Galaxy Class starship vs. Modern Day Earth

[Modax]

I did a search and didn't find anything like this posted before. Imagine a rogue galaxy class travels back in time to early 21st century earth, with the intent to conquer the planet and set themselves up as potentate rulers. (yeah, contrived and cheesy, but its all I could think of) The ship has a full complement of shuttlecraft and photorps, and 1,000 starfleet officers and enlisted men. Assume that 1/10 have access to a phaser assault rifle as seen in contact (or was it insurrection?) while the rest have type III phaser rifles.

I am unsure what the outcome would be. The Feds can use transporters to take VIPs hostage, or send assassination teams anywhere on the planet. However, we all know how unreliable transporters can be. Can ground based radars / radio telescopes jam the Fed's transporters?

They can easily destroy Earth's communications satellites, causing chaos. They can possibly hold the world at ransom by destroying random cities around the world with their photorps if their demands are not met. I don't know if ballistic missile defenses could possibly have any effectiveness at stopping the torpedoes (the technical manual says they can go FTL, but they are only ever shown travelling at sublight (and sub-relativistic) speeds. Assume they have a yield of 2-3 megatons, which I gather from the site is a mid-range estimate of their firepower.

Photorps are rarely if ever used at long ranges. If they have to stick to LEO, can we take them out with ICBMs?

[Mr Bean]

They have a ship, it's intersteller, they have access to the entire star system.
Their weapon of choice would likely simple be rocks. Grab an asteroid, steer it into earths orbit and let gravity do the rest. They need not waste a single torpedo and could use the phrases to carve a giant "Fuck you" into the surface of the asteroid.

As for transporters the standard is any decent ECM suit should be able to jam them since they are jammed by damn near everything. However they have shielded shuttles, they have rocks, they can conquer us.

However with only 1000 personnel they can not conquer us by force, only destroy us, or negotiate some sort of tribute based system for access to their knowledge if not their technology.

[Aaron]

Is this a joke?

A GCS with a thousand men can make life a living hell for modern day Earth but there isn't much else they can do. There is no real way they can use their manpower to take and hold anything on the ground (of those 1000, a good portion are going to be needed to run the ship). Yes they can bombard cities and installations from orbit but to what end? I assume they want Earth and it's people/infrastructure reasonably intact, what is the point in ruling a burned out cinder?

So while we can't do much to challenge them in space, they can't do fuck all to us on the ground. Basically all they can do is extort us and hope we comply before they all die of old age or the ship breaks down in a way that they can't easily fix.

[Count Chocula]

Okay, I'll bite. The Galaxy has shielding, 1,000g acceleration per the TNG TM, transporters that are probably reliable enough to cause fear and panic among leadership that's not 1000' underground, shuttles with shielding that can certainly withstand Sparrow, Sidewinder or Aphid AAMs, and the high ground. As a piracy platform, for extortion, it would have no feasible threats from 20th Century technology....unless its computer core is built on Windows 95. The ship itself has 7.3E5kW dissipation shields, 70MW continuous if my in-my-head math is correct. Plenty strong enough to ward off the occasional LEO debris impact, and its maneuverability, sensors and phasers would make any 4-6g accelerating ICBM attack an exercise in futility.

As far as conquering the planet and setting up as rulers, no fucking way. Off the top of my head...never mind, let me go get my TNG TM...the Galaxy class can support up to 5,000 non-crew personnel. Simple logic posits 5,000 versus 6+ billion and concludes, "no." That's without considering that 20th Century Earth reckons power with military strength AND currency strength, and that pesky, Starfleet-scorned capitalist system exists in various forms on Earth. There's no way I can see, phaser rifles, torpedoes or mass destruction notwithstanding, that that small a crew could conquer 20th Century Earth.

And this is before the smartest 10% of Earth's population start thinking about countermeasures....

[Modax]

I was thinking of it as analogue for Spanish conquistadors versus Aztec Empire..."hopelessly outnumbered" doesn't even begin to describe their situation on the ground, but they have weapons of mass destruction (smallpox in the spaniards case) and can use terror and intimidation to set themselves up as the new rulers. I didn't think of asteroids...that definitely changes things. But is there any strategy they could use to form a world government WITHOUT causing global impact winter levels of devastation? No, probably not. But I'd like to hear if anyone has an idea of how they could pull it off all the same.

[Darth Wong]

Okay, I'll bite. The Galaxy has shielding, 1,000g acceleration per the TNG TM, transporters that are probably reliable enough to cause fear and panic among leadership that's not 1000' underground, shuttles with shielding that can certainly withstand Sparrow, Sidewinder or Aphid AAMs, and the high ground. As a piracy platform, for extortion, it would have no feasible threats from 20th Century technology....unless its computer core is built on Windows 95. The ship itself has 7.3E5kW dissipation shields, 70MW continuous if my in-my-head math is correct. Plenty strong enough to ward off the occasional LEO debris impact, and its maneuverability, sensors and phasers would make any 4-6g accelerating ICBM attack an exercise in futility.

