Starfleet Fleet Positioning

[Captain Seafort]

The impression I got was that they were worried about the Klingon reaction to the pasting the Narada gave them, and were concentrating on the boarder just in case. The problem was that it gave the Narada a clear run at Earth.

[Tsukiyumi]

The impression I got was that they were worried about the Klingon reaction to the pasting the Narada gave them, and were concentrating on the boarder just in case. The problem was that it gave the Narada a clear run at Earth.

That was my thought as well; after such a major engagement, the Klingons would probably be fully mobilized and on the warpath. The Federation had no way to know that the Narada was coming for them, so they just responded to the possibility of rampaging Klingons by redistributing their forces.

Which, as you said, left Vulcan and Earth wide open for attack by the Narada.

[Lighthawk]

So they were worried about the rampaging of a race with cloaking technology, which means their ships could show up anywhere without any warning, and the starfleets responce to that was to pull all ships into a small (relatively) area of space, thus leaving the most important planets in the federation completely unprotected should said cloaked ships slip on by?

[Tsukiyumi]

Even though the deleted scene from the script says "Klingon ships decloak", we didn't see it happen, so there's no reason to assume the Klingons of this universe have cloaks. The TOS Klingons didn't.

[Mikey]

I would personally err on it being the home fleet. However, we have no proof to say it was either, so we cannot say.

Indeed. Mention of ships that were already positioned beyond a few days' travel would be superfluous.

[Foxfyre]

To me it still seems a bit odd that after the Kelvin attack and the obvious changes to Starfleet is why were there no other ships near vulcan or earth.

[Aaron]

Even though the deleted scene from the script says "Klingon ships decloak", we didn't see it happen, so there's no reason to assume the Klingons of this universe have cloaks. The TOS Klingons didn't.

*cough*STIII*cough*

[stitch626]

Thats TMP, completely separate from TOS.

[Tsukiyumi]

Even though the deleted scene from the script says "Klingon ships decloak", we didn't see it happen, so there's no reason to assume the Klingons of this universe have cloaks. The TOS Klingons didn't.

*cough*STIII*cough*

I know. That's a good number of years after the Trek XI era, though.

[Avatar2312]

To me it still seems a bit odd that after the Kelvin attack and the obvious changes to Starfleet is why were there no other ships near vulcan or earth.

The Kelvin was attacked at the Klingon border no way near earth. And Starfleet did improve. There was a huge spacedock at earth, at a time where in TOS no similar sized structure was available in earth's obit. And they had 7 ships available as the distress call came in. In other times and universes the Enterprise was almost always the only ship within range *g*. Besides they probably relied on their planetary defense, the Narada circumvented, by forcing Pike to give Nero the codes. Given that, the defense grid must be pretty heavy in firepower.

And Vulcans never had many ships. They were pacifist and rather isolationistic. Quite unlikely that besides commercial travel much occured there. And even this - given the natural arrogance of Vulcans - was most likely only a few ships per day.

[Sionnach Glic]

The Kelvin was attacked at the Klingon border no way near earth.

Isn't Q'o'nos just a dozen or so light-years away from Earth? If so, the border would actualy be quite close to Earth.

[Mikey]

Hell, it's only 4 days away for a ship limited to sub-Warp 5... according to ENT.

[Avatar2312]

Sure. If it was that way it would put it about 400 light-days away from earth if W5 = 100c.

Somewhere it was speculated of warp transit routes, with different values for certain variables used in the calculation of warp speed, that open up and close at random times and for random duration, greatly increasing the effect of warp drive. That way the E-A was able to go to the center of the galaxy in such short time in ST-V. It was assumed that something similar was present during Broken Bow with Sol and Q'o'nos lying in or near such transit route.

It would be logical to assume that the Klingon homeworld is several dozen light years away from earth. Otherwise the Klingons would most likely have conquered earth when they began to use warp flight, which was several hundred years before humans did afaik.

[Mikey]

Yes, that would be logical. However, idiotic as ENT might have been, it still happened.

[Reliant121]

Maybe Vulcan patrols went out that far, and prevented Klingons from penetrating. The Klingons may have steered clear from that area because of the Vulcans.