Cardasian Federation war

[Duskofdead]

Maybe it seems like I'm nitpicking on that point but it reminds me of the making of Jaws, where Steven Spielberg was careful not to show any land anywhere on the horizon while they were hutning the shark. Because then the audience would just say, "Why don't they just head for land and get help?!"

Bit of a tangent, but didn't Chief Brody as that very question? As I understood it, they could have gone back for help any time, but Quint was spoiling for a fight.

You're right he did, but in the "making of", Steven Spielberg specifically didn't want it to "feel" to the viewer like help was "right over there." Where they were filming, they had to pick the angles carefully because the island they were basing the film crew on was rarely very far from the boat.

[kostmayer]

Works too. The boat really does feel isolated, even though it can only really be a day or two from help.

[Sionnach Glic]

Just to point out, Dusk, my reply to your post is just before your last post. You made another post a minute after I did, so I'm not sure whether you noticed it.

[Duskofdead]

Just to point out, Dusk, my reply to your post is just before your last post. You made another post a minute after I did, so I'm not sure whether you noticed it.

I did indeed miss it, I will try to reply later after work. (Tax season sucks in public accounting- 7 day weeks.)

Thanks for the heads up.

[Sionnach Glic]

No problem. Just wanted to make sure you didn't think I was ignoring your reply.

[Duskofdead]

Yes, in their time. Thing is, for the backbone of the Federation fleet, "their time" was almost a century ago. There's only so long you can keep refitting ships until they become nigh-on useless in any real combat role. A perfect example of this is the Miranda class, once a powerful ship in the Federation, going down like flies to the Dominion fleets. This lack of realisation that there's only so long that those ships will be effective for is a serious problem with the Federation, and they didn't seem to realise the seriousness of the problem until they had ships going down in flames left and right.

Throughout Trek it was frequently commented (often derisively by rivals of the Federation) that the quality and standards of living enjoyed by Starfleet officers and Federation citizens in general was not typical throughout the quadrant. My general take on it is that the Federation generally remained a significant player, in strictly military terms, because of their sophisticated technology. Typically Federation weapons pack more punch while using less devoted space than the ships of their rivals. Certainly at the very least the ships of other species never seem to devote as much space to labs, sensors and scientific equipment unless they are just devoted research vessels (in which case they frequently aren't armed.) And the crew quarters and crew accomodations for other species seems to be decades if not centuries behind the Federation. (The typical Romulan or Klingon crewman seems to enjoy about the same level of comforts and services aboard ship as a Starfleet crewmember of the TOS era, or worse.) I think this general trend applies Federation wide... from the planets to the ships, bases and starbases. The Federation in general devotes more of its resources to science, research, medicine, humanitarian efforts, maintaining a high standard of living, etc. Could the Federation maintain at all times a state of the art, devoted battlefleet devoid of holodecks and comfortable crew quarters? Absolutely it could, I think, however it has frequently not NEEDED to. Ships built primarily for science, research and exploration (Constitution class during its time, Ambassador and Excelsior during their time, Nebula and Galaxy during their time) have always been shown to be at least a match for the out-and-out warships of other powers, if not comfortably superior.

Switching tackle a little bit, I think one of the "real" explanations for mostly seeing Miranda and Excelsior class vessels during TNG was the lack of budget to create myriad new ship models. (We pretty much had to wait for the movies, particularly First Contact, with significantly larger budgets to get serious new ship designs on screen.) I don't think the writers made a concerted effort to show that the Federation was weak or ridiculously naive or relying on an obsolete fleet. (I think also that they very much shied away from taking any thunder away from the Galaxy class Enterprise-D, which was supposed to always inspire awe and be the crowning glory flagship of the Federation all throughout TNG.) I think the in-universe explanation is that the Federation appears to have undergone a very long period of almost entirely peaceful expansion on a rather large scale between the end of TOS and the beginning/middle of TNG, meaning most of its resources went into colonization, research, new technology (we frequently see Federation scientists figuring into show plots researching or testing spanking new technologies, whereas we VERY rarely saw other powers doing the same) and investment into new and potential future Federation members. (The large ongoing investments of aid in planets like Bajor, sending its ships off to clean up radiation or take care of other hazards even for non-member worlds, etc.) While this focus apparently left gaps where once state-of-the-art ship classes fell into being workhorses (Excelsior, Miranda) while newer designs were still in development and not yet rolling off the shipyards, the Federation still churns out newer and more sophisticated and capable starship designs at a rate far surpassing what we've seen in their primary rivals, the Klingons and Romulans.

