Entirely accurate, of course. The Coast Guard analogy/ancestry can't be taken too far without breaking down. The enforcement powers of Starfleet, their work against smuggling, and their constant interaction with civilians do appear very reminiscent of Coast Guard duties and responsibilities, though. And certainly in the minds of the general population the USCG, as well as the various other coast guard forces around the world, are regarded as less a military force than sea-going traffic cops and firemen with cutters and helicopters. Even today, despite things like prominent documentary overage of the USCG role in boarding and searching suspect vessels in the Persian Gulf.jegs2 wrote:One thing about folks wishing to compare Starfleet to the US Coast Guard: The USCG is a bonified military service, complete with officer and enlisted pay-grades, fully in-line with DoD O, W, and E grade scales. All Coast Guard personnel fall under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), as do all uniformed members of all military branches. In fact, my four years of enlisted service in the USCG count toward my current paygrade in the Army, and those years count toward retirement.
The USCG is the only branch of the US military that has authority to detain and arrest civilians on the high seas. They can stop any vessel flying the US flag (or found to be registered in the US), anywhere, and they can stop any vessel in US waters, regardless of country of origin. In time of war, the USCG can be subordinated to the Navy, but that hasn't happened since WW2. The USCG does conduct a wartime mission of patrolling US waters and escorting Naval groups. Some of you will say that you've seen Navy vessels stop and search civilian vessels. Those Navy vessels had a USCG LEDET (Law Enforcement Detatchment) aboard, and the Navy ship in question lowers the Navy colors and hoists the USCG colors, effectively placing that ship under USCG command for that LE operation.
Edited for grammar...
The simple fact is that the USCG obviously does not see its primary mission as fighting the capabilities of an enemy nation's coast guard forces, while the Navy, Air Force and Army do all have that rather high up on their list of priorities when things get serious. That makes the concept of presenting Starfleet to prospective member worlds as a form of Federation Coast Guard obviously tempting, since it won't scare the pacifistic and timid species. Unfortunately, at some point Starfleet began to believe its own hype.
Now, though, try to conceive -- regardless of how utterly insane and impractical the idea obviously is -- of the US having eliminated the Navy, Air Force, Army and Marine Corps as useless deadweight as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed. Now, have the US Coast Guard fight Desert Storm, conduct Operation Northern Watch, Operation Southern Watch, kick the stuffing out of the Taliban, and then topple Saddam Hussein's regime, filling all that out with interventions in Somalia, Yugoslavia and other scenic places around the world. That would not be a pretty sight.
Now also task the US Coast Guard with also covering the responsibilities of NASA, the CIA and all American oceanographic institutes and the US Geological Survey. And they get to run Seaworld as well.
Starfleet is all things to all people, and clearly does have a fairly conventional military grade/rank system, though grotesquely officer heavy. That preponderance of officers might, however, be explained by two factors: the modern standard that fixed wing aviators in the Navy and Air Force are supposed to be officers, and a sociological/educational shift that makes enlisted service look like the poor man's choice when every twit in the Federation is composing classical music and learning calculus in the third grade (which apparently does not go hand in hand with any increase in basic intelligence, rather the opposite).
On the other hand, Starfleet, in the TOS, TNG and DS9 eras, clearly has enlisted grades, a chain of command, and something close to the UCMJ, complete with courts martial. For one thing there would be TNG's The Drumhead, with Crewman First Class Simon Tarses, Medical Technician. Unfortunately, he wore exactly the same uniform as the officers, merely without collar pips. Later, in DS9, it appears that enlisted types occasionally received squared pips to distinguish them from the officers, though that did not seem particularly standardized.
Even the grotesque abuses of the chain of command that are displayed in many episodes can be explained in part by Starfleet getting too caught up in its non-military hype, the intense and aimless philosphizing that characterizes Starfleet training, and finally by the political need to accommodate a lot of species. Even the laid back attitude characteristic of Starfleet is apparently too much for most member species, who send few to no candidates to become members of Starfleet. That "politeness is for dishonest wimps" alien who was part of Wesley Crusher's academy entrance exam in one TNG episode would be constantly up on charges in any real military organization.
Enlisted crewers are deliberately made difficult to pick out among the officers, and appear deprived of even the ability to quickly establish who's who in the chain of command without either knowing each other personally or spending a few minutes hashing out who has seniority.
Thinking too much about the illogic of it all is making my head hurt.
