Sol post Dominion War.

[Deepcrush]

I'm going to expand the OP so that people can have a bit more of an idea. Lets say you have One Billion Tons of material that the UFP has promised for the Core Fleet Command. Important factors below.

1.) Sol is the primary target of your actions. Defend Earth at all costs.
2.) You must build at least a small fleet with these ships.
3.) The Core fleet is on its own. So it must be able to defend against some rather powerful enemies. ie... Breen, Romulans, Borg Cube.
4.) You don't have to build shipyards or drydocks. SF has those already and Spacedocks/74's can double for both.

[Tyyr]

I build 250 Sovereigns and turn the remaining 125 million tons into that equivalent amount of shield generators, ground based phasers and torpedo launchers.

[Deepcrush]

That works, only one problem. Who's going to support the fleet? You can't take care of 250 starships with only a single Spacedock.

Instead of those ground platforms. Maybe a trio of DS9 style stations? Just one is pretty tough and three would be a bitch to cut through and we know they can move so the enemy can't just "go around" them. Plus each can dock 18 ships at a time. One month each = 54 ships per month or 648 ships per year.

[Coalition]

Does Starfleet have any kind of torpedo defense grid technology? That is something that should be standard on all colonies. Torpedoes launched from the surface could cause some serious damage in space.

Given that the torpedoes will have to slow down when traveling through the atmosphere, that will give attacking ships in orbit plenty of time to track the launch sites, kill those, and maneuver. Or you can have hypersonic booms affecting the local colony. A vacuum colony won't have this problem obviously.

Orbital weapons pods (similar to the Cardassian ones) would be a useful method. Make them into one-shot pods, where each pod launches a few torps and is then empty, will add to the enemy's fun. All the orbital fort has to do is select an enemy, select the appropriate pods (this can likely be automatic), and have the pods volley off 30-40 at a single target.

The key weakness with the Cardassian system was the targeting system. The platforms fired on anything with a Federation warp signature, instead of taking firing instructions from the main base. The ability of the base to route power to where it was needed was a nice feature though.

For Sol defense - 250 Sovereigns, or ~2400 Defiants? Choices, choices. I don't have to worry about shipyards or drydocks per the OP, and IIRC they have some atmospheric capability so I can just land them on-planet. Spacedock Beehive.

[Bryan Moore]

I'm with a few large spacedocks for defense/maintaining your defense force fleet.

While, in theory, I'd also like to leave between 100-200 Defiants or other sort of small escort vessels in orbit, however, that ends up being a lot of human and material resources that would likely be sitting there for a large amount of time, likely unused.

I would rather, quite honestly, build something like a torpedo boat, if you will. Make them smaller than the Defiant, basically something that's got a small warp engine, massive shield generators, armor, and torpedoes/phasers, but is only crewed by 10 people max. Make 500 of them, hell, even 1000. But the catch would be, that when not piloted, they would act as orbital defense stations. Basically a dual purpose ship. 500 you should have good coverage, where they could completely surround the Earth with their sensor line of sight. Keep them in a stationary orbit, manned by 1 or 2 people in shifts, as sort of mobile defense posts. They can sit and wait to be fired up, and when needed, beam up crews from Earth (who could normally have other assignments), and you've got your gunboats armed quickly, ready to swarm on any closing fleet.

I would also put a lot of platforms similar to what we saw at Chintoka/Cardassia during the Dominion War. Yes, they fell to sabotage, but design a system around it. Again, every one to be within sight of another.

Moreover, I would make sure that every other planet had defensive systems in place. While the odds of the enemy stopping to attack each particular planet, would be silly, keeping these stations as a launching craft for those UAV's we saw in TNG would be great. Just make sure I had loads of those, so that if anything got within site of Neptune or Pluto, you'd have trouble.

Another interesting concept might be the idea of creating something like the Empire's Interdictor Cruiser. Have something that can create a gravity well or something to force ships to drop outside of warp outside of the Solar System. This way, you won't have the case of some sneak attack coming out of warp right outside of Earth's orbit (ala Xindi probe), wreaking havoc, then leaving. Investing in this, along with the UAV's/Defense Gunships, you'd have a great chance of repelling an invasion.

This is LOTS of resources, but we seem to assume, mostly, that the Federation has a vast amount of them.

[Deepcrush]

Bryan Moore snip

That was surely... something...

[Lighthawk]

I'd build up squads of patrol ships using the following set up per squad

1 sovereign: The heavy of the group, used to engage other large captial ships, or scatter groups of smaller vessels. Having a 3 1/2 million ton battleship bearing down on you would make it hard to hold formation. The sovereign also acts as a sort of shield for the rest of the squad, it size and power make it an obvious target, so that it's presence casts a "shadow" over the smaller ships, hopefully making them targets of lesser interest.

