test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
MACO fleet
karmog
Member Posts: 115 Arc User
Why isn't MACO at the war front with its own fleet? Why is Starfleet the only UFP battle fleet during the times of war? This concerns both, STO and Star Trek in general.
According to Memory Alpha, "Gene Roddenberry was very adamant that the Starfleet was not a military or a militaristic operation." Canonically, Starfleet denies being a military organization (TNG: "Peak Performance"):
MACO, on the other hand, stands for Military Assault Command Operations.
What is the UFP military fleet, if not Starfleet? Why isn't it MACO in STO?
According to Memory Alpha, "Gene Roddenberry was very adamant that the Starfleet was not a military or a militaristic operation." Canonically, Starfleet denies being a military organization (TNG: "Peak Performance"):
Picard: "Starfleet is not a military organization. Its purpose is exploration."
MACO, on the other hand, stands for Military Assault Command Operations.
What is the UFP military fleet, if not Starfleet? Why isn't it MACO in STO?
Post edited by karmog on
0
Comments
MACO is in STO, and it's part of Starfleet.
Also, why would MACO field a "fleet"? They were ground special forces, not an armada.
A far better question would be to ask about the fleets of the core member worlds like Andoria, Vulcan etc., since we have some of their designs in STO.
Do they still have seperate fleets?
The question was about MACO as its own fleet.
Because canonically, "MACO weapons and technology were three years more advanced than those of Starfleet."
Considering that MACO is a military organization, it's much more relevant as a question. Why does an "explorer" organization have a fleet but a military organization does not?
The question applies to both, STO and Star Trek.
MACO is not a seperate organization, MACO elements are part of starfleet now. This is the 25th century, what MACO was pre-UFP in the 22nd century is no longer relevant.
Starfleet MACO is most definitely on the front lines of the war against....well, everyone. Except the Tholians.
If Starfleet is not a military organization even with MACO within it, then what is the UFP military organization with its own fleet?
There isn't any UFP military, there is Starfleet; a paramilitary exploratory and peace-keeping organsation that will wear the mantel of a "military" in times of war.
There is no UFP Military organization.... Starfleet is the UFP organization tasked with exploration, diplomacy and defense. Starfleet performs duties that would have been military in the past.... but it's not a "military organization" it's much more than that.
As a player-created fleet.
More on this from Memory Alpha:
"According to the novel The Needs of the Many, MACOs continued to exist into the 25th century."
It's relevant.
None of that is relevant. MACO is a special operations unit within Starfleet on STO.... there is no seperate MACO. Sorry, you'll just have to deal with it. That is how they exist in STO. MACO is stuff tasked by Starfleet personnel.
According to this logic, an "explorer" organization is tasked with defending a military unit during space battles because the military does not have its own fleet. When Starfleet tells the potential new member worlds that it's an "explorer", not a "military" organization, how does it convince them to join, so that it can defend them against all the "bad guys" out to get them?
Picard explicitly stated that "Starfleet is not a military organization", not that it's "much more". Not to mention that "much more" wouldn't absolve it of being militaristic. It would simply mean that it has other duties as well. If Starfleet is the only UFP battle fleet at the times of war, then it is de facto military organization that happens to perform additional tasks.
If MACO is a special forces military unit within Starfleet, as depicted by STO, then, by its actions, it makes Starfleet a spaceborne military branch of a larger military organization that supposedly doesn't exist. Therefore, either Starfleet or the UFP itself is a military organization. It also means that Picard was lying.
All of it is relevant. MACO is still identified with its own distinct name, where "M" stands for military. Starfleet denies being a military organization. You can't have it both ways. There are also special MACO equipment sets, which are more advanced than Starfleet standard offerings. Clearly, there is enough distinction even in STO.
More on this: If MACO has an advanced space set, then clearly it deals with space technology as well. The question still stands: Why doesn't MACO have its own fleet?
Historically, the merchant navies had the word "merchant" in them, unlike Starfleet. Moreover, being the only UFP battle fleet during the times of war, makes Starfleet a de facto military organization. That also makes Roddenberry's concept a lie.
