Thorin wrote:You don't need aggression to be resistant at all, I have no idea why you would ever think that.
Resistance requires fighting. Fighting requires aggression. Developing the required aggression is a major part of military training. While civilians have in the past demonstrated this aggression (the French, Dutch, Yugoslavs, Russians, etc, etc during WW2 for example), Vulcans have never demonstrated this, and indeed a collectivist state like the Federation would actively discourage it.
The reason why I can't understand them going ahead in secret is because they're going so far into Federation space. Vulcan is in the heart of the federation! It's not a foothold. If it were in WW2, It would have been like the Nazis sending 1000 soldiers to take a foothold in the USA, expecting to eventually take it! It wouldn't happen, Vulcan is simply too far away from Romulan space.
Against an armed nation like the US, sure it'd fail. Against such a pacifist culture as Vulcan, it's another matter.
I could understand them gaining a foothold on one in the neutral zone or in the nearest sectors, but Vulcan is outrageous. And how 3000 could possibly expect to take on the entire population of a planet is outrageous, and how they could possibly expect, even with reinforcements on the way, to take a planet that is surrounded 360 degrees by Starfleet, is absurd.
They're sending a Trojan Horse remember. That would give them the element of surprise they needed to seize their initial targets. Once they've seized those targets, it would be a devil of a job to gt them out. During the 1916 Easter Rising, the Irish Volunteers were able to seize key points around Dublin within a few hours. It took the British Army a week to dislodge them, with the advantages of machine guns and artillery, neither of which the Federation has. Even then, the rebels surrendered after the fall of the GPO rather than keep fighting, which the other positions were still capable of doing.
A spacedock would hold millions, surely there can be no doubt. What else would they need all that space for? It'd be about the same ratio of people:space as the saucer section of a galaxy, wouldn't it? And I'm only on about the main bulk of it, all the bottom of it can have all the power plant and weapons etc. Though fair enough, there is no proof of a spacedock being there, but if there were, it would definitely be millions. And You'd expect to find the best starbases at Vulcan and Earth.
You'd also expect a proper military to have artillery, machine guns, AFVs and no civilians on starships. We've never seen any starbase at Vulcan, so we can't make assumptions.
Regarding the Lakota; I'm not sure but isn't that just because that was the only ship which was loyal to Leyton? But still, that hardly counts. This was war, they had all their ships on the frontlines. In BoBW they had 30 something ships all in the vicinity of earth, and in Endgame they had 27 all in the vicinity of earth. There's no remedy - in wartime you don't have all your ships surrounding a planet so that eventually that will be your only planet remaining.
When they were establishing martial law at the end of "Homefront", they specifically mentioned using the Lakota's transporters to mobilise Starfleet personnel on Earth. No mention of any other ship, or of orbital facilities.
Vulcan civilians? Not all Vulcans of the "military" type enter starfleet, they have their own organisations, too. There would be plenty that would have a military background and have plenty of phasers.
Even still, none of this compares to how idiotic the Romulans are to think they can hold a planet in the middle of Federation space, while at war with the Federation.
There's been no mention of a Vulcan military during TNG. There's been no mention of Vulcan households having enough firepower to hold off an infantry platoon like in the US, and given the Federation's politics it's extremely unlikely. The Federation approach to military preparedness in the TNG-era has always been "rely on Starfleet". If Starfleet can't stop the Romulans getting to Vulcan (which they wouldn't have given the Romulan's Trojan Horse tactic) then Vulcan has had it.
In addition to this evidence from other episodes, look at Picard's Data's and Spock's reaction to being told the Romulan plan. If Vulcan could brush off the attack easilly, as you're claiming you'd have though they'd have mentioned it. They didn't. Not even as a show of bravado to Sela. This strongly implies that had they not been able to escape and warn Starfleet the plan would have worked.
