Ship of the week: Breen frigate

[Sionnach Glic]

All the Breen would have to do would be to keep guests away from the weapons section (a sensible precaution anyway) and they wouldn't have a clue how the ship was armed.

And what stops some random member of the crew from talking about it? Either through bribes, defection, or as a spy?

It's incredibly diffucult to keep military technology a secret for long. The simplest explaination is that it was newly developed, or newly implemented, at the onset of the war, rather than being deployed on every ships for years previously.
As there is no canon to support either side, I go with the simplest (and likliest) explaination, which is that it didn't exist previously.

[Captain Seafort]

I ment every Breen on a Breen ship. Every member of the crew would know about it and when at some trading dump may not think twice about selling a little inside information about it to others.

Basic security/vetting procedures would deal with that - and the Breen don't strike me as the type to be forgiving of mistakes generally, let alone security breaches like you're talking about. I suppose there might be the problem of someone bragging about their fancy new piece of kit over a beer, but the Breen don't appear to be the sociable sort. They keep themselves to themselves - not the type of character to give away secrets like the energy dampener.

[Teaos]

A single breen sold warp drive to the Ferengi. Whats to stop a similar type breen from selling weapons tech.

[Sionnach Glic]

Or even one of them blabbing about weapons tech for a lot of money...
Everyone has their price.

[Granitehewer]

Everyone may have their price, but every power also has its own elaborate security, counterintelligence measures and cultural perogatives, or are we to assume, that every major power knows of every other major powers' inventories and stockpiles, because regardless of cultural perogatives and intense security, scrutiny and counterintelligence, that everyone is fallible and has a price. if everyones' price were obvious and accessible, then such things as section 31, the tal shiar and obsidian order would be redundant.
Everyone may have a price, but the people with the precious knowledge would be harder to get to and much more protected and insulated than their more vocal but less valuable underlings....
Can we not keep referring to the non-cannon; 'legends of the ferengi', its non-cannon

[Sionnach Glic]

Everyone may have their price, but every power also has its own elaborate security, counterintelligence measures and cultural perogatives, or are we to assume, that every major power knows of every other major powers' inventories and stockpiles, because regardless of cultural perogatives and intense security, scrutiny and counterintelligence, that everyone is fallible and has a price.

No, I was simply pointing out that it would be incredibly hard to hide a weapon system that's installed on your ships from being discovered.
Remember, just because a counter-inteligence agency is supposed to keep their enemies from finding information out, it dosen't mean they can. You are assuming that just becuase these organisations exist, they will work perfectly.
Thta sort of thinking led to the construction of the Maginot Line.

if everyones' price were obvious and accessible, then such things as section 31, the tal shiar and obsidian order would be redundant.

How does the fact that you are able to bribe people for info negate the importance of a spy network?

Everyone may have a price, but the people with the precious knowledge would be harder to get to and much more protected and insulated than their more vocal but less valuable underlings....

Exactly, that's one of the reasons those organisations exist.
But you don't need technical readouts of the weapon to know what it does. All it takes is someone going 'the Breen have X which does Y' to blow the whole secret.

[Granitehewer]

Well, i was meaning that the isolationist Breen, who have minimal contact with other powers, and assuming their dominant cultural view and counterintelligence service(noone apart from weyoun, even knew what breen was like!) would render most 'honey traps', stings or bribes useless.
Even if you had a vague idea, about the existance of and the effects of the energy dampener,it does not automatically correlate to creating a successful counter, because there are different methods to the same end.
And clearly because Breen strategy was centred around the energy dampener, the security measures involved would be elaborate.
I wasn't stating that the intelligence agencies were infallible, i was stating, that if everyone had a price, and that price was known and accessible/acheivable, then the efficacy of the agencies would be reduced.

[DarkOmen]

Only pic I've got other than the DITL pics is a schematic...

[Granitehewer]

Cultural affiliations have alot to play in the dark arts, its well known that the CIA and NSA have great difficulty in recruiting or entrenching sources in the Peoples' Republic of China, even with its chinese-american operatives and Taiwanese affiliates, it is less to do with the efficacy of the ministry of state security MSS than the affiliations of the people involved, the ChiComm culture, and the alieness of the PRC compared to the USA.
So we could assume the same might be true for starfleet intel and the Breen Confederacy.
Also a great part of any agencys' budget and procurements goes on counterinformation and counterintelligence, so if the star trek agencies are like contempory agencies, than this could make garnering knowledge of the Breen, very difficult, but you're right, not impossible, i do conceed that.

[Thorin]

I disagree.
I am correct, you are not.

[Sionnach Glic]

Well, i was meaning that the isolationist Breen, who have minimal contact with other powers, and assuming their dominant cultural view and counterintelligence service(noone apart from weyoun, even knew what breen was like!) would render most 'honey traps', stings or bribes useless.

