Lore Breakdown : Starfleet Devastated, Genesis of Operation Return 

Thank goodness that bubblegum isn't sick anymore, praise be to the Emissary!

Lol!

"We are outgunned! Outmanned! Outnumbered, outplanned! We gotta make an all-out stand!" Sorry, couldn't resist.

There's a reason why The Defiant is known as the USS Sisko's Mother-f**king Pimp-hand.

Sisko: How many ships do they have? Nog: Over 1100, sir. Sisko: We have over 600 ships and The Defiant, doesn't seem fair does it? Nog: No sir, it doesn't. Sisko: I meant it doesn't seem fair for them.

ds9 has a ton of great lines.

Lore Reloaded I was just really glad they used Alfred tennyson' "charge of the light brigade" in that episode.

dude, how helpful would that have been?

And not lose a war to the Klingons that never actually happened and it was well known the Federation could basically annihilate the Klingons anyway. But who gives a crap about canon?

Star Trek is notorious for inconsistent continuity, but I never thought something that retarded would ever make it past the drawing board, 86.

Senior Woodz for the love of HELL why does almost everyone reference that non canon ATROCITY STAR TREK : DISCOVERY I'm HAPPY that it's not being renewed for a second season STAR TREK : DISCOVERY SUCKS

I think you need a stronger word there. It doesn't just suck. It is a full on bullshit betrayal of everything Star Trek is supposed to be, and in the process tells the fans of Star Trek to go pound sand, and then has the audacity to be basically unwatchable. What is it with these studios who make a show and have nothing but hatred for the fan base or the IP itself, but then again I don't run my business to lose money, like these studios seem hell bent to do.

Alexander Hamilton championing the Bank of the United States, despite its immense unpopularity. Thomas Jefferson making the Louisiana Purchase. Despite vehement opposition from his own party and a lack personal belief on his part that it was even legal. And of course, as Spock might say, Richard Nixon going to China. Reaching out to a communist nation at the height of the Cold War and laying the foundation for trillions of dollars in business to take place in the decades to come.

I've heard that before actually

ringleader61 US submarines also carried the then shockingly unreliable mk14 torpedo, that thing was particularly fighting for the Japanese. Like how the Miranda and Oberth were more helpful to the Dominion than Starfleet.

Seeing how propaganda is spread in 21st century Earth, I can't imagine it would be difficult to spin the Federation as the bad guys in that.

.. We have gotten into the battle itself yet so.. Beyond that, the discussion is what it looked like at that time.

Hopefully so

I stopped there too. Is it suppose to be funny?

Rashaed i don’t think it was necessarily racially cued nor necessarily meant to be funny, but the old phrase fits ironically - sisko is black, but if it was intentional i see it as pretty innocent

Yes. Very. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-awcx-gTQDLM.html

If you say so. There are much bigger problems today so worrying about this is pointless.

Yea, the fact anyone would take that racially - given it's a saying that has existed since the 50's - if not earlier.. is more an indictment on the person or culture than it is me. I think Hellfish was just making light of the fact that I said it with out realizing that 'in current year' - it can come off wrong. All that to say - if you think I'm racist because of that statement..then this may not be the channel for you as I have little time for that garbage ;P

Scott Musgrave The Borg only attacked with 1 vessel but Starfleet's response though was small but fast. OP Return was planned and prepared over the course of months and they were still short by maybe another hundred ships when they had to depart before the 9th could join. That's the difference between a defensive reactionary force vs an offensive push.

Headless Chicken of Toronto I agree that it was a quick response force but it just feels off if there was that many ships out there that there should have been more available for a battle at the central capital planet. Shelby’s comment that fleet will be back strength in less than a year made me think that 30 ships was a large part of the fleet. Also I assume that ship building was in overdrive after Borg incursion and start of the Dominion War but it still just feels off.

Scott Musgrave Well Starfleet wasn't combat ready during the Borg incursion. Those 30 ships were probably only those that were readily available, combat capable during peacetimes, for a quick counter response. Starfleet still probably had a few thousand ships strong, Federation territory is massive so they'd need at least that many to maintain a presence. But their budget for fleet resources probably did get a huge boost post Borg invasion. 30 isn't a huge number if ships to lose but the loss of manpower probably hurt them the most especially given the crew compliments of those TNG era and older ships.

@@smusgrav realistically the sheer size of the federation suggests at least thousands of ships. I mean there’s an NCC-1701 in kirks time imagine how many ships by DS9

@@galaxianstudios8934 I agree that the was more ships but I always kinda took the Registry number as a running total. So over the lifetime of federation there would be thousands of ships but at any given time there might not be that many. Of course there is exceptions to this naming scheme ie NCC 1701 A, B, C,D etc

Which makes "Operation Return" the battle of Midway?

Or Stalingrad.