^^^This completely. Merchant navies don't have intelligence branches, blatant warships like the Defiant, and military commendations for valor like the Christopher Pike medal.
There is sometimes a trend amongst Trekkies to take absolutely anything Roddenberry said as gospel to the point of discounting anything else. (This is somewhat hilarious given Roddenberry' s status as a atheist.)
Remember it's an enormous franchise that has had a lot of writer's and directors contributing to it.
To the OP, they've Marines in space basically. (Some other term for that I'm sure...) Marines are part of the Department of the Navy. If they've still around in STO, I'm sure it's the same way.
Remember that he isn't responsible for anything that happened after S3 or S4 of TNG. There were subjects ("space pirates" were another one for example) which writers and production staff deliberately held off until after his death, because he didn't agree. I'd bet that DS9 would never have turned out the way it did with him being alive.
As far as in-universe is concerned: look at when Picard said it, and what has happened since then, even when not including any content added by STO. Borg threat, war with the Klingons, war with the Dominion... Viewpoints, organizations, structures etc... all can change over the course of a few eventful years. Just ebcause something was true a few years ago, doesn't mean it can't change.
There are tons of examples that'll prove the opposite. Just look at all the chartered merchant and trade companies throughout history, weather it's any of the East India companies, or the Hanseatic League. None of them were military organizations, but they did have armed warships, soldiers and were even waging war.
They don't have their own fleet because there aren't enough of them. MACOs are elite commandos, not mass-produced in the same way that your average starship crewman is. Their advanced gear is available, for a price, to Starfleet ships, but MACO itself simply doesn't have the manpower to run a battle fleet. Instead, they work alongside regular Starfleet and Battle Group Omega, providing special forces teams and other specialist roles.
--
I think a good way of looking at 25th-century Starfleet is similar to the Culture's fleets and/or Contact. They aren't technically a navy, and generally don't act as one (mostly for political reasons), but in a time of war they are all quite capable of becoming combat-effective very quickly. Section 31 and Special Circumstances also match up quite nicely.
There used to be a picture here, but they changed signatures and I can't be bothered to replace it.
Having MACOs in STO as part of Starfleet makes absolutely no sense. They are only there to have the ENT reference by "honouring" the original MACOs, but this makes as much sense as calling them "Waffen SS" or "Napoleon's Imperial Guard" - it is a ethical slap in the face what the UFP and Starfleet try to be.
But even in STOs context it is clear that MACOs (I personally call them just "Special Task Force" in my headcanon) are not full-time personnel but regular, high-ranking Starfleet officers that recieve special training and equipment and join small "commando" operations when needed, the majority of ground combat is still performed by regular security personnel.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
I've noticed that, too. Not every idea that GR had in Trek was good, or even tenable in an ongoing series/movies. In fact some were, just bad.
BUT: They should be tossed out/ignored when they don't work, and when they turn out to be outright bad ideas. The Star Trek universe of late TNG/DS9/VOY was a darker, murkier place than GR would have allowed. There was violence and conflict and blood and death and war and moral ambiguity. But in all that, the Federation was still what it had always been. They were still peaceful explorers who knew how to fight when they had to. They were still the heroes and the kind of humans we all wish we could be. But the post-GR cannon more and more admitted that the Federation has to regularly interact with a galaxy that doesn't play by its rules, and sometimes to survive you've got to get your hands dirty.
The drama was in the characters finding a balance between doing what was necessary to defend their way of life...without destroying their way of life. The morality of the universe was more grey than black and white--and the whole canon universe was richer, more interesting place for it.
(Section 31 are still an abhorrent nightmare, but that's besides the point.)
As for the MACOs, they are nothing more than (very, very good) ground forces. It's in their name: they're marines. As much as some old guard members of Starfleet might like to protest otherwise, after the Dominion War it's impossible for anyone in-universe to reasonably argue Starfleet is not a combat navy when it needs to be. More to the point, if Starfleet more readily admitted to being a fully trained defensive navy that just does other things most of the time, they would probably suffer less aggression from people that think they're weak/easy pickings. Presenting itself as a group of peaceful explorers with guns makes them seem less like a competent navy and more like a giant group of volunteer militiamen. It's absolutely the wrong impression you want to give if your goal is to avoid conflict.
