How would you utilize a Federation army?

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The Romulan Republic
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Re: How would you utilize a Federation army?

Post by The Romulan Republic »

biostem wrote:Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the Federation decided to revive the idea of the MACOS from Enterprise, and went into a full recruitment and deployment rollout, including revamping the concepts of personal armor and troop transports/shipboard compliments.

1. How would you actually go about recruiting soldiers, (must be volunteer only)?

2. How you you equip them, (can only use technology demonstrated in the various media, no 1-off superweapon stuff).

3. What vessels would you have retrofitted or build additional, (again, keeping within established and fully realized technology)?

4. Where would you station said soldiers, (keep a contingent on board all vessels, keep them in reserve to deployed only when needed, etc)?

5. How or where would you train said soldiers?

6. How would the chain of command function, (reports to ship's captain, has separate directives, give them their own vessels to operate)?

7. Any other significant points you'd address or policies you'd enact? Would you further break this force down into more specialized squads/corps, perhaps?
Okay, since I haven't really done an in-depth response to this yet, here goes.

In brief:

1. Recruitment will emphasize that their role is peacekeeping and defence, not conquest. We will basically portray our armed forces as an elite, upgraded off-shoot of Starfleet Security (which is what they will be). To emphasize the need for a stronger defence, we will bring up the Dominion War and of course the Borg.

2. Pulse phaser rifles would be the primary weapons, with the usual phaser pistols as sidearms. A melee weapon would also be issued, along with some fancier stuff (like that rifle that shoots through walls from DS9) for special situations. Body armour would be introduced (maybe based on Cardassian designs, but with helmets). Special suites for environments that require them. Otherwise, equipment would basically be standard away team stuff.

An APC with light phaser weaponry and shields/armour would be introduced for transporting troops on the ground in situations where a transporter or shuttle isn't practical.

3. Intrepids would be used as fast troop transports as discussed previously, with the more civilian stuff take out to make room for more cargo/passenger capacity and tougher shields/armour. Delta Fliers as support gunships.

4. Vessels and instillations, or at least those operating on the frontier, in or near combat zones, or on hostile borders would carry a small contingent. In addition, each major region of Federation space would have several companies permanently based on one of the major worlds to respond to any crises requiring elite ground troops (hostage situations, uprisings, raiding an enemy facility, etc.), with a small fleet of armed transport ships and gunships maintained to deploy them. Their would also be a separate MACO training facility/HQ, but not based on Earth (the Federation is too centralized on Earth). Possibly on Mars or in the Andorian or Bajoran system (I believe they've already been brought up in this thread as more militant societies).

5. See above. Beyond that, I'd mostly do holodeck training in a wide range of different environments.

6. They would be a branch of Starfleet Security, basically an elite force a step above the standard security officers. As such, they would use Starfleet ranks and report to whoever is in charge of Starfleet Security (presumably some admiral). When aboard a Starfleet ship or facility (other than their own HQ/training facility), they would report to the local Starfleet CO. However, they could also be deployed on their own, rather than as part of a larger ship's contingent (some situations just require a commando team, without attached scientists/engineers/etc.).

7. I think having specialized units for different types of missions or environments makes sense. The challenges of fighting in 0 gravity would be very different from those of fighting in an urban warfare situation, or in a planetary wilderness.
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Re: How would you utilize a Federation army?

Post by SilverDragonRed »

I forgot about the mortars from 'Nor the Battle to the Strong'. So, I'll have those and the CRM114 be the platoon heavy weapon element load-outs and move the TR116 to the company level. I'll also try and re-introduce that hilariously over-powered EMP shell seen in 'The Arena'.
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Re: How would you utilize a Federation army?

Post by LastShadow »

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the Federation decided to revive the idea of the MACOS from Enterprise, and went into a full recruitment and deployment rollout, including revamping the concepts of personal armor and troop transports/shipboard compliments.

1. How would you actually go about recruiting soldiers, (must be volunteer only)?

I would start with a candidate pool from Starfleet security officers, and assorted other personnel. The reasoning behind this will come later.

2. How you you equip them, (can only use technology demonstrated in the various media, no 1-off superweapon stuff).

Equipment would be updated MACO pistols, and Pulse rifles, much like seen in the later star trek movies and Voyager. I prefer the design over the "phaser rifles", maybe some of those shoulder mounted mini torpedo launchers from insurrection.

