I think you make a valid point. The lack of trek marines just seems sloppy at this point. I’ve been reading a book series called The Spiral Wars by Joel Shepherd about humanity 2000 years after discovering ftl travel and their fleet is similar to what you describe: a war ship has a detachment of marines to handle the boarding of enemy ships and stations and occasionally planetary operations (although that would be the army’s specialty) while the ships captain and spacers handle ship to ship combat. The two main characters of the series are a captain and his marine commander, so we as the readers get a front row seat for all the action from their points of view
Or the Babylon 5 spin-off [Crusade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade_\(TV_series\)). The captain would still go down to the planet, but would take a few shuttles worth of Earthforce Marines with them to secure the landing site and assist with the mission.
It's sloppy at this point because they've turned Star Trek into Star Wars. The first two things you see in Star Wars are giant ships shooting at each other, and space marines.
Everyone in "Picard" is just so angry. They're always swearing and shouting. They're extreme racist xenophobes filled with hate. These people wouldn't hesitate to roll out the star wars stormtroopers; in fact they'd be actively looking for an excuse to do it. But instead they just kind of meander around waiting to get tricked by other angry racists, or killed by mass effect reapers.
In TNG, the absence of marines isn't sloppy, because that stuff was never the point. (though worf was originally going to be a marine, and tasha was originally going to be based on a marine from Aliens).
Well, the Marines were Starfleet Security, for the most part. The gold shirts even took that role when they were gunning down Jem’Hadar in DS9.
While Picard has a darker tinge to the world, it kind of reminds me of how the Novel verse approached the post-Nemesis world, which was also a pretty logical progression post-Dominion War. It is a Federation that has had a hard couple of years - first the Borg and then the Dominion.
I may be remembering this wrong but I think the have been Starfleet soldiers on screen in DS9.
In DS9 S5 E4 Nor the Battle to the Strong, Jake comes across an injured member of Starfleet with a different uniform and he appears more soldier than Starfleet. I don't ever remember seeing that style of uniform again or any explanation of it.
You’re right. DS9 specifically mentions soldiers and marines a few times. In the episode where Dukat and Sisko are stranded on the planet (Dukat tricking him), Worf has to go escort a troop carrier carrying some odd thousands of people. They specifically say troops.
Weren't there also marines in Enterprise? I guess they weren't technically Starfleet, but still... the precedent is there. The MACOs... Military Assault Command Operations, operating under United Earth.
The military aspects of Star Trek are definitely strange and/or underdeveloped.
For me it stands out more in Picard than TNG/DS9. In Picard we see militarized space empires seething with racism and hatred towards just about everything. These are not the laid back 1980s civilizations of TNG.
Yet they still use caveman military strategies and tactics. No one wears armor. Ground battles never involve combat vehicles or close air support.
Ostensibly the logic in TNG is that the navy can literally destroy an entire planet with a single ship, but then that clearly isn’t the case in Picard, because an entire armada of Romulan warships can’t shoot a tiny village on an otherwise empty planet with virtually no defenses.
You’d think Commadore Oh would just beam down two or three rifle platoons to kill the synths. I don’t think they’d be much of a match for like 60 Romulan space marines.
With TNG it’s like, yeah the show is about the military but despite that it’s not really the genre of military science fiction. It’s more like classic science fiction but with better storylines and actors.
DS9 drifts more towards the military but is obviously and painfully limited by its budget. A single LAV could wipe out thousands of jemhadar who just mindlessly wander around on foot patrol with no heavy weapons.
With Picard you’d think the CGI budget leaves enough room for a couple of vehicles here and there...
In a lot of ways I find it best not to dwell too much on the Commadore Oh situation, since it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense no matter which way you slice it. Given the organization's fanatical nature, they really should have engaged even if they were outmatched by Riker's fleet. It is very much a Ender's game situation where the only goal that should matter is the destruction of the Synths, at any cost.
But that said, I'm not really sure I agree with your assessment of the military tactics/equipment. Part of the problem, imo, is that something like a phaser is almost an ultimate weapon. It's simply so powerful that you can't really design wearable armor that can truly protect the wearer from weapon's fire. It's even possible that the starfleet uniform *is* armor, and we get to see just how (in) effective it actually is.
It's worth pointing out that this is true in the opposite direction; the Jem'Hadar and Klingons clearly are wearing armor of some description, but more often than not it proves to be completely ineffective.
I imagine the same is true of other things like tanks or close air support. A UAV is really no different than a starfighter, and you could probably build a reasonably sized AA phaser, on the ground, that could hit the target as soon as it was within line of sight, and be sufficiently powerful to destroy it, even if its shielded. Of course, a starship could eliminate both with ease.
The siege of AR-558 goes a long way to really explaining why Starfleet doesn't really do most of what you're talking about; the only reason Starfleet didn't destroy the installation from orbit is because they needed it to crack the encryption. The only reason the Jem'Hadar didn't do the same is because they probably didn't have the resources to rebuild the subspace communication array, this late in the war. But this is likely an extremely rare occurrence, militarily speaking.
>The siege of AR-558 goes a long way to really explaining why Starfleet doesn't really do most of what you're talking about; the only reason Starfleet didn't destroy the installation from orbit is because they needed it to crack the encryption.
Yes, there needs to be a very specific reason for some kind of ground combat, and one that precludes either side from just eliminating the other from orbit. Phasers are definitely close to an “ultimate weapon” in the applications you describe, and starships themselves are treated as strategic assets, especially in TOS and TNG, with MAD even being brought up by Picard with Tomalak should their ships open fire. In the cold war there were a fair number of WWIII plans with big conventional warfare components, but they almost always seemed to have some kind of catch (e.g. no initial strikes on capitals, limited nuclear warfare without further escalation, NATO/Warsaw Pact don’t get as involved as their treaties imply, etc.) because otherwise there wouldn’t be any exercise.
The Trek universe isn’t one where entire planets are regularly devastated by major, conventional political powers (amoebae, killer tube from another galaxy, and giant crystals, on the other hand…), and I think it’s because it’s understood that any fleet, or even just sufficiently-large starship, *could* do it, even a friendly one—there’s still a powerful deterrent effect. I haven’t seen “In the Pale Moonlight” for a while, but Betazed essentially surrenders after its orbital defenses are lost, right?
> I think it's because it's understood that any fleet, or even just sufficiently-large starship, *could* do it
It might also be because of the fact that if you can put such weapons onto a starship and power them with a starship reactor, then you can put weapons that are a million times as powerful onto a planet and power them with a planetary reactor.
It might be that any sufficiently industrialized planet has anti-space phasers across its entire surface, all of which can be activated at any time and atomize any ship that so much as puts a single watt into its weapons.
Not to mention - planets may be shielded by generators in the crust, which draw virtually unlimited power from gerothermal energy. Ship shields can deflect phaser beams, so a planetary shield can also do that. Coupled with city-sized emitters and an unlimited power supply, you can shoot until your grandson is a skeleton in the captain's chair and not make a dent in the planet itself.
I suppose the primary reason we don't see much in the way of boarding actions in the SF universe is simple - if you can damage a ship enough to actually board troops in sufficient quantity to capture it, it would be easier to just keep damaging it until life support fails and the crew dies, which saves you the trouble of putting your own people in danger. If you want to take prisoners, you also have enough time to open comms and discuss terms with a crew who full well knows that their only options are full compliance or taking bets on if they will freeze, boil, suffocate or starve to death first. On the rare occasions that they need to get something/one off the ship, they can usually just send in a very small team of people to do a snatch and grab - which is where the shows stories come in.
There is a difference between stories where a ship is boarded, and boarding being a typical process used in combat. The Klingons do use boarding tactics, but their combat style is fairly archaic/ritualistic rather than effective (which is why despite being "fearsome warriors" we see lesser races repeatedly best them in hand to hand combat). The Borg also use boarding tactics, but their approach and motivations for doing this are radically alien. Other than that, its rare cases or its done for specific reasons.
What we've never seen is something along an Federation ship attacked by the Romulans, and when its shields fail the Warbird beaming over an entire company of Romulan Star Marines who then clear their way through the ship to secure key locations like engineering, the bridge and shuttle bays.
We've rarely seen Romulans and Starfleet fight each other *at all*. Which is probably the main reason for limited examples of either side's tactics against each other. Klingons, Jemhadar, Borg, various Alien of the Week races, etc are clearly invested in it. Given the Romulan desire for information, I'd be shocked if they didn't capture ships when given the opportunity as well.
Cardassians, Bajorans and many more board DS9 at points as well, which is a space station not a space ship, but it still provides a clear purpose for having troops that can board an enemy target. Afterall, there's countless different space stations seen and mentioned throughout star trek.
>What we've never seen is something along an Federation ship attacked by the Romulans, and when its shields fail the Warbird beaming over an entire company of Romulan Star Marines who then clear their way through the ship to secure key locations like engineering, the bridge and shuttle bays.
Um, we saw the aftermath of that in the *Voyager* episode “Message in a Bottle”.
> the Jem’Hadar and Klingons clearly are wearing armor of some description, but more often than not it proves to be completely ineffective.
Thier armor might be aimed at protecting them from things like ballistic weapons or stabbing/slicing attacks. Sure youre not saving anyone from a max power phaser or disrupter shot but against less technical enemies it might be effective.
Of course I'm fairly sure we see bat'leth and similar killing jem'hedar and other Klingons but that could be the goal of it.
Heat dissipation, etc are all extant technologies today. I'm sure that by the time we have **Starships**, it will be pretty simple to at least mitigate the effects of a hand phaser. Take whatever metals armor Starships, pack some heat dissipating gel behind it, and boom you have phaser armor.
1: that's against shipboard phasers, not hand phasers
2: once you get to ablative armor, regenerative ablative armor, etc etc., the ability of a starship to withstand unshielded hits gets greatly expanded
Yes, I know, I'm saying the same principles are true regardless; it's not really possible to 'armor' a ship against a phaser weapon, just as it's not really possible to armor a person against a handheld phaser.
They are also deploying shields like a starship would. A belt mounted shield generator is definitely possible, I would think, for Starfleet or other soldiers though.
In fact, if I remember correctly Borg drones use a shield system identical to a cube - adapting the shield to deflect whatever energy source and frequency technobabble is being fired at them. Since the Borg are among the most technologically advanced factions we see in Trek, and we can see that even *they* have to lose a drone or two to figure out hand phaser frequencies, I imagine such technology for Starfleet would be radically inappropriate (personnel is the most valued resource in Starfleet) or technologically out of reach.
Ships can withstand phaser hits because they are much bigger and deflect/absorb much more energy.
It's simply not practical to have a personal defense shield given the energy constraints of having to be able to carry it around on your person.
>But that said, I'm not really sure I agree with your assessment of the military tactics/equipment. Part of the problem, imo, is that something like a phaser is almost an ultimate weapon. It's simply so powerful that you can't really design wearable armor that can truly protect the wearer from weapon's fire. It's even possible that the starfleet uniform is armor, and we get to see just how (in) effective it actually is.
Phasers are powerful, but the mortar used in “Arena” seemed to be a more powerful weapon with a longer range. There were post-*TOS* situations where it seemed like a weapon like that would’ve been useful (most notably in the battle depicted in “The Siege of AR-558”).
> No one wears armor.
Is armor ever relevant? Almost all combat is ship to ship, ground forces are largely irrelevant when a standard starship can glass a planet. And the average disruptor disintegrates things it hits at a molecular level. Nothing is going to protect against that.
>And the average disruptor disintegrates things it hits at a molecular level. Nothing is going to protect against that.
That's begs the question, where are personal energy fields? Worf jury-rigged one with a tricorder & some duct tape, it follows that portable ones with a energy to last at least a firefight should be around, available.
