If Starfleet can do all that… why can’t everyone else?
Better yet, given the limitations every organization faces of personnel, funding, etc how is Starfleet able to equal organizations that put ALL their resources into military operations?
Soldiering is a profession the same as any other… a person has resource limitations; time if nothing else. If you spend half your time becoming a scientist, and half becoming a Soldier… you’re not going to be very good at either.
Because of the size of both Starfleet and the Federation. Starfleet is much bigger than a pure military, because many who joined Starfleet would never join a pure military. Also the Federation is much larger than most of the other powers.
Why don’t other polities have equivalent organizations? What are their scientists doing instead?
I agree that the only answer is that the Federation and Starfleet have to be significantly larger than anyone else… and their tech advantage has to be significant.
The only “recent” wars Starfleet is known to have fought in the TNG era are the Tzenkethi (small polity), Cardassians (smaller, lower tech), Talarians (tiny, much lower tech) and possibly skirmishes with the Tholians (unknown).
All of these would likely have been fought by the ships assigned to the sector, with maybe second line reinforcements… none would rate as a major war, even the Cardassians, compared to the later Dominion war. This is probably the main reason losing 39 ships at Wolf 359 was such a blow. Starfleet hadn’t faced losses like that in generations.
That’s also why Starfleet didn’t feel any pressure to replace Miranda and Excelsior class vessels after the failure of the Ambassador program (Think about it: every class of heavy cruiser has spawned other vessels of similar engineering and design… except the Ambassador, and we’ve only seen them twice? but Excelsiors and Mirandas are everywhere).
Starfleet got complacent, and then had to fight a peer war with ships two generations or more obsolete.
I think the discussion about military / paramilitary is just one of labels. Military is not military and paramilitary is not paramilitary.
Starfleet is at least a paramilitary force as
Starfleet personnel receives military training (see how Nog behaves during his time at the Academy), uses military-grade equipment and arms and also engages in operations that are typical military operations. Note that the latter is not part of the definition for a para-military force.
The thing that would make Starfleet a fullgrown ‘military’ would be a declaration by the Federation that Starfleet was their official armed forces (i.e. military). This declaration might or might not exist. I, personally, tend to think that Starfleet is a military by this definition.
You’re THIS close to personally offend me. 
(You’re not, I’m joking.)
Please note that not every ‘soldier’ is a ‘soldier’. There are soldiers who, day after day after day, train to fight. And there are soldiers who, after having finished boot camp, only once or twice a year actually hold a gun in their hand (not speaking about actually firing them). The latter could be everyone from a logistics specialist to a medical or psychological doctor and virtually everything in between. There are militaries that have judges or attorneys in uniform (unthinkable for others), there are biologists and chemists, nuclear physics professors and accountants that are by commission, name, rank and training ‘soldiers’ but do not come near a fight for their whole career. They’re by no means perfectly trained fighters, but still soldiers.
Maybe Starfleet simply ‘integrates’ organisations and branches that are not part of the military of other factions and is simply bigger? Maybe there’s simply 100% of the capabilities of other forces and than simply a whole division of personnel added to these 100% tasked with science and what not that would simply not be part of other forces?
That’s actually the modern definition of a military under the contemporary laws of land warfare and relevant treaties.
…but they all exist to support the warfighting mission.
If Starfleet doesn’t exist to fight wars, it is not going to be as good at it as an organization that is optimized for that.
No, it is specifically not. It is the definition of a force equal to a military force, pursuant to Art. 1 of the Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War (Annex to Hague Convention IV of 1907).
Your interpretation is not the prevailing one.
A military MUST adhere to those minimal standards.
A militia or volunteer corps which DOES adhere to them is afforded the protections of the treaty, one that does not is not.
A couple of rejoinders to your assertions/questions:
In the late 20th century / 21st century doctrine of the United States Marine Corps, all Marines are Riflemen first, and then some of them are in addition many other things – intelligence specialists, logistics specialists, etc. Many would assert that USMC personnel are pretty high standard at excelling in both areas, you may disagree.
