Reasons for the Federation not including Marines/Army

[Batman]

Err-no? Not if it is done by technobabble, which is pretty much the only way phasorization can work? Do I have to tell you of all people that phaser vapourization cannot be actual vapourization?

[Alyeska]

Err-no? Not if it is done by technobabble, which is pretty much the only way phasorization can work? Do I have to tell you of all people that phaser vapourization cannot be actual vapourization?

I find this argument silly. Its always used to claim phasers are weak. Every single time I see someone making this argument its on the premise phasers are actually less powerful than assumed. Its not TRUE vaporization. So its less powerful. Well phaser "vaporization" isn't true vaporization, so setting a phaser to vaporize doesn't actually use much extra power.

A phaser can be used to make something "Go Away". Its described in many ways. I've even heard that it breaks the atomic bonds. I'd say that requires some pretty hefty energy requirements. A hell of a lot more than what one would use to simply kill or stun someone else. The vaporize setting is used exceedingly rarely. And in actual combat situations we overwhelmingly see them use more simple kill settings.

Is it true vaporization? No. But its gotta be very energy intensive none the less.

[Batman]

As evidenced by-what,exactly? 'It's gotta be very energy intensive' how? Because the only energy we ever actually witness is the lightshow from the' somehow goes away' effect.

[Stofsk]

The use of body armour would be worthless in countering Star Trek hand weaponry, which set on the higher settings can dissolve/destroy people and materiel. With stun and the lower kill settings, armour might mitigate or even negate the damage; in response, enemies would just increase the settings. The only real, sure-fire defence against phasers and disruptors would be some kind of portable or personal sized force field - just like what the Borg have.
.

Except as seen numerous times there exists plenty of materials that phasers/disruptors and other ST weaponry don't work against. See episodes like DS9's Seige of AR 558 or the dozens of episodes where firefights break out and people take cover and the cover holds. Whatever material that Starfleet uses for storage boxes for example is excellent in stopping phaser fire.
Why? Because the Star Trek weaponry is material dependent. Shooting rocks with the "human flesh" setting only gives you tiny scorch marks. So making bodyarmor makes perfect sense because the wrong setting would make such things highly effective, either you have it on "body armor melting mode" and thus if they hit anything other than the armor it's a light wound or you have it in "flesh" in which case hitting the body armor does nothing.

Or, do you think, just maybe, all those times you refer to the phasers have been set to stun, or low settings. Dun dun DUUNNNNN! Shocking, I know.

Every time someone pulls that 'packing crates stop phasers lol' argument god kills an orphan. Because using the 'blast through metre thick rock wall' settings AKA level 16 when you're on a starship might not be the best idea, especially if it can destroy sensitive equipment or dissolve the transparent aluminum 'windows'.

Or maybe it's simply more economical to go with standard kill.We've never seen phasourize used in what passes for a protracted firefight in Trek.

We see that all the time in TOS, where phasers only had two settings: stun and kill. In TNG, it was less occasionally - TNG introduced 16 power settings to the phasers, most of the time we saw them used on stun.

The use of body armour would be worthless in countering Star Trek hand weaponry, which set on the higher settings can dissolve/destroy people and materiel. With stun and the lower kill settings, armour might mitigate or even negate the damage; in response, enemies would just increase the settings. The only real, sure-fire defence against phasers and disruptors would be some kind of portable or personal sized force field - just like what the Borg have.

Armor would still be useful. It forces the opponent to crank up the firepower. More firepower, more energy used. More energy used, fewer shots available. And depending on the weapon, there could very well be a cool down required between shots to prevent the weapon from over heating.

That's possible I suppose. I like the idea of ablative armour which could protect the wearer for a couple of shots then become useless, just like modern armour.

I still think a personal forcefield makes more sense.

[Darth Tedious]

When I said that armour would result in greater firepower, I didn't mean that people would start cranking their phasers to higher settings- I meant that phaser rifles would become standard, grenades would become more common, and weapons would be upgraded in general.

It is very much a dead issue- the Federation tried armour and decided it wasn't worth the effort. We can only do post-mortem speculation on why they abandoned it, as oppsed to discussing why they should have it.

[montypython]

When I said that armour would result in greater firepower, I didn't mean that people would start cranking their phasers to higher settings- I meant that phaser rifles would become standard, grenades would become more common, and weapons would be upgraded in general.

It is very much a dead issue- the Federation tried armour and decided it wasn't worth the effort. We can only do post-mortem speculation on why they abandoned it, as oppsed to discussing why they should have it.

