Sisko's Worst Command Decisions

[Deepcrush]

So I guess my question is this, even if you can do a draft and you have all these people at you disposal what exactly are you going to do with them?

Not a damn thing. Trying to run a draft in the UFP would be like Modern France believing it could conscript out of the Modern United States. While at first you may get a few people, we stress the word few. Most of them won't work for you and you're more then likely just to piss everyone else off enough for them to attack you. Rather then your enemy.

[Sionnach Glic]

I don't know that a draft is impossible, but you would have to have a damn good reason.

Aye, that's more or less what I was getting at. You'd need a reason good enough to convince the public that they should put their lives on the line. Needless to say, such a reason would be pretty hard to come by even when fighting a serious war.

. Hell, the UK waited several years into WWI to put one in place. The US needed populist incidents just to get into both World Wars and get the draft supported. Even in the Civil War it was unpopular though.

I'd be hesitant to use anything pre-Vietnam to really gauge how the UFP might respond to the institution of a draft. Even in WW2, warfare was very "sanitised" to the people at home. They didn't see the horrors of war, nor did they truly know how lethal the battlefield was. All they saw of the war was propaganda, most of which was staged or edited, and all they heard was how it was their patriotic duty to sign up and defend their nation.

Compare that to friggin' Afghanistan, which has one of the lowest body counts for any real war the US has been in. Do you think anyone could have put a draft into place without being kicked out of office? Not a chance. Hell, there were even members of the military itself trying to weasel out of being deployed. Good luck trying to get the public to take a trip east.

The UFP would most likely be much like that. It appears to be an extremely pacifistic and self-indulgent nation. What we see of their military is a bad enough sign - think of what the civilian populace must be like! I can't see many of them taking the prospect of being taken from their homes, ferried across space to fight and probably die against fanatical aliens all too well.

More than that though there are practical problems.
*snip*

Excellent points. Particularly on the seeming uselessness of large numbers of troops. I hadn't actually thought of that before.

Well, planets have to be conquered in some fashion, so I suppose there may be large troop transports we've never seen. Hell, take something the size of a GCS, strip out everything but engines and life support, fill the rest of the ship up with cryo-stasis pods (so the troops don't need room to eat/sleep/etc) and you could probably ferry a few tens of thousands of people. Though that's still incredibly low, and I doubt the UFP has the resources to build large fleets of such ships.

That's one hell of a puzzle you've just unveiled.

One of two things will happen. Either the enemy will simply dispose of your soldiers from space if they really want the planet or they will just obliterate the infrastructure and leave. I can't see a single scenario where ground forces make sense.

Actualy, ground forces make quite a bit of sense. The introduction of starships doesn't make a ground force obselete any more than fighter jets did.

Let's say that two space-faring nations are waging a war with each other. What's the one thing they both want? Resources. Where are these resources located? On the enemy's planets.Now, let's say one side achieved space supremecy, while the other has a large force of troops and tanks on a planet that's about as built up as modern Earth. The planet refuses to surrender. What does the attacker do now?

Well, sure, he could just level everything from orbit (assuming he doesn't have a problem with causing the death of billions). That'd also wipe out all infrastructure on the planet. Thus to exploit the planet's resources (assuming they haven't been destroyed in the attack) the attacker would then have to shuttle his own work force to the planet, move in or construct the necessary machinery to extract those resources, build facilities to process and refine that resource, build facilities to turn those resources into usable goods, set up landing/take-off sites to ferry those resources off-world to their destination, construct power plants to power all the facilities, construct habitation areas for the work force to live in, construct ammenities to keep the work force happy and set up an administration system and emergency services.
That's a hell of a lot of work, as well as cost. The war would probably have ended by the time the attacker could actually exploit the planet's resources, meaning that you've sacraficed a lot of time, effort and money for something that's effectively useless during a time of war. There's also the fact that some nations (the UFP, for example) would simply never just glass a planet like that. So some other sollution must be reached.

So what other options are there?