None of those numbers are important because we have no real capability to attack a starship in space.

As far as conquering the planet and setting up as rulers, no fucking way. Off the top of my head...never mind, let me go get my TNG TM...the Galaxy class can support up to 5,000 non-crew personnel. Simple logic posits 5,000 versus 6+ billion and concludes, "no." That's without considering that 20th Century Earth reckons power with military strength AND currency strength, and that pesky, Starfleet-scorned capitalist system exists in various forms on Earth. There's no way I can see, phaser rifles, torpedoes or mass destruction notwithstanding, that that small a crew could conquer 20th Century Earth.

And this is before the smartest 10% of Earth's population start thinking about countermeasures....

We can forget countermeasures. The ship can easily sit in geosynchronous orbit and laugh at us, and they would see anything we could try to send their way and effortlessly swat it out of the sky.

Extortion is their only plan, and that's probably what they would want to do, until they realize that we have nothing they could use. What are they going to do with money? Or precious jewels? We don't have antimatter for them, and we could produce small amounts of deuterium, but what are they going to use it for? They have nowhere to go.

[Baffalo]

I was watching a show about the future, called 2057, and Michio Kaku made quite a few appearances in that talking about the future. In the episode about war, he made a comment about his own days in the military, where he said that aircraft can hit the target all they want, but you need infantry to hold any ground targets. The same applies here. Those 1000 people (assuming they're all Starfleet and not also civilians mixed in) are not enough to hold a single small, backwater country, let alone anything modern or large. Unless they're willing to start cloning en mass (something they seem absolutely terrified of, even with the transporter), there is no way they can hold anything. Any troops they send down will get slaughtered, either by long range artillery, battle tanks, aircraft, or just infantry to infantry. Sure, from orbit they can inflict damage, but they'd have to be directly overhead to do any good.

[Count Chocula]

Thinking about it a little more, they'd probably have to rely on behind-the-scenes manipulation of the curent PTB, who would also be jealous of their prerogatives, to successfully "rule" current-day Earth. A real Illuminati conspiracy, as it were. Any meaningful interaction between hostile Federation forces and Earth peoples would result, inevitably, in leakage of technology and possible countermeasures. The Galaxy's trump would remain the threat of mass bombardment from space; there's no reason a Galaxy crew bent on terrorism would stay in low earth orbit, where (maybe) railguns and lasers could (maybe) pick at their shuttles or annoy the ship itself. That would also eliminate any need to keep their combat shields up, which as a rule the TNG ships did not do. I imagine it uses up quite a bit of antimatter to maintain full shields 24/7/365.

As far as the Conquistador analogy goes: the Aztecs thought the Spanish were gods, and welcomed them. I hardly think the Starfleet crew would be in the same advantageous position. In my opinion the Starfleet crew would need to use deceit and cunning to make a go of planetary domination, neither of which they showed any particular talent for doing. Piracy, if they see anything we have that they could use, is the most likely approach.

[Samuel]

Thinking about it a little more, they'd probably have to rely on behind-the-scenes manipulation of the curent PTB, who would also be jealous of their prerogatives, to successfully "rule" current-day Earth. A real Illuminati conspiracy, as it were. Any meaningful interaction between hostile Federation forces and Earth peoples would result, inevitably, in leakage of technology and possible countermeasures. The Galaxy's trump would remain the threat of mass bombardment from space; there's no reason a Galaxy crew bent on terrorism would stay in low earth orbit, where (maybe) railguns and lasers could (maybe) pick at their shuttles or annoy the ship itself. That would also eliminate any need to keep their combat shields up, which as a rule the TNG ships did not do. I imagine it uses up quite a bit of antimatter to maintain full shields 24/7/365.

There are no counter measures. We can't manufacture anti-matter and without that we can't make a ship powerful enough to fight them.

As far as the Conquistador analogy goes: the Aztecs thought the Spanish were gods, and welcomed them. I hardly think the Starfleet crew would be in the same advantageous position. In my opinion the Starfleet crew would need to use deceit and cunning to make a go of planetary domination, neither of which they showed any particular talent for doing. Piracy, if they see anything we have that they could use, is the most likely approach.

Take over the planet using replicators. Think about it- the fled from the Federation and want to try out the whole "exploitive capitalism" deal on a market they can understand reasonably well AND destroy the Federation simply by trading with it. Also avoiding WW3 at the same time.

