Imagine for the moment that you’re in the midst of planning a major war, to be launched
against some rival power. Your enemy has a formidable fleet of warships, maritime or
interstellar it doesn’t matter, but until this fleet is destroyed, you won’t be able
to force any kind of surrender. So, how are you going to go about this?
Well, depending on where and when you find yourself the technology might be different,
but the guiding principles will be the same. Through a combination of materiel, tactics
and logistics, your forces will develop offensive or defensive strategies designed to create
the conditions for a decisive battle, a single victory that can directly lead to a rapid
resolution of the conflict. The Battle of Salamis is maybe the definitive example, when
outnumbered Greek warships destroyed as much as half of the Persian Navy. A more modern
example would be the Battle of Tsushima in which a Russian squadron sailed halfway around
the world just to get annihilated by the Empireo of Japan.
The problem is, creating the conditions for a decisive victory is easier said than done,
if that weren’t the case then everyone would be doing it. There’s two very broad reasons
for this. The first is that your enemy isn’t stupid, they know exactly what you’re trying
to achieve because they’re looking to do the exact same thing to you. And millennia
of naval theory and doctrine gives admirals plenty of options in how to press their advantage,
but also mitigate their weaknesses. When a naval force is losing a battle, there are
steps it can take to potentially prevent it from losing decisively.
The second issue is, the scale of military conflict increases as civilization advances.
As soon as navies become sophisticated enough to the point where they are operating multiple
fleets across many different theaters, the chances of a single victory ending the war
are not impossible, but pretty low. Put another way, the more sophisticated a nation, the
better it becomes at taking a hit, and recovering from it. The Battle of the Red Cliffs, The
Battle of Trafalgar, the Battle of Midway, and countless others, these were all massive
victories, but not enough to definitively end their respective wars, or in some cases,
even settle the question of naval superiority. Even the Battle of Salamis itself wasn’t
quite the decisive victory that the ancient Greeks would want us to believe. Instead,
while decisive victories are obviously still important, they more often decide the outcome
of a campaign, and not necessarily the war as a whole.
Oh, but I hear you saying, creating the conditions for multiple decisive victories across many
different theaters is gonna take too long, isn’t there some surefire way to destroy
an entire fleet? Something really clever, that all those nerds like Nimitz, Yamamoto,
Nelson, Tirpitz, Drake, and my main man Ernest Joseph King, Chief of Naval Operations, United
States Navy, were just way too stupid to ever think of? What if, you waited until the entire
enemy fleet, every single warship, was concentrated in a single place, and then delivered a single
decapitating strike, what if you attacked Fleet Week.
Ahhh yes, the ole’ surprise attack on Fleet Week strategy, so brilliant, so perfect, a
dazzling intersection of ingenuity, planning and execution, all culminating in what can
only be the most astonishing military victory of our time. Once achieved, the entire war
might be won in a day.
If saying it only made it so.
As you might have inferred from my tone there, this is actually something that’s been tried
a few times before. The Gran Colombian attack on the Mayport, Florida Fleet Week, the Settlement
Defense Front’s strike on the Geneva Fleet Week, even the NCIS New Orleans team had to
stop an attack on their city’s fleet week. Most recently we saw this play out yet again
during the Changeling/Borg attack on the Federation’s Fleet Week, I mean they called it Frontier
Day, but same thing.
What frustrates me to no end is that this strategy works pretty much every time. But
it shouldn’t! Why is that? Well let’s consider the question that I'm fairly certain
nobody involved in the aforementioned examples bothered to ask “what is fleet week?”
Well essentially it’s a public relations and community outreach event. Traditionally
it refers to when active military ships returning from deployments overseas, dock in a major
city. The ship’s crews get to relax and see the sights, while the public is given
the chance to tour some of the ships involved, and are encouraged to interact with military
personnel. The goal is to increase public awareness as to the role of the military,
and to strengthen its relationship with the civilian population.
What a fleet week is not, is some big event where an entire navy is assembled in one place.
Most modern Fleet Weeks have under 10 participating warships, while the largest will maybe include
a few dozen. There are a few exceptions to this, the very first Fleet Week in 1935, included
a significant percentage of the United States Navy and there is a similar kind of event
called a Fleet Review. The Coronation Review of the Fleet held by the Royal Navy in 1911
included over 130 warships. But it’s important to remember that these events were products
of their time. Navies were far larger in the early 20th century, but more importantly to
our point, one of the reasons you don’t see enormous fleets assembled for events like
this anymore is, get this, security concerns. The security environment has evolved significantly
since 1935 and keeping the events smaller ensures the safety of both military personnel
and the public.
And yet, across alternate worlds, these practical and obvious considerations are always overlooked,
and Fleet Week becomes a parody of itself, prioritizing spectacle over security to a
cartoonish degree. As an example, let’s break down the implications and consequences
of the Federation’s Frontier Day.
Now when it was first mentioned that all of Starfleet was being assembled in one place,
I figured there was a bit of hyperbole going on. Surely that couldn’t be the case, but
no, this is explicitly stated over and over. And do we really need to explain all the reasons
why this is insane? I guess so, alright here we go.
First of all, even if you wanted to assemble the entire fleet together in one place, it’s
just impossible. These numbers aren’t exact, but during peacetime only about ⅓ of a Navy’s
total ships are on deployment at any given time. You have another third undergoing training
exercises, evaluations and various preparations, and the remaining third undergoing some level
of maintenance. It’s possible to drastically increase the number of deployed ships, but
this is what’s known as a “surge” and is not sustainable in the long run. This system
is foundational to how navies operate, and while evolving technology might mitigate certain
challenges associated with fleet deployments, there is no practical reason why Starfleet
wouldn’t operate this same way.