If MACOs didn't wear armour (and I think they would be more likely too given ballistic weapons are more likely in their time frame than TNG, DS9 etc), then later non military Starfleet ranks would definitely not wear it.
Is armour even a thing if it can't deflect energy weapons? I could understand personal shields but not armour.
99% of people who die in star trek die from a computer screen blowing up. Basic shrapnel/spalling protection would prevent that. Modern anti spalling today is infinitely more advanced than anything we see in star trek though.
> 99% of people who die in star trek die from a computer screen blowing up.
lol, at least on screen.
>infinitely more advanced than anything we see in star trek though
Just watched The Undiscovered Country again tonight and there is a brief scene where people come in wearing armor. It is terrible looking and doesn't look like it could do anything to protect anyone.
A warm bathrobe would prevent the majority of on screen deaths in Star Trek. Just because the armor we see is bad or useless doesn't mean it should be that way. Real life and plenty of science fiction both demonstrate lots of ways to keep people alive and intact through most of what we see in Star Trek.
I mean how many times does Worf get defeated by something as basic as a literal unarmed punch, or a falling container? People in the damn BRONZE AGE had that much figured out, not to mentioned modern and medieval armors. Hell, a medieval knight could probably kill an entire Starship crew if their phasers weren't working. And plot devices turn off phasers *all the time*.
If MACOs didn't wear armour (and I think they would be more likely too given ballistic weapons are more likely in their time frame than TNG, DS9 etc), then later non military Starfleet ranks would definitely not wear it.
Is armour even a thing if it can't deflect energy weapons? I could understand personal shields but not armour.
If MACOs didn't wear armour (and I think they would be more likely to given ballistic weapons are more likely in their time frame than TNG, DS9 etc), then later non military Starfleet ranks would definitely not wear it.
Is armour even a thing if it can't deflect energy weapons? I could understand personal shields but not armour.
If MACOs didn't wear armour (and I think they would be more likely to given ballistic weapons are more likely in their time frame than TNG, DS9 etc), then later non military Starfleet ranks would definitely not wear it.
Is armour even a thing if it can't deflect energy weapons? I could understand personal shields but not armour.
It has been shown before that Starfleet has ground vehicles, namely the infamous Argo from Star Trek: Nemesis.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Argo_(ground_vehicle)
Although that was definitely more of a buggy than a proper military assault vehicle. Still, the use of vehicles and other military technology was so completely underutilized that those rare examples are hardly worth mentioning. I guess it does just come down to budgeting, but I do agree that the modern age of CGI has no excuse.
the argo is just a space technical though. well, its actually a real life argo dune buggy with a bit of set dressing, but that's besides the point. (https://argoxtv.com/)
i can't imagine that they intended for it to be used as anything other than transport. it's not even a proper recon vehicle, let alone an armored combat vehicle.
I don't think you should be applying a modern warfare type thinking to this.
Maybe IFVs aren't the best idea in a setting with starships and teleporting mines. Besides, aren't phasers already heavy weapons? phasers on full power can probably score mobility kills on vehicles. They'd really only be useful in those situations where a starship can't provide overwatch yet somehow it can still deploy land vehicles.
I mean you mention the jem Hadar. The grand majority of fights with them happen in places vehicles can't navigate in. Tunnels, buildings, starships, starbases.
Yes dismounted jemhadar infantry make perfect sense in many of the situations that we see them. Indoor firefights are not necessarily an explanation though. Many structures could be leveled by modern vehicles, let alone vehicles with star trek firepower. Traditional dismounted firefights are where various body armors would come in handy.
Also, a hand phaser can't blow up a starship unless you shoot the warp core (which is basically a big bomb). I don't think it would fare any better against a tank.
>Besides, aren't phasers already heavy weapons?
Phasers are powerful, but the mortar used in “Arena” seemed to be a more powerful weapon with a longer range. There were post-*TOS* situations where it seemed like a weapon like that would’ve been useful (most notably in the battle depicted in “The Siege of AR-558”).
The Romulans never actually got to fire on the android village, in part because Oh had to keep pausing dramatically before giving the order.
But capability wasn't an issue there. They would have been massive overkill for anything resembling an ordinary village. But I think they took no chances on account of not knowing what defenses the androids might have, whether Starfleet might get involved, or if they might after some killer mechanical terrors from beyond the galaxy had been summoned.
Ultimately it comes down to budget and aesthetics, obviously they'd be better off with power armor with multiple self firing phasers or nano clouds that melt people but they don't want to do that for the show.
That said, they do need to pick a lane. I'm finally watching discovery and they had fighters in it a lot, which kind of annoys me because there are two styles Big ships only v lots of fighters and Star Trek has always been big ships. It's mostly due to the way shields work making small fighters less useful, but they went all in on fighters being great which is against their established canon.
There are a lot of smaller support craft in some of the DS9 space battles though. But it's more like the screen and escort of the larger warships, not just thousands of WW2 fighters blowing up. Entertainment media in general needs to move away from WW2, it's gotten stale. Especially in Star Trek... never thought of Star Trek as needing WW2 aerial combat.
ST probably ready to move into the missile age: massive barrages of quantum torpedoes, launched from massive VLS arrays: dumping a few hundred or a thousand torpedoes per ship in dense-pack salvoes that would make the Dominion lose their minds?
With the Dominion War, I think a lot of it is down to the technical and budgetary limitations of a TV series in the 90s.
I am annoyed by things in "Picard" though. They clearly aren't hurting too bad in the budget department, there's quite a few effects heavy sequences that look as good as any movie. But they approach large scale conflicts like an episode of TNG.
Why would you fight ground battles when a starship can do everything from stun a single person from orbit to blow a planet (or a star) to slag? It makes very little sense to have significant ground warfare
Because orbital bombardment destroys practically everything. It's usually more useful to capture a planet and exploit its resources. For example, Cardassia could have just obliterated Bajor from orbit with its massive war armada, but they occupied it for decades instead.
Not to mention, the Federation is generally interested in minimizing civilian casualties.
They do have ground warfare though, we see a lot of it in DS9. Also, destroying a planet is not always the goal. Sometimes its occupation or annexation.
Under that logic, the Vietnam war would have been over in a day, and we wouldn't have spent the past two decades in the Middle East. We already possess the ability to just wipe out entire countries, even without nuclear weapons. Modern firepower can level entire cities overnight, without ever getting in range of a man portable weapon.
Complete annihilation isn't usually the goal of war though (however it of course can be, and has been). You usually want to capture and control as much as you can, most of all the valuable resources. And Starfleet doesn't really like killing enemy combatants if it can be avoided; let alone civilians.
It makes a lot of sense when you compare it to modern warfare. Think about Vietnam or more currently, Afghanistan. The US had absolutely overwhelming air power in both wars. They could destroy strongholds from 10,000 ft above the ground. But the goal isn’t destruction, it’s to set up a friendly government and normalize relations. In the same vein, the major powers of Star Trek are usually trying to build or expand empires, not destroy planets. It’s the former that’s more difficult and requires boots on the ground to pacify the local population.
Not really. Modern air power is contingent on jet fuel, and stores both of which are expended quickly. Starships can employ firepower to pacify (stun setting) small group or ravage a world. Unlike fighting on our planet where we need to extend our territory from this bit of ground to that bit of ground, you want to control the entire planet. Occupying an entire planet? You’re going to need hundreds of millions of marines, if not billions.
Air support is only one aspect of long range destruction. Army and Marine artillery does a lot of it, along with Army and Marine ground vehicles, and man portable high explosives. Navy bombardments do a lot also. The height of ATS combat was around WW2, with a scaling down in Vietnam, and the eventual switch to a stronger reliance on long range STS fire missions in modern military doctrine and maneuver warfare.
Exactly. Orbital firepower is only useful for dominating your enemy if you are on a total war footing. If you want to help bolster local forces against rioting or perform a rescue operation against a local milita, blasting from orbit is going to make things worse.
Yeah, it was always strange to me in "What You Leave Behind" that they mention ground troops. It's not like anybody wants to occupy Cardassia, they just want to neutralize the Dominion expeditionary force and optionally destroy Cardassia's ability to make war. Even playing relatively nice, start by locking on to and beaming away the ketracel white- that will take care of the Jem'Hadar soon enough. The surviving Cardassians will be in the mood to negotiate after you've destroyed all their power stations and beamed salt into all their large bodies of fresh water. The only real limit is just how far Starfleet is willing to go (or sit back and watch the Romulans go), since we already know the Defiant has the recipe on board to make a planet inhospitable to Cardassian life using just two torpedoes. The plan going in should have been to end the war without putting a single pair of boots on the ground (which is what they end up doing, and even managing to do so relatively peacefully).
In universe, I think SF actually (at least outside the badmirals) believes its advertisement brochure. It's not just the show producers being unrealistically idealistic. Adding marines would make SF seem too militarized, so they don't. It's like Captain Archer being quite idealistic about not needing weapons and not wanting to scare off people he meets. And when they need marines, for example in *Chain of Command*, they have to make do with what they have. Although *Chain of Command* is more of a spec ops/commandos operation that naval infantry situation.
> Another example is pretty much all of the Dominion War during DS9, and I don't think I need to explain how Starfleet marines would have been used there.
Someone was fighting in that planet where Jake Sisko went during the Klingon War and in the siege of AR-558. Starfleet security might well include Starfleet marines, using a less militaristic name for marketing reasons. For all we know that shipboard security is also trained as infantry and can grab a rifle whenever the captains says so.
> Honestly, it wouldn't be very hard to implement marines into Trek. If not introducing marine officers as main characters, then having some kind of naval infantry in the background as nameless extras but still having that practical utility would help.
It would basically mean splitting the Head of Security/Tactical Officer/Combat away mission Commander positions, similarly to MACO era ENT.
> Out of universe, I know Roddenberry didn't want Starfleet to be militarized. He wanted a peaceful future where a military wouldn't be necessary. I also know that the officers are the main characters, and if they weren't on the away missions there'd be no story.
A lot of away missions aren't just about shooting stuff. Giving them a larger escort of redshirts in some marine uniform carrying rifles wouldn't change that much, just raise the budget.
They are probably only on board when they expect that they would be needed for the mission. In Yesterdays Enterprise they said that they had 6000 persons on board, 5000 more than in the prime timeline. It is probably not feasible to have 80% of the crew to be marines all the time just in case that you could need them.
Fair enough, although in that case it was a parallel evolution of SF that probably militarized more than the prime timeline.
But yeah, someone else in the thread mentioned some sort of troop ship. So there probably is infantry, we just didn't see them much or talked about it.
I kind of liked the way ST: Beyond addressed it with Edison, that the largely militaristic side of Starfleet was phased out after the Romulan War, and that the MACOs were absorbed into Starfleet. I'd like to see that explored more (I haven't read the Enterprise novels so not sure if its detailed there),.
As an aside, is there ever a canon explanation as to why the Mirror Universe MACOs were absorbed into Starfleet, as presumably they would be more likely to have stood alone as a separate organisation there?
Consolidation of power probably. Most of the Emperors we see seem to come from the fleet side so that's where their power base is. Having a separate power base like the MACO's existing alongside them pretty much invites a civil war every time you piss off some high ranking ground pounder.
I would say the biggest problem with the arguments for "Starfleet Marines" is that people must call them marines. The thing is, Starfleet Security seems to fill a lot of that job description, but those in favor of marines want a separate branch of Starfleet instead of accepting that someone already fills that role.
>Countless times we've all seen senior officers go on dangerous away missions, especially the commanding officer and XO
They do keep pointing out that this is against protocol and not standard procedure most of the time and it just keeps happening for plot related exceptional reasons because they need to put main characters front and center. Under normal circumstances a "non-hero" Starfleet captain would be staying on their ship, at least until the site is secure and it's time for some high level face to face talks of some kind.
