Starfleet size

[Mikey]

And they responded to the clear and present danger of the Borg by building the Defiant class and bringing out a whole new class of flag ship brimming in SOTA tech.

Yes, the development of the Defiant is one instance in which they acted prudently and pragmatically. The subsequent lack of production/use of the Defiant-class is another issue...

Whats that point? Doing everything you can isnt good enough?

The point was that they had on little year to prepare for hostilities with the Dominion, and it didn't help a bit. The abstract of this point is that working reactively rather than proactively isn't worth a hairy rat's a**.

No Adequate for the time being means you can combat anyone who is currently your enemy. Adequate for the future means against all foreseeable enemys. The Federation had both.

How exactly do you foresee an enemy - and necessarily its capabilities - if its not a species of which you know currently?

You can say all you like about hw you think starfleet is stupid but why would they not have every possible ship they can. Going to war time production is something you can do for a few years not indefinatly.

I already mentioned that I think in this case the fault lies with the UFP, not with Starfleet. However, this response is off the topic of the point of mine which it references; what I was referring to is your assumption that increased ship production would hurt other UFP programs by co-opting resources, and we just have no evidence or suggestion that resources need to be - or are - so tightly budgeted.

[Jim]

Hate to burst your bubble, Jim, but "No Child Left Behind" is an initiative of the right wing, not of the "tree-hugging" left.

I used "tree-hugging" as a generic term, not directed at any political party or right or left status. Logically, tree-huggers put flora above fauna so stating the no-kid thing being a tree hugger idea is incorrect on all levels.

I tend to lump extremists together no matter what side of the argument they are on.

[Jim]

According to your own post, they had a year of warning about the Dominion, and a fat lot of good it did them.

it was probably still being debated in committee.

[Teaos]

Who knows how they used that year. We know for a fact that at one point early on there was only 2 defiant class ships but by the end there were lots more. That inital year could have been used to build fleet yards and prepare. They certinly had a lot of fleets ready off the bat which is something we have never seen before.

How exactly do you foresee an enemy - and necessarily its capabilities - if its not a species of which you know currently?

You forsee an enemy by looking who is around you and who could forseeably become your enemy.

In the Feds case the Klingons and Romulans could become enemys but the Vulcans would almost definatly not.

[Jordanis]

Do we ever get an indication in a canon source on how long starship construction takes, from start to finish? The comment that those ships could be replaced within a year isn't necessarily detailed enough--it may mean that the normal building schedules would produce replacement starships by the end of one year, not that replacements could be started and finished within a year.

Because the thing I'm thinking is that a year isn't much time to not only approve resource allocation increases but also actually finish and turn out new ships from start to finish.

The Dominion threat was not forseeable before then, and Starfleet seemed to have decided that the way to meet the Borg threat was crash R&D programs rather than crash building programs. So shipbuilding as a response to the new presence of the Dominion (which was the size of more or less the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans combined, much worse than a worst-case Alpha Quadrant Only war plan would be for) would have to come up from scratch after the first contact.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Depending on the layout of the Federation, it may have taken a year just to assemble fleets of the size seen in the Dominion War from their regular jobs in Federation space, and get all these ships near the Cardassian border.

Of course, we also saw plenty of Klingon and Romulan ships around, without much of a delay at all from when the Romulans entered the war until they started attacking Dominion/Cardassian space. It seems the DS9 writers pretended that either space was a slot smaller, or warp speeds a lot faster than they're "supposed to be", during the Dominion war. Getting from Earth to DS9 to the far corners of Cardassion space was no problem, even for Klingons who don't share a border with Cardassian space. This is only one out of so many inconsistencies in effective size of space/speed of warp travel, that the canon effectively endorses no particular values; the only operational definition of anything in the Trek universe is, "whatever the writers need it to be at that particular time." The Klingons would have needed to cross Federation space to reach DS9 in "The Way of the Warrior," yet Sisko was surprised to see them, even though the Feds"should" have been tracking their fleet since it left Klingon space.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

The Defiant was created years before she first appeared in DS9, yet it's said that Starfleet put her on the shelf as they felt the Borg thread had abated. And then, "First Contact" happened; clearly Starfleet was wrong. And, there don't seem to be many Sovs around, yet. As others have noted, Defiant class ships didn't start showing up until the Dominion war was underway, long after the Defiant herself had been proven effective.

[Jordanis]

The Defiant was created years before she first appeared in DS9, yet it's said that Starfleet put her on the shelf as they felt the Borg thread had abated. And then, "First Contact" happened; clearly Starfleet was wrong. And, there don't seem to be many Sovs around, yet. As others have noted, Defiant class ships didn't start showing up until the Dominion war was underway, long after the Defiant herself had been proven effective.

