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Size of the Federation Fleet?
farmallm
Member Posts: 4,630 Arc User
in Ten Forward
Lets see your guess of the total size of their fleet.
Going by what was told from TNG, DS9, and on. Specially during the Dominion War with their numbers. I would give it around 40,000-60,000 in size.
Going by what was told from TNG, DS9, and on. Specially during the Dominion War with their numbers. I would give it around 40,000-60,000 in size.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
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Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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After the Iconian War: Less than 500
I thought there was something similar on the galaxy class where they only make a handful at a time and reactivate mothballed ships as needed?
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Kirk and Picard are going to be in the extremities of space seeking out new life and new civilizations, it makes sense that there wouldn't be many ships around, on the other hand if you are deeper into Federation space this should be both faster to travel as people are better aware of the fastest routes and with a much higher density of ships as well.
To use a real-life example, the Royal Navy commissioned 16 Dido-Class Light Cruisers during WWII, making this the single-most prolific class of Cruiser in service anywhere in the world. The British Empire was spread across most of the world and most of the Royal Navy's cruisers were spread thinly across the world's sea-lanes. Most of the Dido-Class operated within the Mediterranean, but this was in wartime. In fact, if we take the Galaxy-Class as an example of a 'Battleship', then there were more than twice as many of this ships planned in the original production run than most Dreadnought Classes from the 20th Century. The only class of Battleship I know of that even came close was the King George V-Class of 6 Battleships.
In Star Trek, the Federation's main goal is exploration. Most of its ships would have been on long-range surveys or charting missions. The Federation weren't expecting a Borg attack, so only a handful of Starfleet vessels could respond in time. Given this, I would guess that pre-Wolf 359 we're talking between 1,000 and 3,000 ships to cover the distances involved. By the time of the Dominion War, this would appear to have increased to at least 10,000, probably higher, as a single fleet numbered in the thousands and there were at least 5 fleets on active duty at the time. Then take into account detached ships and reserves...
Of course, without exact reference material, it's hard to tell how many ships there actually were. While the numbers definitely seem extraordinary compared to our own experiences,(the Galaxy-Class being designed and built during a time of peace, while the KGV-Class was built in preparation for war), it needs to be remembered that the Federation has the industrial capacity of 2,000 planets with 8,000LY of space to protect. It's very difficult for us to really perceive what would be necessary or practical under those conditions.
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Anyway, I found this chart which helps put some perspective to the size of the fleet.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a15297/us-navy-entire-fleet/?zoomable
http://www.globalfirepower.com/navy-ships.asp
Voyager certainly had empty spaces for expansion, but not full decks (but then while designed for long term space exploration, it wasn't exactly an Enterprise).
Early TNG dialogue seems to lean towards it being a relatively small size, with the loss of 39 ships at Wolf 359 being treated as a hugely crushing loss. However the size of the Federation and the scope of its resources makes that seem really odd. At the very least we know that there were still a lot of Miranda and Excelsior class ships cruising around in support roles. We have to assume that the Enterprise-C generation ships were the backbone of the fleet with the newer generation being relatively few in number in comparison. In ST6 there is dialogue about the Klingons demanding arms reduction as part of the treaty negotiations that might have been a factor in the fleet being a bit smaller than one would expect.
DS9 on the other hand throws all that out the window with visuals and dialogue indicating much larger fleets likely numbering in the thousands. Considering the massive number of old ships we saw, we could make the argument that they were pulling old retired ships out of mothballs for service.
Overall I think a lot of the problems with the varying fleet portrayals are just a matter of inconsistent writing, with the early TNG writers having a very poor sense of scale when it comes to the size of the Federation.
The needs of the plot, and for the protagonist vessel to be the only one available;
The time and expense of creating and filming models (physical or virtual). The advent of CGI made "fleet" scenes immensely more manageable - back in the day, the shot of four Connies for the "war games" segment of "The Doomsday Machine" was literally just four rescaled but otherwise identical shots of the Enterprise model, split-screened. Even in TNG, they had to build every model by hand and put it up on a motion control rig to photograph it.
