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Star Destroyers and Base Stars.
It was a massacre. That was the first thing that became quickly apparent when the admirals of Starfleet watched the footage of the Battle of Wolf 359, which was the culmination of a number of tragedies in a short span of time, starting with the destruction of the New Providence colony and the loss of the USS Lalo and the kidnapping and resultant transformation of Captain Jean-Luc Picard into Locutus of Borg, who passed on Picard's exhaustive knowledge of Starfleet operations and tactical expertise to the invading Borg Cube.
The destruction caused by the kidnapping of Picard had cut a path of murder from Wolf 359 all the way to Earth. 11,000 lives had been lost, and that was just the lives lost by the Federation themselves while the Klingons and Romulans who had participated in the battle for their lives had been just as high. When the Borg Cube arrived in Earth's solar system, they destroyed several other Federation starships that had met them out of Utopia Planitia yards and the few ships sent to attack them near Mars. Both efforts had failed, and the failure was compounded by the loss of lives with the destruction of Starbase 1 and SpaceDock. It was a miracle the USS Enterprise under Captain Riker and Commander Data had managed to stop the Borg ship with the aid of the captured Picard, who had planted a command deep within the connected mind of the Borg Collective consciousness. They had put the Borg to sleep and the effort stopped the attack…but the Borg ship had been destroyed, a self-destruct mechanism had been triggered somehow, and the Cube was lost to Starfleet.
The admirals in the room, like the rest of the planetary population, were in two minds about the destruction of the Borg Cube since it meant there was no chance of them studying the Borg and their vessel in order to discover the weaknesses of the Borg and to advance their technology into a new golden age.
But on the other hand, the Borg had wiped out a large chunk of Starfleet and compromised their strength. Its destruction should go a long way to soothing the losses felt all throughout the Federation. Many families had lost sons, daughters, wives, husbands, cousins, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, and friends. It was an emotional cost that was going to last for a long time.
As the clips from the compilation were taken from the surviving shuttles and runabouts and escape pods and starships that had survived the Borg, Admiral Colin Baker sighed and shut off the stream. "I think that's enough," he said.
The other admirals didn't say anything but their agreement was clear. They wanted it to stop as much as he did, but what made it even more sinister were the communications being received from people captured by the Borg; the sounds of the screaming were sick and heart-rending, as were the sounds of Borg surgical technology as it got to work on them, and they had to listen as their people, even children, were transformed into Borg. And now they were dead.
Baker pinned everyone with his gaze. He had very recently become the Commander in Chief of Starfleet, and he hated how he had been given this mess to clean up. Right now he felt nothing but cold disappointment towards Starfleet for not taking the Borg seriously enough ever since the Q entity flung the USS Enterprise off into the path of that Cube, and the lives lost at Wolf 359. "I don't want anyone to speak for the next few minutes because I want to get this out off of my chest," he said bluntly as he stood up and walked around the room, hiding his wince because of the cramp he was feeling in his feet and legs.
"A year ago Starfleet was confronted with the uncomfortable truth we were moving faster than expected by an entity which had proven to be treacherous and dangerous, but at the same time was telling us the truth we would soon be encountering extremely dangerous races and phenomena the deeper we travelled to explore the galaxy. One of our finest ships encountered such a threat and barely managed to escape with their lives, and they didn't return to Federation space on their own. They needed the help of the Q who'd sent them there in the first place. But when Starfleet is given the report on the Borg and the threat they pose, everyone created a division within Starfleet to research the Borg and devise any kind of defence strategy but we didn't believe the Borg would come into Federation spaces for a long time, but even then we hadn't developed any of the prototypes we'd needed, although after seeing that," Baker jabbed a thick finger darkly at the screen where the stream of death and destruction caused by the Borg, "I doubt we would have been able to do anything better. But the fact that Starfleet didn't bother to look into defence will be addressed later. Many lives were lost, and that…. Is unacceptable," Baker suddenly slammed a big paw on his desk.
The muffled sound was enough to make everyone in the room jump, making the already tense atmosphere in the office even worse than it had been before.
"Thousands of people including civilians are dead. Things are going to change in Starfleet from this point forward. From now on, there will be no civilians onboard Starfleet ships except civilian scientists and engineers and diplomats. It's too dangerous for our people to be out there and I will not allow any more children to be assimilated by the Borg or sucked through a ruptured hull breach.
"It's also very clear to me that our ships are designed in an optimistic way. They are unable to withstand attacks from several of our enemies and they are easy to cripple or destroy. It's time for the tradition of building a ship with a primary and secondary hull and two nacelles to end. It's time to look for a design that is not only more practical but is more heavily armed and heavily armoured. To many of you, I am describing a warship, but I'm not. I am describing a ship that is as perfect for multi-mission orders - exploration, patrol, diplomacy - as the ships we have out there already, but I want to look to the future of a fleet that is prepared for every eventuality. We have had a close call, and it's time for us to wake up."