3. What vessels would you have retrofitted or build additional, (again, keeping within established and fully realized technology)?

Intrepid class. Intrepid/M variant, M for military. Outfitted to be closer to a Mobile base instead of a science ship. Its ability to land on the surface of a planet could be quite helpful in an army situation. So basically remove a lot of the science labs and equipment, replace them with increased armories, industrial replicators for fabricating needed army supplies. Some type of land based vehicles for scouting, if i have to Argo, if i can some type of low profile shuttle type craft.

4. Where would you station said soldiers, (keep a contingent on board all vessels, keep them in reserve to deployed only when needed, etc)?

They would be based on their transport vessels, though if being transported via a different vessel they would remain aloof and only assist if necessary.

5. How or where would you train said soldiers?

Most likely Earth, or maybe a training facility on mars, somewhere that would be good for training in different environment and situations. Maybe just a big a** holodeck.

6. How would the chain of command function, (reports to ship's captain, has separate directives, give them their own vessels to operate)?

There would be standard chain of command, If on random starship A, they report to their commander, but also the ships captain. If on their own ship, it would be the highest ranking officer, as the crew for the intrepid/m is primarily transport and clealry ship combat if necessary.

7. Any other significant points you'd address or policies you'd enact? Would you further break this force down into more specialized squads/corps, perhaps?

Various specialized squads, 8 - 16 people 8 normally, 16 for specialized joint ops.
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Re: How would you utilize a Federation army?

Post by FireNexus »

Worf's personal shield has been brought up a few times in this thread. But, are we sure that Worf actually built a force field generator? He was inside of a big force field generator and using a communicator. Couldn't he have been using some kind of holoemitter firmware hack to generate a force field?

If not, it seems almost criminally stupid that every Federation ground troop wasn't equipped with a personal force field during the dominion war.

(Sorry if the necro is inappropriate. I read the rule and it gave an exception for slow forums with mostly old threads on first page.)
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Re: How would you utilize a Federation army?

Post by NecronLord »

I'll let it slide as it's got content in it. I honestly don't know. Certainly armour exists that works (and in the movie era was part of starfleet security gear), in different cultures at least. And the borg have functioning personal shields. Making one or both of those a priority is possible.
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Re: How would you utilize a Federation army?

Post by FireNexus »

Armor is all well and good, but what Worf did, with tools he used for it, implies a technological capability for personal shielding among Starfleet that you'd think would be utilized even for normal away missions. How many times would a personal shield, even with only up to a minute of usefulness, have saved some poor extra. Even if stabilizing it requires a backpack as heavy as a car battery, it's the kind of thing that ought to be standard issue even during regular duty. The supplies are off the shelf and clearly replicable.

I always got the impression that Borg personal shields were ZOMG Borg Tech! rather than an evolutionary leap above what starfleet uses. Plus they're clearly unable to stop KE weapons, or at least those more powerful than a black powder revolver.

Worf hacking a holoemitter is consistent with how we know a holodeck works, the tools he used, and the relative effectiveness of personal shields we see in normal use even by very technologically advanced factions. I'll go one further: If that technology were so obvious and easy that a security officer with limited supplies could jury rig it from his kit with a soldering iron and some steel wire, starfleet soldiers would have just made them in the field from kit they pilfered from their buddies.
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Otherwise, I am surprised that nobody has considered using Danube runabouts as gunships, troop transports, and/or bombers. They're small, fast, modular, apparently relatively tough in combat for such a small ship and have enough space for a dining room in back. A ship like that could be loaded up with a squad and some torpedos. And they're cheap enough that they seemed to have an unending supply.

Hell, you could kee them disassembled in a Galaxy class, or unfueled docked to the drive section. Have troop carrier modules, escort modules, humanitarian modules, etc. Assemble or fuel them prior to mission and launch.

If I were running fleet logistics during the Dominion war I'd be assembling masses of runabouts everywhere there was an industrial replicator but no full-scale shipyards. One can't stand up to a Dominion fighter group, but 30 sleds hurling torps would help in fleet actions.
I had a Bill Maher quote here. But fuck him for his white privelegy "joke".

All the rest? Too long.
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