It's certainly procurement costs, or the Federation would have replaced all those obsolete pure-military frigates with some number of less-militarized cruisers rather than keeping them operating to throw at the Klingons now.
That said, I think the Federation is ideologically incapable of providing funding for significant numbers of pure warships, so if we want there to be significant numbers guns to defend the Federation, we need to ensure our utility cruisers mount them.
Because those the Federation pays for.
I dont think I agree.
Im getting the impression that there's political and PR friction both in getting new ships into service, and in getting old ships OUT of service. For a RL analogue, see how long the USAF has been trying to get rid of the A10 Warthog, only to have politicians and partisans of the design say no. Or how many people have tried to find excuses to bring back the USN battleships.
There's certainly industrial incentive to maintain a certain number of new ships every year, if only to keep the relevant skills and crews fresh in the event that there needs to be a sudden accelerated buildout, but Starfleet, or possibly their civilian superiors, evidently doesnt appear to see a need to do so.
That said, I think you're right about the ideological issues here. Which means we kinda have to account for them going forward.
I fully expect that after the first tranche of orders with arboretums, Project Darwin is likely to have a B-variant where the arboretum is ripped out for a cargo bay or enlarged medical bay.
And it will keep getting sold as a science or utility cruiser.
So basically, because the federation is unwilling to have combat ships, every ship we build must be a combat ship, then?
Pretty much. Because they WILL be used as such in combat situations.
And as Captain Paulson's peers are discovering, if they fail, they will be blamed for tactical situations engendered by strategic procurement decisions made while they were still in high school.
I think to be fair, there simply may have been no good solution to the Klingon Empire.
They are a large, old, technologically advanced interstellar nation with centuries of experience at interstellar warfare and a culture that rewards success in war. Their greatest weakness from the Federation's perspective is political disunity. And from that perspective, you can see that a massive military build-up to counteract the threat of the Klingon Empire… might be the very thing that provides the Klingon Empire enough unity to be capable of providing the threat. You think they can't track the Federation's build orders?
Frankly, noone has experience at this sort of interstellar warfare, because war across this sort of volume of space and at this sort of tempo was impossible before the advent of the Warp 7 and Warp 8 drive, which they acquired at the same time we did.
If they are better at this, its because they trained and prepared while we didnt.
And given how modern warfare is as much a matter of industrial decisions as it is the prowess of individual captains, you have to question how much cultural attitudes actually advantage their warmaking capabilities.
As for technology, I increasingly have doubts about that as an excuse.
The Klingons explicitly have advantages in power generation and weapons technology.
Not in material science, or computer technology, or in sensor technology, or drive technology or shield technology.
We're not talking some overpowering lead here, else we wouldnt have Excaliburs 1 v 3 ing D7s and surviving.
The D7, for example, is an explicitly Romulan collaboration, and the Romulans got their ass beat by the Vulcans, then got beat in war by the Federation in its very early days.
As for tracking Federation build orders?
The Federation evidently couldnt track theirs despite their being an empire with oppressed and resentful subjects. So who knows. Anyway, its not like weakness would protect us against them.
