Land Power

[Darth Wong]

How many Breen ships were involved, and how large were they?

[Alyeska]

IIRC it was said that 80 Breen ships attacked and were destroyed before the defending fleet of Sol (located at Mars) could respond. All Breen ships are of the same size and class from what we see. Either they mass produce a single class for a while, or dedicated a capable but smaller ship to the Dominion while keeping their larger ships at home for defense. Either way we can safely assume its the standard sized Breen ship we have seen.

[Darth Wong]

IIRC it was said that 80 Breen ships attacked and were destroyed before the defending fleet of Sol (located at Mars) could respond. All Breen ships are of the same size and class from what we see. Either they mass produce a single class for a while, or dedicated a capable but smaller ship to the Dominion while keeping their larger ships at home for defense. Either way we can safely assume its the standard sized Breen ship we have seen.

Were they cloaked? How did they enter the system without the fleet at Mars responding? And while we're on that note, how does this incident dovetail with your assertion that it is a logical conclusion to assume that Earth must be strongly defended if they kept their defense fleet at Mars rather than Earth?

It sounds like Earth has only short-range defenses, or that they scrambled starships from SpaceDock. But again, it does depend on how these Breen ships compare with a typical Fed capship. If the writers were modeling it after the Doolittle Raid, it would have been a bunch of very small, fast, light raiders (analogous to aircraft) rather than capital ships.

[Alyeska]

It was never said HOW they got there but given the distances involved, the Breen likely had cloaks. The Breen have been at odds with both the Romulans and Klingons and it wouldn't surprise me they had cloaks.

All statements made indicated that no ships were imediately around Earth. Statements made said that the Breen attack force of 80 ships was destroyed in less then five minutes. Five minutes being the time it would take ships stationed at Mars to reach Earth.

This means that Earth has some sort of defensive weapons of some sort. Its possible that Spacedock is in orbit directly above North America and the Breen decloaked within weapons range. They make a symbolic attack on the headquarters of Starfleet knowingly sacraficing their ships and Spacedock makes short work of the fleet.

[Chris OFarrell]

He's not talking about the Borg sphere that the cube launched, he was talking about the Borg Cube itself, that was in the process of shooting it's way through the fleet attempting to defend the planet. He's asking where all the firepower was during that battle. It was now or never at that point, since the Borg Cube was already well on it's way to insertion into Earth orbit. Why the hell would they check their fire at that point?

Same reason, even more so. The fleet was still swarming around the cube at this point, friendly fire is not. They were still causing increasing damage to the ship, its not unreasnoable to assume Earths defensive weapons were still being held in check. The point where the Cube was destroyed was not Earth orbit, but still some distance away from it. A rough guess would put it a little inside Luna orbit, which is still long range. Then the sphere broke free and about a minuite later started the timewarp.

Hell I can see surface bassed defence fire being held back for political reasons, the Government not wanting to use it unless absoloutly necessary, simply because then people will start to panic and realise the Borg are right on their doorstep. Given that the E-E was right behind the thing and about to engage, its not surprising. Its the same reason if you have an interceptor engaging an enemy fighter that you don't start shooting off SAM's at the same enemy at the same time.

[Gil Hamilton]

You keep saying it was Spacedock, but that really doesn't jive up with the Earth being completely defenseless to a Dominion attack in "Homefront". Besides, the Borg Cubes approach to Earth was directly over North America, you could see it in First Contact. Where was Spacedocks firepower then?

[Chris OFarrell]

It was never said HOW they got there but given the distances involved, the Breen likely had cloaks. The Breen have been at odds with both the Romulans and Klingons and it wouldn't surprise me they had cloaks.

Actualy the Breen DO have cloaks, its explictly mentioned in one of the TNG episodes, "Hero Worship" IIRC.

[Darth Wong]

Same reason, even more so. The fleet was still swarming around the cube at this point, friendly fire is not. They were still causing increasing damage to the ship, its not unreasnoable to assume Earths defensive weapons were still being held in check.

In other words, you are conceding that if Earth does have any defensive weapons, they are weaker than the battered survivors of the fleet that was harassing the Borg cube, otherwise they would have ordered the fleet to keep their distance from the cube so they can pound the fuck out of it before it gets any closer.

Of course, this also begs the question of why they have to be so close to the cube in the first place, given the sheer size of the target ...

