Amasov Prime
lensfare-induced epileptic shock
Member # 742
posted
It's funny; I never thought of it before and a friend who's not a Trek fan at all and just watched BOBW (or a part of that episode) asked me if those three tiny drones were all that stands between a possible enemy thread and earth.
So what exactly is the Mars Defense Perimeter? I never thought of it. Was is just a base located on Mars that deployed those flying bombs? Or is the MDP just the planetary defense system of Mars, defending Utopia and the Mars colonies? I seriously doubt the perimeter is some sort of advanced weapons grid securing the whole inner solar system.
BTW, what exactly is earth's defense? In B5, they had the G.O.D.-defense stations and some planet-based defense, as far as I remember, and in ST they talked about planetary shielding from time to time. But in BOBW, the cube in earth's orbit wasn't even attacked, and the Breen invasion was only stopped because of the fleet they had stationed here to protect sector 001.
Or does Stafleet think it isn't even neccesary to protect a world tht far behind the borders? If so, why didn't Wolf, the second Borg incursion of '73 or the Breen attack change their minds?
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Registered: Nov 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov: I seriously doubt the perimeter is some sort of advanced weapons grid securing the whole inner solar system.
Geoff Mandel differs.
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Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I don't think there's any reason to assume that we saw all of Earth's defenses in that episode. We didn't see the battle at Wolf 359 either.
Anyway, aside from the Breen, whose attack really wasn't all that successful as far as concrete resources go, the only things we know to have gotten all the way to Earth were from what Sternbach euphemistically termed the "unaffected races" in the DS9 tech manual. I think there may be a reference to V'Ger neutralizing planetary defenses, and of course the Probe was explicitly doing just that, despite Starfleet "launching everything we have."
So all in all, I'd say the Federation has done a fairly good job as far as defense goes.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Well, we know for certain that the cube in BOBW was not attacked while directly in Earth orbit.
It's been a while since I saw TMP... wasn't there an orbital defense system that was mentioned (and disabled by V'Ger)?
The thing is, that Starfleet has never (that we know of) faced a truly hostile outright invasion of the core sectors of the Federation. From what we know, all of the conflicts before the first Borg invasion were border engagements. So Starfleet probably never considered it as important as providing for border defenses. Or to translate: they figured the border defenses were completely sufficient for repelling attacks. And it was only a highly superior force like the Borg that was able to puncture the outer lines and get to the interior.
Of course, the initial TNG attitude was that war was obsolete, and the Federation had the head-in-the-sand mentality anyway -- so Starfleet probably had qualitatively weaker defensives even though their technology had advanced.
This doesn't answer the question as to what the Mars Defense Perimeter is -- I guess that it's something that'd determined by the overall mentality -- for instance, Starfleet could have maintained a small number of large drones that would go into the center of an invading fleet (surviving thanks to heavy armor) and then blow up real good, decimating the invaders.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The_Tom: Geoff Mandel differs.
Who?
I personally am of the opinion that the MDP consists of a large network of attack drones covering the entire Mars orbital shell (ie. a globe with Mars's orbit around the sun as its equator). The Borg punched through a weak spot in the shell, where the MDP thins as it approaches the highly trafficed area the planet Mars itself.
Of course, when this question came up on TrekBBS, what Mr. Sternbach said didn't sound like he conceived the MDP as a solar system defense, but rather a planetary defense. Makes the MDP kinda pointless that way, if you ask me.
Earth's defenses were mentioned in DS9's "Paradise Lost", as well as one of them movies.
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Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
A large shell of attack drones covering the Mars orbit would be a real waste of time and effort. Talk about spreading out your forces and materials. It would make much more sense, that Starfleet with its back to the wall and its fleet destroyed at Wolf 359 would improvise and push a planetary defence system into the Borg's way.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I think, apart from V'Ger and the Whale Probe - which both were rather 'special' circumstances - i.e. they weren't acts of war committed by a particular race/government/group... I don't think Earth or the Sol System had been directly attacked since probably the time of Enterprise or the Romulan Wars. I think the battle drones were really obsolete, last ditch efforts at a sort of defence from the Borg.
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quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: Well, we know for certain that the cube in BOBW was not attacked while directly in Earth orbit.
Judging by the dialogue and visuals, the Borg didn't quite make it to Earth orbit. Not only had they "halted their approach" to Earth when Data's link took hold, but the cube looked waaay too big to actually be in Earth orbit, assuming a ~3km cube and a ~12,000km Earth.
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posted
I distinctly remember seeing shots of the curve of the Earth both on the viewscreen as the Enterprise-D approached the cube for the last time, and under the cube as it exploded at the end. Using that perspective, the cube definitely had to be somewhere around geosynchronous/geostationary orbit. (Pretty far out, but not THAT far.)
For example, compare the curve of the Earth as seen in BOBW to the size of the Earth as seen in images from the moon. There's a marked difference -- so the cube definitely had to be closer than lunar orbit.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
There are two shots of the Borg cube over Earth on the viewscreen. The first is a wide shot showing the whole globe with a tiny little cube above. The second is a magnified view showing a slight curve of the earth with a screen filling cube in the foreground. The destruction scene shows no sign of earth, only a blank star field and the E-D making a sharpe exit.
VFX scaling is notoriously unreliable but it dose seam as if the cube is in high orbit. However as someone has already pointed out the Borg had just halted their approach to Earth so it's possible that they stopped just outside of range of Earth's defence systems.
posted
Personally I think that the Mars defense perimeter is a defense net for the entire inner solar system but a somewhat outdated one. If we assume that prior to the first Borg attack Earth hadn't been attacked for centuries then I don't belive much of it will have been updated. Those drones may be very effective against normal warships (or older vessels) but didn't stand a chance against the Borg (like the ships at Wolf). I belive the perimeter probably consists mostly of drones like this, with a few old starships to back them up. The drones had warp nacelles so presumeably they can make at least short warp hops to intercept intruders.
As for defense of Earth itself, I imagine very little (At least prior to DW). Perhaps a few mobile phaser platforms and missle intercept stations but not much really.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
I just remembered another specific mention -- didn't someone in the Starfleet Command control room in "Star Trek IV" mention planetary defenses (that naturally weren't working)?
If the Mars defense drones were outdated designs, I think they'd probably be no more than a hundred years old. Starfleet wasn't as "stupid" with respect to Federation defense in the TOS era -- with the Romulans, Klingons, Tholians, and others all posing major threats, they probably had a more tiered defense network back then. That could be the origin of the drones, that were kept for emergency use.
Hmmm... maybe those drones *were* from the TOS era... and had been mothballed. Starfleet started reactivating them when the cube breezed through the task force at Wolf 359, but there were only three ready by the time the cube got to Mars.
Another possibility: perhaps the "Mars Defense Perimeter" is actually an archaic term that fell out of use after the long-term direct threats to Earth faded, and there really WAS no real allotment of armaments to that now-imaginary perimeter -- and the use of that term just indicated the gravity of the situation, that no hostile invasion force had made it that far since the Earth-Romulan War (maybe).
Registered: Nov 2000
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