[X] Recommend a three-ship run over the next five years. (-27.6 Industry)
Before the Federation
The UES Enterprise
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Enterprise's launch in 2151, the date at which United Earth began to engage with the rest of the quadrant. This was regarded with some concern by the Vulcan High Command as the launch occurred against its explicit recommendation, and not without cause. From a purely benevolent perspective the Enterprise demonstrated the best technology that Earth had at its disposal, practically all of which was less sophisticated than that available to the local species.
From a political perspective the exploration of the Enterprise would elevate Earth from an inconsequential world under Vulcan patronage to a starfaring power in its own right, with all the complications inherent with the new status. Given the tensions between the Andorian and Vulcan governments, which vacillated between uneasy truces and open border warfare, the High Command was justifiably concerned by another player involving themselves in the situation. Earth was, after all, closer in a straight line to Andoria than Vulcan.
Given the technological disparity, one could be forgiven for being confused by the outsized impact that Enterprise had in the local area. From a purely military perspective Enterprise had a substantial mass advantage over most vessels used by local powers, and spread over such a large surface area even her inferior polarised plating technology offered substantial defensive advantages. In this author's opinion far more important was the implications of Enterprise to the foreign governments it liaised with, and to explain requires a small digression into the nature of the United Earth government.
Most species were in some senses burdened by their long history, with interfactional conflict and simple obsolescence representing serious obstacles to their focus on common goals. By contrast, Earth had essentially undergone a hard reset in the nuclear exchanges of 2053. When the Vulcans made First Contact in 2062 they offered substantial relief and humanitarian aid, as well as a transformative revelation that deeply impacted the human psyche. In the next half-century humanity was able to rebuild and recover from most of the scars of the war, driven by the urge to reinvent themselves in what some historians call a generational effort to channel their trauma towards productive ends.
Simply put, United Earth built the society they aspired to be atop the rubble of the old and with little consideration for historical mores. The formal unification of the individual nation's authority over space affairs into the supranational body of United Earth in 2142 was essentially a confirmation of an already present reality. Unlike the majority of other planets, the people of Earth were capable of devoting their entire focus towards their goals with minimal internal friction. The number of planets in local space who could have launched a ship the size of Enterprise purely for the purpose of exploration could be listed on one hand - and the number that did one finger.
To the Vulcans, who politely viewed the human obsession with the cosmos as a natural result of the Vulcan intervention after First Contact, this was occasionally exasperating but something they understood on a logical level. To the Andorians, United Earth quickly became a useful tool against Vulcan hegemony. From their perspective humans could be trusted to be even-handed because of their universal perspective of morality and might even become a major component of local power politics in the next century.
To the Tellarites, first contacted in 2153 by Enterprise, the humans were refreshingly willing to insult them back and felt like more of an equal power than the domineering Vulcans and Andorians. To the less influential species, Enterprise generally qualified as a heavy cruiser in mass and capability, but was willing to engage with them as equals and without pretension. To everyone but the Vulcans, the ship presented one overwhelming message: humanity might be new, but they were going to be a force to be reckoned with once they caught up technologically.
The perverse reality was simply that United Earth was structured differently, and despite not being superior industrially or sometimes even being notably inferior, their unity around a common cause allowed them to accomplish what other species could not. This same philosophy was represented in microcosm on Enterprise, allowing them to make allies across traditional divides. This was followed by the launches of Columbia, Discovery, and Challenger. Embarking on similar missions, the presence of United Earth on the local stage was impossible to ignore. Their willingness to defuse the opening strikes of a Vulcan-Andorian War in 2155 and the resultant Vulcan Reformation permanently shifted the lines of power.
From the position of an outside observer who was profoundly reliant on the fractured state of politics, this must have been the frightening culmination of a hectic half-decade of interference by a minor species. The ouster of the Romulan-influenced V'Lass government on Vulcan was the final straw. It was no surprise that despite the unready status of the Imperial Fleet that Praetor Valdore had one message for the Romulan Senate. Earth had to go, before it was too late.
Of course, as history proves, it was already too late.