To make a long story short, it was always my impression that powers like the Cardassians, Romulans and Klingons marginally rivalled the Federation's military strength only by HEAVILY focusing their resources into combat ships and military and intelligence assets, while the Federation prior to the Dominion War never needed to do anything of the sort in order to remain relatively secure, particularly since the majority of Trek's history we've seen on screen has been the Federation largely at peace with all of its neighbors. And if we saw a few years where the Federation lagged behind Vor'chas and D'Deridexes with its fleet of Mirandas, Oberths and Excelsiors, certainly the Federation has more than surpassed that gap now with Akiras, Defiants, Sovereigns and the like.

True, but a military isn't there purely to fight wars. The Republic of Ireland has never since it's creation been in a war. Does that mean it had no need of a military? Of course not. Militaries do all sorts of things. From escorting important people, guarding convoys, hunting down pirates and smugglers, patroling borders, providing security, ensuring the government has the biggest guns in the Federation and deterring hostile powers from attacking.
That last one in particular is something the Federation seriously needs. They are surrounded on all sides by hostile and aggresive powers who would love nothing more than to conquer the UFP. If the Federation hadn't geared up for combat and replenished it's fleets, I'd place a good bet on the Klingons making a move against Earth, and I'm not so sure I'd be betting on the humans at that point.

From watching the show it seems that the Federation always did pretty much all the things you listed as roles of the military, without needing heavily armed combat-devoted ships in order to do it. In fact I am pretty sure every single thing you listed was the topic of multiple episodes. The vast majority of the disasters Starfleet was called upon to answer were non-military in nature; crime investigations, natural disasters, evacuations, colony assistance, trade and political negotiations, ferrying diplomats, etc. Picard initiating a tachyon detection grid to catch cloaked Romulans (which later we learned was integrated into the border watchposts along the neutral zone, giving the Romulans pause about trying to cross even under cloak) was apparently a heavy deterrant to any direct confrontation the Romulans may have been contemplating-- and the initial test of that system was carried out by a fleet of ships, some of which were almost certainly "obsolete" by Dominion War standards. Again we come back to the point that Federation science and technical expertise allowed them to entirely bypass the need to have enormous guns sitting around doing nothing but being guns to deter enemies.

Oh, I know well that they could hardly expect to prepare for the Borg or the Dominion before they were even aware of their existance.
However, that's not what I'm basing my accusations of naivette on. The Federation quite simply seems to place no real priority on their military. Take a look at TNG. We see the Federation's most powerful ships searching for gaseous anomalies. We routinely see the Federation's flagship wandering around the middle of nowhere. Even more serious is Picard's claim that tactics are considered unimportant for a starship captain. And this came from the commanding officer of the fleet flagship! Also note the pathetic response against the first Borg incursion, a mere forty ships as you have already pointed out. Quite likely, this is due to the Federation fleet being mostly spread out across the territory they occupy, and not being well trained in responding to a crisis.

Well it's a bit unfair to claim that the Federation doesn't take military security seriously when its most capable battleships (which were also its most capable exploration ships simultaneously) during TNG were off doing research when there wasn't a war going on. Would you not agree it would have been a waste of assets to have the few Galaxy class ships doing nothing but sitting on the Romulan or Cardassian border.... scaring Romulans and Cardassians from attacking... when throughout all of TNG there was never any war or direct confrontation battle with either of these rivals? That point is moot now because the Federation can just toss some Defiants along their borders (at presumably much less cost than leaving a Sovereign or Galaxy class ship doing the same job) and retire its obsolete Mirandas or whatever else it had patrolling its borders.

In summary, the Federation seems to have disregareded it's military, stretched it out across too much territory, failed to teach them military tactics, and failed to build up to date warships. Hence why I consider them to be naive.

Starfleet recognized this deficiency when preparing for the Borg. While we only saw it in one episode, one of the results of learning about the existence of the Borg was a series of war games to test Starfleet war preparedness under the Zakdorn (recognized as the greatest strategic minds in the galaxy), as well as the development of the pulse phaser, the quantum torpedo, the Defiant and the Sovereign class starships. Does it not speak to Starfleet's favor that it contended favorably with the Romulans, Cardassians and Klingons, powers which seem to devote ALL their focus to the military and tactics and churning out nothing but warships? And that Starfleet competed with these powers without going out of their way to devote heavily to pure military applications-- in fact it didn't need to do so whatsoever until the Borg encounter.