[Alyeska]

You keep saying it was Spacedock, but that really doesn't jive up with the Earth being completely defenseless to a Dominion attack in "Homefront". Besides, the Borg Cubes approach to Earth was directly over North America, you could see it in First Contact. Where was Spacedocks firepower then?

As many of the warsies are so fond of pointing out, phasers and torpedoes don't move that fast and all it would take is a minor course correction by the part of the Cube.

Gil, I was proposing an alternative explination for what happened at Earth with the Breen that fits the evidence better. Do we assume a space station is armed, or do we assume the Federation has ground bassed weapon systems?

Either way, a single space station and a local garison is not going to hold off a serious invassion fleet. That why they said Earth was somewhat exposed.

[Alyeska]

Well Mike, scratch the whole five minutes issue. I've heard that in relation to forces at Mars for years, but it seems the five minutes bit was never in the dialogue.

Maybe Chris can settle exactly what was said in the DS9 episode by posting the dialogue.

[Darth Wong]

You keep saying it was Spacedock, but that really doesn't jive up with the Earth being completely defenseless to a Dominion attack in "Homefront". Besides, the Borg Cubes approach to Earth was directly over North America, you could see it in First Contact. Where was Spacedocks firepower then?

As many of the warsies are so fond of pointing out, phasers and torpedoes don't move that fast and all it would take is a minor course correction by the part of the Cube.

The use of the word "warsies" will not marginalize our comments. And since photon torpedoes are not dumbfire weapons, this explanation doesn't hold up.

Gil, I was proposing an alternative explination for what happened at Earth with the Breen that fits the evidence better. Do we assume a space station is armed, or do we assume the Federation has ground bassed weapon systems?

I would assume that they might have ground-based close-in weapons systems around Starfleet HQ (the planet is largely demilitarized but Starfleet HQ may be an exception), and that they hit small Breen raiders in the air. The Breen ships must have been small simply because they didn't do that much damage. 80 full-size capital ships should be able to do a lot more damage than that, even if they're only attacking for a few minutes.

Either way, a single space station and a local garison is not going to hold off a serious invassion fleet. That why they said Earth was somewhat exposed.

IIRC, they said it was defenseless, not just somewhat exposed.

[Gil Hamilton]

Same reason, even more so. The fleet was still swarming around the cube at this point, friendly fire is not. They were still causing increasing damage to the ship, its not unreasnoable to assume Earths defensive weapons were still being held in check. The point where the Cube was destroyed was not Earth orbit, but still some distance away from it. A rough guess would put it a little inside Luna orbit, which is still long range. Then the sphere broke free and about a minuite later started the timewarp.

Like hell the Borg Cube was not in Earth orbit. Look how big the Earth is in the view, the Borg Cube is well within Lunar Orbit. At that point, it's now or never for Earth's defenders. They need to put as much firepower as they can on that Cube, because at that point, the cube is damaged, but the defending fleet was failing. They couldn't have known that Picard would pull a deus ex machina against the Borg. Ordering the ships away from spitting distance from the cube to make room for the heavy guns just makes sense. Yet there was no fire from Earth or Luna.

Hell I can see surface bassed defence fire being held back for political reasons, the Government not wanting to use it unless absoloutly necessary, simply because then people will start to panic and realise the Borg are right on their doorstep. Given that the E-E was right behind the thing and about to engage, its not surprising. Its the same reason if you have an interceptor engaging an enemy fighter that you don't start shooting off SAM's at the same enemy at the same time.

Why not? They didn't know what that Borg Cube was up to. Just because the E-E was in pursuit is no reason for them not to let fly on the sphere. This isn't some sort of Clan honor thing where anything other than one-on-one combat is a sin, they needed to kill the Borg as quickly as possible. Besides, I'm sure that the Earth's defenders could differentiate between a Borg sphere and the Enterprise... unless you are saying their targeting is that bad, of course.

[Alyeska]

The use of the word "warsies" will not marginalize our comments. And since photon torpedoes are not dumbfire weapons, this explanation doesn't hold up.

What the hell is that all about? You call me and others Trekkies, but I use Warsie and you get agitated? And as for torpedoes, yes they do, though they don't always demonstrate it.

I would assume that they might have ground-based close-in weapons systems around Starfleet HQ (the planet is largely demilitarized but Starfleet HQ may be an exception), and that they hit small Breen raiders in the air. The Breen ships must have been small simply because they didn't do that much damage. 80 full-size capital ships should be able to do a lot more damage than that, even if they're only attacking for a few minutes.