That's exactly what I mean by a crash R&D program instead of a crash build program in response to the borg threat. Starfleet built the Defiant as a systems testbed in the course of its R&D program. She worked, and so served her purpose. Meanwhile, I would guess, many of the best cost/benefit ratio systems were deployed fleet-wide by being built into the normal new construction. Meanwhile, the R&D program continues.

[Mikey]

I didn't consider the Sovs because of how novel a class they were. The Defiant, on the other hand, is a design which was around quite long enough.

You forsee an enemy by looking who is around you and who could forseeably become your enemy.

In the Feds case the Klingons and Romulans could become enemys but the Vulcans would almost definatly not.

This actually supports my point that "adequate for the time being" and "adequate for a current a/o foreseeable enemy" are IN PRACTICE essentially the same.

BTW, why stop at "adequate" when you can aim for "superior?"

[Jordanis]

I didn't consider the Sovs because of how novel a class they were. The Defiant, on the other hand, is a design which was around quite long enough.

You forsee an enemy by looking who is around you and who could forseeably become your enemy.

In the Feds case the Klingons and Romulans could become enemys but the Vulcans would almost definatly not.

This actually supports my point that "adequate for the time being" and "adequate for a current a/o foreseeable enemy" are IN PRACTICE essentially the same.

BTW, why stop at "adequate" when you can aim for "superior?"

Well, to run through a logical chain of events...

1)Starfleet planners use intelligence estimates to devise a 'worst case scenario' war. Before the Dominion, this would have been a war where the Federation faced the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and some other minor powers. They create a recommended fleet strength to successfully fight this war.

2)Other Starfleet planners use diplomatic intelligence to rate the probability of the worst case and all less-bad cases coming to pass.

3)The Federation Council or whoever uses this information to balance Starfleet's resource budget against whatever other commitments the Federation may have. It may or may not be a wise decision. We don't know a) how much the Federation has to allocate and b) what other commitments it has, so it is difficult for us to rate the decision. Sometimes, no doubt, the Council decides that the threat of catastrophic losses is sufficient deterrent. 24th Century Mutually Assured Destruction.


The Dominion came out of nowhere and wildly altered the balance of power. Starfleet intelligence would have had no intel sources on the size of the Dominion fleet or on the likeliness of the Dominion declaring war. Of course, it was obvious to us, but that's television for you.

Given the fact that the Federation was on a war footing so fast, someone in intel must have made some truly heroic fact-finding missions, and someone else got the build programs online with great haste as well. A year is really not a lot of time for an entity the size of the Federation to shift gears, but they managed it. Good show all around, I'd say.

[Teaos]

BTW, why stop at "adequate" when you can aim for "superior?"

Arms race.

Maybe the Feds could up their fleet a little bit with out it putting stress on other areas. But whats to stop the Klingons doing the same thing? Or the Romulans?

The Federation has obviously learned from the many arms races in the past that they never end well for anyone but those who make the weapons.

It might be a treaty or just an unspoken agreemnet but it seems the three major powers are pretty evenly matched. I doubt that is a coincedence.

[Mikey]

It would be a logical assumption that the Klingons and Romulans already build up to the best of their abilities; e.g., the Negh'Var, the Scimitar...

[Captain Picard's Hair]

It is my impression that the Klingons/Romulans spend a higher percentage of their GDP on the military. Look at how their fleet is made up from warships, while the Federation puts out ships equally strong that are built as multipurpose explorers. Clearly, Starfleet has a large budget for science, exploration, and diplomacy, that the Klingons/Romulans can't match. It would certainly fit the UFP philosophy for their overall budget shake out this way as well: less military, more science, exploration, civil stuff. It is the Federation's technological advantage that allows their ships to stand toe to toe with the warships of the Klingons and Romulans. This implies that the Federation also has the highest GDP in the alpha quadrant, but it does follow from fact that the military is a low priority in the Federation but still matches what the other powers can put out. In that case, the Federation may be capable of maintaining that superior military that their alpha quadrant rivals can't match, with a higher budget for the military/ or with a dedicated fleet of warships separate from their science fleet as Rochey suggests.

[Mikey]

Excellent observation, 'Hair. All I'd be asking for is a SLIGHT shift.

[Sionnach Glic]

I've always gotten the impresion that Federation ships were, on average, better than ships of other races. This would mean that other races would generaly fall behind in any type of arms race, or simply wouldn't be able to keep it up for long.

Just my 2 cents...