Armour was abandoned with the advent of muskets, but then redeveloped after WWI with modern materials, so technological changes like that could be a reason.

[Stofsk]

When I said that armour would result in greater firepower, I didn't mean that people would start cranking their phasers to higher settings- I meant that phaser rifles would become standard, grenades would become more common, and weapons would be upgraded in general.

I don't believe there is much difference in firepower between the various types of phaser, with the proviso that I think the type 1 phaser is necessarily weaker being a hold-out concealable weapon, which is much smaller than the other two types. I think the advantage the rifle gives is a larger power pack and probably some heat dissipation capability (so it can fire more than the other types and can fire in a sustained way without overheating).

[Alyeska]

As evidenced by-what,exactly? 'It's gotta be very energy intensive' how? Because the only energy we ever actually witness is the lightshow from the' somehow goes away' effect.

Making something disappear. The entire form of mass to just not be there anymore. That would require significant energy. To claim anything else is trying to get around the point. That mass is GONE. And to do anything to it requires energy.

[Batman]

As evidenced by-what,exactly? 'It's gotta be very energy intensive' how? Because the only energy we ever actually witness is the lightshow from the' somehow goes away' effect.

Making something disappear. The entire form of mass to just not be there anymore. That would require significant energy.

Very well. Show me your calculations. It can't be vapourization, melting, burning or anything like that, so what do you base your energy requirements on? And what is 'significant' energy?
We know Trek hand weapons have somewhere around single figure MJ total energy capacity (DS9 'Return to Grace', unless you want to argue cardassian weapons are orders of magnitude worse than Federation stuff) and TNG's 'The Mind's Eye' rates a Type III at roughly a MW.

[Alyeska]

As evidenced by-what,exactly? 'It's gotta be very energy intensive' how? Because the only energy we ever actually witness is the lightshow from the' somehow goes away' effect.

Making something disappear. The entire form of mass to just not be there anymore. That would require significant energy.

Very well. Show me your calculations. It can't be vapourization, melting, burning or anything like that, so what do you base your energy requirements on? And what is 'significant' energy?
We know Trek hand weapons have somewhere around single figure MJ total energy capacity (DS9 'Return to Grace', unless you want to argue cardassian weapons are orders of magnitude worse than Federation stuff) and TNG's 'The Mind's Eye' rates a Type III at roughly a MW.

Single digit megajoules? Do you know how powerful that is? A 9mm bullet has aproximately 500 joules of energy. A .44 magnum is about 1,500 joules. A .50cal BMG is 18 kilojoules. A single megajoule is 55 times more powerful than a .50cal bullet from a M2 Heavy Machine Gun. Thats fucking powerful. Tank guns? Those put out 10-20 megajoules of energy.

And you scoff that phasers are just "single figure MJ".

The Enterprise episode "Regeneration" had phase pistols capable of 10 MJ shots.

[Batman]

By SciFi standards, single figure MJ for sidearms is nothing to brag about, but if you agree that is the realm Trek hand phasers reside in, we have no quarrel.

[Alyeska]

By SciFi standards, single figure MJ for sidearms is nothing to brag about, but if you agree that is the realm Trek hand phasers reside in, we have no quarrel.

Single digit MJ is enough firepower to cause a body to disappear, rapidly. Its also grossly more firepower than necessary. They can set the phasers to 5-15 KJ and kill people most times with a single shot while using far less energy. My point stands that the higher settings on a phaser consume drasticaly more energy. This is proven. I also highly suspect the "vaporize" setting uses significant.

Armor requires a higher setting. A higher setting lowers the available energy reserves. Hence my original argument. Even if armor doesn't protect, it decreases the available ammo for your opponent. Still a useful tool to have.

[Connor MacLeod]

Single digit MJ is enough firepower to cause a body to disappear, rapidly.

If you explode someone grenade like, yeah. actually you could probably get away with less than that depending on how you applied it. I don't recall phasers acting deliberately like a "pulsed laser" type energy weapon very often (if they do explosive damage its usually a secondary effect of dumping lots of energy into it or some other mechanism.)

I believe they have caused severe, widespread burning though, which about a megajoule dumped into a body could do (like a flamethrower, I've heard it described usually.)

Its also grossly more firepower than necessary. They can set the phasers to 5-15 KJ and kill people most times with a single shot while using far less energy.

Probably less, depending on the kill mechanism. Electricla shocks, for example, don't need to be very powerful to kill you. Nor does an arrow, for that matter.

