Breen Attack on Earth

[SomosFuga]

Did any races have planetary bombardment weapons? If they were just using ship-to-ship weapons then I would not expect too much damage. More a terror/scare tactic than anything meant to do physical harm.

Are you serious?
Remember ep Silent Enemy when they leveled a mountain using phase cannons. In ep Divergence the klingon admiral threatened to obliterate a planet. Both examples about 220 years before the breen attack on Earth.

It's not hard to believe that SF wouldn't have dedicated planetary bombardment weapons as standard in their ships but why wouldn't the dominion, cardassians or the breen, not to mention the romulans, the klingons, the borg, and so on.

[Jim]

I was serious, but in honesty, I do not recall the mountain leveling that you mention. The Klingons threatened a lot of stuff that they could never follow up on so...

I do remember many times where "hiding in caves" was more than adequate to protect everyone. That does not say to me that planetary bombardment on a scale that is any real threat was available.

I feel that if it was an actual viable option, it would have been used a lot more. I would have expected the Cardassians to use it against the Maquis. I would have expected the Dominion to use it widely during the war as well. Why use ground forces when you can just push a button? Especially the Dominion. When they got cut off from their reinforcements and had shortages in both Jem’Hadar and Ketracel White they could not “afford” to throw troops into the grinder. Just bomb planets back into the stone age if that is an actual viable option. However, they did not do that (in either situation) as I felt it was not an actual viable option.

[Graham Kennedy]

I was serious, but in honesty, I do not recall the mountain leveling that you mention. The Klingons threatened a lot of stuff that they could never follow up on so...

I do remember many times where "hiding in caves" was more than adequate to protect everyone. That does not say to me that planetary bombardment on a scale that is any real threat was available.

I feel that if it was an actual viable option, it would have been used a lot more. I would have expected the Cardassians to use it against the Maquis. I would have expected the Dominion to use it widely during the war as well. Why use ground forces when you can just push a button? Especially the Dominion. When they got cut off from their reinforcements and had shortages in both Jem’Hadar and Ketracel White they could not “afford” to throw troops into the grinder. Just bomb planets back into the stone age if that is an actual viable option. However, they did not do that (in either situation) as I felt it was not an actual viable option.

I suspect it's a combination of actual war aims and MAD. For the former it's no different to what happens now. Why does America wage extensive ground wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, when it has a vast nuclear arsenal? In part, because using those weapons would defeat the purpose of the war. You can't "liberate Iraq" by turning it into a nuclear wasteland, and nor can the Dominion impose control and order on the Alpha Quadrant by annihilating the population of all the planets.

And if the Cardassians or Dominion did start to do that, everybody else would respond in kind. A Trek equivalent of World War III that left all sides in ruins isn't in anybody's interest.

[McAvoy]

I suspect it's a combination of actual war aims and MAD. For the former it's no different to what happens now. Why does America wage extensive ground wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, when it has a vast nuclear arsenal? In part, because using those weapons would defeat the purpose of the war. You can't "liberate Iraq" by turning it into a nuclear wasteland, and nor can the Dominion impose control and order on the Alpha Quadrant by annihilating the population of all the planets.

And if the Cardassians or Dominion did start to do that, everybody else would respond in kind. A Trek equivalent of World War III that left all sides in ruins isn't in anybody's interest.

Well with nukes, there is also radiation too...

[Mikey]

@ Jim - if I understand your question correctly, then no; I don't recall any particular weaponry that was specifically designed for planetary bombardment. However, as has been mentioned, "standard" shipboard weapons are more than capable of glassing a good-sized chunk of terrain.

[Jim]

@ Jim - if I understand your question correctly, then no; I don't recall any particular weaponry that was specifically designed for planetary bombardment. However, as has been mentioned, "standard" shipboard weapons are more than capable of glassing a good-sized chunk of terrain.

I am willing to accept the possibility. I just thought that if it was viable, it would have been used more. Especially by the Dominion who do not care at all about the solids or the plantes, outside of potential future resource mining.

[Captain Seafort]

I just thought that if it was viable, it would have been used more. Especially by the Dominion who do not care at all about the solids or the plantes, outside of potential future resource mining.

It might have been, given how little we saw of planetary assault tactics. Alternatively, they may have held off either on the grounds that it's a waste of resources, or as part of a softly-softly approach during the early stages of the campaign in order to avoid a situation where most of the quadrant was joining the war against them, as would likely have happened had they been too blatant in their objective to take control of the quadrant.

[SomosFuga]

Yeap, the dominion may have feared other powers to align against them if they had use mass destruction weapons plus the cardassians and breen may have feared retaliation against their own planets.

[Praeothmin]

We know Trek has planetary shielding, even if it's not powerful enough to stop one starship for long, but these shields were operated by a mental institution...
Ty'Gokor, a Klingon command center, had shields powerful enough that "even a dozen won't penetrate the shielding around the command centre" according to O'Brien...
So who's to say that San Francisco, home of Starfleet headquarters, didn't have such shields?
Combine that to the defense platforms found everywhere in ST, and it looks more and more like bleedthrough damage, or as has been suggested, perhaps smaller ship's fire, like small fighter crafts...

[Mikey]

So who's to say that San Francisco, home of Starfleet headquarters, didn't have such shields?

Nobody is. The problem here, though, is that just because it's possible/plausible/sensible doesn't mean that we can assume it without positive evidence.

Combine that to the defense platforms found everywhere in ST

Er... I recall the Cardie unmanned platforms and the big Klingon hybrid bases/platforms. Where else is "everywhere?"

[SomosFuga]

Combine that to the defense platforms found everywhere in ST, and it looks more and more like bleedthrough damage, or as has been suggested, perhaps smaller ship's fire, like small fighter crafts...

The only one i can remember from cannon is that from tha cardassians. Those were awesome

[SomosFuga]

Nobody is. The problem here, though, is that just because it's possible/plausible/sensible doesn't mean that we can assume it without positive evidence

And we can not assume they don't exist either just because we haven't see them.

Er... I recall the Cardie unmanned platforms and the big Klingon hybrid bases/platforms. Where else is "everywhere?"

big Klingon hybrid bases/platforms? i don't remember those.

[McAvoy]

That starbase we saw in Season 5's season opener?

Sorry... drunk and too lazy to look up the episode.

[Mikey]

And we can not assume they don't exist either just because we haven't see them.

If we have to make a statement about their existence beyond "possibly," then yes we can and we must. Absence of evidence, and all that.

big Klingon hybrid bases/platforms? i don't remember those.

This, from DS9: "Apocalypse Rising."

[Jim]

The problem here, though, is that just because it's possible/plausible/sensible doesn't mean that we can assume it without positive evidence.

You mean like with effective bombardment abilities?