America was highly isolationist during WW1, does this mean that no one knew anything about them? Does this mean that Germany was unable to get info from bribing US personel? Nope.

Even if you had a vague idea, about the existance of and the effects of the energy dampener,it does not automatically correlate to creating a successful counter, because there are different methods to the same end.

So? That's not what this debate is about.
This debate is about whether the Breen weapon was either a new developement shortly before the war or was developed previously but kept undeployed, or whether the Breen had been using it for a long period of time before that.

And clearly because Breen strategy was centred around the energy dampener, the security measures involved would be elaborate.

WW2 German tactics were heavily centered around Panzer tanks. Does this mean that no one knew about them?

I wasn't stating that the intelligence agencies were infallible, i was stating, that if everyone had a price, and that price was known and accessible/acheivable, then the efficacy of the agencies would be reduced.

It's far more complicated than that. If you wanted to get precise info about this weapon, ie its yield and its range and whatnot, thats where these agencies come in.
Its far easier to simply find out that these weapons exist, you don't need a spy network to find that out.

So we could assume the same might be true for starfleet intel and the Breen Confederacy.

Except the Federation dosen't need to set up a spy network to find out about the existant of one, suposedly widly used, weapon.

Also a great part of any agencys' budget and procurements goes on counterinformation and counterintelligence, so if the star trek agencies are like contempory agencies, than this could make garnering knowledge of the Breen, very difficult, but you're right, not impossible, i do conceed that.

Precise knowledge (eg; how many ships they have, what the yield of their weapons are, etc)? Yes. General knowledge (eg; what type of weapons they use)? No.

I disagree.
I am correct, you are not.

What?

And Omen, that is one ugly ship .

[Granitehewer]

Pre WW1 america was isolationist, in part due to the number of ex pat germans and their lobbying, so any German scoring of an intelligence coup, hardly correlates to the Federation-Breen analogy, where it is possible that there would not be any communication, social transfers, common cultural affinities or concepts.
WW2 German tactics; panzer tactics by heinz guderian and blitzkrieg,were actually pioneered as a joint german reichswehr-soviet red army effort and utilised in wargames in the caucasus pre WW2, in Kazan and Lipetsk in 1926 (not forgetting the protoblitzkrieg by Brusilov), the reason that in barbarossa the soviet salients were overran has more to do with Stalins' purges of the high command, rather than a 'secret' panzer tactic, so the german panzer tactic or panzer example is inappropriate.
Genuinely secret german or japanese (another isolationist country) weapons such as battleships like the yamato or mushashi, i-400 submarine, He162, Ju 488, Mitsuibishi J4M1 J8M Ki20, Nakajima Ki 115 which were deemed to have great strategic import, were kept secret and intelligence resources were utilised so that these remained so virtually until the end of the war.
You really should use the spy network to confirm, as merely 'finding out these weapons exist' can lean more towards conjecture, myth, rumour, guesswork and supposition than fact.
The Federation would need to utilise its intelligence networks to discover the existance of the Breen dampening weapon, if it were deployed prior to the Dominion war.

[Granitehewer]

Anyways i like Rochey as a friend, alot, and don't want this thread to lose momentum and spiral out of hand, and become upsetting, or tread on toes or honour, so will leave it at that last post, regardless of future responses

[Captain Peabody]

Ah! The Breen frigate is one darn cool-looking ship, in my opinion. The wierd green hull surfacing, a-symmetrical design, and the fact that they took down the Defiant are all plus points, of course; not to mention the energy-draining weapon. Beyond this, though, am I correct in thinking they're not all that tough? If I remember correctly, a couple of volleys of Quantum Torpedoes from the Defiant was enough to completely destroy one in Tears of the Prophets....
But still; one of the best Trek designs out there, in my opinion, and definitely an example of 'outside-the-box' thinking on the part of the production crew.

[Monroe]

I think based on the culture of the Breen its possible. Look at Japan after the Catholics were kicked out and Japan went isolasionist from 1611-1853 no one knew a thing about them. America had an isolasionist policy but were no where close to what Japan had. America still wanted to make money off others and did so, they just didn't want to be caught up in other's wars. Think of early America as the Swiss. The Swiss aren't pure isolasionist, they're neutral but are willing to do trade. Japan was neither.

Then if you look at the rulers of the world look at Japan again, the Emperor's dynasty has lasted 2500 years because of their culture. That's a long dynasty by any standards. Almost inhumanly so. 2500 years without a coup?

If the Breen have a culture of intense privacy as they appear to have, and isolasionism similiar to the Japanese than its entirely possible that they have weapons that the Federation don't know about. Especially since the Breen have never gone to an all out war with the federation before.

That's my opinion on it.