My point stands that the higher settings on a phaser consume drasticaly more energy. This is proven. I also highly suspect the "vaporize" setting uses significant.

Armor requires a higher setting. A higher setting lowers the available energy reserves. Hence my original argument. Even if armor doesn't protect, it decreases the available ammo for your opponent. Still a useful tool to have.

I'm curious at your reasoning and the evidence behind your theory.

[Alyeska]

I'm curious at your reasoning and the evidence behind your theory.

Armor use requires a more powerful energy setting. This reduces the available number of shots in the energy cell. An energy cell has a limited supply of energy. The more powerful your shot, the fewer shots you have.

For example. Lets say that a phaser can store 100 megajoules worth of energy. If you are firing 5 kilojoule shots you have 20,000 shots available. But if you're firing 1 megajoule shots you only have 100 shots available. A drastic decrease in available "ammo". Armor would protect against energy weapons with less energy or not designed to penetrate the armor. If the enemy has a weapon capable of hurting the armor, it probably did so with more energy. This means you don't have nearly as much available ammo to keep firing.

Why do Storm Troopers wear armor when a majority of blasters are capable of penetrating? Sure it provides some degree of protection from glancing shots, but most of the time the troopers are still dead. The answer hit me when I was reading Survivors Quest. The slavers that wanted to kill the Chiss armed themselves with old blasters from the Outbound Flight ships. The Tibana gas had mostly dissipated from the years so the blasters weren't capable of full power shots anymore. They were still quite able to kill unarmored humans in one or two shots. Well the 4 Storm Troopers that were on the Dreadnaughts had their armor. They survived hit after hit and chewed their way through the enemy forces. Armor might not always protect you, but it forces your opponent to waste energy to kill you and reduce their available ammunition. When your opponent is incapable of matching your armor, its an added bonus.

[Stofsk]

The problem though is you're assuming that armouring is possible against phasers and disruptors, and that the limited number of shots on higher settings would be low enough to make a difference is the former is true. I am somewhat sceptical of both, but the second one in particular- we've seen around half a dozen hand phasers used as a makeshift energy supply in TOS to propel a shuttlecraft into a low orbit of an M-class planet. The TNG tech manual also states some pretty crazy awesome numbers for the megajoule capacity in type I and type II phasers.

[Alyeska]

The problem though is you're assuming that armouring is possible against phasers and disruptors, and that the limited number of shots on higher settings would be low enough to make a difference is the former is true. I am somewhat sceptical of both, but the second one in particular- we've seen around half a dozen hand phasers used as a makeshift energy supply in TOS to propel a shuttlecraft into a low orbit of an M-class planet. The TNG tech manual also states some pretty crazy awesome numbers for the megajoule capacity in type I and type II phasers.

As Chuck has noticed, they make phaser resistant storage containers. Can't be that hard.

[Baffalo]

As Chuck has noticed, they make phaser resistant storage containers. Can't be that hard.

I wouldn't necessarily say that. One of the biggest issues with phasers is that you need to absorb the energy and then dissipate it. Dissipation is easy: just spread it out over the surface and let it radiate out. But the absorption might be an issue, because we don't know how thick the walls of those containers are. Those containers might be just a few millimeters thick or they might be an inch thick, and that's a big difference.

Also, we don't know how heavy the material is, which can be another issue. Starfleet uses anti-gravity to move large, heavy containers, and so it doesn't matter if a container weighs a good ton all on it's own. The antigrav will will pick it up and move it. Momentum might be an issue at that point, but that's another topic.

So you might have a material that needs to be thick to be effective and might weigh a hell of a lot. Or it might be thin and weigh about the same as feathers. We just don't know. Without better information, we can only speculate, which is why I'm guessing we have so many varied options in regards to how this would work.

I will say this. The general rule of thumb for what a soldier can carry into combat is roughly 60 lbs (27.2 kilograms). Phasers aren't very heavy, and I have yet to really see Starfleet carry heavy packs into a situation except for specialized packs like for engineers. So while the weight issue above is a concern, as long as it falls below that 60 lbs limit, it would be reasonable to include it.

[JasonB]

Will in Star Trek the movies we have Colonel West form Star Trek undiscovered country. Suggestion UFP had MACO tell last dyeing days of TOS. We know UFP has navy. We have seen UFP ground personal wearing strange kind uniform suggestion might train soldiers. Only example rank we have available not stand starfleet had been TNG Subaltern. He must likely assimilated during Star Trek best of both worlds.
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Subaltern

[Connor MacLeod]

Armor use requires a more powerful energy setting. This reduces the available number of shots in the energy cell. An energy cell has a limited supply of energy. The more powerful your shot, the fewer shots you have.