The Breen ships appear to be about the size of a Sabre class ship. Maybe 160-200 meters in length.

IIRC, they said it was defenseless, not just somewhat exposed.

Which contradicts what you earlier theorized. We can logicaly conclude Spacedock is in orbit and reasonably assume its armed. You just said Sanfrancisco had some weapons. And we know that Mars is cranking out ships. Earth litteraly can't be defenseless. Now against an invassion fleet the defenses at Sol would be equal to defenseless.

[Gil Hamilton]

As many of the warsies are so fond of pointing out, phasers and torpedoes don't move that fast and all it would take is a minor course correction by the part of the Cube.

Photon torpedoes are guided weapons and I didn't just say photon torpedoes, I said missiles in generation. They obviously aren't photon torpedoes, since those wouldn't be able to surface launch. A minor course correction wouldn't do the trick and a major one would make the Borg cube insertion into Earth's orbit go wahooni shaped and the Cube would have to come back into range eventually to make it's goal of attacking Earth.

Gil, I was proposing an alternative explination for what happened at Earth with the Breen that fits the evidence better. Do we assume a space station is armed, or do we assume the Federation has ground bassed weapon systems?

Ground based defense weapons, obviously. "Homefront" makes it clear they don't have anything else. They even only had a total of one ship in orbit and that was the Lakota.

Either way, a single space station and a local garison is not going to hold off a serious invassion fleet. That why they said Earth was somewhat exposed.

They didn't say "somewhat exposed". They said "defenseless". That was the whole point of Leyton's plan. His plan would have been silly if Earth had all sorts of orbital defenses that could frag a fleet of Breen ships, which wouldn't have been effected by Earth's power grid being knocked out. After all, the idea was to scare everyone into thinking that The Changling Menace had just knocked out all of their defenses and power, and the Dominion fleet was on the way, so he could pull off his coup.

[Gil Hamilton]

Which contradicts what you earlier theorized. We can logicaly conclude Spacedock is in orbit and reasonably assume its armed. You just said Sanfrancisco had some weapons. And we know that Mars is cranking out ships. Earth litteraly can't be defenseless. Now against an invassion fleet the defenses at Sol would be equal to defenseless.

Even though it never fired once in "First Contact", even though the Borg Cube was approaching over North America.

[Alyeska]

Anyone care to calc the distance for this shot?

[Alyeska]

Which contradicts what you earlier theorized. We can logicaly conclude Spacedock is in orbit and reasonably assume its armed. You just said Sanfrancisco had some weapons. And we know that Mars is cranking out ships. Earth litteraly can't be defenseless. Now against an invassion fleet the defenses at Sol would be equal to defenseless.

Even though it never fired once in "First Contact", even though the Borg Cube was approaching over North America.

Was it in range? Is it possible that Spacedock isn't in such an orbit but happened to be in the DS9 episode? Spacedock is massive and still very useful and I seriously doubt the Federation would scrap it. I also doubt its unarmed. That just doesn't make sense. Why have we not seen it in the Borg incidents? Well the Borg could be intentionaly avoding it. Afterall we see how much damage the fleet is doing, and if Spacedock is the same power as DS9, well thats a LOT of firepower the Borg can easily avoid until their ready.

[Chris OFarrell]

In other words, you are conceding that if Earth does have any defensive weapons, they are weaker than the battered survivors of the fleet that was harassing the Borg cube, otherwise they would have ordered the fleet to keep their distance from the cube so they can pound the fuck out of it before it gets any closer.

Hardly

Surface bassed weapons were almost certinaly a last resort against the enemy if the fleet couldn't stop them. The fleet wasn't a couple of Mirandas or something, they still had many frontline heavy ships pounding the Cube heavily. If they had failed, then you may well have seen planatery defence batteries open up, but they DIDN'T fail nor did the Sphere pose a threat, with no shields and the E-E right on its ass before it opened the portal.

Of course, this also begs the question of why they have to be so close to the cube in the first place, given the sheer size of the target ...

I'm not defending Starfleets tatics here But to be fair the fleet was un-coordinated at that point, the flagship had been blown away and it was clear for whatever reason tehre was no secondery ship to which command would devolve in the battle line. Picard had to come in and take over the battle.

[Darth Wong]

The use of the word "warsies" will not marginalize our comments. And since photon torpedoes are not dumbfire weapons, this explanation doesn't hold up.

What the hell is that all about? You call me and others Trekkies, but I use Warsie and you get agitated?