In my own experience in the United States Army, we received basic combat training and while our infantry and other combat arms specialist went on to focused individual and small unit training, which really never stopped in or out of a combat theater – the rest of the personnel went to a variety of schools that covered a plethora of topical areas – linguistic training, intelligence analysis and collection, communications, mechanical maintenance, journalism, music, graphic arts production, logistics, medical training from immediate field trauma to specialty areas like respiratory or radiology etc. In most of these cases the broad level of capability exceeded that of the same role in the civilian practice – for example Operating Room technicians did more than just scrub, but also circulated, supervised triage, did minor procedures like debridement and also performed the Central Sterilization and Supply duties, not the case in the civilian world. These people may not have more than the basics of warfighting – but some were very excellent field support personnel and even top end markspersons.
And here we are only talking about the Enlisted personnel, the parallel to the enlisted academy personnel that are products of the insanely good Federation general education then a year of exceptional training at the Enlisted Academies.
Which brings us to resources – the Cardassian have/had a very strong cultural regard for education, excellence and pursuit of the arts, then their resource limitations shifted the focus into the Cardassian Union we saw primarily in TNG and DS9. If they had the same sort of resources the Federation had, likely they would have retained their old ways with Civilian rule and pursuits of art and culture over control and military adventurism.
The fusion of Post WWIII Human idealogy and Vulcan’s IDIC, Andorian and Tellerite cultures after the Romulan War created a mindset that was more aggressive than later eras, and more materialistic in focus than the Post-Scarcity model we see in TNG. The Dominion had the resources and the seperation of duties through genetic caste system that proved more than capable of putting the Federation back on its heels where the Klingons and Romulans et.al. had proven unable to do so. They didn’t so much lose the War as concede it was perhaps unnecessary after Bashir’s actions. So the fighting allowed time for Science and Diplomacy to function – supporting the Federation and Starfleet’s ideology.
That said, Section 31 using a bio-weapon to win was also largely responsible even if anti-ethical to the Federation and Starfleet’s stated agenda – much like a Vulcan Hello – or the Swaggering Cowboy Kirk approach. Starfleet and the Federation “matured” into their later standard, but that required the constant additon of cultural fuel from new member species and going post-need resources. It was the Federation Credit not the Ferengi Latinum that stabilized the “galactic” economies which is why the Ferengi begrudgingly participated with the summits to set the trade value hosted on Betazed. Still behind that veneer we find Starfleet personnel making exceptions to win – Sisko framing the Dominion for the murder of Romulans to get the Romulans into the war; Janeway violating the temporal Prime directive to save her crew and attempt a Genocide on the Borg, etc.
So to wrap this up – The Klingons lost because their caste system and resource struggling and sending resources to maintain their enslaved worlds and culturally mandated internecine warfare culminated in them being unable to our produce and out perform the Federation. Not unlike the Soviet Union eventually failing without a bullet fired to the Western alliances. The Romulans “lost” because their closed loop culture squandered resources fighting each other factionally – Tal Shiar vs Tal Diann and so on and also having to keep their feet on their conquered species. The Cardassians couldn’t maintain control of their own people when spending so much on competing with resource rich rivals and etc.
You can be the best soldiers in the galaxy – but if you run out of resources, its hard to fight. The Jem’hadar had this problem with Ketrecel White, for example. The Federation was so rich in talent and resources, that the Dominion War started turning on their inability to train people to replaces their losses due to overstaffed ships like the Galaxy class. They had to start boot-strapping from the Merchant Marines and Species/Planetary Defense Forces, and “shake and baking” cadets through a reduced Adcademy time so they could fill roles in the field. The PDD ships required less personnel and projected more military force with the crew sizes they did carry – a shift in Starfleet design caused by the Borg but probably saved them in the Dominion War.
This doesn’t mean “everyone else” can’t do what Starfleet did/does – but there are limitations to many of them doing it – size of population (Talarians), limitations of resources (Cardassians), Size of zone of control (Romulans), lack of interest or incentive (Tholians), Cultural Impediments (Klingons) and so on. The Dominion War shows flaws in the Federation approach … we’ve only had a few chances to see post Dominion War Federation on screen – Nemesis and then the Hobus Nova wrecked the Romulan Star Empire it seems, and Picard suggests the Federation has hit a manpower problem that the Synthetic Life Form revolt really preyed upon and a more insular Federation First agenda seems to be in place there.