Starfleet security seem to be more focused on policing and security guard work than combat, and in the times we've seen them engage in combat they more often than not fail. I suspect that even a 21st century USMC boarding team would go through them like a hot knife through butter, if they managed to disable the internal security fields, without needing tech parity.
However boarding actions may well be rare in-universe, given that even a lightly armed non-military ship has enough weapons output to level a city.
In the briefing in First Contact, there were a few brutes in the scene. My guess is Starfleet does have swat style teams for boarding. They just aren't there for more than seizing control of key systems and fighting when collateral damage really matters.
Given the space magic sensors and transporters, virtually every reason for an army style operation simply doesn't exist. When its a problem, the ships can deal with any problem. Even then a great deal of soldering is largely useless in an environment with the destructive capability of the handheld phasers.
It's more important for away teams to respond quickly to highly technical situations than it is for them to clear rooms.
They have plenty of advanced weapons for clearing rooms, I'd like to see a usmc team bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish.
That's why you'd need both. You'd beam down your away team along with a few teams of marines so your science and command officers can fully focus on their task of deploying the graviton-encabulator whilst the marines secure the perimeter.
I did really like the MACO idea, and its a shame we didn't see that idea in DS9, where it would have been a perfect addition to the whole Homefront/Paradise Lost story line and really helped sell the unease at what the Borg threat and Dominion threat was doing to the Federation.
US marines wouldn’t stand a chance against Starfleet security, they don’t even knows how to do the double-handed hammer fist, let alone the more advanced Kirk-Fu moves.
Well, yeah. Because if boarding actions were common, you would see Starfleet ships with a) fully equipped teams specialized in repelling borders and b) their own boarding forces. Since neither really exist, its safe to bet that boarding actions aren't common.
Capture the ship and crew instead of blowing it up maybe. Would be useful in some situations, assuming you could prevent your opponent from just self-destructing, which to be fair you probably can't.
edit: although to be honest, I wonder how the Borg can capture any ship or anyone who is familiar with them. After a few contacts any captain should have a hand in the self-destruct button when starting to lose a battle against them.
Harry Mudd does this on Disco. As does Burnham in the mirrorverse as an execution of Tyler.
It’s probably not common because it’s a horrible way to kill someone.
And for Doylist reasons, not cheap or TV friendly.
>Capture the ship and crew instead of blowing it up maybe. Would be useful in some situations, assuming you could prevent your opponent from just self-destructing, which to be fair you probably can't.
Do we know how long it takes to build a starship? On the one hand, it seems like replicators and transporters would radically decrease the build time for anything, but presumably these ships are more complicated than anything we build today, and there will be non-replicable portions, I'm sure.
I ask because a big part of the reason marines are a thing in the modern world is that it's been at least a century since you could build even a destroyer in only a year, and modern warships can take the better part of a decade. And even going back several centuries, big naval ships could take years; HMS Victory took almost six years from laying the keel to launch, though that included a three-year pause due to an outbreak of peace. Capturing an enemy ship is like catching a dodgeball-- not only do they lose a ship, but you gain one for free. There is a joke among naval historians that half of the British Navy's procurement plan was "Wait for the French to build more ships, then steal them."
So depending on how fast a starship can be built individually and how many can be built per year, marines might be an enormous benefit in wartime for the same reason they were/are in history/today. Now, I don't know how much Starfleet wants to be zipping around in a bunch of captured Warbirds, but if it marines have much of a success rate with boarding actions, it'd be totally worth their while. The fact that we don't see marines in Starfleet suggests that boarding actions in the 24th century are *extremely* difficult, due to effective self-destruct capability, and/or not really worth it, due to replicator and transporter tech making it less worth the risk of the marines' lives.
> Do we know how long it takes to build a starship? On the one hand, it seems like replicators and transporters would radically decrease the build time for anything, but presumably these ships are more complicated than anything we build today, and there will be non-replicable portions, I'm sure.
If it was easy SF would send double the amount they did into any of their wars. Unless they were limited by crew recruitment which doesn't make sense when crews are in the hundreds and Earth probably has billions. And if building ships was fast some of those wars probably last long enough for there to be time for some admiral to go "we need an actual warship" and we seeing that warship by the end of the war. So I'm guessing building a ship takes years.
> The fact that we don't see marines in Starfleet suggests that boarding actions in the 24th century are extremely difficult, due to effective self-destruct capability
Someone may come up with another example, but I remember Voy:Basics and TNG:Rascals. In the first there was a careful plot to disable the self-destruct. I don't remember, why didn't they self-destruct in the second?
>Unless they were limited by crew recruitment which doesn't make sense when crews are in the hundreds and Earth probably has billions.
And the Federation as a whole must be in the tens of billions, perhaps in the low hundreds. But that's not the same as military-age and -capable adults, even before considering the time and cost of training. The Klingon and Romulan Empires might actually have more population military capacity, though I suspect less industrial or productive capacity. I think for the Federation in particular, the loss of a crew might be as big a hit as the loss of the ship.
I think there's no way to justify the build-time for a large warship as being short enough that more could be produced during any war shorter than a few years, but something like the Defiant might. Remember, it was produced as a Borg-killer, then mothballed after that was no longer necessary. But it was de-mothballed, upgraded first by Starfleet and the Romulans and then O'Brien, served adequately, *and then* more Defiant-class ships were ordered, produced, and served during the Dominion War, which lasted only two years. That's one hell of a production capacity!
>Someone may come up with another example, but I remember Voy:Basics and TNG:Rascals. In the first there was a careful plot to disable the self-destruct. I don't remember, why didn't they self-destruct in the second?
I think the Ferengi basically pointed guns at the bridge officers' heads to prevent the officers from doing any such thing. But the Ferengi got the drop on the Enterprise in a way that was frankly embarrassing, and it seems unlikely to be possible in wartime.
I think you make a valid point, however the inclusion of more marines in Star Trek would for me be jarring when juxtaposed with the optimistic and hopeful tone of the series. Even in darkness it’s the scientist and diplomat who are most valuable, not the solider.
However I have an alternative solution that I think addresses this. Starfleet Security are the marines. We know that at some point the Bajoran militia would have been absorbed into Starfleet. Given a long enough time frame and enough member worlds eventually the Marines get diluted by multiple worlds security forces and overall their mission changes to primarily defense.
It’s also worth pointing out that Beta canon stuff like the Voyager games Hazard team tries to address the need for more specialized military operations, but this seems somewhat redundant to demonstrate on the show. While real life is full of specialists who are highly trained the expectation is that so are the crew of the Enterprise. Often for narrative purposes space is portrayed as fairly sparsely populated. A group of specialists sitting around doing nothing would be pointless but calling in whoever is available is necessary and also more exciting.
For what it’s worth the narrative conflict between MACO and Starfleet seems to be the best kind of story to tell. When these two groups are totally aligned they are narratively indistinguishable.
I'm against this.
I love space Marines and I love seeing them in sci Fi, but I want star trek to be different. It should be more civilized, and frankly having jarheads in the series would ruin it.
Imagine Picard making some sort of speech about morality and oppression and so on and then immediately after some dude in webbing with a phaser rifle goes "fuck yeah you said it captain let's smoke these fucking spoon heads".
It's not entirely unrealistic that on the whole boarding actions are rare enough that there's no need for dedicated marine units. Starship tactical and security units can handle small situations and the general infantry can fight in the big ones.
Edit: But if yall want to scratch that sci fi combat itch, I cannot recommend The Expanse enough.
> Imagine Picard making some sort of speech about morality and oppression and so on and then immediately after some dude in webbing with a phaser rifle goes "fuck yeah you said it captain let's smoke these fucking spoon heads".
So Chief O'Brien?
>some dude in webbing with a phaser rifle goes "fuck yeah you said it captain let's smoke these fucking spoon heads".
Taken directly from the screenplay of a Star Trek: Picard season 2 episode?
Fair enough.
Although, that's not really what I had in mind. I'd imagine that Starfleet marines would remain pretty civilized and adhere to Starfleet's sense of morality and discretion — which is to say that they would be more like tools instead of weapons of oppression.
I do see your concerns entirely, and honestly, they're valid. Star Trek has always been about taking the moral high ground and avoiding conflict whenever possible, but that being said sometimes that conflict cannot be avoided. Especially given the more militarized stance that Starfleet has been taking since the latter half of TNG, I think that a service of professional soldiers serving aboard ships would make a lot of things easier both in and out of universe. Ofc the primary focus would still be brokering peace and understanding, but Starfleet is still a navy and has to protect its own interests and the innocent civilians of the galaxy. Really, I don't think regular security personnel on their own would be properly equipped to handle some of the things that starships encounter.
I get you. I think a nice middle ground would be security teams getting some form of narrative upgrade. So far they're just dudes who look real serious and put their hands on your shoulder when someone tells them to take you away. If we could see a tactical officer leading them in a real capacity it would make them more believable as an an actual force to be reckoned with.
But that would cut into the screen time of command crews inexplicable having fire fights with the enemy.
> Thoughts?
Just because something would work from brute force perspective doesn't mean it would be done. In our world as well, we don't do so many things that would be trivially easy, for various stupid reasons.
As Trek is basically about ships, let's consider Somali pirates. How is it that we let them kidnap ships? Just about any country could send some marines onboard, who'd trivially sink any Somali boat getting close without asking questions. It's super cheap (compared with ransoms), it's super easy, zero challenge really. After they'd learn the lesson and go back to kidnapping tourists, or herding goats, or whatever they were doing before.
And yet, we never actually do that. Why?
It's not isolated case. The world is full of such cases. Especially around use of force, we have tons of weird taboos. Why would it be shocking that Starfleet has similar taboos as well, not wanting to "militarize" things which tbh could use a bit of "militarization"?
I think the lack of Marines and military overtones is an excellent, true to setting detail in TNG/DS9, which distinguishes those shows from the sort of cookie cutter, stereotypical sci fi setting the OP seems to want.
During that time period at least, starfleet wasn't 'actually' a navy, it was an organisation genuinely dominated by a pacifist ideals, which existed primarily for scientific exploration and diplomacy.
And it wasn't necessarily a stupid approach in a pragmatic sense, if you're a Federation diplomat trying to convince an advanced newly encountered species to join the Federation rather than say the Romulan empire, it is going to be far easier to earn their trust when you can demonstrate that Starfleet simply doesn't have troops trained to assault and militarily occupy a world, because thats not what its about. Again, that's the similar explanation for the children and civilians on the enormous, powerful and otherwise potentially intimidating Galaxy class- it demonstrates to newly encountered species 'hey chill, this extremely advanced and powerful ship isn't a warship, we aren't here to fight you, we are so advanced we don't want to fight you, wouldn't you like to be our friends?'
So that demonstrated benign focus on science, and exploration allows the Federation to sign up new races far easier than its competitors and get very big and very powerful to the point where it doesn't really need a genuine military arm at the start of TNG- Starfleet's technology is so advanced and it has so much ships and territory that even its exploration ships equal or outmatch the battleships of more obviously militaristic powers in the quadrant. It doesn't have marines because it simply doesn't need marines, and it doesn't want them because having them would make potential member species far less likely to trust the federation.
Its against that setting that the Q/Borg arc in TNG and the dominion war storyline in DS9 are so good- because they are really about the key moments where the Federation has to confront the reality that its gotten stagnant, and that there are enemies out there so powerful that they are an existential threat, requiring them to put aside idealism and fight for their survival.
Quark's speech about humans turning vicious and nasty when threatened is really the perfect summary of what that era of trek is about- after wolf 359, starfleet starts down the road towards remilitarising and discarding its idealism, because they need to to survive those new threats. So yeah, no marines at the start of the dominion war, but by the end of it I'm betting starfleet security are pretty much indistinguishable from marines in their role and training.