This is not the "vs" forum, and you know perfectly well that if I were actually agitated, it would rather obvious.

And as for torpedoes, yes they do, though they don't always demonstrate it.

Right, so we are still left questioning why there were no swarms of torpedoes coming at the Borg cube. Whatever ground-based defenses Earth has are obviously inadequate for dicing with capitalships. And whatever the Breen attacked Earth with was obviously not capitalships.

The Breen ships appear to be about the size of a Sabre class ship. Maybe 160-200 meters in length.

Other Breen ships in other episodes, you mean. We never saw these ones, and the likelihood of eighty ships, all larger than the Defiant, doing so little damage is rather low.

Which contradicts what you earlier theorized. We can logicaly conclude Spacedock is in orbit and reasonably assume its armed. You just said Sanfrancisco had some weapons.

A close-in air defense system is not what you would call a weapons system that can engage a starship, never mind taking one out.

And we know that Mars is cranking out ships. Earth litteraly can't be defenseless. Now against an invassion fleet the defenses at Sol would be equal to defenseless.

Then why was one lousy starship (the Lakota) so important to its defense in "Paradise Lost"?

[Darth Wong]

In other words, you are conceding that if Earth does have any defensive weapons, they are weaker than the battered survivors of the fleet that was harassing the Borg cube, otherwise they would have ordered the fleet to keep their distance from the cube so they can pound the fuck out of it before it gets any closer.

Hardly

Surface bassed weapons were almost certinaly a last resort against the enemy if the fleet couldn't stop them.

Which, for the second time, means that they were weaker than the fleet, even in its battered condition. Since they were already in theoretical range, there is no reason whatsoever to hold fire at this point. Not only could the harassing fleet pull back to clear a lane of fire, but to put it bluntly, they are all expendable if the entire popularion of the planet Earth is facing imminent defeat.

[Alyeska]

This is not the "vs" forum, and you know perfectly well that if I were actually agitated, it would rather obvious.

This not being the VS forum is irrelevent. I was pointing out that this is was in contention against what is most commonly voiced by a specific contigent of debaters. This is PST, but your still a Warsie and I'm still a Trekkie.

Right, so we are still left questioning why there were no swarms of torpedoes coming at the Borg cube. Whatever ground-based defenses Earth has are obviously inadequate for dicing with capitalships. And whatever the Breen attacked Earth with was obviously not capitalships.

Or they didn't have the fuel to reach that far. Or they hadn't been built yet. There are a few options here.

Other Breen ships in other episodes, you mean. We never saw these ones, and the likelihood of eighty ships, all larger than the Defiant, doing so little damage is rather low.

Mike, we have litteraly only ever seen a single class of Breen ship. Just one.

A close-in air defense system is not what you would call a weapons system that can engage a starship, never mind taking one out.

A close in air defense system is going to be useless when you take into account that Federation enemies never bother with such attacks.

Then why was one lousy starship (the Lakota) so important to its defense in "Paradise Lost"?

That had to be the Admiral litteraly decieving the President. We KNOW there are several assets of size in system. Utopia Planitia is always cranking out ships and has at least one Spacedock of the size that can fit a GCS inside of it. Either the Admiral was lying, or he abused his position and managed to shut down the command & control systems between Earth and its orbital facilities (hell, we know that Earth has a few repair yards in orbit to) meaning only starships in orbit could support. The Lakota was conviently the only one in orbit. We know THAT particular bit was intentional on the Admirals part.

[Alyeska]

Remember those drones sent at the Borg Cube in BOBW PT2 as part of the Mars Defense perimeter? Those things never fired a shot even when they were in range of known Starfleet weapons. They looked an awful lot like missiles of some sort. And their range was fairly impressive. Its possible that Earth had several of these missiles at its disposal but didn't use them in FC because the Cube would have blown them away. However they could have been used in the DS9 episode to take out the Breen fleet.

[Chris OFarrell]

Like hell the Borg Cube was not in Earth orbit. Look how big the Earth is in the view, the Borg Cube is well within Lunar Orbit.

Conceaded, but its still hardly within orbit of Earth even if its within Lunas orbit. Even high geosynch orbits have the Earth quite a bit clooser then that. The pictures of Earth I have seen from such orbits had the Earth quite a bit bigger then that.

