Starfleet - Dangerously shorthanded?

[Uraniun235]

Consider:

Riker was repeatedly offered his own command. Picard felt it necessary to urge him on by saying "Starfleet needs good captains". In the United States Navy, this would never happen, because there are plenty of other officers who will be more than willing to take up the position.

TNG Redemption - the Enterprise command staff had to be gutted in order to fill center seats throughout Picard's task force. The highest-ranking officer overseeing the work on the Nebula-class Sutherland was a Lt. Cmdr - given the size and power of a Nebula, surely a higher ranking and more experienced officer would normally command such a starship at such a late stage of construction.

The Galaxy class starship, at several times the volume of the Ent-nil, generally has around 1,000 people aboard at any given time. I have seen noted (but never canonically confirmed) that Starfleet personnel account for approximately three-quarters of this number - i.e. 750 actual crew. This is less than twice the crew complement of the Constitution class for a ship which has more than twenty times the volume.

TNG Coming of Age - A starbase could only send one out of four applicant finalists that were all "Academy material" to the Academy.

It seems apparent that Starfleet recruitment and training practices are inadequate to the task - one wonders if the total ship strength of Starfleet has at times been dictated not by industrial capacity but by the limitations of Starfleet's recruitment and training doctrines.

[Alyeska]

And in DS9 we hear that Starfleet has around 2 billion personel in it.

[Isolder74]

Sometime I wonder what is the deal with the recruiting of cadets anyway. Why are they so selective anyway? Everything gives the impression that it is the only place they are trained. They play the we want the best game even when we see evidence of severe personnell shortagages. Makes you wonder how they even managed to crew ships at all during the Dominion war.

[Darth Wong]

And in DS9 we hear that Starfleet has around 2 billion personel in it.

Which means nothing since Starfleet comprises a substantial portion of the government at large, and not all Starfleet personnel are capable of combat. When you have "Starfleet medical journals" and "Starfleet cybernetics journals", it's pretty obvious that a lot of Starfleeters don't carry guns.

[Xon]

And in DS9 we hear that Starfleet has around 2 billion personel in it.

Which means nothing since Starfleet comprises a substantial portion of the government at large, and not all Starfleet personnel are capable of combat. When you have "Starfleet medical journals" and "Starfleet cybernetics journals", it's pretty obvious that a lot of Starfleeters don't carry guns.

"Starfleet" probably needed to offer everything and the kitchen sink at the start because the civilian sectors just havent caught up. Radically new technology base folloed by a massive deployment in a few hundred years, when Earth was just pulling it's ass out of World War 3.

[Xon]

It may, though, be a technological matter.
Bubble shields are geometrically simple. Hull huggers aren't. The generators needed for hull hugging shields may simply be more energy intensive/complicated/expensive/whatever. During TOS and a lot of DS9, the Feds were at war, or pretty close to it (the Fed's relations with the Klingons and Romulans were rather tense during TOS). During TNG, Generations, Insurrection, and FC, they weren't. Nemesis may simply be the consequence of lessons learned from the Dominion War.

This sounds like they were cutting back on usage of the shield generators to reduce maintenance, which requires personal, time and resources.

There is an absurd rate of accidental sentience in Trek - M5, Exocomps, the nanobots in early TNG, Moriarty, the Enterprise herself, Mk I EMH, the Fair Haven program... perhaps it's an inevitable consequence of Federation computer design ? Mayeb that's why they don't mass-produce droids, it'd only be a matter of time before they start demanding better work hours and weekends off

I think it is the result of Federation computer design, and they probably cant afford to have more of the Starfleet infrastructure demanding more resources todo stuff when they are already short handed.

[Uraniun235]

Also:

The July 05 estimate of the United States population is 295,734,134 people.

The December 04 listing (pdf) of total active duty US military personnel is 1,411,287.

This works out to about 0.477% of the total American population being active-duty military personnel.

This is where it gets hazy and I apologize for it. If I remember correctly, in the episode with the genetically altered freaks, Bashir said the Federation would have to capitulate after something like 600 billion Feddies died. Now, in order for all those people to die, they had to exist first, so that would establish a lower limit of around 600 billion Federation citizens - given the nature of the Federation, it seems likely that they would be willing to surrender before everyone had been killed, plus this estimate was used in conjunction with a speculated future resistance movement which would occur against Dominion occupiers... a movement which could not happen if everyone was dead. I'll be random and presume that the Federation would surrender after having 75% of the population wiped out, giving the Federation a grand total of 800 billion citizens before any such catastrophe. I suspect they'd surrender earlier, but I'll be a little generous.