Secondly, ships aren’t just there for show, they have a job to do. On any given day Starfleet
vessels might be conducting missions of exploration, deterrence, diplomacy, scientific research,
search and rescue, law enforcement, space traffic control, disaster relief, and I’m
sure several hundred other duties. None of these responsibilities go away, just because
it’s Frontier Day.
And lastly, let’s imagine there’s some magical space solution to everything I’ve
just talked about. Even if you could assemble the entire fleet in one place, why would Starfleet
want to? The Federation is a pretty big entity. There are hundreds of member worlds, thousands
of colonies, all spread out across thousands of light years. If Frontier Day is so important,
why are Starfleet’s festivities being held solely over Earth? There should be a Fleet
Week Vulcan, Fleet Week Andoria, Fleet Week Bolarus, and so on and so on. Spreading out
Fleet Week across hundreds of worlds not only addresses every single concern I have, it
also makes it more inclusive to the Federation as a whole and just a better event.
But again I can already hear some of you saying, ah Marc, you poor fool, the Changelings were
responsible for everything. Did you miss that? There were people in Starfleet who knew this
was a bad idea, and even tried to address it.
Well no, I actually did catch that but to counter this argument, I need to invent and
then invoke what I’m gonna call Marc’s First Law. Now I’m still not sure how you’re
supposed to phrase a law, this is my first one after all, but the general premise goes
like this:
Dumb ideas are implemented all the time, often with cataclysmic results. But they’re implemented
in the first place because there was at least a legitimate expectation of a positive outcome.
Ideas like this, fall into what I call the “zone of believability”. But some ideas
are just so clearly bad, their consequences so obvious, that no sensible person would
ever consider them. These ideas cross the threshold into the “Zone of Ridiculousness”.
Moving the United States Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbor in 1940 turned out to be a bad
idea. But between its strategic location, the hope the fleet’s presence might deter
further japanese aggression, improving readiness and demonstrating to the world that the United
States was committed to defending what at the time was only a territory and not a state,
there was enough of a rationale to place the idea within the Zone of Believability. If
FDR had ordered every single US ship to Hawaii, well then it crosses the threshold.
When an idea is in the Zone of Ridiculousness, there’s really no explanation that can overcome
its inherent preposterousness. You’re putting a band-aid on someone who was just decapitated.
Or at the very least, you need a better explanation than “some changelings infiltrated Starfleet”.
So why doesn’t this explanation work? As we’ve touched on in this video, this order,
regardless of who gave it, would cause a severe disruption of operational readiness, present
a clear threat to Federation security, be a logistical nightmare, and is counter-productive
to the stated aims of Frontier Day itself. Ordering every ship to a single location is
so nonsensical that it would irreparably damage the credibility of not only the person who
ordered it, but anyone who followed it.
Now it is true that in the leadup to Frontier Day, we do see a few Starfleet Personnel raise
their objections. But it’s done with this kind of half-hearted submissiveness that to
me borders on cowardice.
If you think an order has the potential to cause serious harm to Federation interests,
you don’t just write three memos and hope you get a response. But to be fair, just because
an order is nonsensical, doesn’t mean it’s illegal. But in the case of Frontier Day,
it's hardly a stretch to argue that following this order might constitute dereliction of
duty, reckless endangerment, and a whole host of other criminal charges. Any Starfleet Captain
who chose to disobey these orders and instead contact a legal officer or begin some sort
of review process with the Starfleet Judge Advocate General Corps or whatever, would
be perfectly within their rights so far as I can tell.
But that's not all, because some institutions, particularly those concerned with the consequences
of its personnel mindlessly following orders, not only provide the option for harmful orders
to be disobeyed, but require it. Disobedience is a feature, not a bug. The modern German
army is the best example of this, its soldiers follow this hard to translate and hard to
pronounce concept that essentially boils down to: no superior officer ranks higher than
your own conscience. I don't know if Starfleet has a similar policy, but it's hard to imagine
anything more completely aligned to Federation principles. One of the most striking elements
of Starfleet, is that compared to the Romulans, Klingons and Cardassians, it uses a decentralized
command structure, individual Captains are trusted to make critical decisions and exercise
discretion in carrying out their missions, even when faced with unexpected challenges
or limited resources. In this way, decision making is distributed across multiple different
levels and doesn't always come from the top down. In short, it doesn’t matter at all
if the Changelings replaced every single Admiral, because individual Captains are incentivized
to follow their own moral compass and act in the best interests of the Federation and
its people, rather than blindly following orders. Or at least they should be, I still
don’t get why only one ship in the fleet recognized how completely stupid this whole
Frontier Day celebration was.
So what I'm really trying to get at here is that in our own reality at least, if you’re
trying to destroy an enemy navy, there are an almost endless number of reasons why attacking
“fleet week” or something similar, wouldn't work. So why is it successful again and again
and again across alternate worlds, especially during events like Frontier Day, where they
should be even less of a chance of it working? Well, the explanation “maybe everyone is
just really dumb”, isn’t exactly satisfying, but it’s the best one I got.
Of course, that is just my opinion, and even though Marc’s 2nd Law clearly dictates that
anyone who disagrees with me is wrong, I’d like to hear your thoughts. Is assembling
an entire navy in one place actually a really smart idea? Did the Changelings just replace
all of Starfleet, and that’s how they got away with it? Or are you from one of the many
planets in the Federation that’s not Earth and you’re pissed off that you couldn't
attend Frontier Day? Let me know in the comments below, and until next time, this has been
incoming.