For example. Lets say that a phaser can store 100 megajoules worth of energy. If you are firing 5 kilojoule shots you have 20,000 shots available. But if you're firing 1 megajoule shots you only have 100 shots available. A drastic decrease in available "ammo". Armor would protect against energy weapons with less energy or not designed to penetrate the armor. If the enemy has a weapon capable of hurting the armor, it probably did so with more energy. This means you don't have nearly as much available ammo to keep firing.

Depends on how the beam interacts with the armor and matter in general. You could just burn a small hole in the armor, then fire through said hole to do whatever destructive effects might be defined (as noted, the non-NDF kill mechanism for phasers can be debated.)

Why do Storm Troopers wear armor when a majority of blasters are capable of penetrating? Sure it provides some degree of protection from glancing shots, but most of the time the troopers are still dead.

How do we know they're dead rather than injured or incapacitated? Again alot of this depends on the damage mechanism implied, and blasters aren't any more consistent in their damage mechanism than phasers are. (EG they blow huge holes in walls, but they don't in people.) For all we know Storm trooper armour is designed first and foremost to protect gainst stun effects and mechanicla damage from blaster bolts, with secondary consideration to other modes of damage (blunt force from a sufficiently powerful explosion or projectiel impact, thermal effects, etc.) There's alot of conflicting data WRT to Storm trooper armor and the defensive mechanisms as it is (did you know they apparently carry energy/heat sinks for some unfathomable reason? Its in the Visual Dictionaries.)

Hell you dont even need alot of energy to penetrate ST armor either if the weapon is designed or configured right. Given what I've seen of proposed "real life" laser designs it should be possible to drill trhough the armour (with sufficient amount of energy behind the beam) and do damage to flesh underneath with successive pulses.

The answer hit me when I was reading Survivors Quest. The slavers that wanted to kill the Chiss armed themselves with old blasters from the Outbound Flight ships. The Tibana gas had mostly dissipated from the years so the blasters weren't capable of full power shots anymore. They were still quite able to kill unarmored humans in one or two shots. Well the 4 Storm Troopers that were on the Dreadnaughts had their armor. They survived hit after hit and chewed their way through the enemy forces. Armor might not always protect you, but it forces your opponent to waste energy to kill you and reduce their available ammunition. When your opponent is incapable of matching your armor, its an added bonus.

It could also depend on the kind of blaster, the model and power rating of the blaster, and kind of damage mechanism the blaster in question has. All of which has been very much open ended historically. There still isn't even consensus whether blasteras are lasers, particle beams, plasma, or projectile weapons and the evidence could support any of those (or any combination.) depending on who you ask.

There's also the distinct possibility that ST armor is not all of one type, especailyl across countless decades. It would be pretty silly to assume they don't change or alter it to suit specific circumstances when we do in fact know they do (sandtroopers, snowtroopers, Rad troopers, etc. Hell we know scout troopers have much LIGHTER armor, and clone troopers, which ar the closest to truly *military* storm troopers, supposedly had much heavier and protective armor than storm troopers do.) There was also that mention in one of the Wraith Squadron novels of "light stormtrooper" armor, which supposedly was able to be penetrated by bullets.

[NovaSaber]

Err-no? Not if it is done by technobabble, which is pretty much the only way phasorization can work? Do I have to tell you of all people that phaser vapourization cannot be actual vapourization?

I find this argument silly. Its always used to claim phasers are weak. Every single time I see someone making this argument its on the premise phasers are actually less powerful than assumed. Its not TRUE vaporization. So its less powerful. Well phaser "vaporization" isn't true vaporization, so setting a phaser to vaporize doesn't actually use much extra power.

A phaser can be used to make something "Go Away". Its described in many ways. I've even heard that it breaks the atomic bonds. I'd say that requires some pretty hefty energy requirements. A hell of a lot more than what one would use to simply kill or stun someone else. The vaporize setting is used exceedingly rarely. And in actual combat situations we overwhelmingly see them use more simple kill settings.

Is it true vaporization? No. But its gotta be very energy intensive none the less.

Does the phaser using less energy make it "weak" anyway?
If it, due to the unusual way it works, can do what it does with low energy consumption, wouldn't that actually be an advantage over a weapon that literally vaporizes things?