If you read all this, kudos and thanks – but ultimately its your Prime Timeline for trek, and you can settle out things as they best make sense to you. Cheers.
Unrelated to that last post but more on the original topic:
That is a link to a document detailing the crew allotment of a Saber Class vessel in the late 2374/75 era I had for a Decipher Trek game I ran. I used the statistics for allotment from that document I suggested earlier and then laid out the crew based on number of officers suggested, department suggestions or requirements, and the differential that the Saber is a Cruiser not an Escort so it had to cover Cruiser role missions. Feedback welcome, so is derision, its just a sample – and remember its LUG/Decipher based so Operations is a third gold shirt Department, not exactly compliant with STA methodology then.
Well, let’s simply read the text, shall we?
You’re the native speaker of us two, but I think “not only to armies” means that the laws of war always applies to armies whether they adhere to those minimal standards or not, right?
No. A military is a military when a State says it’s a military.
But.
First, this sentence is incorrect because of Art. 2 of said instrument that also grants protection of the treaty also to groups that are not organised in accordance with Art. 1, but I accept this is an academic exception since the levée en masse is an undogmatic special case with virtually no practical relevance. But since you started arguing about my interpretation of the law, I wanted to be specific. 
Anyway, the purpose of the list within Art. 1 Hague Regulations is to define what is military enough (remember, paramilitary means literally “like a military”) to count as (lawful, if you want) belligerent with respect to the laws of war. I do not object the fact that the list is derived from observations how an average military looked like at the time (and still looks like), but a military does not need to meet these requirements to be considered a military. They even do not need to meet these requirements while fighting. See, for instance, Art. 44 (3) of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflict (Additional Protocol I, AP1) that allows combatants to be indistinguishable from the civilian population (i.e. not wearing distinctive emblems or uniforms) and that is widely accepted to reflect customary international law.
While we’re at AP1, you’ll find your minimum requirements for armed forces there, specifically within Art. 43 (1) 2 AP1. This requirement is a bit lower than the requirements of Art. 1 Hague Regulations.
And now, please educate me on how my interpretation is not the prevailing one. Always eager to learn. 
There are many militaries around the world that do have a warfighting mission but carry out other duties most of their times. See Austria, for instance, that was part of KFOR as a non-NATO member. They’ve a military that for sure can fight – but most of the time renders assistance to the police and provides disaster relief. Its neighbour Germany, on the other hand (so close you mistook Garmisch, that’s actually German, to be Austrian) has a completely different culture. The German military can only in rare exceptions be used as a supporting police force (to sum it up, any situation short of a civil war is probably a no-no) and is only second-in-line for disaster relief (they usually provide manpower while the first line of defense against disasters would be the non-armed Federal Agency for Technical Relief).
(Edit: In this example, Austria would be the military excelling at policing and disaster relief (= Starfleet) which would not be considered a ‘job for a military’ by Germany (= non-Federation faction). Sorry to all fellow Germans for this example.)
Please also remember that Astronauts are often soldiers (most of them air force, I believe). They carry the rank of staff officers and are expert scientists.
Also, what @Fortunae wrote. Kudos!
Another example down that road: I heard of things like a UCMJ, judging benches consisting 100% of soldiers and accusers and counsels for the defense that are soldiers. There are countries where this would be unthinkable (again, Germany. I tend to know funny things about that country. 
). From the perspective of such a country, one could argue that the U.S. would not concentrate 100% on military operations, as a trial would be defined a purely civilian matter.
…concerning Germany it’s not always purely civilian as within disciplinary trials and some adjacent fields there are honorary judges on the bench that are not trained in law, but are soldiers. So the ‘purely civilian matter’ does not hold completely true for Germany. But this is only a fun fact. 
One could, on the other hand, simply accept that militaries are different and tasked differently and sometimes include personnel that would be considered non-military in other cultures. I tend to think this way about Starfleet.