Hmm, well, personally I never really got that impression. They were deffinitely a major power in the Alpha Quadrant. But I never got the impression that they had any real hope of taking the Federation on alone.

We had different impressions then. I got the impression that the Romulans didn't invade not so much because they couldn't but because that wasn't really their style. They were much more about subterfuge, plotting, and divide and conquer. Their involvement in the Klingon Civil War is one example, their attempt to have Geordi assassinate a Klingon leader to sow discord between the UFP and the Klingons is another, etc. They were about to invade the Federation during Nemesis (even AFTER Starfleet had "updated" and introduced tons of combat designs into its ranks!) pretty much until they realized that they feared Shinzon more than they feared the UFP, and questioned his sanity and competency.

Well, I don't mean to imply that I'm expecting the Enterprise-D to plow through a whole fleet of them!
Thing is, we've seen Warbirds being beaten by the much smaller E-D, which is primarily a scientific and research ship, with little military facilities on board. Contrast this with the much larger and, more importantly, combat-orientated D'Derix, and we come to the conclusion that the Warbirds, while powerful, have little punch in them. I dread to think what an Akira or, gods forbid, a Sovereign would do to one!

You have pretty much proved the point I've been trying to make. The Federation, without going out of its way to be a heavily combat-biased power, can match the largest and most powerful devoted warship of one of its most powerful rivals using ships whose primary design focus was scientific research. I think if we found out the Cardassians were still using Galors because they were putting most of their resources into mass producing kanar or research how to make class M planets warmer then your judgment about not taking military preparedness seriously would be far more apt.

Ah, right. I think I've realised the problem we're encountering here.
We seem to be reaching our conclusions via seperate ways here. While you are placing emphasis with the writers, I am disregarding them entirely and just going by what we see "in-universe".

During TNG, the writers never really implied the Federation had any major fleet numbers, agreed. However, during DS9, it was quite apparent the Federation did have such numbers. So, how do we rectify this apparent contradiction in-universe?

Everything was smaller scale in TNG. The Federation didn't have 1500 ships along the Cardassian border but then neither did the Cardassians. Everything was larger scale in DS9, my only disagreement with your line of thinking is that you seem to be intepreting the jump in numbers as "Starfleet had those ships all along but had them off staring at nebula." If Starfleet had those ships off in the sticks doing nothing, then so did the Cardassians and everyone else for that matter, because most "hostile encounters" we saw throughout TNG involved 2-5 ships. The largest encounter we ever saw besides Wolf 359 was the tachyon blockade on the Romulan fleet during the Klingon civil war.

Ah, my apologies.
I think this does highlight the "getting the same conclusion from different ways" theory I put forth above.

No need for apologies, I misperceived that you were picking a fight where there was none but I have since seen that you are just here for some fun discussion and I apologize for getting my back up a little and reacting like you were just picking at my post.

Agreed. The writers who wrote in the "we can't afford a war with them" quote were likely writing that from the sense that a war would be seriously costly with the Cardassians, due to the Federation's small fleet.
However, roll on to DS9 a few years later, and we see massive Federation fleets. To rationalise this 'contradiction' we can take his quote to mean that while the Federation could easily beat the Cardassians in open warfare, they would be seriously weakened by the aftermath.

Yeah my take on it is similar, the Federation "could" have devoted large ship numbers at the expense of a) leaving colonies in states of distress b) ignoring distress calls c) dropping important research d) pulling away from evacuation efforts e) abandoning Bajor or similar friendly worlds who were depending on Federation aid or support f) ignoring plagues, natural disasters and other crises which predominantly occupied Starfleet during peacetime, as seen in TNG.

If I may go back to my Middle-East analogy again, take a look at the US and Iraq. In barely any time at all, the US military had crushed the Iraqi armies and seized control of the country.
However, a few years later and the aftermath of the war has crippled the US army, weakened their hold on other territories (Afghanistan), drasticaly reduced their capability to sustain a serious war against oponents that could give them a run for their money (Russia, China, the European countries, etc), and sent their leader's popular support crashing to the ground like a plane with no engines.
It's quite possible that the occupation of Cardassian territores could have just the same effect on the Federation.