2 / 800 gives us 0.25% of the Federation population in Starfleet - lower than the rate for the US military.

This isn't too bad, but Darth Wong brings up an interesting point; Starfleet seems to have a very broad mission, which means a lot of people aren't even in the fleet; they're just doing other things under the big broad Starfleet umbrella. This only gets worse when you factor in the "tooth to tail" ratio in which each combat person requires so many support personnel in order to function; how much of Starfleet's personnel resources are tied up in running the starbases? How many people are tied up doing nothing but paperwork for the monstrous bureaucratic titan that Starfleet must be? And how many people are "science and support" personnel like the botanist or the schoolteacher or the squeegee guy who goes in and cleans shit out of the fucking dolphin tanks? (Okay, maybe that last one gets handled by the ship's janitor, but still.)

Makes you wonder how they even managed to crew ships at all during the Dominion war.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that a lot of the ships we saw getting pasted - most notably, the Mirandas often escorting the Defiant - were heavily automated and thrown at the enemy with little expectation of bringing them back home. I could well see an organization like the Federation, faced with a crippling inability to put bodies on the line, deciding to consolidate starship crews onto the newest and best ships, and throwing the rest of the fleet in as cannon fodder.

[Jalinth]

Consider:

Riker was repeatedly offered his own command. Picard felt it necessary to urge him on by saying "Starfleet needs good captains". In the United States Navy, this would never happen, because there are plenty of other officers who will be more than willing to take up the position.
[\quote]

Either Riker is considered to be an amazingly brilliant officer or they are short of personnel and he is considered to be command material. Scary either way. Riker as one of the most brilliant officers? Maybe as a boytoy.

TNG Redemption - the Enterprise command staff had to be gutted in order to fill center seats throughout Picard's task force. The highest-ranking officer overseeing the work on the Nebula-class Sutherland was a Lt. Cmdr - given the size and power of a Nebula, surely a higher ranking and more experienced officer would normally command such a starship at such a late stage of construction.

All I can think of is since any of the ships weren't fully operational, so didn't have the normal command staff aboard. A yard dog wouldn't typically have the same rank as a ship's officer.

TNG Coming of Age - A starbase could only send one out of four applicant finalists that were all "Academy material" to the Academy.
It seems apparent that Starfleet recruitment and training practices are inadequate to the task - one wonders if the total ship strength of Starfleet has at times been dictated not by industrial capacity but by the limitations of Starfleet's recruitment and training doctrines.

The size of the Academy is way too small to pump out all the officers needed. The only Mustand in the series that I recall is O'Brian and I don't remember if they ever explicitly said if he went to the Academy before becoming an officer. The quota doesn't really make that much sense unless they had such an overabundance of qualified people wanting into starfleet that arbitrary quotas made sense. I wonder if they have the same overabundance for entry into the red/gold shirt ranks - they be looking for a lot more replacements than for officers

[Uraniun235]

The only Mustand in the series that I recall is O'Brian and I don't remember if they ever explicitly said if he went to the Academy before becoming an officer.

Crewman Tarsas in TNG The Drumhead said he went to the "academy training program for enlisted personnel", which was differentiated from "going to the academy and going the whole way".

[The Kernel]

And in DS9 we hear that Starfleet has around 2 billion personel in it.

Which means nothing since Starfleet comprises a substantial portion of the government at large, and not all Starfleet personnel are capable of combat. When you have "Starfleet medical journals" and "Starfleet cybernetics journals", it's pretty obvious that a lot of Starfleeters don't carry guns.

Well it's possible that these people are merely civilians that have recieved Starfleet grants for their research. This makes sense since the Carrington award was given by Starfleet (I seem to remember a man in a Starfleet uniform announcing the award), yet Bashir was the only nominee to be mentioned as being in Starfleet.

[Sir Sirius]

The only Mustand in the series that I recall is O'Brian and I don't remember if they ever explicitly said if he went to the Academy before becoming an officer.

Crewman Tarsas in TNG The Drumhead said he went to the "academy training program for enlisted personnel", which was differentiated from "going to the academy and going the whole way".

There were also two guys who had not gone to the Academy DS9:"Starship Down". In a scene where Worf is barating an crewman by the name of Stephens and O'Brien thinks he's treating him and another crewman a bit too harshly, when O'Brien takes it up with Worf he says, "You have to understand they are abit out of their element, they are not bridge officers, they haven't been to Starfleet Acedemy..."