Of course, everyone else’s headcanon is everyone else’s headcanon and not mine.
This is fascinating, I’m enjoying both sides
A couple of quick queries:
@tanksoldier: I don’t know much about other navies in this aspect, but I believe the UK Royal Navy does operate scientific missions, with trained scientific personnel (albeit trained as soldiers as well). There’s definitely a long tradition of this in the UK: most of the great exploratory voyages of the 18th century were made by naval vessels (such as the Beagle), although they carried civilian scientists. James Cook encountered Australia while specifically sailing to observe the Transit of Venus. This of course was because they had the resources. Would this be considered a suitable mission for the USN these days?
@Fortunae: you mention the Tal Diann - I’ve always loved the concept, but have they ever been mentioned in canon (or beta canon outside of LUGTrek)? I’d have thought they were shoo-in for Picard, but they didn’t show.
@Fortunae: you mention the Tal Diann - I’ve always loved the concept, but have they ever been mentioned in canon (or beta canon outside of LUGTrek)? I’d have thought they were shoo-in for Picard, but they didn’t show.
I have not seen them mentioned by Canon outside of their usage in LUG and Decipher; that said they are Romulan Naval Intelligence essentially so you can feel pretty safe saying there is Romulan Naval Intelligence seperate from that Tal Shiar. A real life example would be the Soviet Political officer attached to a Submarine, or the difference between the CIA, the DIA and Army or Naval Intelligence in the American structure. I use them, because doing so makes sense to me in my head space with all the paranoia and competition in the Romulan culture – when we get a Romulan STA book perhaps we’ll see if they include Romulan Intelligence seperate from that Tal Shiar. I use all the civialian Federation agencies from LUG as well, the PIB, the FIB etc – but they aren’t canon, though the grey dressed D.T.I. are.
Yes.
(I need a run, duck & cover emoji. 
)
[quote=“MisterX, post:30, topic:13113”]
No. A military is a military when a State says it’s a military.[/quote]
…which doesn’t contradict what I said. Per the Hague Convention of 1907 a signatory’s organized military MUST adhere to the Conventions, and militias and volunteer corps must adhere when they are considered part of the signatory’s military. Militias and volunteer corps of signatory states don’t have to adhere, but they don’t receive the protections of the Convention when they don’t.
Part of your problem is you are reading only parts of the document, not the whole thing.
Article 1 “The Contracting Powers shall issue instructions to their armed land forces which shall be in conformity with the Regulations respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, annexed to the present Convention.”
So, a signatory’s military MUST conform to the Convention… except when engaged in a conflict with a non-signatory:
Article 2: “The provisions contained in the Regulations referred to in Article 1, as well as in the present Convention, do not apply except between Contracting Powers, and then only if all the belligerents are parties to the Convention”
The Convention doesn’t determine what constitutes a nation’s military. It describes how that military must behave, whatever form it takes.
The Convention states specifically that militias and volunteer corps which do not adhere are not protected:
"The laws, rights, and duties of war apply not only to armies, but also to militia and volunteer corps-fulfilling the following conditions:
If they don’t conform, they are not afforded the “laws, rights and duties of war”.
Completely wrong. The Convention doesn’t define a military. A nation does that. The Convention describes what a military must do, and who is and is not protected by the provisions of the Convention.
Correct. A military can violate the Hague and Geneva Conventions, and the other customary laws of war, and still be a military.
…not by countries that have done any actual fighting since 1945.
…a scientist wearing a uniform and being classified as a “soldier” doesn’t actually make them one.
In the US, military personnel selected to become astronauts come under the operational control of NASA. They no longer train as military personnel, and I doubt NASA would win many wars.
I will try to make this short. Spoiler: I will fail.
Every State has to conform to the convention as it is widely accepted that it reflects customary international law. If you’re not cool with that assertion, please argue with the IMT about it. That was their idea (AJIL, Vol. 41, 1947, pp. 248-249).
Which was my point the whole time. Thank you for agreeing.
If I may quote you on “problems”: Part of your problem is that you do not read the document.