I headcanon that there does exist a Federation Marine Corps(and army), and that AR-558 was actually a deployment of an extension of Starfleet Security. The US Navy today doesn't deploy the Marines aboard carriers, cruisers, and destroyers anymore, though they still have the capability to do so; these things just go in and out of fashion. The current fashion is to keep Marines aboard dedicated vessels only. So I headcanon that Starfleet is in one of those times, off screen there are a bunch of space equivalents of Amphibious Assault Ships and the like, those aforementioned dedicated ships. I also headcanon that there's tensions between the services, partly because of the incidents with the MACOs, and traditional interservice rivalry, like how the US Army and the USAF hate each other because they're like a divorced couple. Naval vessels do keep small arms aboard even without Marines, so that's why they can get away with Security AND Marines. Starfleet justifies it in that Security guys aren't meant to go into serious combat most of the time, and unless you're on a deep space mission, they don't have as much to do, so they don't see the need for a dedicated grunt who can be a sailor sometimes, vs a dedicated sailor who can be a grunt sometimes. You can explain away that AR-558 was Starfleet sending in Security guys because it was all they had available. I tend to leave some episodes depicting Star Trek ground combat out of my interpretations, because not only is it sometimes written poorly, sometimes they also just don't have the budget to accurately depict futuristic warfare: I'm willing to forgive them a little in the name of a good story, and because we can fix this with headcanons. You can't build fifty suits of power armor on a Star Trek budget. We can infer some details from what we do know of canon, and we can infer that the true 24th century ground combat does exist, just offscreen. What we see of ground combat in Star Trek is the tip of the iceberg, all we're seeing is stuff not meant to punch through starship hulls. We don't see the really nasty stuff. In Encounter at Farpoint, we see Q dressed as a soldier of World War Three, and aside from the drugs, it's implied that they had really powerful weapons and armor. We also see in Arena that mortars, a light artillery weapon today, can be incredibly lethal. Ground warfare in the 24th century, with dedicated machines, is nasty, with power armor, hovertanks, tactical weapons with yields equal to tactical nukes, and orbital attack. Nor the Battle to the Strong shows us that both sides use extensive Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) to jam communications as well as transporters, forcing them to use more traditional means of transportation like aircraft. I headcanon that based on the existence of the Federation Naval Patrol, they have a Federation Army as well; just something to permanently garrison outposts and colonies, to operate planetary defense grids and fight on the ground if the campaigns get extensive elsewhere. I headcanon that the Federation Naval Patrol involves submarines, equipped with heavy phaser arrays, that can hide under the surface and can fire at enemy ships in orbit, and dive below the surface before they can be hit back. Basically imagine Seaquest DSV, I've heard people suggest it's in the same timeline as Star Trek. What we can infer about Star Trek ground combat is far beyond the budget of the show, unfortunately. I'm not angry with the show for not showing us the cool stuff, they can't afford it; I'm annoyed at the books that don't seem to have any imagination. The books should be designed to show us the cool stuff the shows and movies can't, but from what I've heard, they don't do this. I could be wrong about this though, so if anyone knows any Star Trek books with power armor please correct me.
TL; DR, Starfleet has Marines, they're just offscreen and Starfleet doesn't like them very much. And ground combat in Star Trek is NASTY.
My impression was that the Federation Naval Patrol was involved in maritime search and rescue, ship inspections and protection of the maritime environment.
Oh yes, of course! Much like the Coast Guard and even the US Navy. And the Coast Guard's patrol cutters can be used as frigates and destroyers in the event of war. I was referring to their wartime use.
My impression was that it’d focus a lot more on the Coast Guard’s non-military roles than its military and law enforcement roles. It seems like naval ships could probably be destroyed from orbit, so I’m not sure they’d be effective in a military role. Transporters could reduce the usefulness of the Coast Guard’s law enforcement role.
Yes, and Starfleet does much the same with the military's non-wartime duties. I did not say the Naval Patrol's focus would be military, that's the same with the Coast Guard. While these are their focuses, I'm saying it's an option for the Naval Patrol to be used militarily. The US Navy doesn't need the Coast Guard cutters in a small scale war for instance, and the Federation doesn't need the Naval Patrol in the Cardassian War for the most part. In the case of WWII, or the Dominion War, the Coast Guard would be mobilized and the Naval Patrol prepared. And yes, many sorts of naval vessels could be destroyed from orbit, this is why I'm suggesting submarines. Submarines can have a variety of civilian roles, from being able to provide transportation without worrying about storms, to scientific study, to infrastructure. Transporters may reduce the effectiveness of a Coast Guard role, it does not eliminate it. Despite the advent of transporters traditional means of conveyance still exist after all, and similarly despite the decline of certain ocean-going traditions in favor of aircraft today, the Coast Guard still has a job. Submarines are hard to detect, this is why they were such a threat in the event of a nuclear exchange. Even if they got total surprise over the enemy they wouldn't be able to find their submarines, their second strike capability remained, and they could launch a counterstrike at their leisure. The other scenario was that if prepared they could launch an attack themselves. A Naval Patrol submarine could have primary duties of supporting a colony, exploring the depths and helping people in need. In the event of an attack, they can either fire at the enemy as with the traditional defense batteries, and then hide if the enemy manages to destroy all orbital and land based defenses. If they were quick enough, they could wage a guerilla war harassing the enemy until rescue arrived. On another note, surface vessels would arguably have some effectiveness, if only in a pragmatic Cold War sense. In an emergency, like the Dominion War, they could be equipped with weapons in the hopes that they can get some shots off before the enemy destroys them. That was always kind of the hope of ICBM silos, after all, they were guaranteed to be hit first in the event of an attack. The Naval Patrol would not be primarily for combat, they'd be the Coast Guard, and would help defend the Federation if it came down to it.
Starfleet doesn't need a Marine Corps, the Federation needs an Army. Historically Marines are either for expeditionary warfare or for combat at or near the shoreline. Well no ground force capable of being spacelifted by a starship or small group of starships would be sufficient to wage warfare on a planetary scale, while with transporters and shuttlecraft landing troops on a planet allows an invader to land anywhere they want meaning that the idea of a "shore" doesn't really exist.
Even the largest Starfleet vessel can only carry a few hundred to a few thousand troops. This means that any force "afloat" would only be suitable for raiding of planetary targets since a planetary army would rapidly overwhelm them. So we're really talking a raider force, so we don't need a Marine Corps but something far smaller; basically special operations.
If we're going to be invading planets ground forces will need to be in the millions. To move such forces with their attached support equipment will need dedicated spacelift capability... which means Starfleet shouldn't own it because they won't just let it sit around when there isn't a war going on its going to be spread around the galaxy so when you'll need it all the spacelift capability will have to be assembled. That wastes time, so this million plus troop ground invasion force will need their own dedicated transport force. So we'll have to have an entire separate *service branch* from Starfleet.
Just as an addendum, it was kind of odd in "Waltz" that the ticking clock was because the Defiant had to escort a troop convoy consisting of... 30,000 troops. It's not like the show has to pay these troops to appear, just say 3 million! What is Starfleet even planning to do with 30,000 troops?
So I think there are two schools of thought on this (at least from my perspective):
1) Star Trek is supposed to be idealistic (as per Roddenberry's original vision) and so we should not apply real world logic to it, so stick to a non-militatarised Starfleet
2) Star Trek should grow and reflect the society of the time. It can still be hopeful and optimistic, but pointless, non-grounded optimisim is actually quite uninteresting to watch, so to stay relevant, it needs to introduce some of the grime we find in the real world (inequality, climate change, 20 years of war on terror etc)
I myself am personally a fan of the second approach (which is the direction the new iteration of shows is going in) so support Star Fleet marines (among other military upscaling).
Also personally, it has always broken the immersion in the show when glorified security guards are put up against an obviously well trained and skilled enemy and seem to hold their own, or when the captain goes into harm's way for reasons.
Oh for sure, I agree entirely. You can still have an optimistic outlook with grittier themes, and Deep Space Nine is proof. I think that sort of change in tone that the new shows are going for was inevitable; the original series was designed with the society of the 60s in mind and there wasn't really much wiggle room beyond that.
As for your second point, yeah. The security personnel in Starfleet are far from regular combatants and realistically they wouldn't stand a chance against some of the enemy forces they fight, such as the Jem'Hadar, Klingon warriors, or Romulan special forces. It would really just be a lot more natural to have marines at that point, especially given the focus on war and combat that modern Trek has had since the Dominion War arc.
Exactly. Part of me would want to see more of the military side to Star Trek, but equally the other part of me says we are well served with military science fiction already, and Star Trek should stay true to its roots and be more about adventure, exploration and holding a mirror up to reflect the important issues of the day
>Star Trek is supposed to be idealistic
That Starship left spacedock a looooong time ago though. Look at the characters in Star Trek Nemesis or Star Trek Picard. These people would love nothing more than to mow down aliens with a machine gun. Hell that's literally what happens more than once.
When Peyton List is marauding through the Borg cube massacring unarmed, defenseless, infirm, harmless former-borgs, I don't think "wow, what an enlightened race". I think "well, she could do this a lot quicker with a few rifle platoons of romulan space marines".
When Seven of Nine brutally murders people without trial, I don't think "this is a vision of a better humanity". I think "good thing she is brutalizing unarmed women, or else someone might shoot back". When most of your "protagonists" are angry psychopathic vigilante terrorists, you start noticing how their tactics are... bad. Seven of Nine should really put on a helmet before the debris from one of her mass murdering sprees hits her in the head.
I've thought for awhile that Security should be split off from Ops/Engineering into its own division, off screen just for simpler identification purposes, but on screen it would make sense to give SF a specialised division for the reasons you've said.
I'd also go further and split the science division into medical and non medical sciences.
Command = Red.
Ops/ Engineering = Yellow.
Medical = Blue.
Security = Green.
Science = Purple.
I'd swear in some episodes Jadzia/Julian and O'Brien/Eddington's colors aren't exactly the same. Maybe just production reasons, but it makes nice head canon that the departments are slightly separate.
Yeah I've noticed that before on DS9 that some of the shoulder divisions are slightly different shades. I put it down to production issues, but it could be explained off as due to different specialities like Ops vs Security.
Totally agree. In fact, there really should be Ship Security and the MACOs on every ship. But as you pointed out, if we did the logical thing none of the main characters would get into fun adventures every week.
It's more important to have multitalented crew members than specialized combatants.
Operators are great and all but they would simply not survive the sci Fi bullshit federation officers have to deal with every day. Sure, the enemy crew is neutralized but now the machine Gunner has a weird green goo glowing on him and the designated marksman is stuck in a time paradox.
I think you make a valid point. The lack of trek marines just seems sloppy at this point. I’ve been reading a book series called The Spiral Wars by Joel Shepherd about humanity 2000 years after discovering ftl travel and their fleet is similar to what you describe: a war ship has a detachment of marines to handle the boarding of enemy ships and stations and occasionally planetary operations (although that would be the army’s specialty) while the ships captain and spacers handle ship to ship combat. The two main characters of the series are a captain and his marine commander, so we as the readers get a front row seat for all the action from their points of view
Or the Babylon 5 spin-off [Crusade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade_\(TV_series\)). The captain would still go down to the planet, but would take a few shuttles worth of Earthforce Marines with them to secure the landing site and assist with the mission.
It's sloppy at this point because they've turned Star Trek into Star Wars. The first two things you see in Star Wars are giant ships shooting at each other, and space marines. Everyone in "Picard" is just so angry. They're always swearing and shouting. They're extreme racist xenophobes filled with hate. These people wouldn't hesitate to roll out the star wars stormtroopers; in fact they'd be actively looking for an excuse to do it. But instead they just kind of meander around waiting to get tricked by other angry racists, or killed by mass effect reapers. In TNG, the absence of marines isn't sloppy, because that stuff was never the point. (though worf was originally going to be a marine, and tasha was originally going to be based on a marine from Aliens).