When it doesn't have to be, it's an exploratory/policing/general services fleet. Kirk and his generation did a better job of being an exploratory organization that made no secret of the fact it was a fully functional military ready and willing and able to flatten you if you pushed them to thin ice, as the Andorians would say. At the beginnings of TNG, Picard's Starfleet had let itself grow arrogant and overconfident in its own safety, and they became too soft. The Borg gave them a rude awakening and they were still scrambling to find the proper balance between exploration and combat when the Dominion showed up. The Dominion War forced them to find that balance ... quickly. They did, and were stronger for it.
No one asks why the US Marines don't have their own fleet. It's understood that the US Navy will get them where they need to go.
That's basically the point.
The premise of this thread is a joke, GR and morals or Starfleets status as a military not withstanding.
MACO was never a Naval force. If Earth would have some armada of it's own, it would just be the United Earth Navy or something like that, to supplement Starfleet.
MACO plays no role in this entirely. Even if it wasn't absorbed into Starfleet... (but it was absorbed into Starfleet according to STO, which we are discussing here).
I don't agree. The differentiation between exploratory and defensive fleet is unnecessary, as it doesn't exist. Starfleet is a fully equipped defensive and peacekeeping armada as it is a scientific and exploratory fleet. Every single vessel is basically armed to the teeth, except ships that are really not supposed to operate outside of safe territory. The personnel on each of those vessels is trained to function under any circumstances although the majority of Starfleet personnel doesn't sign up to fight. While humanity in TNG got arrogant and alarmed as they faced the Borg, they weren't "softer" or less capable to fight - and the intented message of "Q, who" was *not* that we need to get bigger guns, by the way
The impression that there is the need for more militarization, marines and warships comes, at least that is my impression reading your posting, once again from terminology and the display of people that simply would not like to use violence which you and many other confuse with "weakness".
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
It would be necessary if Trek was more "realistic", in my opinion.
I don't buy the status of Starfleet. Not even a bit. Just to many jobs for one organization to be efficient.
Again, I can't find the exact wording so I guess it's a bit of headcanon, but it makes sense with the history of STO and what was stated in the series. TOS and TNG were set during peacetime, and a lot changed during DS9 because of the Dominion War (notice you have Betazoid tactical officers who aren't just pilots in STO, and that makes sense after their planet got invaded) and even more because of the Klingon War and the Undine trouble since.
Starfleet was not a military then, but it has changed to have a strong military component by the 25th Century. Because STO is one of those timelines the Enterprise crew would try and avert.
And that's one of the things I like about it. It's interesting to see Starfleet officers trying to keep their high ethics in a setting where there are several wars going on.
As much as the Starfleet credo is to 'explore strange new worlds', they are in practice, the primary peacekeeping force of the UFP.
A Starfleet away team is in essence, the evolution of a MACO squad.
Military Assault Command is more of a special forces organization than an actual fleet. They handle the ground game while Starfleet stays in orbit swatting flies and taking out capital ships. Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to see more MACO commandos, more operations with them involved. I would like to see them garrisoned on every ship in the fleet, at least one squad per ship. If the Federation is surrounded by military threats, then they need a sizable force of soldiers, not just security forces. A ship's security should be focused on defending the ship, not getting slaughtered on the surface of some random planet. It's the job of the MACOs to handle anything on the surface, on their own or part of the CO's away team.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
I actually agree 100 percent with this. It was one of the points of my post, and if that didn't come across clearly, I screwed up. What I meant was that Starfleet is a single organization with two very different mandates (one peaceful and one military/defensive), and it's rarely doing both things at the same exact moment. This is not a structure I've ever seen in the real world, which is why I think so many people don't really get Starfleet.