[Junghalli]

Riker was repeatedly offered his own command. Picard felt it necessary to urge him on by saying "Starfleet needs good captains". In the United States Navy, this would never happen, because there are plenty of other officers who will be more than willing to take up the position.

That was probably more a personal opinion on Picard's part. He had great respect for Riker and thought he'd make a good Captain and was holding his own career back. Also he was supposed to be an exemplary officer (I know, he actually sucked, but SoD), so this may explain why he was offered the Captain's chair after turning it down before.

The only Mustand in the series that I recall is O'Brian and I don't remember if they ever explicitly said if he went to the Academy before becoming an officer.

Crewman Tarsas in TNG The Drumhead said he went to the "academy training program for enlisted personnel", which was differentiated from "going to the academy and going the whole way".

He was probably talking about basic there.

[General Zod]

He was probably talking about basic there.

Not likely. In real armies/navies/etc., you have two basic officer schools. Officer schools, and then enlisted schools. Both require basic training of a sort. The person in the quote you posted was likely referring to Starfleet's equivalent of an enlisted training school, as opposed to an officer school.

[RedImperator]

He was probably talking about basic there.

Not likely. In real armies/navies/etc., you have two basic officer schools. Officer schools, and then enlisted schools. Both require basic training of a sort. The person in the quote you posted was likely referring to Starfleet's equivalent of an enlisted training school, as opposed to an officer school.

It could be that they've combined officer and enlisted basic training into the same program. It would fit with their philosophy.

[General Zod]

He was probably talking about basic there.

Not likely. In real armies/navies/etc., you have two basic officer schools. Officer schools, and then enlisted schools. Both require basic training of a sort. The person in the quote you posted was likely referring to Starfleet's equivalent of an enlisted training school, as opposed to an officer school.

It could be that they've combined officer and enlisted basic training into the same program. It would fit with their philosophy.

Possibly. With just a basic training program for everyone who wants to join, and then an officer school for those furthering their career through the academy.

[Arcen]

I believe there is a problem with the math. While the selection process is stringent, I think the overall problem might be with simple attrition. Why stay in Starfleet? Advancement seems very limited especially to those choice slots with real freedom such as serving aboard the Enterprise. Most of the ships never do any real exploring and just travel between well know systems. If you what to explore, the easiest way is to do it yourself in your own ship. (One example being Mudd) While your research isn't as well funded as would be Federation backing, the lack of restrictions and overhead would more than make up for it. Additionally, any discovery would made wouldn't be subject to Federation distribution or censorship. Finally, how much could you make when you control your discovery. So while Starfleet has lots of applicants and (though less) graduates, most probably leave after a short period of time.

[General Zod]

I believe there is a problem with the math. While the selection process is stringent, I think the overall problem might be with simple attrition. Why stay in Starfleet? Advancement seems very limited especially to those choice slots with real freedom such as serving aboard the Enterprise. Most of the ships never do any real exploring and just travel between well know systems. If you what to explore, the easiest way is to do it yourself in your own ship. (One example being Mudd) While your research isn't as well funded as would be Federation backing, the lack of restrictions and overhead would more than make up for it. Additionally, any discovery would made wouldn't be subject to Federation distribution or censorship. Finally, how much could you make when you control your discovery. So while Starfleet has lots of applicants and (though less) graduates, most probably leave after a short period of time.

Of course the problem with exploring with your own ship is that it's dangerous, as various episodes of ToS, TNG, and Voyager prove frequently. Without a sufficient crew and way to resupply, you may as well be prepared to kiss your arse goodbye.

[Arcen]

True, but if you were looking for safety, would you even enter Starfleet? Their track record isn't what I would call good. The best advantage I see of joining Starfleet would seem to be generalization and medical research. You would be able to see a far greater range of different sciences, cultures, planets, and races with all the medical challenges and advances that go along with them.

[StarshipTitanic]

True, but if you were looking for safety, would you even enter Starfleet? Their track record isn't what I would call good.

How do you propose to deal with all the threats that a Starfleet capital ship can brush aside with ease?

[Arcen]

I am not proposing to "brush aside" any threats. I was commenting on the shortage of Starfleet presonel. An adventurous individual wouldn't necessarily contemplate joining Starfleet because it increased their personnel safety. Of course one of the other big draws would have to be family tradtion. Family pressure is demonstrated in a number of episodes across the movies and series (Pressure from Cisco for Jake to join, Scotty's pride and sorrow in "Wrath of Kahn" Geordi searching for his lost mother, etc.). Problem with just recruiting from within is rapid expansion and/or attrition again.