If the higher settings of the phaser rely on triggering some sort of NDF chain reaction in the target, then it is plausible that the energy consumption does not increase in proportion to the effect.

[Danny]

My theory is that according to Picard, starfleet is an exploratory organization [he didnt say a military one first]. Creating a starfleet Marine Corps/Army would be a militant view to a otherwise liberal agenda. Also dont forget starfleet did have "troops". In the episode Waltz in DS9 season 6, sisko and dukat crash land on that planet. Worf and the gang go and try to find them both, but Worf is told by Kira that the Defiant is to be part of a protection detail that would escort a troop convoy in 2 days. In her words, "There are over 50,000 troops on that convoy. You have 50 hours, not a minute more".

This ontop of the episode Siege of AR-558 lends credence to the fact Starfleet had troops that served as "Marines/Army", but they were not called that...same reason why MACO wasnt called Marines or Army.

And just my observation, but who the hell really needs a separate branch of Starfleet Marines anyway? In a universe where a couple of torpedoes or a prolonged phaser blast can wipe out an entire division of federation troops, it stands to reason it would be a giant waste of time [and resources]. You might as well have your security team as well as your crewman cross trained in ground combat do the job. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone. When you create a base, just have security officers guard the base.

[Elheru Aran]

You can't have only one branch of the military without the others. If you have no navy, how are your army going anywhere that they can't walk/ride to? If you have no air force, how are you going to hit targets that are beyond the reach of conventional artillery (ICBM's are actually frequently controlled by air forces...)? If you have a space force but no ground-pounders, how are you going to maintain control over the planet you're trying to take, especially if you have ethical constraints against simply massacring the inhabitants from space?

You aren't thinking things through. A ground military, while less important in a civilization that's primarily space-based, is still necessary.

[Danny]

You can't have only one branch of the military without the others. If you have no navy, how are your army going anywhere that they can't walk/ride to? If you have no air force, how are you going to hit targets that are beyond the reach of conventional artillery (ICBM's are actually frequently controlled by air forces...)? If you have a space force but no ground-pounders, how are you going to maintain control over the planet you're trying to take, especially if you have ethical constraints against simply massacring the inhabitants from space?

You aren't thinking things through. A ground military, while less important in a civilization that's primarily space-based, is still necessary.

Then WHY didnt star trek universe [both series and movies] ever mention anything about a Starfleet Army or Starfleet Marine Corps? Starfleet is the only military branch because it absorbs all agenices and branches under its purview, like it does to all security forces of alien worlds who decide to join the federation. Plus starfleet has technology [LIKE STARSHIPS?] that can do the jobs current military branches do. This is a list of ALL branches under starfleet:

There were a number of branches and agencies that assisted Starfleet Command in the running of the service.

Judge Advocate General
Office of the Inspector General
Spaceframe development
Starfleet Administration
Starfleet Advanced Technologies
Starfleet Bureau of Information
Starfleet Cartography
Starfleet Corps of Engineers
Starfleet Exploratory Division
Starfleet Intelligence
Department of Internal Affairs
Starfleet Materiel Supply Command
Starfleet Medical
Starfleet Medical Academy
Starfleet Mission Operations
Starfleet Operational Support Services
Starfleet Operations
Administrative Operations
Starfleet Orbital Operations
Starfleet Research and Development
Starfleet Shipyards Operations
Starfleet Security
Starfleet Science
Starfleet Stellar Imaging
Starfleet Tactical

After over 30 years of star trek, no mention of Marines or Army. The closest thing was MACO, and we never heard from them after Enterprise...because Enterprise was the last series which blew hard and screwed up everything like voyager.
Starfleet is essentially both the navy AND the air force, since its starships can ferry troops to battle, engage other ships in combat, and capable of doing planetary bombardments which would wipe out an army.

Also, starfleet does have "troops", but they arent distinct from security, operations or even tactical. Security can do the job of the marines/army, as they have demonstrated numerous of times before.

[Darth Fanboy]

Then WHY didnt star trek universe [both series and movies] ever mention anything about a Starfleet Army or Starfleet Marine Corps?

It's almost as if Gene Roddenberry didn't really care about that stuff.

[aussiemuscle308]

so, score one point for 'Enterprise' for having marines/Security specialists?

personal shield sounds like a good idea against phasers, especially when one shot can vaporise you. we only saw one instance when Worf jury rigged his comm-badge to do so.