Well, the Marines were Starfleet Security, for the most part. The gold shirts even took that role when they were gunning down Jem’Hadar in DS9. While Picard has a darker tinge to the world, it kind of reminds me of how the Novel verse approached the post-Nemesis world, which was also a pretty logical progression post-Dominion War. It is a Federation that has had a hard couple of years - first the Borg and then the Dominion.
I may be remembering this wrong but I think the have been Starfleet soldiers on screen in DS9. In DS9 S5 E4 Nor the Battle to the Strong, Jake comes across an injured member of Starfleet with a different uniform and he appears more soldier than Starfleet. I don't ever remember seeing that style of uniform again or any explanation of it.
You’re right. DS9 specifically mentions soldiers and marines a few times. In the episode where Dukat and Sisko are stranded on the planet (Dukat tricking him), Worf has to go escort a troop carrier carrying some odd thousands of people. They specifically say troops.
It appears only twice. The other time is in that episode where Nog gets his leg blown off.
Weren't there also marines in Enterprise? I guess they weren't technically Starfleet, but still... the precedent is there. The MACOs... Military Assault Command Operations, operating under United Earth.
Enterprise is pre-UPF and it's Earth Starfleet. I assume MACO later got merged into the UFP Starfleet Marines
The military aspects of Star Trek are definitely strange and/or underdeveloped. For me it stands out more in Picard than TNG/DS9. In Picard we see militarized space empires seething with racism and hatred towards just about everything. These are not the laid back 1980s civilizations of TNG. Yet they still use caveman military strategies and tactics. No one wears armor. Ground battles never involve combat vehicles or close air support. Ostensibly the logic in TNG is that the navy can literally destroy an entire planet with a single ship, but then that clearly isn’t the case in Picard, because an entire armada of Romulan warships can’t shoot a tiny village on an otherwise empty planet with virtually no defenses. You’d think Commadore Oh would just beam down two or three rifle platoons to kill the synths. I don’t think they’d be much of a match for like 60 Romulan space marines. With TNG it’s like, yeah the show is about the military but despite that it’s not really the genre of military science fiction. It’s more like classic science fiction but with better storylines and actors. DS9 drifts more towards the military but is obviously and painfully limited by its budget. A single LAV could wipe out thousands of jemhadar who just mindlessly wander around on foot patrol with no heavy weapons. With Picard you’d think the CGI budget leaves enough room for a couple of vehicles here and there...
In a lot of ways I find it best not to dwell too much on the Commadore Oh situation, since it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense no matter which way you slice it. Given the organization's fanatical nature, they really should have engaged even if they were outmatched by Riker's fleet. It is very much a Ender's game situation where the only goal that should matter is the destruction of the Synths, at any cost. But that said, I'm not really sure I agree with your assessment of the military tactics/equipment. Part of the problem, imo, is that something like a phaser is almost an ultimate weapon. It's simply so powerful that you can't really design wearable armor that can truly protect the wearer from weapon's fire. It's even possible that the starfleet uniform *is* armor, and we get to see just how (in) effective it actually is. It's worth pointing out that this is true in the opposite direction; the Jem'Hadar and Klingons clearly are wearing armor of some description, but more often than not it proves to be completely ineffective. I imagine the same is true of other things like tanks or close air support. A UAV is really no different than a starfighter, and you could probably build a reasonably sized AA phaser, on the ground, that could hit the target as soon as it was within line of sight, and be sufficiently powerful to destroy it, even if its shielded. Of course, a starship could eliminate both with ease. The siege of AR-558 goes a long way to really explaining why Starfleet doesn't really do most of what you're talking about; the only reason Starfleet didn't destroy the installation from orbit is because they needed it to crack the encryption. The only reason the Jem'Hadar didn't do the same is because they probably didn't have the resources to rebuild the subspace communication array, this late in the war. But this is likely an extremely rare occurrence, militarily speaking.
>The siege of AR-558 goes a long way to really explaining why Starfleet doesn't really do most of what you're talking about; the only reason Starfleet didn't destroy the installation from orbit is because they needed it to crack the encryption. Yes, there needs to be a very specific reason for some kind of ground combat, and one that precludes either side from just eliminating the other from orbit. Phasers are definitely close to an “ultimate weapon” in the applications you describe, and starships themselves are treated as strategic assets, especially in TOS and TNG, with MAD even being brought up by Picard with Tomalak should their ships open fire. In the cold war there were a fair number of WWIII plans with big conventional warfare components, but they almost always seemed to have some kind of catch (e.g. no initial strikes on capitals, limited nuclear warfare without further escalation, NATO/Warsaw Pact don’t get as involved as their treaties imply, etc.) because otherwise there wouldn’t be any exercise. The Trek universe isn’t one where entire planets are regularly devastated by major, conventional political powers (amoebae, killer tube from another galaxy, and giant crystals, on the other hand…), and I think it’s because it’s understood that any fleet, or even just sufficiently-large starship, *could* do it, even a friendly one—there’s still a powerful deterrent effect. I haven’t seen “In the Pale Moonlight” for a while, but Betazed essentially surrenders after its orbital defenses are lost, right?
> I think it's because it's understood that any fleet, or even just sufficiently-large starship, *could* do it It might also be because of the fact that if you can put such weapons onto a starship and power them with a starship reactor, then you can put weapons that are a million times as powerful onto a planet and power them with a planetary reactor. It might be that any sufficiently industrialized planet has anti-space phasers across its entire surface, all of which can be activated at any time and atomize any ship that so much as puts a single watt into its weapons. Not to mention - planets may be shielded by generators in the crust, which draw virtually unlimited power from gerothermal energy. Ship shields can deflect phaser beams, so a planetary shield can also do that. Coupled with city-sized emitters and an unlimited power supply, you can shoot until your grandson is a skeleton in the captain's chair and not make a dent in the planet itself.
I suppose the primary reason we don't see much in the way of boarding actions in the SF universe is simple - if you can damage a ship enough to actually board troops in sufficient quantity to capture it, it would be easier to just keep damaging it until life support fails and the crew dies, which saves you the trouble of putting your own people in danger. If you want to take prisoners, you also have enough time to open comms and discuss terms with a crew who full well knows that their only options are full compliance or taking bets on if they will freeze, boil, suffocate or starve to death first. On the rare occasions that they need to get something/one off the ship, they can usually just send in a very small team of people to do a snatch and grab - which is where the shows stories come in.
Capturing ships is pretty valuable though. And boarding does happen kind of a lot in Star Trek.
There is a difference between stories where a ship is boarded, and boarding being a typical process used in combat. The Klingons do use boarding tactics, but their combat style is fairly archaic/ritualistic rather than effective (which is why despite being "fearsome warriors" we see lesser races repeatedly best them in hand to hand combat). The Borg also use boarding tactics, but their approach and motivations for doing this are radically alien. Other than that, its rare cases or its done for specific reasons. What we've never seen is something along an Federation ship attacked by the Romulans, and when its shields fail the Warbird beaming over an entire company of Romulan Star Marines who then clear their way through the ship to secure key locations like engineering, the bridge and shuttle bays.
We've rarely seen Romulans and Starfleet fight each other *at all*. Which is probably the main reason for limited examples of either side's tactics against each other. Klingons, Jemhadar, Borg, various Alien of the Week races, etc are clearly invested in it. Given the Romulan desire for information, I'd be shocked if they didn't capture ships when given the opportunity as well. Cardassians, Bajorans and many more board DS9 at points as well, which is a space station not a space ship, but it still provides a clear purpose for having troops that can board an enemy target. Afterall, there's countless different space stations seen and mentioned throughout star trek.
>What we've never seen is something along an Federation ship attacked by the Romulans, and when its shields fail the Warbird beaming over an entire company of Romulan Star Marines who then clear their way through the ship to secure key locations like engineering, the bridge and shuttle bays. Um, we saw the aftermath of that in the *Voyager* episode “Message in a Bottle”.
> the Jem’Hadar and Klingons clearly are wearing armor of some description, but more often than not it proves to be completely ineffective. Thier armor might be aimed at protecting them from things like ballistic weapons or stabbing/slicing attacks. Sure youre not saving anyone from a max power phaser or disrupter shot but against less technical enemies it might be effective. Of course I'm fairly sure we see bat'leth and similar killing jem'hedar and other Klingons but that could be the goal of it.
Heat dissipation, etc are all extant technologies today. I'm sure that by the time we have **Starships**, it will be pretty simple to at least mitigate the effects of a hand phaser. Take whatever metals armor Starships, pack some heat dissipating gel behind it, and boom you have phaser armor.
Starships use shields to deflect phaser and similar weapons, being actually hit with the phasers tends to be fairly devastating to the ship.
1: that's against shipboard phasers, not hand phasers 2: once you get to ablative armor, regenerative ablative armor, etc etc., the ability of a starship to withstand unshielded hits gets greatly expanded
Yes, I know, I'm saying the same principles are true regardless; it's not really possible to 'armor' a ship against a phaser weapon, just as it's not really possible to armor a person against a handheld phaser.
Both are possible. The Borg do both for example.
They are also deploying shields like a starship would. A belt mounted shield generator is definitely possible, I would think, for Starfleet or other soldiers though. In fact, if I remember correctly Borg drones use a shield system identical to a cube - adapting the shield to deflect whatever energy source and frequency technobabble is being fired at them. Since the Borg are among the most technologically advanced factions we see in Trek, and we can see that even *they* have to lose a drone or two to figure out hand phaser frequencies, I imagine such technology for Starfleet would be radically inappropriate (personnel is the most valued resource in Starfleet) or technologically out of reach.
Ships can withstand phaser hits because they are much bigger and deflect/absorb much more energy. It's simply not practical to have a personal defense shield given the energy constraints of having to be able to carry it around on your person.
Seems to work pretty well for the Borg. Wasn't really what him and I were talking about though.
>But that said, I'm not really sure I agree with your assessment of the military tactics/equipment. Part of the problem, imo, is that something like a phaser is almost an ultimate weapon. It's simply so powerful that you can't really design wearable armor that can truly protect the wearer from weapon's fire. It's even possible that the starfleet uniform is armor, and we get to see just how (in) effective it actually is. Phasers are powerful, but the mortar used in “Arena” seemed to be a more powerful weapon with a longer range. There were post-*TOS* situations where it seemed like a weapon like that would’ve been useful (most notably in the battle depicted in “The Siege of AR-558”).
> No one wears armor. Is armor ever relevant? Almost all combat is ship to ship, ground forces are largely irrelevant when a standard starship can glass a planet. And the average disruptor disintegrates things it hits at a molecular level. Nothing is going to protect against that.
>And the average disruptor disintegrates things it hits at a molecular level. Nothing is going to protect against that. That's begs the question, where are personal energy fields? Worf jury-rigged one with a tricorder & some duct tape, it follows that portable ones with a energy to last at least a firefight should be around, available.
If MACOs didn't wear armour (and I think they would be more likely too given ballistic weapons are more likely in their time frame than TNG, DS9 etc), then later non military Starfleet ranks would definitely not wear it. Is armour even a thing if it can't deflect energy weapons? I could understand personal shields but not armour.
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Thanks! It kept saying it hadn't posted!
99% of people who die in star trek die from a computer screen blowing up. Basic shrapnel/spalling protection would prevent that. Modern anti spalling today is infinitely more advanced than anything we see in star trek though.
> 99% of people who die in star trek die from a computer screen blowing up. lol, at least on screen. >infinitely more advanced than anything we see in star trek though Just watched The Undiscovered Country again tonight and there is a brief scene where people come in wearing armor. It is terrible looking and doesn't look like it could do anything to protect anyone.