[Junghalli]

I can think of four potentially viable strategies for the people in the ship:

1) Indirect rule. The native government is allowed to remain in place and govern their own affairs as long as they swear fealty to the people in the starship. Minimal interference with native affairs, which should minimize resistance. Carrot can be offered in the form of advanced technology, stick in the form of reprisals by orbital bombardment.

2) Proxy rule. Make an alliance with a powerful native nation, give them enough advanced technology to give them a decisive advantage over the others (but not enough to be a threat to the people in the ship), have them conquer the planet for you and rule it as your proxy.

3) Rule by extortion. Demand stuff from the native nations, and blow cities up or slam asteroids into the planet if they don't do what you say. Similar to option 1 but with less mutual benefit.

4) Wipe out mankind with a dino-killer. Claim the empty planet.

[Count Chocula]

All of which are feasible, but none of which have precedent in the ST series - except for Section 31 personnel and Admiral Ross (yeah, I'm sticking to human species). I don't think the Maquis would do this either. These are pretty ruthless tactics, and don't seem to fit the happy-happy joy-joy Federation attitude.

As an adjunct to Junghalli's OP: which ST species do you think would be most likely to do this? My money's on the Vorta or the Romulan Tal Shiar.

[Patrick Degan]

What does early 21st century Earth have that the crew of a Galaxy-class starship could possibly want? What would be the point of this exercise if the answer to the first question is "nothing"?

[Themightytom]

They show up and after a quick perusal of current events, offer a cure for the swine flu, All Flus EVER, and throw in the cure for genital herpes for fun. They can live comfortable off the profits from marketing and patents and buy their way to ruling any country in the world.

[Baffalo]

All of which are feasible, but none of which have precedent in the ST series - except for Section 31 personnel and Admiral Ross (yeah, I'm sticking to human species). I don't think the Maquis would do this either. These are pretty ruthless tactics, and don't seem to fit the happy-happy joy-joy Federation attitude.

As an adjunct to Junghalli's OP: which ST species do you think would be most likely to do this? My money's on the Vorta or the Romulan Tal Shiar.

It sure as hell won't be the Klingons. The Klingons have this historical knack for letting their honor get in the way of making serious decisions about anything. The only variation to this seems to be the way the Klingons reacted in TOS and TUC, when they acted like warriors and soldiers rather than dumb brutes who put honor above everything. Except for Chang, who was stupid enough to leave the mic on and spout Shakespear at the Enterprise rather than just blowing them to hell. That was just stupid.

The Cardassians, assuming this is before they became the hosts of a Klingon invasion force, would've done it, if only to subjugate Earth in the past and use those resources to try and conquer everything. It's doubtful they'd be that much more successful at it than the Galaxy alone in an actual conquest, but they also wouldn't hesitate to wipe out all human life and just take over the dead planet. The only reason they'd keep humans alive is slave labor, and that's it. Edit: That's assuming they can only send forces once, and don't send a full invasion force. if they send an invasion force, then yeah, get out your shackles.

The Ferengi probably wouldn't, mostly because I see them being written in the way they were later on, as the greedy materialistic gnomes they are throughout DS9. If they'd remained true to their original nature, as greedy materialistic Machiavellian gnomes the first two times they appeared in TNG, then it's a serious toss up. The thought of a planet ripe and able to be plundered would certainly sit well with them, but if they're greedy like later on, they'd rather just establish a trade route and try to sucker us out of all our resources, rather than try and conquer us. Too much money.

The Borg tried it, we saw where that got them, so we'll move on.

I don't see the Voth, the descendants of dinosaurs, doing it either. For one, they wouldn't have to go back in time, they could just show up at Earth in the present and overwhelm Starfleet. For another, they seem content to stay in the Delta Quadrant and pretend they evolved there, rather than admit the truth of their heritage. If they did finally accept the truth of the matter, then I could see them coming back to Earth, but not to stay. Mostly just to pop in and visit their biological cousins.

I don't know enough about the Xindi to make any sort of judgment, so if someone wishes to comment on them, please do so.

That leaves the Romulans. The Romulans are tricky, not just in terms of their general attitude but also the way they've been depicted. Typically, the Romulans like to sneak around and use covert means to knock their enemies down a few pegs before swooping in for the fatal blow. However, they are also depicted as being xenophobic, preferring to stay in their space and keep everyone out. They have the weapons to probably attack several smaller powers, but would rather just stay home and watch TV rather than actually attack. The only reason they'd go back in time would be if something happened to them and they wanted to turn the tables... oops! Better see this thread about that...

[Ghost Rider]

Jesus christ...locking because we have done this and aside from this being one of the fucking dumber "Trek R Stoopid!" the problems is that they cannot conquer and HOLD us, but there is NOTHING we can do.

Locking because there has been a thread, and the OP is either lazy or a fucktard for not finding and perusing it.