Translation of Cardassian Intelligence Report 2307Q4
Report to Rear Admiral Nash zh'Rhashaan
Admiral, the following report was intercepted while being routed through a Cardassian subspace relay. I have forwarded it to you with greatest possible speed, and I believe you will find it to be of interest. My one note of caution is a reminder that we have indications the Cardassians utilize multiple intelligence services operating on differing levels of secrecy and need-to-know status. It is possible that the highest levels of Cardassian government have access to additional details regarding Starfleet that this Gul Zinther is simply not authorized to know about.
USS T'Mir
*****
From: Gul Zinther
To: Legate Dunor
Sir:
Per your request I have re-summarized the current state of our knowledge regarding the fleet status and movements of the primary military arm of the United Federation of Planets, known as "Starfleet". I believe your previous confusion arises from my failure to properly place Starfleet in context to what we know about the Federation's political structure. The sections below entitled "Summary of Federation Political Structure" and "Starfleet versus Home Fleets" should make matters clearer. None of this information will be new to you, but my hope is that by presenting it in a more structured format the chain of logic will be easier to follow.
Summary of Federation Political Structure
The Federation freely provides information on its basic history and government structure, even upon first contact scenarios. While obviously this information is heavily propagandized and designed to evoke favorable responses, the question from the beginning has been why they do not maintain tighter information security. My colleagues seem to attribute this to a lack of discipline and the general foolishness of aliens. I however, find that aliens usually have a reason for the mistakes they make. Personal flaws are proceeded by societal flaws, and it is in the structure of Federation society that we may find our answer.
The Federation's origins lie over 100 years ago in a military alliance between four species of moderate power against an entity known as the Romulan Star Empire. We know very little about this 'Star Empire' though the Federation's information packet implies they are still in existence. At any rate after successfully fighting off the Romulans in a war of unknown duration and intensity, these four species (Andorians, Humans, Vulcans, and Tellarites) were sufficiently pleased with their alliance to enter a more permanent arrangement. Each species on its own lacked the military might to claim extensive swathes of territory. However by cooperating they had the sufficient ships and resource base to dominate all their near neighbors and enforce territorial claims.
Why this arrangement managed to persist rather than fall apart due to internal struggles for control is a mystery best left to the social scientists. Most assuredly the resulting Federation over-government was weak and probably little more than a means of mediating disputes among its members. Certainly you would see nothing like the respect, duty, and honor we owe to the State and the resulting effectiveness of our Union. My personal suspicion is that there was a local power vacuum due to circumstances of history, and the weak proto-Federation found itself with even weaker species to make into client states. Success, even as a result of the weakness of your opponents, can cover over many faults.
It was likely at this time that Starfleet formed. With each member species concerned about showing too much weakness to the other, they hit upon the solution of a mixed-species command for their most powerful warships. With Andorians and Humans and Vulcans and Tellarites all serving together in Starfleet, it would be nearly impossible for one power to successfully plot a coup and take control. The target's own people would be in so many key positions that concealment would be virtually impossible, You will see at once that this portends poorly for information security. Unlike our own state service where information is dispensed only to those who need to know, the Federation's continuing existence was predicated on the fact that no one in its military could keep a secret.
Admittedly with the passage of time and entire generations growing up seeing the Federation's permanent military alliance as a natural state of affairs, the Federation government and Starfleet likely stabilized considerably. As we know from our own experience with client races, patience and the work of many years is needed to convince a people to accept a permanently subordinate position. However it can be done, as shown again and again by the success of our Union in such endeavors. As power flowed to the Federation government and Starfleet continued to hold the most prized commands, ambitious politicians and soldiers began to seek their careers in the Federation rather than their own member world governments and the Federation grew to have true power of its own.
How this slow process of can be reconciled with the recent elevation of a new species known as the Amarki to full Federation membership has yet to be determined. They seem to have been offered the same deal as the other four, a chance to collectively dominate the local galactic neighborhood. Certainly this is suspiciously fortuitous for the Amarki, who would otherwise have found themselves pinned between the Federation on one side and our expanding Union on the other, likely to be crushed in between. Indeed it's hardly a leap to suppose that the Amarki have known about our Union for far longer than they pretend and negotiated entrance to the Federation in the hopes of protecting themselves. What the Federation gained from agreeing to divide up their dominion with a fifth race is unknown, and there must be more to the story than the propaganda they broadcast.
Further analysis of the Federation and potential cracks in their alliance is of course ongoing.
Starfleet versus Home Fleets
As perceptive as you are Legate Dunor, I am certain you noticed certain key phrases above. Phrases such as "mixed-species command for their most powerful warships" and "Starfleet continued to hold the most prized commands" which imply that the Federation has less powerful warships and less prized commands that are not part of Starfleet. That implication would be correct. As should be obvious from their history, the Federation's members species would have been extremely foolish indeed to place all of their military might in Starfleet's basket in those early days.
Instead each Federation member maintains what has become known as the "Home Fleet", a number of warships that exclusively owned and crewed by their member species solely for the protection of their home worlds and possibly major colonies (this is unclear). Home Fleet vessels are apparently deployed outside their home systems only in the most dire of emergencies, while Starfleet handles sector-wide responses, patrols, and suppression of rebellious colonies or client species. These Home Fleets are an intriguing indication that the unity of the Federation members is less solid than they pretend, given the apparent drive to maintain the authority derived from an independent military.