3 Akiras: Dual role, artillery support and Carrier. Each Akira has 15 torpedo tubes, 7 of which are forward facing, all of the pulsefire type. 3 Akira could put out 21 torpedos per second, making for a nice opening barrage and useful for picking off any ships that get split from the attacking group. Each akira would also carry 72 peregrine fighters, 18 fighter wings, total of 216 for the squad. The fighters would be used as needed, providing the enemy extra targets to track, forcing them to keep their shields even all around, putting extra fire into weaken areas, ect.

5 defiants: The fist of the squad, the defiants are the heavy hitters of the group, the ones that go in close and really mix it up. They fly in formation and concentrate on pounding down enemy shields one by one, doing the real damage while the sovereign keeps everyone distracted.

1 nebula: The group's non-combatant. Load the ship's mission pod with the best long range and high powered sensors availible, and turn it into an AWAC. The nebula is the ship that finds the enemy and directs the rest of the squad in combat, keeping an eye on the bigger picture and the conditions of the other ships. The Nebula would actually be the lead ship of the group, not the sovereign. The nebula would also perform pick up and rescue if a ship went down, beaming out survivors from escape pods.

With the given resources, I could build 50 such squads to patrol in and around the system, with enough left for two space stations around the size of DS9 to assist the drydocks and Spacedock 74 in keeping the 500 ships supplied and repaired.

[Bryan Moore]

Bryan Moore snip

That was surely... something...

Can I take that as a complement?

[Deepcrush]

More of a "lets stick to the UFP and not bringing in other Universes" idea.

Lighthawk has a pretty good overall plan. The fleet he built would serve well not only in protecting Earth but if on rotation as he said would also serve well for the Romulan Border and the other Core Worlds which were part of the OP.

[Bryan Moore]

Fair enough. Do we see anything in our Trek universe that can drop a ship out of warp? You can't deny it would be immensely useful to stop surprise invasions.

[Lighthawk]

Not that I can recall seeing, but I'm think there were shown cases of a ship just getting blasted hard enough that it dropped them from warp. Possibly the impact knocks them around enough that the warp field collapses, or else some safety system shuts off the warp engines once they get enough out of line with their set course, in order to make sure they don't fly through something.

[Lighthawk]

More of a "lets stick to the UFP and not bringing in other Universes" idea.

Lighthawk has a pretty good overall plan. The fleet he built would serve well not only in protecting Earth but if on rotation as he said would also serve well for the Romulan Border and the other Core Worlds which were part of the OP.

Thanks.

And I think it would be a more than adequete fleet, with over 500 ships being part of it. I think the total resources you allowed were a bit excessive for just defending one system.

As for other core worlds and the border, with the nebula's and their sensor pods, you could easily patroll a large area, though some considerations would need to be made for cloaking.

[Deepcrush]

Remember you're defending the core worlds and RSE border, however the protection of Sol is just your primary concern.

[McAvoy]

I think defending Sol is the equivilant of defending the US coast between 1900 to 1950. The US has a great advantage (and disadvantage) of having two large oceans between any European or Asian country. Once you get there and perhaps even engage the local fleet or even take on the whole battlefleet, you still have to steam your damaged ships back to port. Add to the fact that the US around that point was equal or better than the British who around this time was still the largest and most powerful fleet. Even the British would have a extremely difficult time taking on the US East Coast. One of the design criteria of US ship design is long endurance and the heavy armor to withstand much greater damage. In the tripod of ship design, armament, armor and speed, the US always favored slow speed, heavier armor and armament. Whereas for example, the British favored, faster speed, heavy armament and lighter scale of armor. Germans, favored lighter armament, heavy armor and moderate speed.

Apply this to Star Trek terms pre Dominion War and during the war. Starfleet seemed to have a far effective fleet defending Sol during First Contact than it did in peacetime TNG Best of Both Worlds. By the time the Breen attacked Earth, the war has been going on for a well over a year, and had many years before that for Starfleet to gear up for the war.

So the Supreme Commander's suprise (also considering he probably knows the defenses of Earth since he is the Supreme Commander of both the Federation and Klingon fleets) is probably warrented since the Breen have to enter Federation space, dodge or engage the local fleets, the engage the defending fleet in Sol before attacking Earth. Like I said before, Martok's reaction to it was also of standard practice. When you decide to engage the enemy you are not supposed to lose ervery single vessel to the attack just for a political attack. You may engage the enemy to draw them out for ambush by a far larger fleet. The German attacks on the British coast during World War One is an example. But the Germans never decided (except in the end) to send ships out to for example Portsmouth to attack the docks there and be sunk with chance of escaping.

With the Spacedock there and perhaps other similar or smaller or even bigger spacestations around the system especially around Mars, I wouldn't be suprised that Sol at this point could field a large enough defense to dispel any such notion of attack by the Dominion except as a suicide run.

[Mikey]

Well thought, but contradicted by the fact that the Breen task group did in fact reach Earth. And the Iowa-class sure didn't sacrifice speed.