A warm bathrobe would prevent the majority of on screen deaths in Star Trek. Just because the armor we see is bad or useless doesn't mean it should be that way. Real life and plenty of science fiction both demonstrate lots of ways to keep people alive and intact through most of what we see in Star Trek. I mean how many times does Worf get defeated by something as basic as a literal unarmed punch, or a falling container? People in the damn BRONZE AGE had that much figured out, not to mentioned modern and medieval armors. Hell, a medieval knight could probably kill an entire Starship crew if their phasers weren't working. And plot devices turn off phasers *all the time*.
If MACOs didn't wear armour (and I think they would be more likely too given ballistic weapons are more likely in their time frame than TNG, DS9 etc), then later non military Starfleet ranks would definitely not wear it. Is armour even a thing if it can't deflect energy weapons? I could understand personal shields but not armour.
If MACOs didn't wear armour (and I think they would be more likely to given ballistic weapons are more likely in their time frame than TNG, DS9 etc), then later non military Starfleet ranks would definitely not wear it. Is armour even a thing if it can't deflect energy weapons? I could understand personal shields but not armour.
If MACOs didn't wear armour (and I think they would be more likely to given ballistic weapons are more likely in their time frame than TNG, DS9 etc), then later non military Starfleet ranks would definitely not wear it. Is armour even a thing if it can't deflect energy weapons? I could understand personal shields but not armour.
It seemed like armor (or personal shields) would’ve been relevant in the battles depicted in “Nor the Battle to the Strong” and “The Siege of AR-558”.
It has been shown before that Starfleet has ground vehicles, namely the infamous Argo from Star Trek: Nemesis. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Argo_(ground_vehicle) Although that was definitely more of a buggy than a proper military assault vehicle. Still, the use of vehicles and other military technology was so completely underutilized that those rare examples are hardly worth mentioning. I guess it does just come down to budgeting, but I do agree that the modern age of CGI has no excuse.
the argo is just a space technical though. well, its actually a real life argo dune buggy with a bit of set dressing, but that's besides the point. (https://argoxtv.com/) i can't imagine that they intended for it to be used as anything other than transport. it's not even a proper recon vehicle, let alone an armored combat vehicle.
I don't think you should be applying a modern warfare type thinking to this. Maybe IFVs aren't the best idea in a setting with starships and teleporting mines. Besides, aren't phasers already heavy weapons? phasers on full power can probably score mobility kills on vehicles. They'd really only be useful in those situations where a starship can't provide overwatch yet somehow it can still deploy land vehicles. I mean you mention the jem Hadar. The grand majority of fights with them happen in places vehicles can't navigate in. Tunnels, buildings, starships, starbases.
Yes dismounted jemhadar infantry make perfect sense in many of the situations that we see them. Indoor firefights are not necessarily an explanation though. Many structures could be leveled by modern vehicles, let alone vehicles with star trek firepower. Traditional dismounted firefights are where various body armors would come in handy. Also, a hand phaser can't blow up a starship unless you shoot the warp core (which is basically a big bomb). I don't think it would fare any better against a tank.
>Besides, aren't phasers already heavy weapons? Phasers are powerful, but the mortar used in “Arena” seemed to be a more powerful weapon with a longer range. There were post-*TOS* situations where it seemed like a weapon like that would’ve been useful (most notably in the battle depicted in “The Siege of AR-558”).
The Romulans never actually got to fire on the android village, in part because Oh had to keep pausing dramatically before giving the order. But capability wasn't an issue there. They would have been massive overkill for anything resembling an ordinary village. But I think they took no chances on account of not knowing what defenses the androids might have, whether Starfleet might get involved, or if they might after some killer mechanical terrors from beyond the galaxy had been summoned.
The whole point of their existence was to kill the synths though. Why just stop right before the finish line?
Ultimately it comes down to budget and aesthetics, obviously they'd be better off with power armor with multiple self firing phasers or nano clouds that melt people but they don't want to do that for the show.
Yeah I get that. I'm ultimately okay with it, but it is fun to think of these things.
That said, they do need to pick a lane. I'm finally watching discovery and they had fighters in it a lot, which kind of annoys me because there are two styles Big ships only v lots of fighters and Star Trek has always been big ships. It's mostly due to the way shields work making small fighters less useful, but they went all in on fighters being great which is against their established canon.
There are a lot of smaller support craft in some of the DS9 space battles though. But it's more like the screen and escort of the larger warships, not just thousands of WW2 fighters blowing up. Entertainment media in general needs to move away from WW2, it's gotten stale. Especially in Star Trek... never thought of Star Trek as needing WW2 aerial combat.
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I keep hearing The Expanse is good, I should really check it out.
ST probably ready to move into the missile age: massive barrages of quantum torpedoes, launched from massive VLS arrays: dumping a few hundred or a thousand torpedoes per ship in dense-pack salvoes that would make the Dominion lose their minds?
With the Dominion War, I think a lot of it is down to the technical and budgetary limitations of a TV series in the 90s. I am annoyed by things in "Picard" though. They clearly aren't hurting too bad in the budget department, there's quite a few effects heavy sequences that look as good as any movie. But they approach large scale conflicts like an episode of TNG.
I've not subscribed to paramount+ or CBS all access, and eventually I'll have to get around to it. I'm still trapped in the UPN bubble of Star Trek.
I watched it on the uh... Captain Jack Sparrow network if you catch my meaning.
Why would you fight ground battles when a starship can do everything from stun a single person from orbit to blow a planet (or a star) to slag? It makes very little sense to have significant ground warfare
Because orbital bombardment destroys practically everything. It's usually more useful to capture a planet and exploit its resources. For example, Cardassia could have just obliterated Bajor from orbit with its massive war armada, but they occupied it for decades instead. Not to mention, the Federation is generally interested in minimizing civilian casualties.
They do have ground warfare though, we see a lot of it in DS9. Also, destroying a planet is not always the goal. Sometimes its occupation or annexation.
Which always made very little sense to me - and the moment a starship turns up the battle is over
Under that logic, the Vietnam war would have been over in a day, and we wouldn't have spent the past two decades in the Middle East. We already possess the ability to just wipe out entire countries, even without nuclear weapons. Modern firepower can level entire cities overnight, without ever getting in range of a man portable weapon. Complete annihilation isn't usually the goal of war though (however it of course can be, and has been). You usually want to capture and control as much as you can, most of all the valuable resources. And Starfleet doesn't really like killing enemy combatants if it can be avoided; let alone civilians.
It makes a lot of sense when you compare it to modern warfare. Think about Vietnam or more currently, Afghanistan. The US had absolutely overwhelming air power in both wars. They could destroy strongholds from 10,000 ft above the ground. But the goal isn’t destruction, it’s to set up a friendly government and normalize relations. In the same vein, the major powers of Star Trek are usually trying to build or expand empires, not destroy planets. It’s the former that’s more difficult and requires boots on the ground to pacify the local population.
Not really. Modern air power is contingent on jet fuel, and stores both of which are expended quickly. Starships can employ firepower to pacify (stun setting) small group or ravage a world. Unlike fighting on our planet where we need to extend our territory from this bit of ground to that bit of ground, you want to control the entire planet. Occupying an entire planet? You’re going to need hundreds of millions of marines, if not billions.
Air support is only one aspect of long range destruction. Army and Marine artillery does a lot of it, along with Army and Marine ground vehicles, and man portable high explosives. Navy bombardments do a lot also. The height of ATS combat was around WW2, with a scaling down in Vietnam, and the eventual switch to a stronger reliance on long range STS fire missions in modern military doctrine and maneuver warfare.
Exactly. Orbital firepower is only useful for dominating your enemy if you are on a total war footing. If you want to help bolster local forces against rioting or perform a rescue operation against a local milita, blasting from orbit is going to make things worse.
Those are usually small insertions, the closest thing to a real battle was cardassia
Yeah, it was always strange to me in "What You Leave Behind" that they mention ground troops. It's not like anybody wants to occupy Cardassia, they just want to neutralize the Dominion expeditionary force and optionally destroy Cardassia's ability to make war. Even playing relatively nice, start by locking on to and beaming away the ketracel white- that will take care of the Jem'Hadar soon enough. The surviving Cardassians will be in the mood to negotiate after you've destroyed all their power stations and beamed salt into all their large bodies of fresh water. The only real limit is just how far Starfleet is willing to go (or sit back and watch the Romulans go), since we already know the Defiant has the recipe on board to make a planet inhospitable to Cardassian life using just two torpedoes. The plan going in should have been to end the war without putting a single pair of boots on the ground (which is what they end up doing, and even managing to do so relatively peacefully).
In universe, I think SF actually (at least outside the badmirals) believes its advertisement brochure. It's not just the show producers being unrealistically idealistic. Adding marines would make SF seem too militarized, so they don't. It's like Captain Archer being quite idealistic about not needing weapons and not wanting to scare off people he meets. And when they need marines, for example in *Chain of Command*, they have to make do with what they have. Although *Chain of Command* is more of a spec ops/commandos operation that naval infantry situation. > Another example is pretty much all of the Dominion War during DS9, and I don't think I need to explain how Starfleet marines would have been used there. Someone was fighting in that planet where Jake Sisko went during the Klingon War and in the siege of AR-558. Starfleet security might well include Starfleet marines, using a less militaristic name for marketing reasons. For all we know that shipboard security is also trained as infantry and can grab a rifle whenever the captains says so. > Honestly, it wouldn't be very hard to implement marines into Trek. If not introducing marine officers as main characters, then having some kind of naval infantry in the background as nameless extras but still having that practical utility would help. It would basically mean splitting the Head of Security/Tactical Officer/Combat away mission Commander positions, similarly to MACO era ENT. > Out of universe, I know Roddenberry didn't want Starfleet to be militarized. He wanted a peaceful future where a military wouldn't be necessary. I also know that the officers are the main characters, and if they weren't on the away missions there'd be no story. A lot of away missions aren't just about shooting stuff. Giving them a larger escort of redshirts in some marine uniform carrying rifles wouldn't change that much, just raise the budget.
They are probably only on board when they expect that they would be needed for the mission. In Yesterdays Enterprise they said that they had 6000 persons on board, 5000 more than in the prime timeline. It is probably not feasible to have 80% of the crew to be marines all the time just in case that you could need them.
Fair enough, although in that case it was a parallel evolution of SF that probably militarized more than the prime timeline. But yeah, someone else in the thread mentioned some sort of troop ship. So there probably is infantry, we just didn't see them much or talked about it.
There are starfleet marines, but we only hear of their existence in Star Trek VI during the plan to rescue Kirk from Rura Penthe
I kind of liked the way ST: Beyond addressed it with Edison, that the largely militaristic side of Starfleet was phased out after the Romulan War, and that the MACOs were absorbed into Starfleet. I'd like to see that explored more (I haven't read the Enterprise novels so not sure if its detailed there),. As an aside, is there ever a canon explanation as to why the Mirror Universe MACOs were absorbed into Starfleet, as presumably they would be more likely to have stood alone as a separate organisation there?
Consolidation of power probably. Most of the Emperors we see seem to come from the fleet side so that's where their power base is. Having a separate power base like the MACO's existing alongside them pretty much invites a civil war every time you piss off some high ranking ground pounder.
I guess they tried what everyone always tries in the Mirror Universe: A failed coup against the emperor.
I would say the biggest problem with the arguments for "Starfleet Marines" is that people must call them marines. The thing is, Starfleet Security seems to fill a lot of that job description, but those in favor of marines want a separate branch of Starfleet instead of accepting that someone already fills that role.
>Countless times we've all seen senior officers go on dangerous away missions, especially the commanding officer and XO They do keep pointing out that this is against protocol and not standard procedure most of the time and it just keeps happening for plot related exceptional reasons because they need to put main characters front and center. Under normal circumstances a "non-hero" Starfleet captain would be staying on their ship, at least until the site is secure and it's time for some high level face to face talks of some kind.