"The President of the Federation and the Federation Council are reacting to the fear generated by the Borg attack. They are demanding we do more to ensure the Borg don't come. They're afraid. But at the same time, I understand their fears, because I share them. From now on things in Starfleet will be changing. I'm open to suggestions."
Baker finished and he sat back down behind his desk, gazing with hard expectation at his fellow admirals.
"It will take us a while to be in a position to build new ships," one admiral said thoughtfully. "I think we should get a few of the mothballed ships out; the ships that were decommissioned, say 40 years ago will be positioned within the colonies and around Earth. Their presence should prove to the others and to the public we are taking this seriously. But it will take a full year for us to get the fleet back up to full strength."
Baker shook his head. No, that wasn't good enough.
"I don't think we should have conventional ships. Our current starship design; nacelles, nacelle struts, saucer section, engineering hull, its just not good enough. I want us to design new classes of ships that are easier to build, more robust, and capable of fighting an enemy ship off. I want ships that are robust and powerful enough to fight and defend the Borg," he said.
In his mind, he already had a vision of different starships that were slightly larger but with different designs patrolling the Federation and defending Federation colonies, but also going out towards other parts of the galaxy and performing the traditional duties of Starfleet, but Baker was himself having problems picturing the type of ships they needed.
"We are not a military organisation, sir," a second admiral, an attractive Bolian woman reminded him. "But I think your right. We should also look into our current defence strategy."
"How much have our debriefing teams learnt from the officers who survived Wolf 359?" Someone asked.
Everyone expected it to be extremely intensive considering they had survived whereas so many others hadn't, and traumatic. They had watched as so many people had been killed in the attack, and many had been captured by the Borg.
"They're still ongoing, but from what we can tell, the Borg seems to focus on those who are active threats and they barely pay any heed of the survivors of ships that can't fight back," a dark-skinned Vulcan admiral said. "That can be an advantage, but I think Admiral Baker is right. Starfleet is a peaceful organisation, however, I have always seen the logic other races have when constructing their own ships; my people have ships with the main body with the warp nacelle wrapped around it. Klingon ships are heavily armoured to withstand minor damage while making sure the weapons are located away from the ship itself. And they don't have many vulnerable physical spots. The ones they do have been armoured or defended to make it very difficult to breach. Our ships don't feature those philosophies."
"They will need to," Baker interrupted quickly. "We need to rethink our design philosophies and design ships that are not designed and built on optimistic lines. Those ideas have caused more losses of life than what we should tolerate."
An admiral with a short crisp brown grey-speckled beard had been keeping himself quiet for some time, but now he felt it was time for him to have his say. "Do you know what I saw from the clips taken on Wolf 359? I saw a number of ships that had been cut to pieces by the Borg. I saw an Excelsior-class ship be held in place by a tractor beam, only for the saucer to be ripped to bits; I agree we need to change, but can we? We've designed and built our ships a certain way. Many admirals are traditionalists and can't see themselves commanding anything different."
"They're going to have to," Baker replied grimly. "If not they can leave."
But he knew they were right and the admirals in the room knew that he was going to be in for a fight. Starfleet had been exploring space and defending their colonies, and fighting in wars in a certain way for the past 300 years. They were used to a certain way of doing things. The idea of changing would be hard for them to take. But they would need to change, and quickly or else they would find themselves replaced by people who were capable of seeing change.
"We could begin designing our ships so then the two hulls are merged together to form one mass instead of multiple, and we can also bring in the nacelles to fit into the bodywork. It would make the ship more compact than anything we're used to seeing, but it would go a long way to stepping in the right direction," someone suggested.
Baker nodded. "That would be a start, but I think our best efforts will be to look at our past. Think about it; in the past, naval fleets on Earth were filled with a variety of warships and carriers."
"While this is all well and good, I would like to remind you of the horrors many of our people suffered on the Borg ship where they were transported over, and they were then assimilated. How do we prevent that?" Someone asked with anger in their voice. Clearly, they had taken the sounds of the screaming of the tortured Starfleet personnel and others badly. Nobody could blame them. Everyone else with any compassion felt exactly the same, especially at the vivid descriptions of what horrors had actually awaited them on the invading Borg ship.
"We could bring back the MACOs?" Someone suggested, looking around the room.
"MACOs?"
"Military Assault Commandos. They were a paramilitary group in the 22nd century. They were a major help, especially against Klingons and Nausicaan pirates, but it was in the Romulan wars that they really had a chance to shine. They were disbanded gradually over the years as more and more of them were made to join Starfleet," the admiral explained. "But they had specialist training, in weapons and martial arts."