I am sure you have many questions regarding the composition and fleet strength of these Home Fleets, Legate Dunor. Unfortunately, the answers have proved exceedingly elusive. Much of what I explained above was gleaned from mentions in passing during various communications dealing with other topics. Information about and discussion of Starfleet itself is wildly popular in the Federation, with us having been able to glean remarkable amounts of information simply from gossip among various Federation clients. By contrast the Home Fleets are never discussed publicly (at least among client races), and since they rarely move there is no signal traffic to intercept. I am unable to provide Home Fleet numbers or ship types or even absolute confirmation of the Home Fleet's existence for any Federation member with the exception of the Amarki, who definitely had at least one heavy cruiser before integration and are unlikely to have lost it in the interim.
Divisions within Starfleet
The last organizational matter we must turn our attention to is a split within Starfleet's command structure. A large portion of the Federation's heavy cruisers are permanently detailed to a sub-division of Starfleet known as the "Exploration Corps." The Exploration Corps has an independent Legate-equivalent commander and is considered something of an elite service, being detailed the best troops and considered to have the most prestigious commands. The starship Enterprise and its infamous commander Nash ka'Sharren belong to the Exploration Corps. A comparison to our own Order system is unavoidable, though as always when dealing with aliens I must caution you to avoid assuming too much from superficial similarities.
The Exploration Corps purports to consist solely of heavy cruisers from the Federation's Excelsior class that are capable of operating for extended periods of time without operational support. Its primary mandate (once one cuts through the propaganda about the glories of exploration) is to push back the Federation's frontiers, seeking new resources and new species to take as clients. As we share a frontier with the Federation, it is unsurprising that encounters with Exploration Corps heavy cruisers have proved common. Their propensity to operate unsupported is an exploitable vulnerability.
If all of this seems rather detailed information for an enemy with which we have no formal contact, I must emphasize again the importance of continual propaganda and conditioning in holding the Federation's member races together in their unnatural multi-racial union. Consequently they are forced again and again to sacrifice information security in favor of cultural unity, using the Exploration Corps in their propaganda as "heroic figures" which their member races and their so-called "affiliate" clients can rally behind. While this commonly available information no doubt contains many lies, exaggerations, and misdirections regarding motivation, we can take it as accurate in the broadest strokes.
Fleet Composition
Having briefly summarized the Federation's structure, we now have context to discuss the Federation's fleet status without your prior confusion regarding my use of the terms "Home Fleet" and "Exploration Corps". Let us first begin with a discussion of ship classes. You will be able to reference each of these in your database for available statistics.
Heavy Cruiser "Excelsior Class":
Familiar to us from our encounters with the Enterprise, we have encountered four of these ships belonging to the Exploration Corps on our frontier, and it appears Starfleet regular service has assigned at least one additional Excelsior as part of a border patrol group between the Federation and the Union. However our contacts among the race known as "Orions" assure us that this represents the majority of Starfleet's available heavy cruiser supply, with only one or two more being in service throughout the entirety of their territory. It is unsurprising that once they were able to guess the skill, potency, and numbers of the Cardassian Union's fleet the Federation has responded by concentrating their most powerful ships on our shared frontier.
Heavy Cruiser/Destroyer "Constitution Class":
The USS Cheron represented a great concern when it appeared as part of the Starfleet border patrol, as the Federation apparently had a destroyer capable of matching our own Jaldun class. Subsequent analysis of Federation historical propaganda has alleviated these concerns, as the Cheron is apparently the last of the Federation's previous generation of heavy cruisers, a relic retained in service and called up to in a desperate attempt to hold back the Union. While the Cheron itself is still potent when matched against a Jaldun, we need not be worried about the ship class. They aren't going to be making any more of these.
Light Cruiser "Constellation Class":
We know the Federation uses a light cruiser model that is notably inferior to the Jaldun class and that there is at least one such cruiser in the border patrol fleet. Unfortunately our usual source of information, Federation propaganda, focuses very little on these lesser ships. The Orions believe that the Federation has between six and twelve of these ships.
Escort "?????":
We have also recently seen at least one escort in the border patrol fleet, believed to be slightly inferior to our own Takaaki. Despite this inferiority, the Orions inform us that the escort is a new model and that the Federation extensively uses an older, even more inferior class of escorts. How many escorts the Federation has is unknown other than "a lot".
While the above might seem to paint a very positive picture of Starfleet's numerical inferiority, technological inferiority, and doctrinal inferiority in allowing its most powerful ships to act unsupported, I must issue several cautions. First, none of the above numbers include the "Home Fleets" discussed earlier, meaning that in a state of war Starfleet could afford to throw all these ships at us while leaving key systems defended, or even mass all of the Home Fleets in one vast destructive push. At a certain point quantity has a quality all its own, and we have absolutely no idea of Home Fleet composition.
Second, there are indications that the Federation's current fleet strength is at less than could be maintained by its total industrial capacity. Likely our Union presents the greatest threat the Federation has seen in many decades, and its political class had been allowing Starfleet to decay in order to weaken a rival power base. Federation propaganda as filtered through the Orions states that several Starfleet shipyards have been opened or expanded in the last five years and are reportedly very active. While the other ship designs are inferior to our own, the Excelsiors are a solid class that represent a serious threat to our fleet.
Fortunately heavy cruisers are famously expensive and to build and crew. Even if production has increased, there are likely sharp limits to the Federation's rate of output. I hope that you have found this summary more informative and less confusing than my first attempt, Legate Dunor. In deference to your impatience for a better second attempt, I have taken the liberty of transmitting it by subspace ahead of my own arrival.
