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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I know this is an older thread, but I am starting spinning up with Star Trek Adventures. I am playing Starfleet as a Ministry of Defense, with a Tri-Sevices approach to its Forces. In the current world, the idea of a dedicated Navy, Air Force and Army are the logical approach which I would assume would emulated in the future.
If you look at modern American and Royal Navies, they can project force with Naval Aviation or Fleet Air Arm, land Marines (Royal or otherwise), with specialized coxswains driving the landing craft.
The United States Coast Guard, a soft power Navy, even has Port Security and Maritime Security organizations that can land and secure contested ports, or provide specialized security forces. They all use naval ratings and ranks for enlisted and officer even while conducting a âlandâ warfare mission.
Except that there is no human âtraditionâ in having Marines as an own branch of service.
Russia, and its child/parent the USSR, and most Communist Block nations have a separate naval infantry branch or arm, even post USSR, if they have a navy. Spetznaz are almost directly equivalent to the USMC, save in troop quality.
Most Commonwealth nations with significant navies have either Marines as a branch or Naval Infantry as a division with distinctive dress.
Many South American nations have now or have had a Naval Infantry as an arm within the Navy.
The German Seebataillon are functionally a separate arm within the German Navy⌠seamen given infantry training. A similar arm exists still, in the form of the Naval Protection Forces; a German Seebattalion is in fact currently attached to the Dutch Marine Corps for training the Seebattalions.
France had Troops de Marine in the 19th C⌠an arm of the Army at the Corps level. currently, they still have the Troops de Marine, but also the Marins de Fusileer (an arm within the Navy) and the Commandos de Marine (the Special Ops of the French Navy.)
Mexico has the Cuerpo de InfanterĂa de Marina, 30 Battalions of infantry, plus several specialized Battalions. Itâs an arm within the Mexican Navy.
Australia has a recurrantly deployed USMC presence⌠And sometimes has hosted UK Royal Marine deployments.
Separate distinctive uniforms for dedicated Naval Infantry are common worldwide since the move to regularization of each countryâs military forces (late 1700âs to around 1900); not always a separate service, but if not, almost always a special arm within one of the others, either the Army (France) or the Navy (Almost everyone else outside East Asia). No nation has had their Naval Infantry as part of the air arm; only the US and USSR have had significant air force troops, in both cases, not used for beachheads, but for forward observation and for pilot extraction.
Searching solely for âMarinesâ doesnât get the truth of the matter, since dedicated naval staff trained for ground warfare ashore, both for port protection and for amphibious operations are usually needing a mix of skills separate from the rest of the fleet, and quite different from the Army as well.
After WW II, many Naval Infantry and/or Marine forces were removed, as the changing nature of warfare was expected to render then unneeded⌠but Army troops seldom do port protection well. Likewise, most felt amphibious landings would go away⌠but they still happen, just not in large scale.
Major wars in canon for UFP Starfleet prior to DS9 S1 include:
2256-2257: Federation-Klingon War
2259: Gorn incursions.
2260âs: Second Federation-Klingon War, Romulan incursions.
2267: Gorn Incursion (TOS: Arena), End of 2nd Fed-Klingon War by Organia
2270s & 2280âs: several klingon incursions against the federationâŚ
2340âs to 2367: Federation-Cardassian War.
2353: Federation-Tholian conflict,
2360âs: Fed-Tzenkethi War.
2364: TNG Season 1
2369: DS9 season 1
There is a 16+ year active war with the Cardassians, and it stalemated 3 years before DS9. The Tzenkethi War is DURING the Cardassian War. So is the Tholian Conflict.
So, not, not 100 years. Merely 5 or so.
There may have been many conflicts in the history of bopth Starfleet and the Federation but if you look at the canon material than you will never find any mentions of Starfleet Marines.You willfind some Starfleet members with an mysterious division colour in Star Trek V who are often identified as marines because of the role they play in the movie. But that division colour is not mentioned in Bob Flechterâs production notes (which BTW are canon), making this a production error.
We only know that Starfleet does not have a marine corps, they rely on their security force. But we know that Starfleet is not the only military service of the Federation. Many members still have their own military (Vulcans, Andorians etc.). And we know about the existence of the Fedration Naval Patrol, which is a (wet) navy (and not a space navy). (BTW I belive that the MACO still exists as a seperate service, we only know that they were dissolved and absorbed into Starfleet in the Kelvinverse but that might not have happened in the Prime timeline.)
Drop the fixation on the word Marines.
Itâs essentially a strawman argument there, Caranfang.
You know that if someone talks about marines they also tend to use marine ranks and structures, but Starfleet does not have those. They do not need those.
And BTW we know that at least the Romulan War was only fought in space, because if there had been any form ground combat it would have been discovered that the Romulans look like Vulcans. And I am sure that this also applies to many of the conflicts in which Starfleet was involved (except those with the Klingons and the Gorn and the Dominion war).
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Which exactly proves my point that there is no tradition in âhaving Marines as an own branch of serviceâ (emphasis added).
Having served in the German Navy, please let me assure you that the Seebataillon is in no way an own branch of service as Army, Navy and Air Force are.
On a sidenote: âSeebataillonâ (âsea battalionâ) is a battalion of marine infantry within the âEinsatzflottille 1â (âmission/deployment flotilla 1â), a brigade-level unit of the German Navy. âSeebataillonâ is only the name of a specific battalion (thereâs also the âKommando Spezialkräfte der Marineâ, the âNavyâs Special Forces Commandâ) being part (arguably the biggest, though) of the German marine infantry.
The functional(!) equivalent of Marines are the âObjektschutzkräfte der Marineâ (object protection forces of the navy) who are indeed the German Navyâs infantry. They do receive different training than most other sailors, yet they bear Navy ranks, wear Navy uniforms and can easily be transferred to other posts within other units, provided they meet training requirements. Yes, the âObjektschutzkräfte der Marineâ are the only soldiers of the German Navy wearing a (blue) beret (the beret being the formal cover of the Army). But so do the âObjektschutzkräfte der Luftwaffeâ (who are infantry within the Air Force).
Objektschutzkräfte (be it those of the Navy or those of the Air Force) are, speaking in terms of organisation, to their respecitve branch what infantry, artillery, tanks or airborne troops are to the Army. A different training within a unified branch of service. You might call that âfunctionally a separate armâ and I might concur in the big picture. But even in the big picture that is not âan own branch of serviceâ like Army/Navy/Air Force/Coast Guard/Gendarmerie/Carabinieri (âŚ) are. On that note: Thereâs also naval aviation and army aviation. Yet, despite they receive very different training than other soldiers of the Army/Navy, noone would call them an âown branch of serviceâ. Theyâre army or navy personnel, respectively.
This.
What we all do in our games is what we do in our games.
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Starfleet doesnât have marines.
But it can call its Klingon allies that have a different doctrine.
And they can have ground forces from other allied planets if necessary. Iâm sure Andorans have great ground soldiers and Section 31, Starfleet Intelligence and the Enginneer Corps can mobilize capable individuals.
I wonder even if Vulcan can call some Vulcans with anger issues.
Maybe the âmarinesâ can have their own ships to officially not beeing Starfleet for some deniability.
Because Starfleet brings Peace. And as Peacemaker said âI cherish peace with all my heartâ and Section 31 completes the quote
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