A good point. The number of planets and people that the Federation has to draw upon means that its government necessarily operates at a scale about one thousand times as large as our current nation-states.
So the question is, what is Starfleet's size based on man power alone?
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
That would be a good question. I would estimate at 50 million Starfleet officers and enlisted along with Starfleet Reserves and civilian employees.
We know that Starfleet lost 98 ships in the 7th fleet early Dominion-war (DS9 6x01). The fleet itself was 112 ships large.
Operation Return was executed by 627 Starfleet vessels, combined elements from the 2nd, 5th and 9th fleets. This operation was crucial: the arival of 2800 Jem'Hadar reinforcements was seen as a decisive Dominion advantage, after 3 months of fighting with Dominion successes.
The 2nd Battle of Chin'Toka saw 312 allied ships fighting, which we can assume about 1/3 will be Starfleet vessels. 311 were lost, only one Klingon ship survived.
We also know that it took Starfleet an estimated year to replace 39 lost ships from Wolf-359, although ship construction obviously spiked when the Federation actually was at war with the Dominion.
The problem we also face in making a good estimate is Runabouts. They come with their own registry number, so technically count as full-scale vessels. I'm not sure if they should count in our final estimates though.
I would say that on the outset of the Dominion War, Starfleet had about 3000 ships in active combat range, to fill up at least 9 fleets of about 100-300 ships each. Considering the vast size, which ensured they still had the ability to scramble 104 reserve ships for the 2nd battle of Chin'Toka, I would give Starfleet a final estimated fleet of 7000 ships at the onset of the Dominion War. With the heaviest losses in the first 3 months and the final weeks, I estimate Starfleet lost about 2000 ships, leaving 5000 ships at the end of the war. Lost ships would probably be replaced at a maximum of 400 ships/year (10x more than Wolf-359 levels of ship building, me being very generous). So 5 years after the Dominion War, Starfleet would have been back at full strength, which is twice as far as estimates went for the Klingon Empire.
As for the STO days? I think that (ignoring the tens of thousands of players each having at least 7 ships per char) Starfleet would be sitting around 8.000 ships. Many ships were already lost after 4-5 years of wars with the Klingons, so that is why I doubt Starfleet sitting at more than this number. Post-Iconian war, this number is more likely down to about 1000 ships.
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Excluding Crewmen there are so few enlisted Starfleet personnel it's hardly worth counting them (there's what three named NCOs and a handful of extras in the TOS films), there's no such thing as Starfleet reservists and all Starfleet personnel are civilians and they don't have contractors.
They occasionally drop in to help non-Starfleet research teams and so on in TNG. The closest thing I could think of were Seven, Nelix, Kes, and Garak who worked with and in Starfleet without being members but there's even fewer of them than enlisted personnel.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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What I am referring to as in Starfleet civilians are the scientists who work for Starfleet just like in today's various services, they are many civilians who work for the Army or the Navy. Only during the early run of TNG were there no enlisted (due to Roddenberry's all officers no enlisted rule), but in later seasons (where they had no rank pins) and especially during the run of DS9. Simon Tarses of TNG Drumhead was a good non-main character example. I don't agree that there was very little Starfleet Civilian workers. We see them manning Ten-Forward, teachers, scientists (Dr Marcus'), and so on.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Federation_members#Background_information
According to Star Trek Star Charts, there were 985 billion Federation citizens as of 2370. Let's round that off to an even trillion. Assuming that Starfleet's resources/budget and personnel are of a similar proportion relative to their nation as applies to the navies of current-day developed nations on Earth, then Starfleet should have about a billion personnel (including all starbases and planetside assignments) and a budget approaching the equivalent of one quadrillion US dollars per standard Earth year (assuming that with three thousand times the population of the present-day USA, the Federation in the late 24th century has at least three thousand times as large a national economy).