Starfleet is basically what would happen if the US Navy and the US Geological Survey and the Red Cross/Doctors Without Borders were a single organization. It works, and works very well, but it confuses the TRIBBLE out of outside observers. Of course the Enterprise or Voyager must be a warship, they think. Why else would it have enough guns to glass a planet if it was just an explorer. (Yes, even Voyager has enough.)
I love TNG and the Galaxy class, but the 2360s Galaxy was itself a monument to that era of the Federation's arrogance. It was the most heavily armed thing Starfleet had, with the best equipment and the best crews. The Enterprise-D was the best of the best. By definition it would've been--and was--routinely sent to very dangerous trouble spots, and attracted unexpected trouble just by existing. Part of its standing orders were to go into danger/mystery/something that ate up one of its sister ships/etc. and poke at it for science.
And yet it carried civilian children, almost always with no chance to get them off the ship if things got really hairy. That is arrogance of a most dangerous sort, and it's a miracle there weren't more civilian casualties. There would have had to have been if not for plot armor. Even the people who made the series admitted how stupid carrying so many civilians on the Enterprise was. Not that anyone onboard wanted to take infants and children to fight the Borg at Wolf-359, but they were put in position so that that's what they had to do. The dream of a floating peaceful city in space is excellent and one that should be strived for. But it doesn't mesh with the mission profile of the Federation flagship, which at least half the time is "go poke this mysterious and possibly dangerous and deadly new thing that possibly destroyed this other ship/planet/space station."
I am almost positive the 2370s era Galaxies being fielded in the Dominion War were internally different given that they were more heavily armed, and there were so MANY of them--I always got the sense they were originally very difficult to build. And even after the war no one was going to load them up with children because taking children into the unknown is a horribly irresponsible idea.
The writers flat out admit this and make it explicit, though I'm not sure they did it on purpose. Annika Hansen/Seven of Nine is the result of this irresponsible attitude. Her parents knew/suspected they were chasing something highly dangerous. They lied about their flight plan and dropped off the map with a six year old, and fed her to a monster in their arrogance.
It's not a matter of claiming the Federation is weak because it isn't willing to fight, or that it is objectively weak at all. It is a galactic superpower with really only 2 peers in the Alpha and Beta Quadrant--the Klingons and the Romulans. The point of Q, Who was not that the Federation needed bigger guns. It was that it needed to understand universal peace wasn't actually a thing that existed yet, and there were threats big and terrible enough that the Federation wasn't ready to just mow through them with smug self-assurance, which is what Picard had at that stage of the show. He's markedly less arrogant and more cautious after the Borg are introduced, because he's accepted the Federation is not at the top of the food chain, even if they're pretty high up. Q was nasty about it, but his goal was to teach Picard humility so Picard would be READY for what was coming.
Now, was the Federation of the 2360s relatively weaker than the Federation of the 2260s compared to its contemporary neighbors? Probably not in any way that mattered in terms of technology and materiel. They were on equal footing with the Klingons and more than a match for the Cardassians, and the only reason the Romulans were so dangerous was their ships were so gigantic, and they had an advantage in terms of armor mass and sheer number of weapon emplacements. A Galaxy with a comptentent commander could take a Romulan Warbird, but it would be a close thing.
The flaw of the 2360s Federation was not a lack of technology or fighting ability. It wasn't their reluctance to use force unless absolutely necessary--that is a virtue. Their flaw was assuming their own safety and superiority and untouchability, which Q neatly broke them. If Starfleet is going to be an exploratory and defensive arm, it must be both those things equally, and TNG never gave the impression that was the case before the Borg. After the Borg, that began to change, and fast.
It's easy to understand why this might have happened. Star Trek VI suggested that the Khitomer Accords de-emphasized Starfleet's combat role, but that's really a non-issue given how well ships like the Enterprise-D were armed. What is often overlooked is that in the mid-2360s, Starfleet had just come off the "Cardassian Wars," which apparently lasted at least 20 years on and off and were nasty enough that officers like Data--who is hard coded for pacifism unless the situation is truly dire--were swimming in combat valor medals. So Picard's Starfleet is initially going to be more wary of using violence than is objectively wise, because it's emotionally exhausted. Again, the Borg shake them out of this. Those parasite things from the early seasons were also trying to soften the Federation up for conquest, and weakened/sabotaged the portion of its command structure responsible for identifying, preparing for, and responding to threats. It would have taken years to repair that damage.
