Starfleet Ground Froce Mission and Tactics

[Eric R.]

STARFLEET GROND FORCES

STARFLEET GROUND
FORCE MISSIONS
Like Starfleet the SGFs have been assigned similar missions and perform them with the up most professionalism and dedication. It is Ironic that while most Federation citizens think easily of Starfleet doing all the work protecting the frontier of the Federation that it is in reality it is the beings of the SGFs who work the hardest day in day out defending and maintaining stability on the surface on the colony worlds, as a consequence hardly anybody ever sees them actually doing there job. In addition they perform several missions which surprise even third year Starfleet Academy cadets, such as in the exploration and scientific fields. It is usually these young cadets who might become impressed enough with the other missions who will want to join the SGF upon graduation.

Scientific Mission
SGFs participate in all of Starfleet’s varied scientific missions, from individually detached science officers working aboard starship and starbases to SGF science teams working on projects supported by the SGFs themselves. Many scientific research installations and field missions working along the frontiers of the Federation often find SGFs personnel assigned as both a needed scientific resource and as a defense against sudden incursion and attack by raiders, renegades, and rogues or hostile powers. In addition SGFs science personnel provide basic science support to all SGFs field units so that they would not have to rely on regular Starfleet science personnel and resources for such duty.

Diplomatic Mission
SGFs personnel are handsomely represented in the ranks of Starfleet’s Diplomatic corps and within the Federations Diplomatic services. As ambassadors they have tended to be assigned to worlds which have recently been involved in major wars and are in the process of rebuilding from them in addition they are assigned to those worlds which might become involved in dangerous situations and conflicts and can give the Federation council and president a “soldiers” eye view” of the situation. Meanwhile SGFs units provide embassy security details and are ready to help evacuate Government and Starfleet personnel and there dependants in case of a dangerous conflict erupting and threatening there life.

Disaster & Emergency Relief/Evacuation
SGFs units are usually almost always the first units to arrive after a natural or manmade disaster on distant worlds. There mission there is to provide security and order in an otherwise chaotic situation and to provide relief where possible in the form of medical care, shelter and basic provisions such as food and clothing. Sometimes this mission can simply consist of guarding an important shipment of medical supplies to a plague ridden planet through pirate invested space. In other cases where further living on the world is untenable or is about to become so due to the disaster the Ground Forces are tasked with organizing and running the ground portion of an evacuation.

Exploration & Colonization
Individual SGFs officers have always participated in Starfleet’s Exploration missions and continue to be an important contributor to Planetary Survey missions and in the conducting of important colonial survey missions which lay the ground work for future colonial settlement. As part of this mission the SGFs provide a basic early defense from attack and then later stability to sometimes rough and rowdy frontier colonial politics and intra colony conflicts. In addition engineers help design, build and maintain canals, roads, rails, landing pads and other important elements of a colonies basic but very important infrastructure.

Defense
The basic mission of the SGFs is and always shall be the defense of Federation worlds, citizens and property. Be that from lawless bandits and raiders to repelling massive planetary invasions, the SGFs make no excuse for there concentration on the primary reason for there existence. Most SGFs units in peacetime are spread out over the frontiers helping to defend lone outposts and colonies. Other units are stationed aboard the assault transports maintain by Starfleet and are ready to come to a world’s assistance at a moments notice.


STARFLEET GROUND
FORCE TACTICS
Without doubt SGFs have committed to two basic understandings of there approach to war, 1.) Fight smart, quick and in the most unorthodox method imaginable, and 2.) The SGFs will always have to fight outnumbered so get use to it! However some have argued since the end of the Dominion War that a third has been added; if you find yourself in a battle, fight with aggression.

SGFs believe in the basic military principle of economy of force; which simply means you use only those forces and resources required to accomplish a mission not more, (or less), then is needed. In other words; if a highly trained company of RRT personnel can destroy a pirate base with much effort you don’t need to wipe out the planets surface with your orbital phaser batteries to do the same mission. Ground Force leaders are encouraged to use the principles of sound engineering, science and technology as well as there environment to outwit an opponent and then to turn these into a force enhancement which will enable a leader to more effectively use his troops against typically superior numbers.

In addition SGF leaders are no longer trained to sit and wait patiently while preparing for the enemy to come to them. Instead they are now encouraged and sometimes even ordered to seek out and find the enemy and there weaknesses and to attack them with precision and surgical ability creating the most havoc and rendering the most confusion as possible and then to continue the attack aggressively, not allowing them to regroup for another attack or further action. But the Ground Forces still do not want leaders to act recklessly or without thinking and conservation of force, both of personnel and of resources, is taught and hammed home in both classroom and in field exercise.

Meanwhile the Dominion War has given rise to a deeper thinking on the issue and tactics of Planetary Assault then ever before. During the war Starfleet, especially the Ground Forces, conducted over 134 separate planetary assaults by units larger than a company in size and strength. Many of these proved most costly to the first waves of troops landing, while other’s occurred unopposed and free of any hostile presence. The “vomit trains” so called because of the landing near free fall speed to the surface, maybe are becoming a thing of the past as new tactics are tried. One of which holds great promise involves the use of first landing on a planets ocean area and then making way to a nearby coast by means of a submersible landing craft and thus out of the line of fire of massive planetary phaser batteries. This is only one of the many new and innovative methods which is undergoing Ground Force consideration.

[Eric R.]

Crazy me I actually thought this one would stir a good debate.

[Highway Hoss]

Interesting...a mention of ground forces that doesn't trigger a massive response...maybe because you didn't use the "M" word, Eric.

BTW I like your articles on the SGF....keep up the good work.

[BouncyCaitian]

Sounds like the Special Operations Groups I have running around in the background in my games. The players have only seen them once ina while, but tend to treat them like the rest of Starfleet: like fire: with respect and distance.