That is my feeling as well, not to mention the fact that the Federation by its own principles doesn't seem to seek to occupy or force enemies to a peaceful resolution. Rather they view it the other way around, achieve the peaceful resolution by nearly any means necessary, with force as a vastly distant worst alternative when all else fails. Our current society gives a lot of mouth service to this same idea but the Federation actually lives up to it so much more than we do that it's hard for us to perceive truly treating force as an absolute last alternative-- we're far too impatient (or corrupt and insincere about our spoken values, as the case might be) to relate to that mindset in a genuine way.[/i]

[Sionnach Glic]

My general take on it is that the Federation generally remained a significant player, in strictly military terms, because of their sophisticated technology.

Agreed. That's my take on the whole situation.

And the crew quarters and crew accomodations for other species seems to be decades if not centuries behind the Federation. (The typical Romulan or Klingon crewman seems to enjoy about the same level of comforts and services aboard ship as a Starfleet crewmember of the TOS era, or worse.)

Personally, that's one of my major problems with Starfleet designs. Crew comforts are all well and good, but they don't need king-sized rooms for every ensign on the ship, that's just stupidity.

Ships built primarily for science, research and exploration (Constitution class during its time, Ambassador and Excelsior during their time, Nebula and Galaxy during their time) have always been shown to be at least a match for the out-and-out warships of other powers, if not comfortably superior.

Quite true. But at the same time, that's a very bad way of looking at how you run your military. Sure, a galaxy can take down (let's say) three Galor class cruisers. That's fine for warship. However, we've seen that they can build much more powerful ships in much smaller frames (eg, the hideuosly overpowered Defiant class). Building such dedicated warships, and having a corps of ships purely for defence would massively reduce casualties among crews. Take a look at the battles in the Dominion War; we saw Mirandas going down like flies during most of those battles. The crew fatality rate for people serving onboard those ships must have been massive during the war.

Switching tackle a little bit, I think one of the "real" explanations for mostly seeing Miranda and Excelsior class vessels during TNG was the lack of budget to create myriad new ship models.

Agreed.

From watching the show it seems that the Federation always did pretty much all the things you listed as roles of the military, without needing heavily armed combat-devoted ships in order to do it. In fact I am pretty sure every single thing you listed was the topic of multiple episodes.

Quite true, but you run into the problem of higher crew fatalities than would otherwise occur.

Would you not agree it would have been a waste of assets to have the few Galaxy class ships doing nothing but sitting on the Romulan or Cardassian border.... scaring Romulans and Cardassians from attacking... when throughout all of TNG there was never any war or direct confrontation battle with either of these rivals?

I would, because the Galaxy class was not a pure warship. Put something like the Defiant class on the borders instead, and you can send as many Galaxies as you want off to search for gaseous anomalies. Would you say the USA's carrier fleets are a waste of assets if they weren't off scanning the seabed?

Starfleet recognized this deficiency when preparing for the Borg.

I know. I believe Picard's quote about the unimportance of tactics came from the episode you pointed out. It's good that they rectified this problem, but the fact that it got to that stage at all is a rather glaring problem.

Does it not speak to Starfleet's favor that it contended favorably with the Romulans, Cardassians and Klingons, powers which seem to devote ALL their focus to the military and tactics and churning out nothing but warships? And that Starfleet competed with these powers without going out of their way to devote heavily to pure military applications-- in fact it didn't need to do so whatsoever until the Borg encounter.

It says a lot about the power of Starfleet ships. All the tactics in the world won't save you if you're too badly outmatched. The fact that the Federation was able to stave off the Romulans, Klingons, and other power says nothing of any tactical prowess.

They were about to invade the Federation during Nemesis (even AFTER Starfleet had "updated" and introduced tons of combat designs into its ranks!) pretty much until they realized that they feared Shinzon more than they feared the UFP, and questioned his sanity and competency.

I thought that it was all Shinzon's idea to attack the UFP?
Well, we know for a fact that the much larger D'Deridex doesn't come close to matching a Galaxy. We know from the general amount of ships they deployed during the Dominion War that they don't have as much ships as the other factions (probably due to spending all their resources on a fleet of massive warships). I figured that Shinzon thought he could raze Earth to the ground, and take the Federation apart bit by bit with the Scimitar, but I never got the impression that the Romulans were preparing for an all-out invasion.

Everything was smaller scale in TNG. The Federation didn't have 1500 ships along the Cardassian border but then neither did the Cardassians.

Agreed. Though the problem crops up when you try to rationalise the contradiction in numbers in-universe.

If Starfleet had those ships off in the sticks doing nothing, then so did the Cardassians and everyone else for that matter, because most "hostile encounters" we saw throughout TNG involved 2-5 ships.