"That sounds like a good idea. They sound like marines of old-fashioned maritime navies."
"They are in a way. I don't think we've got much in the way of choice, not if we want to keep the Federation going."
"That only protects our ships," the Bolian pointed out.
"Perhaps," the dark-skinned Vulcan admiral leaned forward, a thoughtful expression on her face, although there was something else there that was unsettling although thanks to the woman's Vulcan self-control which had been taught to her and many like her over the last thousand years or so, it was hard to see, "we need to build an army."
"An army?" A red-headed admiral repeated in surprise and shock. "But…Starfleet has been maintaining the peace for the last 300 years, we haven't needed an army."
"We might do now. But I think we should take whoever would like to join as a soldier, and train them as appropriate and then summon them if the need arises. That way we can maintain Federation peace. At the same time we can have these soldiers scattered throughout Federation space and even deploy them if we need to," the Vulcan admiral said.
Baker made a note silently on his padd. "I like the idea of having an army. With the way the Borg threat took us by surprise, Starfleet Security needs to change. A formal army could do wonders."
"But do you think the President and the Council will stand for it?"
Baker made a face. No, he knew the President and the Council would not stand for it. They would see the idea of an army as against everything that the Federation held dear. And he agreed with him, but considering the losses Starfleet had taken from the Borg attack and from the earlier war with the Cardassians, where many Federation citizens died, he knew he would need to find a way of persuading the Federation council of that, but luckily he knew how.
The Federation Council and the President were not too dissimilar to himself and Starfleet's admiralty. Both thrived on reason. All he needed to do was to use a logical argument and he would have them twisted around his finger.
"I'll speak to them," he added a subtle note to check the final casualty figures for the Cardassian losses and the losses suffered from the incidents with the Romulans, adding them up nicely with the losses suffered during the Battle of Wolf 359. "In the meantime, I want a complete number of research and development units to be set up, effective immediately, to look into ways of designing new starships that are better designed and better defended. We need new power sources and new weapons, and new means of propulsion; warp technology might have been the staple of our means of exploring the galaxy, but we need to have other means of propulsion because we have become too dependent on warp drive, and our dependency on dilithium is more of a flaw than a strength."
The meeting dragged on as Baker browbeat everyone who didn't fall in line. He was a hard man who didn't appreciate debate that much except over certain points, but he was determined to get his ideas for a better Starfleet out into the open. Baker had other meetings with other admirals and operations operatives, and they reached the conclusion he had.
Starfleet just wasn't designing their ships to meet the challenges of the galaxy, of the universe. While Fleet Admiral Colin Baker came up with the idea, he was but the spark that ignited the fire. Baker had begun the research and development projects aimed at improving every aspect of Starfleet shipbuilding design. The most important thing to improve upon was the design principles. Many in Starfleet believed that the warp nacelle struts made the ship too fragile, never mind vulnerable. And the exposed deflector dish could easily be destroyed.
A cry went out for help and guidance.
Historians looked into history, notably, the 20th and 21st centuries looked at military history and took a look at the sea-air ships used by navies and air forces. Attracted by the ability to project and dominate a large area of sea air, aircraft carriers, once the largest military vessels on Earth, were found to be too vulnerable to attack. Instead of scrapping the project, Starfleet merely decided to look for a solution. When aircraft carriers were re-discovered in maritime history, many in Starfleet saw the bonuses in having ships like that in the fleet. And some were even fascinated by the prospect of having fighters, perhaps robotic ones to prevent losses of life and limb, which would make an enemy fighting Starfleet extremely painful for them in the long run. At the same time, many in Starfleet were horrified by the notion of the thought of a Federation battlefleet. At the Utopia Planitia shipyards, more projects were yielding results as the design for more classically designed Federation cruisers and 'escort vessels' in the Akira-class and Defiant-class were yielding good results, while the Quantum torpedo and the plasma phaser, and the first of what would become staple phased polaron beam cannons were put on the production line.
The rest of the fleet was being augmented to take these new technologies, with the Galaxy-class ships of the fleet being given the Galaxy-X refit, a controversial idea that was in the planning stages but would not be implemented until 20-30 years into the future but had been brought ahead due to desperate measures being needed to ensure Federation security. The Galaxy-X refit involved the complete restructuring of the hull, with the space frame being augmented and refined to make it more rigid.
A third warp nacelle was to be installed as well, but that was not only to supply the ship with more speed as two more warp cores were installed onboard the ships, to increase the energy output, it was to supply power to a large phaser cannon located directly underneath the saucer section.
Slowly, the traditional starship design was phased out, or they were modified to reflect the new design philosophy, otherwise, they were replaced with newer classes that showcased their new philosophy.
