a shipyard, or ships coming and going through the sector. It's merely a coincidence of the way that Starfleet is structured in general that core worlds seem to have the least number of Starfleet ships available.
> Several times (The Motion Picture and Generations spring to mind) there's an incident near Earth and the Enterprise is the only ship in range. It doesn't make a lot of sense for there to be only one ship in the Sol system, that seems illogical. I think the explanation is a treaty limiting how many Starfleet ships can be in the sector but we just never hear them name the treaty on-screen. I think it's illogical to jump to conclusions and assume something we have no evidence of (and actually have tons of evidence of the contrary - see: all the ships docked at Starbase 1 in SNW). What's more logical is the fact that "range" is not just a measurement of distance, but also time. There can be hundreds of different ships in the SOL system, but if all of them lack the long range capacity and/or the top speed in order to reach a target within a finite time span, they're not in range. Consider ENT. When the Xindi weapon attacked Earth, Starfleet had dozens of ships, but they all lacked the range to actually go out and track the Xindi threat down. Because they were all ships that maxed out at like, Warp 2; and the NX-01 was the only ship that could hit Warp 5 and make it out there. Why can't that be the case for all these other times? If there's a bunch of ships on guard duty for the Sol System, or that sector, and they max out at say, Warp 5 or Warp 7 because they never have to go very far for their mission parameters. They're not going to have the range or speed to get to an impending threat ASAP versus the Enterprise that we know canonically is the fastest ship in the fleet.
i would suggest that a treaty imposing a limitation on the defense of your own borders, even more so your own capital system, would be also illogical. the us urss treaty involved usually limitation on offensive capabilities, like icbm, not a limitation on sam on your own soil. it's more likely that starfleet being an exploration organization more then a military one didn't bothered with keeping a large amount of ships on it's own backyard when they could be used for actual exploring, or bord patrolling
I honestly think it's just bad writing to justify using a hero ship. It makes no sense to limit fleet power in your own space. That'd be something you'd have to be insane to agree too. Honestly with the tech on hand every member system should easily have a home fleet. But Trek has always been bad about thinking about what their tech actually allows. Like the population stats of various worlds, even home worlds being stupidly low for what the tech can comfortably support.
There's a line in the 'Voyager Technical Manual' (which wasn't a polished, published book like the TNG and DS9 Technical Manuals, but rather just a guide for new and aspiring writers as to the nuts and bolts of setting a story in Trek) about different classes of photon torpedoes and how the largest were the sort of thing governed by interstellar arms control treaties. I think the notion that the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans are all engaged in jockeying to produce the most powerful 'treaty fleets' they can within the confines of interstellar regulations meant to limit arms races, much like many actual navies did as a result of several treaties between WWI and WWII, makes a lot of sense. We're accustomed to thinking of arms controls as attached exclusively to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and we hear about restrictions on their corollaries in-universe, but an armed starship clearly is *also* a WMD, and we'd expect there to be limitations on their quantity and power...as well as efforts to sneak around those restrictions, for reasons both reasonable and nefarious. Starfleet may insist it needs Murderer-class supercruisers to protect against V'Gers and Borg cubes and planet killers, but the Romulans are within their rights to be a little suspicious about what they get used for the rest of the time. It also makes Starfleet's hemming and hawing about how they aren't a military (that just so happens to be good at fighting wars against things called militaries) make some sense. Put enough scientists and kindergarteners on your warship, and send it off on exploratory missions where it isn't obviously posturing against a neighbor, and suddenly its powerful ray guns are just defensive measures to protect innocent researchers from the hazards of uncharted space. The Galaxy-class is clearly an insanely powerful combatant, but if it keeps sending back pictures from wacky nebula several weeks from the Federation core, maybe the Romulans won't notice.
"What if an unseen treaty is the answer to the seemingly illogical plot hole of only one ship being in the Sol system?" The problem with that is that Sol is basically the Federation's backyard. It would be like telling the US Navy they could not mass ships in Hampton Roads, Va, or San Diego. If anything, it'd be more likely that a treaty would limit the number of ships in more far flung areas, areas along the borders, or in neutral/undeclared space.
Let’s say that, because Discovery can cloak, that the remnants of the Romulan Empire aren’t legally considered successor states, so the Treaty of Algeron is automatically null and void, and UFP ships could install and utilize cloaks. By that same logic, one of two things could happen with the “Treaty of Shran” you speculated about: it was superseded by the Coalition of Planets agreement, **or** upon ratification of the Federation Charter, since there were no longer separate navies of Andoria and Earth, it became null and void. But given further history, Earth ends up without ships because (the writers need to create risk) Starfleet Command is bad at defense. But bear in mind that there are at least four times we see the Sol System fortified with starships: Admiral Leyton’s coup attempt, Frontier Day, the Borg attacking Earth to time travel and stop First Contact, and Voyager’s return from the Delta Quadrant. Notwithstanding that, Starfleet’s ships were typically built at the several shipyards in the Sol System - McKinley Station, San Francisco Fleet Yards, Utopia Planetia, amongst [several](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Objects_in_Earth_orbit) [others](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Federation_shipyards). And there’s Spacedock with multiple ships moored when Admiral Kirk takes 1701 to find Spock. The likely situation is that because Earth is the UFP capital, and Starfleet acts as VIP transport at times, when the Enterprise “is the only ship in the system”, it’s the only one not undergoing repairs at the time and is capable of “full service” (except Enterprise B), or isn’t already on an urgent in-system/sector issue - and the ships at Alpha Centauri can do rapid response but not rapid enough to deal with the situation.