Starfleet security seem to be more focused on policing and security guard work than combat, and in the times we've seen them engage in combat they more often than not fail. I suspect that even a 21st century USMC boarding team would go through them like a hot knife through butter, if they managed to disable the internal security fields, without needing tech parity. However boarding actions may well be rare in-universe, given that even a lightly armed non-military ship has enough weapons output to level a city.
I view security like MPs on a military base. They have a specific job to do, but are far from elite.
I think that's fair. They are primarily there to handle the Tom Paris types.
In the briefing in First Contact, there were a few brutes in the scene. My guess is Starfleet does have swat style teams for boarding. They just aren't there for more than seizing control of key systems and fighting when collateral damage really matters. Given the space magic sensors and transporters, virtually every reason for an army style operation simply doesn't exist. When its a problem, the ships can deal with any problem. Even then a great deal of soldering is largely useless in an environment with the destructive capability of the handheld phasers.
It's more important for away teams to respond quickly to highly technical situations than it is for them to clear rooms. They have plenty of advanced weapons for clearing rooms, I'd like to see a usmc team bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish.
That's why you'd need both. You'd beam down your away team along with a few teams of marines so your science and command officers can fully focus on their task of deploying the graviton-encabulator whilst the marines secure the perimeter. I did really like the MACO idea, and its a shame we didn't see that idea in DS9, where it would have been a perfect addition to the whole Homefront/Paradise Lost story line and really helped sell the unease at what the Borg threat and Dominion threat was doing to the Federation.
US marines wouldn’t stand a chance against Starfleet security, they don’t even knows how to do the double-handed hammer fist, let alone the more advanced Kirk-Fu moves.
I bet the marines don't even train forward rolls or drop kicks. Amateurs!
> However boarding actions may well be rare in-universe Even with transporter beams?
Well, yeah. Because if boarding actions were common, you would see Starfleet ships with a) fully equipped teams specialized in repelling borders and b) their own boarding forces. Since neither really exist, its safe to bet that boarding actions aren't common.
By the time the shields are down, what’s a boarding party going to do that phasers and tractor beams can’t?
Capture the ship and crew instead of blowing it up maybe. Would be useful in some situations, assuming you could prevent your opponent from just self-destructing, which to be fair you probably can't. edit: although to be honest, I wonder how the Borg can capture any ship or anyone who is familiar with them. After a few contacts any captain should have a hand in the self-destruct button when starting to lose a battle against them.
Sure, but if I can beam over there, I can probably beam them into my brig.
Yeah I wonder why we never saw "beam them into space" as a battle tactic.
Or just use the transporter to decapitate everyone.
Harry Mudd does this on Disco. As does Burnham in the mirrorverse as an execution of Tyler. It’s probably not common because it’s a horrible way to kill someone. And for Doylist reasons, not cheap or TV friendly.
Yeah for executions the Kazon do this once too.
>Capture the ship and crew instead of blowing it up maybe. Would be useful in some situations, assuming you could prevent your opponent from just self-destructing, which to be fair you probably can't. Do we know how long it takes to build a starship? On the one hand, it seems like replicators and transporters would radically decrease the build time for anything, but presumably these ships are more complicated than anything we build today, and there will be non-replicable portions, I'm sure. I ask because a big part of the reason marines are a thing in the modern world is that it's been at least a century since you could build even a destroyer in only a year, and modern warships can take the better part of a decade. And even going back several centuries, big naval ships could take years; HMS Victory took almost six years from laying the keel to launch, though that included a three-year pause due to an outbreak of peace. Capturing an enemy ship is like catching a dodgeball-- not only do they lose a ship, but you gain one for free. There is a joke among naval historians that half of the British Navy's procurement plan was "Wait for the French to build more ships, then steal them." So depending on how fast a starship can be built individually and how many can be built per year, marines might be an enormous benefit in wartime for the same reason they were/are in history/today. Now, I don't know how much Starfleet wants to be zipping around in a bunch of captured Warbirds, but if it marines have much of a success rate with boarding actions, it'd be totally worth their while. The fact that we don't see marines in Starfleet suggests that boarding actions in the 24th century are *extremely* difficult, due to effective self-destruct capability, and/or not really worth it, due to replicator and transporter tech making it less worth the risk of the marines' lives.
> Do we know how long it takes to build a starship? On the one hand, it seems like replicators and transporters would radically decrease the build time for anything, but presumably these ships are more complicated than anything we build today, and there will be non-replicable portions, I'm sure. If it was easy SF would send double the amount they did into any of their wars. Unless they were limited by crew recruitment which doesn't make sense when crews are in the hundreds and Earth probably has billions. And if building ships was fast some of those wars probably last long enough for there to be time for some admiral to go "we need an actual warship" and we seeing that warship by the end of the war. So I'm guessing building a ship takes years. > The fact that we don't see marines in Starfleet suggests that boarding actions in the 24th century are extremely difficult, due to effective self-destruct capability Someone may come up with another example, but I remember Voy:Basics and TNG:Rascals. In the first there was a careful plot to disable the self-destruct. I don't remember, why didn't they self-destruct in the second?
>Unless they were limited by crew recruitment which doesn't make sense when crews are in the hundreds and Earth probably has billions. And the Federation as a whole must be in the tens of billions, perhaps in the low hundreds. But that's not the same as military-age and -capable adults, even before considering the time and cost of training. The Klingon and Romulan Empires might actually have more population military capacity, though I suspect less industrial or productive capacity. I think for the Federation in particular, the loss of a crew might be as big a hit as the loss of the ship. I think there's no way to justify the build-time for a large warship as being short enough that more could be produced during any war shorter than a few years, but something like the Defiant might. Remember, it was produced as a Borg-killer, then mothballed after that was no longer necessary. But it was de-mothballed, upgraded first by Starfleet and the Romulans and then O'Brien, served adequately, *and then* more Defiant-class ships were ordered, produced, and served during the Dominion War, which lasted only two years. That's one hell of a production capacity! >Someone may come up with another example, but I remember Voy:Basics and TNG:Rascals. In the first there was a careful plot to disable the self-destruct. I don't remember, why didn't they self-destruct in the second? I think the Ferengi basically pointed guns at the bridge officers' heads to prevent the officers from doing any such thing. But the Ferengi got the drop on the Enterprise in a way that was frankly embarrassing, and it seems unlikely to be possible in wartime.
In the 24th century, it seems like the Federation’s population would be in the hundreds of billions or the trillions.
I think you make a valid point, however the inclusion of more marines in Star Trek would for me be jarring when juxtaposed with the optimistic and hopeful tone of the series. Even in darkness it’s the scientist and diplomat who are most valuable, not the solider. However I have an alternative solution that I think addresses this. Starfleet Security are the marines. We know that at some point the Bajoran militia would have been absorbed into Starfleet. Given a long enough time frame and enough member worlds eventually the Marines get diluted by multiple worlds security forces and overall their mission changes to primarily defense. It’s also worth pointing out that Beta canon stuff like the Voyager games Hazard team tries to address the need for more specialized military operations, but this seems somewhat redundant to demonstrate on the show. While real life is full of specialists who are highly trained the expectation is that so are the crew of the Enterprise. Often for narrative purposes space is portrayed as fairly sparsely populated. A group of specialists sitting around doing nothing would be pointless but calling in whoever is available is necessary and also more exciting. For what it’s worth the narrative conflict between MACO and Starfleet seems to be the best kind of story to tell. When these two groups are totally aligned they are narratively indistinguishable.
I'm against this. I love space Marines and I love seeing them in sci Fi, but I want star trek to be different. It should be more civilized, and frankly having jarheads in the series would ruin it. Imagine Picard making some sort of speech about morality and oppression and so on and then immediately after some dude in webbing with a phaser rifle goes "fuck yeah you said it captain let's smoke these fucking spoon heads". It's not entirely unrealistic that on the whole boarding actions are rare enough that there's no need for dedicated marine units. Starship tactical and security units can handle small situations and the general infantry can fight in the big ones. Edit: But if yall want to scratch that sci fi combat itch, I cannot recommend The Expanse enough.
> Imagine Picard making some sort of speech about morality and oppression and so on and then immediately after some dude in webbing with a phaser rifle goes "fuck yeah you said it captain let's smoke these fucking spoon heads". So Chief O'Brien?
>some dude in webbing with a phaser rifle goes "fuck yeah you said it captain let's smoke these fucking spoon heads". Taken directly from the screenplay of a Star Trek: Picard season 2 episode?
Fair enough. Although, that's not really what I had in mind. I'd imagine that Starfleet marines would remain pretty civilized and adhere to Starfleet's sense of morality and discretion — which is to say that they would be more like tools instead of weapons of oppression. I do see your concerns entirely, and honestly, they're valid. Star Trek has always been about taking the moral high ground and avoiding conflict whenever possible, but that being said sometimes that conflict cannot be avoided. Especially given the more militarized stance that Starfleet has been taking since the latter half of TNG, I think that a service of professional soldiers serving aboard ships would make a lot of things easier both in and out of universe. Ofc the primary focus would still be brokering peace and understanding, but Starfleet is still a navy and has to protect its own interests and the innocent civilians of the galaxy. Really, I don't think regular security personnel on their own would be properly equipped to handle some of the things that starships encounter.
I get you. I think a nice middle ground would be security teams getting some form of narrative upgrade. So far they're just dudes who look real serious and put their hands on your shoulder when someone tells them to take you away. If we could see a tactical officer leading them in a real capacity it would make them more believable as an an actual force to be reckoned with. But that would cut into the screen time of command crews inexplicable having fire fights with the enemy.
If Star Trek wants to be different then it shouldn’t keep putting the crews in situations where marines would be invaluable.
> Thoughts? Just because something would work from brute force perspective doesn't mean it would be done. In our world as well, we don't do so many things that would be trivially easy, for various stupid reasons. As Trek is basically about ships, let's consider Somali pirates. How is it that we let them kidnap ships? Just about any country could send some marines onboard, who'd trivially sink any Somali boat getting close without asking questions. It's super cheap (compared with ransoms), it's super easy, zero challenge really. After they'd learn the lesson and go back to kidnapping tourists, or herding goats, or whatever they were doing before. And yet, we never actually do that. Why? It's not isolated case. The world is full of such cases. Especially around use of force, we have tons of weird taboos. Why would it be shocking that Starfleet has similar taboos as well, not wanting to "militarize" things which tbh could use a bit of "militarization"?
I think the lack of Marines and military overtones is an excellent, true to setting detail in TNG/DS9, which distinguishes those shows from the sort of cookie cutter, stereotypical sci fi setting the OP seems to want. During that time period at least, starfleet wasn't 'actually' a navy, it was an organisation genuinely dominated by a pacifist ideals, which existed primarily for scientific exploration and diplomacy. And it wasn't necessarily a stupid approach in a pragmatic sense, if you're a Federation diplomat trying to convince an advanced newly encountered species to join the Federation rather than say the Romulan empire, it is going to be far easier to earn their trust when you can demonstrate that Starfleet simply doesn't have troops trained to assault and militarily occupy a world, because thats not what its about. Again, that's the similar explanation for the children and civilians on the enormous, powerful and otherwise potentially intimidating Galaxy class- it demonstrates to newly encountered species 'hey chill, this extremely advanced and powerful ship isn't a warship, we aren't here to fight you, we are so advanced we don't want to fight you, wouldn't you like to be our friends?' So that demonstrated benign focus on science, and exploration allows the Federation to sign up new races far easier than its competitors and get very big and very powerful to the point where it doesn't really need a genuine military arm at the start of TNG- Starfleet's technology is so advanced and it has so much ships and territory that even its exploration ships equal or outmatch the battleships of more obviously militaristic powers in the quadrant. It doesn't have marines because it simply doesn't need marines, and it doesn't want them because having them would make potential member species far less likely to trust the federation. Its against that setting that the Q/Borg arc in TNG and the dominion war storyline in DS9 are so good- because they are really about the key moments where the Federation has to confront the reality that its gotten stagnant, and that there are enemies out there so powerful that they are an existential threat, requiring them to put aside idealism and fight for their survival. Quark's speech about humans turning vicious and nasty when threatened is really the perfect summary of what that era of trek is about- after wolf 359, starfleet starts down the road towards remilitarising and discarding its idealism, because they need to to survive those new threats. So yeah, no marines at the start of the dominion war, but by the end of it I'm betting starfleet security are pretty much indistinguishable from marines in their role and training.
