You honour me, greatly. Thank you, Sir. 
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This topic does seem to crop up frequently. As a GM I can do whatever I want with my campaign. If I want to have SF Marines, then I will. But as a lifelong ST fan, I cannot find any basis for them in canon. None. Zero. Nada. Except for MACO in ENTERPRISE, but they were disbanded when Starfleet was created. Hence, I will not include them in my campaign. Ground Forces are another matter, but canonically, on air, I donât think there has anything but âsecurityâ forces for most planets.
But then, most planets encountered arenât balkinized like present day Earth, so the crew has to deal, largely, with one government. I think, although I do not know, Roddenberry saw the future as not requiring armies, since fleets would control the space around a planet with such awesome destructive ability that ground combat would be obsolete. Worlds would have progressed to having a single governmental body for the entire planet, meaning that an army would be obsolete. Again, I do not know this, nor can I prove it, but given the utopian view of Star Trek it seems a reasonable supposition. Perhaps Larry Nemacek would have some wisdom, from his access to Roddenberryâs files.
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Just a couple of quick side notes on naming:
âStarfleet Marinesâ implies theyâre part of Starfleet, not a separate service - otherwise theyâd be UFP or Federation Marines.
Thereâs no reason such a force would be called âMarinesâ - that quite explicitly references seagoing troops⌠Not sure what they would be though: hmm, âstarship troopersâ? (Cue Sarah Brightman :D)
(I would also note that the usual role of a marine force within a naval service would be to handle security and carry out ground missions âin forceâ - a role also suited to Security. The US model is very unusual.)
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There are no Starfleet Marines. There is not a single episode or movie which mentions them.
The MACOs were never part of Starfleet (but their members had been transfered to Starfleet after the faounding of both the Federation and Starfleet). Starfleet Security is responsible for security on Earth and all Starfleet/federal installations. Most members (except Earth itself) still have their own naval forces. And I am sure that all of them have some sort of planetary defence force which is not part of Starfleet.
Iâm aware of all that (for reference my position is near the top of the page) - I was providing some extra info for those that want to use them or something similar.
As a friend of mine keeps pointing out: your canon is whatever you want it to beâŚ
Well usually youâd have ships specially fitted with extra crew quarters, maybe less weapons, better stealth and ECCM capabilities, less cargo capacity, and then it would be a Starfleet Marines transport ship for bringing a company or so of marines between engagement zones.
One of the ship mission profiles (Crisis and Emergency Response) indicates that such ships are used as troop transports during times of war. I would think that such troops are not Starfleet, but are instead drawn from the armies of constituent worlds. These ships also function as hospital ships, supply carriers, and evacuation vessels so they likely have the ability to carry large numbers of extra beings for short periods even if they do not put them in full âquartersâ equivalent to what the regular crews utilize.
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Looking at the role Marines tradtionally play in a navy, Starfleet security seems to manage most of them, really the only thing Marines do that SFS doesnât explictly do is âamphibious assaultâ and one could perhaps question if you need a branch entirely devoted to âWe train really hard to come out of shuttles shooting our phasersâ especially when you consider that starfleet is largely defensive and proably rarely conducts offensive operations, and by the dominion war hadnât fought a MAJOR war in over 100 years. Basicly before the dominion war the last major major war the UFP seems to have fought was the Klingon-Federation war of the 2250s. all the other conflicts in between seem to have been brush fire wars. So when you examine facts a dedicated starfleet marine service seems⌠unnesscary and thus likely never was created
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Although Iâm sure some Admirals probably would have wanted to in response to Wolf 359
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Wolf 359 was a space ânavalâ battle. Ground Forces would not have been an asset.
Ships like the Defiant class, on the other hand, would have been.
Hence, in response to Wolf 359, ships like the Defiant were developed.
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doesnât mean you cannot have squads deployed to board the enemy vessel
The way I see it: thatâs the job of Starfleet Security. Ground forces and tactical operations are part of the remit of the Security department, rather than a whole other branch of Starfleet or a parallel organisation as they were with the United Earth MACOs, and individual personnel within the Security department (and beyond) can opt to specialise in a variety of different fields; we know that Ro Laren took advanced tactical training shortly before she was assigned to infiltrate the Maquis, and that Chakotay was an instructor in that course several years earlier.
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