Well, there's the possibility of attempting to attack and occupy the planet and use the already existing work force and infrastructure to exploit the planet's wealth for you. It also means a nice boost from tax money when you get a few billion extra paying you.
So how would the attacker go about a ground assault? Well, firstly, any military unit or facility that's in the open would be anhialated by orbital fire immediately. The only facilities and forces that would survive unscathed would be those located inside population centres. So the attacker is now left with the choice of either causing serious colateral damage and blasting those units from orbit, or a lengthy ground campaign. Choosing the latter would lead to a lengthy and drawn-out struggle, while choosing the latter would piss the population off and cause damage to the planet's infrastructure. In either case, the planet's wealth could be exploited far quicker than if it had just been blasted into rubble.

The third, and most likely, option is that of blockade. The defender refuses to surrender, so the attacker stations a task force of ships in orbit with the objective of preventing any ships from landing on or taking off from the planet. This doesn't gain the attacker anything, but it saves him from wasting time and effort on pacifying the planet while its resources can no longer be used by the enemy. At the end of the war, assuming the attackers triumph and dismantle the opposing government, the planet (and all other planets the defenders had) will again be given the option to surrender. If they refuse, then it's back to the option of a ground assault.

So overall, a good ground force is still a necessity, even in Trek.

So I guess my question is this, even if you can do a draft and you have all these people at you disposal what exactly are you going to do with them?

Damn all, most likely. As you correctly pointed out, there's simply no way of moving so many people to so many different locations in such a short amount of time.

[BigJKU316]

On Orbital Bombardment. Even if you are the UFP during a war there would be few moral qualms about blowing away all the militarily useful structures, which in this definition would not even include factories but simply anything that can build a starship and contribute to the enemy. They can build all the disruptor rifles they want, I am not going down there after all. You simply bypass the planet, leave a ship or two to watch it and keep them from building anything that can threaten you and move on. Basically this is the approach the US took in the Pacific. If you blast apart the runway and chase all the ships out of the harbor it does not matter if there are 100,000 Japanese left there with guns. The only reason to take a planet or an island is if it has something you want or you need it to serve as a base. But in space there are dozens of un-occupied, lifeless rocks one can establish supply dumps on. No need to go to all the trouble of a full scale ground war.

On the necessity of a ground force. I guess I just don't see it, at least on a large scale for offensive operations. One needs them to exist, at least theoretically to raise the cost of an invasion high enough that it is not practical but I still think whoever controls the space around a planet will win in the end. I mean in theory I could just locate the armed people with sensors and beam them directly into large prison ships if they really cared that much. Hell, they could beam you up and just scatter your molecules into space if they wanted.

I think that what you should see is two different forces out there. One would be highly trained almost special forces like troops to seize the odd facility here and there or snatch a person or ship and so on. The rest would simply be a planet having an armed militia. On the larger worlds the size of such a force would be so large as to make any invasion impractical, really regardless of how poor the troops might be.

[Deepcrush]

Given how easy it is to block transporters, sensors and comms. If you want to take a planet. It will come down to troops on the ground, fighting house to house.

[Captain Seafort]

The only reason to take a planet or an island is if it has something you want or you need it to serve as a base. But in space there are dozens of un-occupied, lifeless rocks one can establish supply dumps on. No need to go to all the trouble of a full scale ground war.

Nonetheless, this is a key part of Trek warfare - the strategic range of their ships is very short. In "The Defector", "Chain of Command" and "Tears of the Prophets" we saw military operations being conducted over ranges of only a few light years. In the first it was stated that having a base within the Neutral Zone would give the Romulans a major advantage, despite it being only 2.5 ly wide, and in the latter two, only inhabited systems just across the border (Minos Korvo and Chintoka) were considered viable targets.

[Deepcrush]

For every step closer you are to attacking your enemies vital core points. Is one step closer to winning. The same goes for your enemy. A day closer, is a day that someone on the other side has to make up for.

[Captain Seafort]

It's also a step that stretches your LoC and shortens the enemy's. Not as clear-cut an advantage as you make out.

[Deepcrush]

It's also a step that stretches your LoC and shortens the enemy's. Not as clear-cut an advantage as you make out.

Never said it was clear cut. It is however an advantage to have a forward operations post closer to the enemy heart then they have to yours. Much the same as DS9 was to Cardassia vs anything the Dominion had until they took Betazed.

If you build a supply/defense post then it is, a clear cut advantage if you work to make it so.

[Captain Seafort]

Whereupon we're agreed on the usefulness (necessity indeed) of seizing major systems and planets as you advance.

make it so.