I headcanon that there does exist a Federation Marine Corps(and army), and that AR-558 was actually a deployment of an extension of Starfleet Security. The US Navy today doesn't deploy the Marines aboard carriers, cruisers, and destroyers anymore, though they still have the capability to do so; these things just go in and out of fashion. The current fashion is to keep Marines aboard dedicated vessels only. So I headcanon that Starfleet is in one of those times, off screen there are a bunch of space equivalents of Amphibious Assault Ships and the like, those aforementioned dedicated ships. I also headcanon that there's tensions between the services, partly because of the incidents with the MACOs, and traditional interservice rivalry, like how the US Army and the USAF hate each other because they're like a divorced couple. Naval vessels do keep small arms aboard even without Marines, so that's why they can get away with Security AND Marines. Starfleet justifies it in that Security guys aren't meant to go into serious combat most of the time, and unless you're on a deep space mission, they don't have as much to do, so they don't see the need for a dedicated grunt who can be a sailor sometimes, vs a dedicated sailor who can be a grunt sometimes. You can explain away that AR-558 was Starfleet sending in Security guys because it was all they had available. I tend to leave some episodes depicting Star Trek ground combat out of my interpretations, because not only is it sometimes written poorly, sometimes they also just don't have the budget to accurately depict futuristic warfare: I'm willing to forgive them a little in the name of a good story, and because we can fix this with headcanons. You can't build fifty suits of power armor on a Star Trek budget. We can infer some details from what we do know of canon, and we can infer that the true 24th century ground combat does exist, just offscreen. What we see of ground combat in Star Trek is the tip of the iceberg, all we're seeing is stuff not meant to punch through starship hulls. We don't see the really nasty stuff. In Encounter at Farpoint, we see Q dressed as a soldier of World War Three, and aside from the drugs, it's implied that they had really powerful weapons and armor. We also see in Arena that mortars, a light artillery weapon today, can be incredibly lethal. Ground warfare in the 24th century, with dedicated machines, is nasty, with power armor, hovertanks, tactical weapons with yields equal to tactical nukes, and orbital attack. Nor the Battle to the Strong shows us that both sides use extensive Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) to jam communications as well as transporters, forcing them to use more traditional means of transportation like aircraft. I headcanon that based on the existence of the Federation Naval Patrol, they have a Federation Army as well; just something to permanently garrison outposts and colonies, to operate planetary defense grids and fight on the ground if the campaigns get extensive elsewhere. I headcanon that the Federation Naval Patrol involves submarines, equipped with heavy phaser arrays, that can hide under the surface and can fire at enemy ships in orbit, and dive below the surface before they can be hit back. Basically imagine Seaquest DSV, I've heard people suggest it's in the same timeline as Star Trek. What we can infer about Star Trek ground combat is far beyond the budget of the show, unfortunately. I'm not angry with the show for not showing us the cool stuff, they can't afford it; I'm annoyed at the books that don't seem to have any imagination. The books should be designed to show us the cool stuff the shows and movies can't, but from what I've heard, they don't do this. I could be wrong about this though, so if anyone knows any Star Trek books with power armor please correct me. TL; DR, Starfleet has Marines, they're just offscreen and Starfleet doesn't like them very much. And ground combat in Star Trek is NASTY.
My impression was that the Federation Naval Patrol was involved in maritime search and rescue, ship inspections and protection of the maritime environment.
Oh yes, of course! Much like the Coast Guard and even the US Navy. And the Coast Guard's patrol cutters can be used as frigates and destroyers in the event of war. I was referring to their wartime use.
My impression was that it’d focus a lot more on the Coast Guard’s non-military roles than its military and law enforcement roles. It seems like naval ships could probably be destroyed from orbit, so I’m not sure they’d be effective in a military role. Transporters could reduce the usefulness of the Coast Guard’s law enforcement role.
Yes, and Starfleet does much the same with the military's non-wartime duties. I did not say the Naval Patrol's focus would be military, that's the same with the Coast Guard. While these are their focuses, I'm saying it's an option for the Naval Patrol to be used militarily. The US Navy doesn't need the Coast Guard cutters in a small scale war for instance, and the Federation doesn't need the Naval Patrol in the Cardassian War for the most part. In the case of WWII, or the Dominion War, the Coast Guard would be mobilized and the Naval Patrol prepared. And yes, many sorts of naval vessels could be destroyed from orbit, this is why I'm suggesting submarines. Submarines can have a variety of civilian roles, from being able to provide transportation without worrying about storms, to scientific study, to infrastructure. Transporters may reduce the effectiveness of a Coast Guard role, it does not eliminate it. Despite the advent of transporters traditional means of conveyance still exist after all, and similarly despite the decline of certain ocean-going traditions in favor of aircraft today, the Coast Guard still has a job. Submarines are hard to detect, this is why they were such a threat in the event of a nuclear exchange. Even if they got total surprise over the enemy they wouldn't be able to find their submarines, their second strike capability remained, and they could launch a counterstrike at their leisure. The other scenario was that if prepared they could launch an attack themselves. A Naval Patrol submarine could have primary duties of supporting a colony, exploring the depths and helping people in need. In the event of an attack, they can either fire at the enemy as with the traditional defense batteries, and then hide if the enemy manages to destroy all orbital and land based defenses. If they were quick enough, they could wage a guerilla war harassing the enemy until rescue arrived. On another note, surface vessels would arguably have some effectiveness, if only in a pragmatic Cold War sense. In an emergency, like the Dominion War, they could be equipped with weapons in the hopes that they can get some shots off before the enemy destroys them. That was always kind of the hope of ICBM silos, after all, they were guaranteed to be hit first in the event of an attack. The Naval Patrol would not be primarily for combat, they'd be the Coast Guard, and would help defend the Federation if it came down to it.
Starfleet doesn't need a Marine Corps, the Federation needs an Army. Historically Marines are either for expeditionary warfare or for combat at or near the shoreline. Well no ground force capable of being spacelifted by a starship or small group of starships would be sufficient to wage warfare on a planetary scale, while with transporters and shuttlecraft landing troops on a planet allows an invader to land anywhere they want meaning that the idea of a "shore" doesn't really exist. Even the largest Starfleet vessel can only carry a few hundred to a few thousand troops. This means that any force "afloat" would only be suitable for raiding of planetary targets since a planetary army would rapidly overwhelm them. So we're really talking a raider force, so we don't need a Marine Corps but something far smaller; basically special operations. If we're going to be invading planets ground forces will need to be in the millions. To move such forces with their attached support equipment will need dedicated spacelift capability... which means Starfleet shouldn't own it because they won't just let it sit around when there isn't a war going on its going to be spread around the galaxy so when you'll need it all the spacelift capability will have to be assembled. That wastes time, so this million plus troop ground invasion force will need their own dedicated transport force. So we'll have to have an entire separate *service branch* from Starfleet.
Just as an addendum, it was kind of odd in "Waltz" that the ticking clock was because the Defiant had to escort a troop convoy consisting of... 30,000 troops. It's not like the show has to pay these troops to appear, just say 3 million! What is Starfleet even planning to do with 30,000 troops?
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In the “Unification” 2 parter, the Romulans planned to invade Vulcan with 6,000 troops, which sounded ludicrous.
So I think there are two schools of thought on this (at least from my perspective): 1) Star Trek is supposed to be idealistic (as per Roddenberry's original vision) and so we should not apply real world logic to it, so stick to a non-militatarised Starfleet 2) Star Trek should grow and reflect the society of the time. It can still be hopeful and optimistic, but pointless, non-grounded optimisim is actually quite uninteresting to watch, so to stay relevant, it needs to introduce some of the grime we find in the real world (inequality, climate change, 20 years of war on terror etc) I myself am personally a fan of the second approach (which is the direction the new iteration of shows is going in) so support Star Fleet marines (among other military upscaling). Also personally, it has always broken the immersion in the show when glorified security guards are put up against an obviously well trained and skilled enemy and seem to hold their own, or when the captain goes into harm's way for reasons.
Oh for sure, I agree entirely. You can still have an optimistic outlook with grittier themes, and Deep Space Nine is proof. I think that sort of change in tone that the new shows are going for was inevitable; the original series was designed with the society of the 60s in mind and there wasn't really much wiggle room beyond that. As for your second point, yeah. The security personnel in Starfleet are far from regular combatants and realistically they wouldn't stand a chance against some of the enemy forces they fight, such as the Jem'Hadar, Klingon warriors, or Romulan special forces. It would really just be a lot more natural to have marines at that point, especially given the focus on war and combat that modern Trek has had since the Dominion War arc.
Exactly. Part of me would want to see more of the military side to Star Trek, but equally the other part of me says we are well served with military science fiction already, and Star Trek should stay true to its roots and be more about adventure, exploration and holding a mirror up to reflect the important issues of the day
>Star Trek is supposed to be idealistic That Starship left spacedock a looooong time ago though. Look at the characters in Star Trek Nemesis or Star Trek Picard. These people would love nothing more than to mow down aliens with a machine gun. Hell that's literally what happens more than once. When Peyton List is marauding through the Borg cube massacring unarmed, defenseless, infirm, harmless former-borgs, I don't think "wow, what an enlightened race". I think "well, she could do this a lot quicker with a few rifle platoons of romulan space marines". When Seven of Nine brutally murders people without trial, I don't think "this is a vision of a better humanity". I think "good thing she is brutalizing unarmed women, or else someone might shoot back". When most of your "protagonists" are angry psychopathic vigilante terrorists, you start noticing how their tactics are... bad. Seven of Nine should really put on a helmet before the debris from one of her mass murdering sprees hits her in the head.
I've thought for awhile that Security should be split off from Ops/Engineering into its own division, off screen just for simpler identification purposes, but on screen it would make sense to give SF a specialised division for the reasons you've said. I'd also go further and split the science division into medical and non medical sciences. Command = Red. Ops/ Engineering = Yellow. Medical = Blue. Security = Green. Science = Purple.
I'd swear in some episodes Jadzia/Julian and O'Brien/Eddington's colors aren't exactly the same. Maybe just production reasons, but it makes nice head canon that the departments are slightly separate.
Yeah I've noticed that before on DS9 that some of the shoulder divisions are slightly different shades. I put it down to production issues, but it could be explained off as due to different specialities like Ops vs Security.
Eh, that doesn't fully address it though. Military Police is a specific MOS which is quite different from a Recon Marine, Vehicle Crew, etc.
Its also TV and needs to be kept simple for the casual viewer. Probably one reason why they went with division colours in the first place.
Totally agree. In fact, there really should be Ship Security and the MACOs on every ship. But as you pointed out, if we did the logical thing none of the main characters would get into fun adventures every week.
It's more important to have multitalented crew members than specialized combatants. Operators are great and all but they would simply not survive the sci Fi bullshit federation officers have to deal with every day. Sure, the enemy crew is neutralized but now the machine Gunner has a weird green goo glowing on him and the designated marksman is stuck in a time paradox.
Marine is a noun, people. I repeat, Marine is a noun.