Quite true, though there were no all-out battles in TNG. Most of the actions seemed to consist of small skirmishes; ship commanders deciding to give the Federation a prod, much the way Soviet aircraft would buzz US forces during the Cold War.

Yeah my take on it is similar, the Federation "could" have devoted large ship numbers at the expense of a) leaving colonies in states of distress b) ignoring distress calls c) dropping important research d) pulling away from evacuation efforts e) abandoning Bajor or similar friendly worlds who were depending on Federation aid or support f) ignoring plagues, natural disasters and other crises which predominantly occupied Starfleet during peacetime, as seen in TNG.

Agreed.
Heh, when you put it like that, the Federation seems to be smack-bang in the worst place of the universe, with all those crazy spatial phenomenon around.

That is my feeling as well, not to mention the fact that the Federation by its own principles doesn't seem to seek to occupy or force enemies to a peaceful resolution. Rather they view it the other way around, achieve the peaceful resolution by nearly any means necessary, with force as a vastly distant worst alternative when all else fails. Our current society gives a lot of mouth service to this same idea but the Federation actually lives up to it so much more than we do that it's hard for us to perceive truly treating force as an absolute last alternative-- we're far too impatient (or corrupt and insincere about our spoken values, as the case might be) to relate to that mindset in a genuine way.[/i]

Agreed.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

The Federation seems to view their military entirely as a deterrent (until the Dominion War), which may serve as an in-universe explanation for their lack of true warships. Nevertheless (due to their tech), nobody dared launch an invasion of the Federation until the Dominion. Their military "strategy" certainly was effective enough in that regard.

On the other hand, the stabilization achieved when they reached a peaceful agreement with the Klingons, tilting the balance of power against the Romulans, may have "empowered" the Federation to become more complacent between the TOS era and the TNG era, while their technological advances allowed them to remain powerful.

[Sionnach Glic]

Seems like a reasonable explaination to me.

[Duskofdead]

The Federation seems to view their military entirely as a deterrent (until the Dominion War), which may serve as an in-universe explanation for their lack of true warships. Nevertheless (due to their tech), nobody dared launch an invasion of the Federation until the Dominion. Their military "strategy" certainly was effective enough in that regard.

On the other hand, the stabilization achieved when they reached a peaceful agreement with the Klingons, tilting the balance of power against the Romulans, may have "empowered" the Federation to become more complacent between the TOS era and the TNG era, while their technological advances allowed them to remain powerful.

Put virtually anyone at peace long enough and I think you would see some degree of "softening." Look at the Klingons-- Worf commented that the Klingons jumping into war with the Cardassians and Dominion had less to do with politics and more to do with people feeling the Klingon Empire had been at peace for too long. And look at their ships-- birds of prey largely, supplemented by flippin k't'ingas, vor'chas (getting warmer but still oldish) and so far as we know one Negh'var (their flagship.) The Klingons brought to the table a virtually obsolete fleet made threatening only because obsolete to the Klingons still put them, in firepower terms, on favorable terms against the likes of the Cardassians or Dominion attack ships. Sheer numbers were a factor too (only 1/3rd of their forces overwhelmed Cardassia) and their combat tactics (not being afraid to ram, aggressively attack superior enemy forces, etc.) kept them in the game and kept others intimidated by them.

As others have commented (and I agree) the Romulans seem to build their ships to intimidate psychologically, rather than to be practical militarily. This implies a long adaptation to peacetime for them as well-- focusing more on "scaring off" rival powers as well as using their ships, as Graham suggested, to show the might and power of the Romulan Empire to member worlds who might be contemplating protests or uprisings.

The Alpha Quadrant, relatively speaking, was a peaceful place-- a fragile peace, but peace nonetheless, for many decades. Rochev and I seem to virtually agree on pretty much our entire assessment of what has been shown in Trek, we just diverge at the final conclusion, he calls the Federation ridiculously naive for not prioritizing war preparedness and visible, tangible military strength more than they did. I would say that almost any claim of lax "resting on one's laurel's" in terms of military preparedness would be as true of the entire AQ as of the Feds-- the Feds choosing to "hide" or integrate war preparedness in starship designs primarily meant for other purposes (research, exploration) is just in line with their value system and their attitude about going out into space and expanding through peaceful contact, sharing of knowledge, etc. "If someone shakes a threatening fist at you with one hand and extends an olive branch with the other hand, take the olive branch" or whatever that saying is. I don't think it's an effort to be "stupid" about the possibility of armed conflict so much as that the possibility of armed conflict was something they refused to let dictate entirely their mission in space and their prioritization of what they wanted and needed out of their fleet.