At that point, it's now or never for Earth's defenders. They need to put as much firepower as they can on that Cube, because at that point, the cube is damaged, but the defending fleet was failing. They couldn't have known that Picard would pull a deus ex machina against the Borg. Ordering the ships away from spitting distance from the cube to make room for the heavy guns just makes sense. Yet there was no fire from Earth or Luna.

No 'Now or NEVER' is when the Cube settles into Earth orbit and the fleet has been destroyed. THAT is literaly the last stand. THe fleet was still active with quite a few heavy ships and was still pounding it out with the Borg. Even without Picard there was still a good chance for victory by the Fleet, you had the Cube taking quite a bit of damage. If the fleet had failed or expanded its weapons, then you may well have seen the defences start up. Given how Taboo Earth using or deploying military force is in 'Homefront', its not that surprising if they held off opening fire until it was the only option left. Phasers and torpedoes volleying up from Earths surface into space by the dozens MIGHT just classify as 'wrecking paradise' and it would make just as much sense politicaly as anything else regarding Earth.

Why not? They didn't know what that Borg Cube was up to. Just because the E-E was in pursuit is no reason for them not to let fly on the sphere.

Sphere, not Cube. And the E-E was in close pursuit. You wana risk blasting the Fereration flagship when it has matters well in hand? The sphere is a weak ship, a single Q-Torp volley would kill it! Its nowehre near as tough as a Cube. Do you launch ICBM's at a warship approaching your country? Or do you wait for your bigger better warship to blow it out of the water?

This isn't some sort of Clan honor thing where anything other than one-on-one combat is a sin, they needed to kill the Borg as quickly as possible.

And they were about to do so, if the Sphere hadn't generated the tempral vortex and vanished.

Besides, I'm sure that the Earth's defenders could differentiate between a Borg sphere and the Enterprise... unless you are saying their targeting is that bad, of course.

Yes and technicaly Patriot missiles can differentiate between friendly and enemy aircraft in a dogfight, but you don't see them being fired much into furballs do you? The E-E had the firepower and was engaging the Sphere. There was simply no reason for the far weaker sphere to warrent an alpha strike from Earth. If the Fleet had been destroyed and nothing else was left, THEN they would have engaged, But one 'escape pod' for all intents and purposes with a Sovereign class in hot pursit? Why risk friendly fire? Its just commen sense.

[Darth Wong]

Mike, we have litteraly only ever seen a single class of Breen ship. Just one.

So are you saying that it takes eighty Breen ships to knock over part of Starfleet HQ? Why wasn't the entire city of San Francisco obliterated? Just how feeble are Breen ships?

A close-in air defense system is not what you would call a weapons system that can engage a starship, never mind taking one out.

A close in air defense system is going to be useless when you take into account that Federation enemies never bother with such attacks.

They did in this case, unless you are arguing that an orbital bombardment from 80 capital ships would actually be so pathetically weak.

Then why was one lousy starship (the Lakota) so important to its defense in "Paradise Lost"?

That had to be the Admiral litteraly decieving the President. We KNOW there are several assets of size in system. Utopia Planitia is always cranking out ships and has at least one Spacedock of the size that can fit a GCS inside of it. Either the Admiral was lying, or he abused his position and managed to shut down the command & control systems between Earth and its orbital facilities (hell, we know that Earth has a few repair yards in orbit to) meaning only starships in orbit could support. The Lakota was conviently the only one in orbit. We know THAT particular bit was intentional on the Admirals part.

The fact that Utopia Planitia makes ships doesn't mean they're coming out at the rates (more than one per day) that you claim, or that the system should be assumed to have lots of starships in it at any given time on that basis.

[Darth Wong]

Conceaded, but its still hardly within orbit of Earth even if its within Lunas orbit. Even high geosynch orbits have the Earth quite a bit clooser then that. The pictures of Earth I have seen from such orbits had the Earth quite a bit bigger then that.

So? Given the fact that photorps supposedly have ranges of millions of kilometres and phasers have ranges of hundreds of thousands of kilometres against immobile targets (which the Borg Cube is large enough to qualify as, particularly in light of its predictable approach), they should still have been able to pound the hell out of it.

No 'Now or NEVER' is when the Cube settles into Earth orbit and the fleet has been destroyed. THAT is literaly the last stand.

No, THAT is stupid. You don't hold fire until the enemy is close enough to wipe out millions of people, for fuck's sake. The purpose of defense weapons is to keep the enemy from getting into that position in the first place, not to wait until he's already got a gun to your head before you pull yours out of its holster.