Ground Forces

[Temujin]

In a nutshell they consist of lightly armed infantry, with at best the equivalent of some light artillery (i.e., mortars) and an RPG equivalent (see ST Insurrection, but don't bill me for the therapy ). Other than the poorly armed dune buggy from ST Nemesis, we've seen no vehicles.

In essence, they are wholly dependent upon starships and shuttles for space / air superiority and heavy bombardment, and shuttles and transporters for transport, aside from simply walking that is.

Say in Nemesis, didn't the random armed mob on the planet have a tank or something in the background of one of the shots? I remember someone saying you could see a tracked vehicle anyway, but I never watched the movie again to check.

This is all I could find on short notice, but it does look like they have something heavier than the dune buggies.



At about 4:18 you can see the edge of something that looks like a light AFV, but I can't tell if its wheeled or tracked The videos is not in widescreen so it appears some of it was cut off.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Not really, the terrain around them was somewhat rough, but going out of their way to engage the enemy from a wildly different avenue of approach would be preferable, especially after using the holograms to make it appear as though they would come from the obvious way.

For example, instead of moving through the canyon pass (which would also be where the minefield was located) depending on their equipment, they could have instead moved around it, over the cliff faces and behind the defenders, drop some stun grenades and rappel down, then taking the interior, all the while the defenders are still waiting to hear the booms of their minefield going off. Regardless of whether they knew about the mines or not (which they didn't, at least as far as the mines being taken over and to be used against them) still fits in with the wildly different avenue of approach thing.

Do we really know enough about the terrain around the base to deduce what was possible and what not? Your assumptions are not unreasonable by any means, but then again despite the general retardation of Trek in military matters, wouldn't even the Federales try to deploy some remote sensors to avoid being outflanked by a small team of commandos? The Jem'Hadar could avoid active tricorder scans, if I remember correctly, but since they were not actually invisible, passive motion detectors and heat sensors should still work. Or even trip wires connected to illumination or smoke grenades, 'nam style, although those can be avoided more easily.

[Sea Skimmer]

At about 4:18 you can see the edge of something that looks like a light AFV, but I can't tell if its wheeled or tracked The videos is not in widescreen so it appears some of it was cut off.

Thanks for the clip. I can't tell either, but this sure did remind me how godawful that movie was. All and all though, those random desert bandits are still the most competent appearing ground military force in Star Trek.

[Srelex]

What about non-canon sources, like the novels? Are they any better on ground forces?

[Uraniun235]

The novels are literally just as legitimate as any ground force you'd care to hoke up yourself in this very thread. You might as well ask if there's any good fanfiction about Federation Army grunts. Or, hell, just gin one up yourself.

[Uraniun235]

Myself, I consider the Federation Army to basically be a direct analogue of a modern 21st century army, including using bullets and artillery and shit, but they're obviously never deployed because those huge Federation pussies can't bear the thought of using real man guns to wage war.

[Azron_Stoma]

Do we really know enough about the terrain around the base to deduce what was possible and what not?

Barely.

Wouldn't even the Federales try to deploy some remote sensors to avoid being outflanked by a small team of commandos? The Jem'Hadar could avoid active tricorder scans, if I remember correctly, but since they were not actually invisible, passive motion detectors and heat sensors should still work. Or even trip wires connected to illumination or smoke grenades, 'nam style, although those can be avoided more easily.

Considering we saw no evidence of them having anything of the sort on hand, or even considering such a possibility, no.

Chalk it up to Starfleet command being idiots who don't supply their troops properly, and can't be arsed to spare any more than 150 soldiers to hold a Relay station, acting as if it was a low priority Instillation, in spite of the fact that Warfare is 75-90% Intelligence and 10-25% force concentration. So any insight onto enemy movements would be essential if they want to mount up a worthwhile defense, making AR-558 a high priority operation, like cracking the Enigma code and all that.

Then again the Jem'Hadar seem more willing to sacrifice troops when they could just bomb the entire facility to keep it from enemy hands, the Federation need it intact, the Dominion can just make a new one and mothball the original, or if they really want to be sneaky bastards, they could do exactly what they did at AR-558 and then later A. switch codes and B. only relay false orders to AR-558 spreading disinformation.

Kind of reminds me of "The Changing Face of Evil"where Weyoun wanted to destroy all the escape pods, while the Founder decided to let them all live in the hopes of demoralizing them... A better idea would have been to go halfway, especially if they can identify which pods hold high ranking officers. But that's neither here nor there.