[Sionnach Glic]

Agreed for the most part.

As for how we view the Federation's lack of a major military fleet, well, I suppose that's all down to personal opinion.

[Mikey]

It seems to me that the dichotomy is this: Dusk and some others feel that what the UFP has is good enough, and that there would be some sacrifice involved in militarizing even more; Rochey, Seafort, and myself are of the mind that the galaxy is a big scary place, there's always some new unknown big bad out there, and merely "good enough" isn't really good enough; particularly when you have the capacity to be much better without much of a stretch.

[Duskofdead]

It seems to me that the dichotomy is this: Dusk and some others feel that what the UFP has is good enough, and that there would be some sacrifice involved in militarizing even more; Rochey, Seafort, and myself are of the mind that the galaxy is a big scary place, there's always some new unknown big bad out there, and merely "good enough" isn't really good enough; particularly when you have the capacity to be much better without much of a stretch.

That last line is the part I disagree with. The Federation can make "bad mother" ships like the Defiant. (Let's just put aside the claim from many that it's ridiculously overpowered for its size, a criticism I agree with mostly) And it was flat out stated that the sickbay was totally insufficient, the beds were bunks, there were no science labs, no real crew or family accomodations, and that it was flat out built to fight and nothing else. We "see" that it is perhaps roughly on par, combat wise, with an "updated" Excelsior-- that's more or less the only real comparison to another Fed ship we have so I guess we have to go with that. Granted, the Excelsior is an older ship, but it is still vastly more capable in a lot of arenas than the Defiant. Sacrificing all that other utility for more guns is pretty much unacceptable given the Federation's express stated purpose and Starfleet's charter. Doing it for a small number of ships meant solely to be defensive is fine and Starfleet's already doing that with the Defiant and the Prometheus (the two ships that as far as we know have NO utility at all other than fighting) and we know for sure that the Defiant at least is in mainstream production.

I guess what it really comes down to is that I LIKE the UFP. I'm not of the opinion that they are hopelessly naive pacifists who need a good strong tough guy ("like me!") to come tell them how to beat up the bad guys. I like the optimistic value system of the human future portrayed in Trek... honestly if I wanted to just see militaristic, cynical people warring all the time I'd pop in virtually any other sci fi. (Well except Stargate, it has a lot of combat but it is sort of a hybrid of "most sci fi" and Trek in the sense that they are very wide-eyed and optimistic about advancing humanity, exploring, learning, etc.)

[Mikey]

I know that you disagree; that's why I said it was dichotomy between what you believe and what I expressed in the latter part. My point is not that The UFP should be a military junta, nor should Starfleet be a strictly military force. Rather, it is that Starfleet has been caught with its pants down before, and has prevailed mostly due to a technological advantage; the equal tactical and strategic incompetence of its adversaries; and hero characters/"fate points." Nobody would say that these are the cornerstones on which to base your defense, and I would just like the UFP to show a little foresight and accept the idea that a portion of Starfleet needs to be devoted to military pursuits - in ship design (which has slowly begun,) in personnel (AR-558 was just one shining example of how poorly prepared Starfleet is to prosecute infantry/planetside tactical missions, even though it was obviously important enough to make the attempt,) and in preparedness.

In other words, if you can take a small percentage of your Galaxies (for example) and make that percentage a much more potent fighting vessel at the expense of its exploration, diplomatic, and scientific abilities, why wouldn't you since the need has been shown? You wouldn't be losing such capabilities of your entire stock of GCS', and you would be increasing your preparedness for the eventuality of hostilities against a possible threat more competent than the Romulans or the Klingons. Wouldn't it have been nice to shrink the number of casualties, and perhaps shorten the duration of the Dominion War, by not having to scramble to cobble together a wartime footing AFTER the outbreak of war?

[mwhittington]

I agree with what you're saying, Duskofdead, except the Defiant is a superior ship compared to the Lakota (Excelsior variant) in combat capability. Granted, the Lakota is an awesome ship, but my take on its upgrades -and this is just speculation- is that the engineers probably just hollowed it out and put new guts in it, like some people do with their computer, and tuned it purely for combat. I may be wrong, but it's the simplest explanation, IMO. Also, according to Graham Kennedy, the Lakota project was scrapped because it was easier to build a Defiant than to upgrade an Excelsior and also because of the superiority of the Defiant over it in that little skirmish they had.