Again, it might be due to my insufficient grasp of the english language, but I read an exception to Art. 1 that still affords this Levée en masse the “laws, rights and duties of war”. I grant you that: It’s almost purely academic. And simply knowing about this stuff probably disqualifies me for being a soldier. But, again, please educate me what the purpose of Art. 2 is in case it’s not an exception. I’m curious.
And there you’re right. Formally. Because I forgot a ‘not’. The sentence shall read: The purpose of the list within Art. 1 Hague Regulations is not to define what is a military. This is conclusive with my previous statement about militaries: “A military is a military when a State says it’s a military.” I’m glad you agreed.
I’m curious about your definition about “actual fighting”. In my naivité, I thought that engagements like ISAF actually included “actual fighting”, but I am obviously wrong about that. Please ask your local special forces about not wearing uniform in engagements. But, oh, that was NIAC, right. What about Putin’s “little green men” on Crimea? The ones that did not wear any signs, just military grade equipment (hey, just like stipulated in Art. 44 (3) AP1! What a coincidence!)? Probably just an act of aggression but no “actual fighting”? I feel expertly trolled.
So, what’s your definition of soldier? How many hours a week does one have to train shooting to keep this status, despite being commissioned and contributing to the war fighting effort? Are there soldiers within the JAG corps? Is the doctor in the field hospital a soldier? Is the logistics expert? The tank mechanic? The intelligence officer who stays in camp the whole rotation? The commander who plans, but doesn’t leave it either? Probably only the tough guys who leave camp and do the shooting, right? You’re free to think that way. Then let’s just agree to disagree, because I most solemny do.
(As probably do some veterans who would think of themselves as soldiers, despite having decommissioned, but that’s a completely different story.)
Anyway, we’re getting far off-topic. Let’s just agree on that
shall we?
This would lead us to the conclusion that it’s a nice idea to draw from contemporary militaries on how a crew breakdown in % could look like. A conclusion I would support to the degree that any decision within a STA game shall support the drama.
Watching ENT I come ti the conclusion that Starfleet of that time is more like a mix of NASA, Coast Guard and the non-military uniformed services of the US. Starfleet officers see themselves as explorers and scientist, but not as soldiers and are unhappy that their ships are armed and that something like an armory officer is needed. At that time each nation of earth still had its own military. The MACO were not part of Starfleet.
Over a century later the situation was different. The conflicts with the Romulans, the Klingons among others led to a militarization of Starfleet. Some scientists like David Marcus feared that Starfleet would use their discoveries as weapons.
Another centiry later the whole situation had changed. Despite several more conflicts Starfleet does not see itself as military force, but has returned to the idealism of its early days. The Klingons have become allies and the Romulans had isolated themselves. Not even the arrival of the Borg could change that. Starfleet was forced to modernize its vessels. A move that helped in the Dominion War.
In line with the mission profile, a rating of 1 indicated ad-hoc or jury-rigged ability. A ship with a Medical of 1 might use the wardroom as an operating theater, and the surgeon might be an MD who is normally assigned to the life sciences team… or maybe they just have the equivalent to an independent duty corpsman.
An example of a vessel with Medical 1 would be the U.S.S. Defiant (Sisko’s Defiant, not the old Constitution that got dragged into the Mirror Universe) - while there is a small sickbay, facilities are limited and it’s mainly there to stabilise casualties until they can be gotten to a proper medical facility. The ship is also sharing its doctor with DS9, so there’s no guarantee that there’ll be a doctor aboard because he splits his time between Defiant’s sickbay and DS9’s infirmary.
Voyager’s sickbay comes close, though. While well-appointed with medical technology - an EMH, and medical replicators capable of performing tissue cloning for transplants (as seen in the episode Phage) - it has a low capacity and is only crewed by a single doctor and a nurse during normal operation. In ideal conditions, that’s Medical 2 (facilities don’t seem to be that different to the Enterprise’s during the 2260s, though McCoy’s sickbay seemed bigger), but being run only by an EMH could justify a Medical rating of 1 because it’s understaffed.
And Voyager specifically only had one doctor and one nurse (or they got really unlucky and all medical staff was killed off), where as the Enterprise-D had a large staff consisting of several doctors and nurses.