I’d say Return is more along the lines of Guadalcanal.

I'll throw it in the hopper.

Those are nbot tactics but standing orders of trying to maintain friendly contacts with others. Although most of the times one should return the favour when fire upon. Then again GR always insisted that Starfleet was no military *hust*bullshit*hust*

I agree with this. I was hoping the Star Trek TNG movie we got during the war era would deal with this but instead we got "Insurrection". /sigh

Matthew Brandenburg agreed. How plausible was that? We will take our most advanced ship with the most firepower, and not even use it in a war we are losing!

Probably not likely. Drafting soldiers works for combat troops, but it takes years of training to make someone capable of serving on starship.

AdmRose does it? Navy drafted people put them on a ship in a matter of months. Plus how many would already be familiar with civilian equivalents. A warp field specialist is a warp field specialist.

Time was the enemy here. They needed to get to DS9 before the minefield was brought down. The quickest route between two places is a straight line, and the Dominion knew it.

All points I used to argue the validity of Sisko's plan and tactics with those individuals. And as I also said, occupying those Dominion forces was necessary to ensure they wouldn't go after Earth, Vulcan, and Kronos. Gowron had similar concerns as Starfleet's admiralty which was why Worf pointed out Gowron's hesitation to dedicate ships to OP Return when he showed up at the 11th hour. But don't forget Sisko's ace up his sleave; Rom and Kira. He was banking on them and whatever resistance support in the station to cripple her defences before Starfleet showed up. That's why he wasn't concerned of individual ships breaking through and making a b line to DS9 would end up being blown out of the sky. The whole thing was carefully orchestrated despite their lack of preparedness being forced to press on ahead of schedule.

They only succeeded because of the wormhole aliens going "nope" to the 2K Dominion ships that were coming through the wormhole after the minefield got blown up

TheDjbz also the klingons. But they got lucky. Or should i say fortunate.

That allowed them to beat the fleet that was already there yes, but there's no way that what remained of the Fed/Klingon fleet could take on the reinforcements.

TheDjbz oh no. If they had to take on the reinforcements aswell it would have been like 6:1

Federation would have to retreat and regroup with other forces

I intend to include all trek ships and as many others as I can

What did I miss?

I would say it's one of a few but yea.. make or break it for sure

Agree that there are others later on in the war such as bringing the romulans into the war, finding a countermeasure to the breen energy weapon and getting rid of Gowron before he compromised the entire safety of the alpha quadrant with stupid strategic decisions in an attempt to discredit martok to name a few. Though Operation return was the first one and if they hadn't had won it, the war was lost, before it had really began in a couple of months.

In theory, they might have.. though the dominion war doesn't make us feel like it.

Ships ... are nothing without a crew anyway.

Yea, you've never seen siege of ar-558?

I would think Dominion had the largest, Federation second, Klingons third, and Cardassia last. It is not ever stated in the show though.

Like star wars, we never really know. complete read outs.. I wouldn't necessarily disagree with Lance .. Romulans would probably be above klingons given how many wars they incurred at that time..

Lore Reloaded I agree with you the Romulans probably had a fleet larger than the Klingons. I did not mention them because they were not in the war during Operation Return.

I’d say Starfleet had a large fleet, but arguably the most dated and unsuitable for combat among the major players in the war. Most of the ships we see in the early fights are designs from the time of TOS or science vessels that have been pressed into combat duty. The Defiant is quite possibly the Federation’s only “warship” at the outbreak of war.

AdmRose agreed. Probably also with the least competent crews for fighting wars. I mean the Jem Hadar are bred to fight. Klingons we all know how warrior focused they are. The Cardassians also much more militaristic.

I don't think he would have surrendered but may have been more willing for an 'uncomfortable peace' and concessions. Anytime he is ever asked to surrender, he has fought - and even gotten his ship destroyed in alternate realities.