Hardly. I've gone on way too long about why the Federation isn't "weak." The Federation of the 2360s was objectively strong but statically and philosophically hamstrung w/r/t it's defensive responsibilities, and it took violence on the part of the Borg encounter and purging the parasite infiltrators to start to fix that. They were still fixing it when the Dominion War started. There were absolutely times when violence was NOT the answer and Picard knew that and did the right thing: stopping Captain Maxwell from starting a war even when he KNEW that Cardassians were doing exactly what Maxwell accused them of comes to mind.
The Federation (and thus, Starfleet) needs marines and war-capable vessels (which it most certainly has in abundance) is because it is charged with fighting wars. It is a navy. Navies have or transport marine ground force components to fulfill one of the basic functions they are responsible for. Did the MACO arm shrink during the more peaceful period of early TNG? Almost certainly. Did it ever completely cease to be? Almost certainly not. Picard's ship didn't carry MACOs because it wasn't going to war and wasn't responsible for moving troops to trouble spots.
The thing that always struck me about the Dominion War was that in the beginning it wasn't just a matter of the Dominion winning the early battles because they had better weapons/ships/etc. Federation ships and technological know-how was arguably superior, though in the beginning the Dominion had weapons that could penetrate Federation shields with ease. It felt like the Federation had forgotten how to fight a total war--the strategy and tactics and even what sort of ships were needed--and had to relearn on the fly. They did, and fast, because of the leadership of officers like Captain Sisko, who managed to find the balance between soldier and explorer necessary to fight without destroying what made Starfleet and the Federation great. Remember when the Jem'Hadar destroyed the Odyssey by ramming it? Everyone is horrified, and wants to know why. Except Sisko. He gets it immediately, and thus understands the kind of foe they're up against. It's no accident that Sisko more balanced but necessarily-aggressive approach was often put in contrast with Martok's sometimes overly aggressive, uncaring ideology (bloodwine in the ruins of Cardassia Prime) and Admiral Ross' apparent inability to take things far enough/be aggressive enough--at least when he wasn't working for Section 31. Sisko was an incredibly dangerous and aggressive Captain in battle, but overall was an exemplar of the ideal Starfleet balance between combat and peaceful exploration. (Of course, IMHO he went off his rocker sometimes, usually when facing the Maquis and using chemical weapons on their planets. That was NOT how a balanced Starfleet Captain was supposed to act.)
By contrast, Kirk's Starfleet not only knew how to fight a total war, they were expecting it and preparing for it and ready for it start at a moment's notice, because there WAS going to be war with the Klingons. And there was and it was going to be terrible and burn the quadrant--until the Organians stopped it. No one is going to argue Kirk wasn't a great peaceful explorer and peacemaker. But even he once said, "I'm a soldier, not a diplomat." Picard was a diplomat who was an excellent soldier when necessary. There's a difference. Neither one is superior to the other, but each has advantages and disadvantages.
(For the record, I think Picard would've been an excellent front-line ship commander in a war, on par or superior to Sisko. We saw that in the AU in Yesterday's Enterprise. But that's not how his mindset worked by default. He had to be pushed into it, and when he was it was usually against the Borg, which left him emotionally compromised. In the main timeline we never really get to see Picard on war footing without Borg-angst. It was a more natural role for Sisko.)
EDIT: In response to Khan5000 above, while an exact number is never given, by the 24th century Starfleet has tens of thousands of ships in active service, of various sizes and classes. They're huge.
well the US Navy does a lot of surveying when they are out to sea. I was stationed on an aircraft carrier for 7 years. While we were blowing things up we had standing orders to answer all distress calls and render assistance, investigate weird weather phenomenon, assist in search and rescue operations, conduct diplomatic missions, and record hazards to navigation
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.