Was that deliberate?

[Deepcrush]

Whereupon we're agreed on the usefulness (necessity indeed) of seizing major systems and planets as you advance.

Yes, we are agreed.

Was that deliberate?

Not at all.

[BigJKU316]

Whereupon we're agreed on the usefulness (necessity indeed) of seizing major systems and planets as you advance.

make it so.

Was that deliberate?

I have never quite understood the inconsistancy on these things. Voyager and the E-D can cruise forever it seems like but you are right, military operations are conducted over limited space with little imagination. I always just chalked it up to Starfleet being run by people who know nothing about military operations and the Dominion seeming to have not fought a major war in a long long time.

In the Dominion War you can't bypass anyone because they seem to have not built a logistical tail (ie supply ships) to replace consumables such as torpedoes. I can't imagine it is a fuel issue so much as they don't have a proper plan in place to bring weapons and replacement parts to the front from their supply sources.

And I am not sure how taking an inhabited planet would help this problem. I mean I suppose if you captured an anti-matter refinery intact or something I could see it, but assuming they deny you that it would just make the problem worse rather than better because now I have to supply my fleet there along with the ground force holding it along with the civilians who I presumably am going to take care of.

I think they had the strategic targets all wrong in the Dominion War and I get the impression it is a leftover from the earlier AQ conflicts that were mostly about colonies and living space where the conflicts were about controlling territory. The Dominion War was more of a fight to the death. The targets should have been ship-yards and industrial facilities.

[Mikey]

Some of what you say is true - some of the issues could be circumvented by common sense. But the taking (intact!) of inhabited, or habitable, worlds isn't a step to further the waging of war... it's the whole point of waging war. The UFP, by and large, isn't in the business of waging punitive wars. Granted, they may fold like a cheap suitcase and give back all their gains to a weaker opponent at the bargaining table, but that's not germane to this conversation.

[BigJKU316]

Some of what you say is true - some of the issues could be circumvented by common sense. But the taking (intact!) of inhabited, or habitable, worlds isn't a step to further the waging of war... it's the whole point of waging war. The UFP, by and large, isn't in the business of waging punitive wars. Granted, they may fold like a cheap suitcase and give back all their gains to a weaker opponent at the bargaining table, but that's not germane to this conversation.

You are not taking a world intact if it is defended with any gusto. You are looking at basically taking the battle for Germany in 1945 and replicating it across the whole of a planet with weapons of unimaginable destructive power.

To put it in perpective the Russians lost 6% of their total population in WWII to military deaths to a power half their size in terms of people. Assuming you go to conquer a planet about equal to Earth you are going to lose, dead probably between 8 and 10% of the population of Earth. To achieve that the Russians enlisted about 34 million people during the war, or a force equal to about 40% of the population of Germany.

More than that you are mistaken about the purpose of waging a war. The purpose is simply to impose your will on the opposition. Many wars are about territory, but not all.

[Deepcrush]

More than that you are mistaken about the purpose of waging a war. The purpose is simply to impose your will on the opposition. Many wars are about territory, but not all.

Wrong, wars are about resources. Human, oil, ore, farmland, money... doesn't matter.

[Mikey]

You are not taking a world intact if it is defended with any gusto. You are looking at basically taking the battle for Germany in 1945 and replicating it across the whole of a planet with weapons of unimaginable destructive power.

Let's see... defending or attempting to conquer with boots on the ground, versus simplyi DBZ from orbit... yeah, they'd both obliterate the planet's civilization infrastructure the same...

Except for "not at all."

To put it in perpective the Russians lost 6% of their total population in WWII to military deaths to a power half their size in terms of people. Assuming you go to conquer a planet about equal to Earth you are going to lose, dead probably between 8 and 10% of the population of Earth. To achieve that the Russians enlisted about 34 million people during the war, or a force equal to about 40% of the population of Germany.

Yep. War sucks, and lots of people die. In fact, the bit about people dying is probably the main reason for it sucking. Can't argue, won't argue. Is this, however, somehow relevant?

More than that you are mistaken about the purpose of waging a war. The purpose is simply to impose your will on the opposition. Many wars are about territory, but not all.

Yeah, OK. And in space, how do you propose to do that without taking and holding territory? Further, why would you do that without taking and holding territory?