Labeld - Probably not. Picard may not have been willing to go all out at all costs the way Sisko did, but one should also remember that Picard was older and had different life experiences. A big part of why Sisko fought so hard for DS9, Bajor, and the wormhole was the fact that he'd grown close to it during his deployment on DS9. It was "home" to him and he could see the importance of keeping it, and thus was willing to do anything to keep it safe. Picard by contrast DIDN'T have that. The Enterprise D/E was never tethered to one portion of Federation territory the way DS9 and the Defiant was, and as such while Picard did occasionally have actions that required a more military response, they weren't always with the same foe and rarely were in the same portion of space. In that sense, Picard was never able to form any lasting attachment to anyone portion of Federation space the way Sisko did and thus the real test of Picard's character was in his battles with the Borg, which came to a head in "First Contact." Now, that doesn't mean he would have just surrendered. As it should be remembered that in terms of tactical intelligence, between Picard and Sisko is that Sisko gets a lot of credit as much of DS9 was a highlight real to show him make hard decisions that would be associated with a man in combat on a routine basis, which "The Next Generation" never did... but in many ways... it is possible that Picard was actually the better tactical mind in the Starfleet hierarchy... Remember that Starfleet has an official maneuver named for Picard from an action that took place between the start of TNG and "The Undiscovered Country" that we get hints at when the Enterprise finds the USS Stargazer. By contrast for all the DS9 adventures of Sisko blowing up Dominion ships in a runabout or in the Defiant there was no naming of a maneuver for him. In this, it's likely that what we see in DS9 was that Sisko had perfected pre-existing maneuvers whereas Picard had invented a tactically viable maneuver on the fly in his first contact with the Ferengi. And with that experience, should we replace the Defiant and Sisko with Picard and the Enterprise E, you might well still see a pushback that is aimed at retaking DS9, which would have the potential to be tactically superior to what Sisko performed in canon... The major difference, and this is more based on the fact that TNG's story writing was never conducive to covering a full scale war, if one switched Sisko and Picard, you'd likely see something closer to what happened with the Cardassian border wars... the Federation technically wins the fight, but doesn't hammer the message home and essentially leaving a Cardassia/Dominion Alliance that may be shaken slightly but no where near totally beaten watching the Federation entrench on its side of the border... It's in this that I think one could argue that Sisko was probably the more strategically adept of the two, but then, DS9 was also set up more to show a captain's military skills and thus there is more to use with Sisko in terms of character analysis.

I don't think so. I honestly don't see this playing out much differently, other than the fact I can't imagine Picard would have approved of the Gunboat diplomacy they tried with the Odyssey. He would have recognized it for the blunder it was. At any rate, by the time the war came around the tactical situation was pretty clear and there weren't many choices left for the Federation. Blockade the wormhole now and start the war sooner, or wait until there are so many Dominion forces in the alpha quadrant even the borg would have trouble clearing them out. I'm not even sure Picard would have changed much of the events during the cold war period as many of the key events that took place were out of the Federation's hands. Could Picard have prevented a secret Tal'shiar and Obsidian Order raid on the supposed Founders homeworld? Picard may have been more diplomatic on his first go around, but when diplomacy failed he was as rigid as anyone, threatening war with the Romulans on multiple occasions and with the Klingons I believe. He wasn't afraid to play that card (granted, when he did he always had a winning hand...but still). I can't imagine Picard tricking the Romulans into joining the war though. That was a mission much better suited for Sisko.

2 things about operation return one the uss enterprise miss the chance to be at the battle of angles due to heavy damage from the first contact mission. Two as stated in insurection starfleet had captain picard and the uss enterprise in the back bushes doing mostly diplomatic functions and dealing and fightingback water bush fires during the domminion war?

captianjessie1 - Though it should be noted that the Defiant and likely several other ships from "First Contact" were also damaged in the Battle of Sector 001, and in many ways, the Defiant likely took greater damage than the Enterprise E did in that battle. About the greatest damage the Enterprise E took was internal after the Borg beamed aboard and in the Enterprise crew's efforts to reclaim the ship. The other point could go either way. Shuttling the Enterprise as the flagship would help with diplomatic efforts, and real life navies do that today, particularly with regard to the battleships or aircraft carriers (more the aircraft carrier since the battleship era ended in WW2), but a lot of that is more of a peace time operation. It would only make sense in a time of war if you're concerned about internal loyalty, which in theory shouldn't have been a Federation problem, or as part of a large scale reserve... In reality, I'd hold it more as the latter for the reason why the Enterprise E, the most advanced ship in the fleet, wasn't put on the front lines in the Dominion War... Is that the Dominion had thrown so many surprises the Federation's way that there was a strategic concern for a reserve to counter any potential surprise that could be called on in a moment's notice. The "brush fire" missions mentioned in "Insurrection" are simply a part of that role as a reserve in case the Dominion made some sort of breakthrough... but that's a guess on my part.

Where do you think all those ships used during the dominion wars came froms. Most of them were older designs, mostlikely demothballed from thier reserves, only during and after the Dom wars the Federation undertook some major refit and rebuild programs.

Agreed.

You forget it literally took Devine intervention (from a Bajoran POV) to win the war.

Even if true it doesn't explain why Federation ships were suddenly effective against Dominion ships.

...wut

Andrew Blanchard Fanboi.

#notallheroeswearcapes

Jonsin 1459 talking about the civil war in the next generation

Demetrius John your talking about a 150 year gap between the Federation-Klingon war. and the civil that war thathappened in the 2460’s

Demetrius John I know what your talking about. that was more like a conflict then an all out war. the Klingons were spread to thin at that point

They never worried about the minutae when it comes to trek wars.. it makes the lore..interesting.