[Das_Boot]

Of course, one of the traditional military incentives that is eliminated in the TNG universe is the fact that there is no longer an economic draw. With the supposed elimination of the impoverished sector of humanity, as well as a possibly nil cost for higher education, the necessity for lower-class citizens of the Federation (if any) to enter the military in order to provide basic needs for themsleves or their family is gone. All that Starfleet can offer is adventure and excitement away from home.

[Coalition]

Another incentive might be that without Starfleet, you rely upon them for defenses, transportation, communications, etc.

If you join Starfleet, you are in a vessel that has weapons, you can go just anout anywhere, and you've got comms any time you need it.

Of course you have to subscribe to the party line, but being armed in the face of danger is a nice offset.

[Skylon]

I believe there is a problem with the math. While the selection process is stringent, I think the overall problem might be with simple attrition. Why stay in Starfleet? Advancement seems very limited especially to those choice slots with real freedom such as serving aboard the Enterprise. Most of the ships never do any real exploring and just travel between well know systems. If you what to explore, the easiest way is to do it yourself in your own ship. (One example being Mudd) While your research isn't as well funded as would be Federation backing, the lack of restrictions and overhead would more than make up for it. Additionally, any discovery would made wouldn't be subject to Federation distribution or censorship. Finally, how much could you make when you control your discovery. So while Starfleet has lots of applicants and (though less) graduates, most probably leave after a short period of time.

Rank and advancement seems a real screwy issue in Starfleet. By Nemesis Geordi, Data and Wof are still Lt. Commander's in Starfleet. When based on their records one would imagine they had made Commander or they are dead-ended. Where as Riker would have his ass booted out of the Navy if he said "no, I want to stay on this ship".

Heck, in Voyager Harry Kim never made it past Ensign in seven years and he was a department head. And they promoted people on that show, despite being stranded light-years from home.

The TOS movies also had possibly way too many veteran officers on one ship. By ST V, Kirk, Spock and Scotty are all Captains, while Sulu, Chekov, Uhura and McCoy are Commanders. Maybe some special case was made for the crew of the Ent-A after saving the planet in ST IV, but in a real navy, Kirk and Spock would have each had their own ships, Scotty, if he had no inclination for command, would be working in the Engineering Corps in some high level research or administrative capacity, while Sulu, Chekov and Uhura would probably not be at their typical posts as helm, navigator and communications.

One episode though REALLY ticked me off. It involved Troi taking a bloody test to get promoted to Commander. Now, in the modern military I believe enlised personnel take some sort of exam before becoming NCO's (Sgt, etc) but officers? Sure there are staff schools, command schools...but to take a test whenever, pass it and boom, promotion?

[Arcen]

Rank and advancement seems a real screwy issue in Starfleet. By Nemesis Geordi, Data and Wof are still Lt. Commander's in Starfleet. When based on their records one would imagine they had made Commander or they are dead-ended. Where as Riker would have his ass booted out of the Navy if he said "no, I want to stay on this ship".

Heck, in Voyager Harry Kim never made it past Ensign in seven years and he was a department head. And they promoted people on that show, despite being stranded light-years from home.

The TOS movies also had possibly way too many veteran officers on one ship. By ST V, Kirk, Spock and Scotty are all Captains, while Sulu, Chekov, Uhura and McCoy are Commanders. Maybe some special case was made for the crew of the Ent-A after saving the planet in ST IV, but in a real navy, Kirk and Spock would have each had their own ships, Scotty, if he had no inclination for command, would be working in the Engineering Corps in some high level research or administrative capacity, while Sulu, Chekov and Uhura would probably not be at their typical posts as helm, navigator and communications.

One episode though REALLY ticked me off. It involved Troi taking a bloody test to get promoted to Commander. Now, in the modern military I believe enlised personnel take some sort of exam before becoming NCO's (Sgt, etc) but officers? Sure there are staff schools, command schools...but to take a test whenever, pass it and boom, promotion?

Excellent Point. There should be faster promotions if turnover inside of Starfleet is part of the problem. Hmmm... What would explain both the lack of personnel and lack of promotion within Starfleet? Excessive red tape? The only thing I can think of is that Starfleet must be so desirable that personnel rarely leave. Either that, or there are major incentives in place for remaining in Starfleet.