ON GABRIEL TACTICS
I'm not sure what the point was in letting both sides build up. It sounds like we lost the element of surprise.
If we launch a retaliatory raid for their raid, we
almost certainly wouldn't get to retain the element of surprise. The enemy knows we're pissed, and can reasonably predict that we're coming. The only real surprise we can hit them with is "holy crap they sent HOW many ships?"
If the Jaldun surrendered, we would capture it and imprison its crew. Which isn't much different from what the Konen did, and may in fact not be different at all when you consider that sometimes ships get destroyed faster than they can surrender.
The only real difference is that
the Konen and Cardassians will torture the captured Starfleet crew.
This is not a small difference, and should not be overlooked even for a moment.
You misunderstand, i never claimed all our ships have been messed with, just that we don't know how the demo charges got into the republic. and never said that all our ships would be victim to the same fate that befell Republic, just that they struck us and if they do have some operators within our forces, they might get intel that we are coming and from where we stripped ships for the retaliatory strike.
They can use that to either meet the force on their terms or, even more interesting, use that time to raid the hell of our Gabriel Hinterlands. Even if we do extract a pound of flesh out of that counterstrike, what do you think the reaction back in the federation would be?
I don't know where you got the idea that the Cardies would sneak in further demo charges into our fleet (assuming that is what they did), specially in the aftermath of the Republic. At no time I stated that nor did I thought it likely.
I am far more worried with the bigger picture here and wanted to wait for more info on the nature of the hit on the Republic to know if we had any holes in our intel aparatus, if we had infiltrators (not saboteurs, by and large, but observers and the like) before going half cocked onto a retaliatory strike that is, basically, what the cardies would expect of anyone.
it is an old trick, anger your enemy, force him to attack you and use that time to hit him elsewhere...
Suffice to say that
all Cardassian intelligence operations in our space will suddenly get a lot more difficult with Federation forces placed on unusually high alert due to the known success of a Cardassian sabotage attempt. It's certainly possible that the Cardassians have succeeded in penetrating our security defenses with a lot of infiltrators, but if so, then if those infiltrators "go active" in an attempt to further undermine our response, they are going to reveal themselves in droves. It's not a one-sided issue.
Moreover, going on a hunt for the spies for several months before attacking lets the enemy make purely military preparations that will work whether the enemy has any spies for us to find or not...
Clearly that idea didn't work, the Konen are isolating and hitting SINGLE SHIPS!
We need a single ship that they can't break, that and I'd be willing to bet that Sabotage wasn't a C/L/H Test....
Hawke, you
do realize that we can't somehow guarantee that the Cardassians automatically attack our biggest, strongest ship, right? They'll just go on trying to isolate our frigates and cruisers, and our best counter is to have enough ships to reliably double up or have reinforcements in place to answer a distress call. If we just send a super-mega flagship, they'll simply ignore it, just like they didn't target one of our
Excelsiors in the last raid.
I'll drop this if you give me one thing:
A Garentee that the E-A and eventuall E-B/Enlightenment(?) can compete favorably against enemy battleships, especially ones that are meant to compete favorably against the Ambassador.
Doesn't that depend heavily on what you mean by "compete favorably?" In the past, you've tended to regard all but our most decisive victories as a form of defeat, damaged ships as a disaster, and lost ships as a sign of utter failures and urgent need for action.
Do you expect the heavy cruisers being discussed to "compete favorably" in the sense of "win a one-on-cage match?" Do you expect them to "compete favorably" in the sense of an equal cost of heavy cruisers making equal or greater contributions to our collective war effort than single jumbo-explorers would? Or what?
ON GABRIEL POLITICS
Ultimately, if it's a council norm, N'Girs hands are tied. Politicians will value good governance and fair play in elections that involve billions over 400 prisoners. If you want to critique that thinking fine, but to pin it all on N'Gir doing it for selfish political reasons is irksomly inaccurate.
Iron Wolf, this is getting kind of hard for me to swallow.
Firstly, it's pinning a great deal on details of wording. "Councill norm." Is it a "council norm" to discipline Starfleet admirals for carrying out military operations in response to attacks or emergencies that take place close to an election cycle? As in, is there
precedent for this sort of thing, has it happened before?
Because if so, I get the feeling that it is also a "Federation enemies' norm" to carefully time military moves to coincide with our election cycle. Did we see the Klingons or Romulans getting up to nasty shit in 2294Q1? Perhaps not; that was right after Khitomer and the fall of the Cartwright Conspiracy. How about '88, '82, '76, '70, and '64?
They're not stupid; if they know that our political leadership will purge the upper echelons of Starfleet's command structure in retaliation for any risky military actions taken during a certain four to eight week window, they are quite capable of exploiting that weakness.
...
Secondly, "council norm" or not, N'Gir doesn't
have to fire Sulu or otherwise punish Starfleet for launching counter-raids in the Gabriel Expanse. There's nothing in the Federation Charter that says Starfleet isn't allowed to fight in a declared free-fire zone during election season, especially when Federation shipping has already been attacked. Firing Sulu is not a required action on her part.
So painting it as though her hands are somehow tied in the matter is taking things a step too far. If there is a high probability of her taking such a step, it is because she thinks this is an appropriate course of action. In which case her thinking on the matter is subject to critique; she cannot wash her hands of responsibility when hers is the desk with the "the buck stops here" stickers plastered on it.
If N'Gir were a helpless puppet of Council tradition, she'd be a very different woman.
Like imagine this from NGirs perspective as Federation Quest. She probably would get an option like "[ ]launch a major offensive in retaliation (40% chance major political stonewalling from other council factions, 40% minor retaliatory action from other parties, 20% they do nothing). And, unlike what people assume, if her prepolling is showing her party losing she's less likely to do anything to piss off new councillors who don't belong to her faction.
You made those percentages up. Furthermore, I must point out that this would be an
excellent opportunity for her to engage in coalition-building with the Hawks or the (traditionally opposed) Expansionists, by taking a firm line in the Gabriel Expanse. It would frustrate the Pacifists,
specifically, I suppose... but the very participation of Starfleet in the Gabriel Expanse would tend to do that anyway.