Starfleet isn't a military, all its personnel are civilians. The scientists that work for Starfleet are the ones with blue (or green) coloured uniforms.
As for enlisted, the people without ranks are simply crewmen as for NCOs there's still very few even into TNG and DS9 (there's no background characters with O'Brien's ranks for instance). Also Roddenberry had no such rule, the Yeomen for instance were NCOs, explicitly so in TMP (less so in tOS as they had no ranks). But (with the single exception of the TOS films) the numbers of crewmen and NCOs is massively outmatched by officers.
And the ENT D was home to more than Starfleet, the inhabitants of Ten Forward are not Starfleet so don't count towards their manpower (which is what your original post was referring to) and Marcus was a scientist on a facility the Enterprise went to help, they weren't associated with Starfleet.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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If Starfleet functions anything like today's navies, then ships would be assigned to command structures based on regions. As a result, ships within these command structures would encounter or talk to each other on a regular basis. This seems more likely when we consider how often Enterprise rendezvoused with the Hood in Season 1 of TNG. The Captain of the Yamato also knew Picard - this makes sense given they were two of only 8 Captains commanding the largest and most-advanced starships ever constructed by the Federation. Picard had heard of Ben Maxwell ('The Wounded') but didn't know him despite serving in the same conflict as Captain of the Stargazer. It isn't too ridiculous to assume that a few dozen Captains serving in the same region would know each other. This was true of the Mediterranean Fleet of the Royal Navy, for example. Most, if not all, the COs knew each other.
Admirals are of a much smaller corps. The ratio of Admirals:Captains depends on how many Admirals are needed to cover the different formations and sectors. On the other hand, the Federation has hundreds of sectors.
Trials of Blood and Fire
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You're actually helping my point. If there are thousands of ships and they are divided in regions, how would the Enterprise be going from Cardassia to Romulus, for instance? How can you not form a 1000 ship size fleet with ease?
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My assumption has been hundreds of the smaller ships - the little Mirandas in STO and their predecessors, the customs vessels, pickets, emergency response, and light diplomatic duties to stitch the Federation together. Ships like the Defiant would be here, defense ships along hostile areas. Add to that all the Nova and Obreth - survey vessels on specific short-range, but long-term scientific expeditions - exploring all those worlds technically 'within' the Federation.
Then the big cruisers we love - conversely, Starfleet only seems to build 'dozens' of these, and are proportionally a smaller part of the fleet, but more capable. These seem to handle major Federation diplomatic functions, serve as the cores of fleets in defense situations, and otherwise justify themselves by performing deep-space exploration.
Then add all the planetary-side starbases and star stations, the communication relay stations, listening posts, scientific observatories Starfleet has. And, then, presumably, if there are thousands of Starfleet ships of various qualifications, there are probably tens of thousands of freighters, but those stick to the boring safe routes so don't show up much.
STO seems to be on the other side of some revolution in ship-building, the more 'modular' design, old designs being packed up with modern equipment, and so more of the big ships are around, just in time for our captains!
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I'll add ever advancing industrial repelicator technology.
Increasing Starfleets size was like not a priority for the Federation until the Dominion war, but during and after I have a feeling ship building exploded.
Then it would increase to rebuild and prepare for the borg, then the tension with the Klingons, and so on.
Thanks to Industrial replicators, your ship building efforts are only held back by rare none replicated parts, crew training, and amoung of ship yards.
By the end of the Iconian War, if most major federation worlds have ship yards, and they would, you'd see a over 150 worlds building ships, even civilian shipyards would pressed into service.
At ten ships a month times a 150 worlds, that 1500 ships a month, 12 months a earth year, that's 18,000 ships a year.
And that doesn't include megaship yards, like Plantia Utopia or hiring other powers like the Ferengi to build ships, or the countless ships they scaverenged off other powers like the Dominion, or found and built in the Dyson Spheres.