The SOG's, for there part, see themselves as the First, Last, and Only Line of Defense against a potentially hostile universe, because they are flexible, fast, and frighteningly efficent. The Tend to see FRRT/Security personell as 'hamstrung' and 'not up to snuff' in a manner vaugely reminicent of U.S. Marines Vs. U.S. Army.

Suffice it to say, this does engender freindly (and not so freindly) competetion between both sides of the arguement. Regular Fleet personell would rather ignore the SOG's and hope they go away, but Starfleet keeps them around.

With the advent of the Dominion War, the SOG's ranks have expanded considerbly and a healthy respect for thier talents has be engendered amongst the Fleet.

While primarily trained in Sea, Air, Land, And Space Combat, the SOG's are cross trained in scientific, diplomatic and exploratory disciplines to round out thier skills and make them more valuable.

It also makes for a nasty shock for potential belligerants when they discover that that diplomat/scientist/feild tech is schooled in martial arts and small unit tactics equal to any normal field officer/enlisted. Several terrorist/criminal actions have been successfully defused by the intervention of SOG officers and enlisted.

Given the relative lack of personnel by the end of the Dominion War, Starfleet has considered the idea of expanding the SOG mandate to train more personnel in the SOG tradition as 'force multipliers' for the Federation while Starfleet rebuilds it's shattered fleet.

Love yer articles

[Highway Hoss]

Originally posted by BouncyCaitian
Sounds like the Special Operations Groups I have running around in the background in my games. The players have only seen them once ina while, but tend to treat them like the rest of Starfleet: like fire: with respect and distance.

The SOG's, for there part, see themselves as the First, Last, and Only Line of Defense against a potentially hostile universe, because they are flexible, fast, and frighteningly efficent. The Tend to see FRRT/Security personell as 'hamstrung' and 'not up to snuff' in a manner vaugely reminicent of U.S. Marines Vs. U.S. Army.

Suffice it to say, this does engender freindly (and not so freindly) competetion between both sides of the arguement. Regular Fleet personell would rather ignore the SOG's and hope they go away, but Starfleet keeps them around.

With the advent of the Dominion War, the SOG's ranks have expanded considerbly and a healthy respect for thier talents has be engendered amongst the Fleet.

While primarily trained in Sea, Air, Land, And Space Combat, the SOG's are cross trained in scientific, diplomatic and exploratory disciplines to round out thier skills and make them more valuable.

It also makes for a nasty shock for potential belligerants when they discover that that diplomat/scientist/feild tech is schooled in martial arts and small unit tactics equal to any normal field officer/enlisted. Several terrorist/criminal actions have been successfully defused by the intervention of SOG officers and enlisted.

Given the relative lack of personnel by the end of the Dominion War, Starfleet has considered the idea of expanding the SOG mandate to train more personnel in the SOG tradition as 'force multipliers' for the Federation while Starfleet rebuilds it's shattered fleet.

Love yer articles

I like the SOG idea....sounds really interesting Can you give us more info about the SOG?

[BouncyCaitian]

Starfleet Special Operations Groups

Descended in tradition from the counter-terrorism forces of the Late 20th Early 21st Centuries (The German Grenzhutzgruppe 9 (GSG9), Isreali Sayeret Matkal, Polish Samodzielny Podpddzail Antyterrorystyczny Policji, etc.) and the famous Military Assault Command Operations groups of the 22nd century, The Special Operations Group is considered the elite of the elite by those in Starfleet who know better, a plague or something to wish would go away by and large by the rest of Starfleet and indeed the Federation at large.

In spite of what people might be given over to say about them, the SOG’s are not warmongers, brutes or ‘gun-shooting cowboy lunatics’. In fact the individuals are trained from the first week not to show any signs of violent behavior or telegraph their reputation anymore than necessary. Their track record and training will speak louder in the long run than any self-aggrandizing propaganda. And by in large, it has.

Early History: From NX-Era to the Cold War Era
The origin of the Special Operations Group structure came out of the end of the Earth-Romulan War of the 2150’s and 60’s. While the MACO troops were exceptionally competent, they were simply lacking in some of the technical or command skills needed for some of their operations. Attempts to mix regular crew in with the MACO’s had mixed to bad results during the war. MACO’s trained, fought, slept and played together, thus allowing the groups to develop a synergy that allowed them to work far more efficiently than normal security teams or Starfleet crews. When a new person without training was brought into the group dynamic, it impeded efficiency and had gotten more than one MACO/Fleet team killed.
Deeming this unacceptable, Starfleet was torn at the as to exactly what to do. Many veterans of the war were tired, worn, and would have preferred to table the whole idea of elite troops in favor to returning to the Exploratory mission the previous Terran Starfleet. The newly formed United Federation of Planets Starfleet Command, however had a few surprising proponents of the idea of elite soldiers.
The Andorian and Vulcan High Commands, while disagreeing on specific methodology, both agreed that a cadre of highly cross-trained officers and enlisted gave the new Federation a wild card to play in light of the growing threat of the Klingon and Romulan Empires (both expansionist imperial powers, although the Klingons resembled nothing more bandit kingdoms with large warships at this point from the Federation’s point of view).
The Terrans for their part, wanted very little to do with it officially. The keyword being ‘officially’. Most of the older officers who had survived Earth’s Unification and remembered military history could not deny the effectiveness of highly-trained small units in times of need, so cooler heads prevailed. They also noticed that some of the MACO’s who went on to other fields in the fleet had proven valuable surprise factors during the Xindi Conflict and the Earth-Romulan War.
The sudden emergence of what had appeared to be a simple science officer, or enlisted engineering rating, as a highly competent combat trained officer familiar with small unit tactics and various forms of combat in any environment had turned the tide in several instances during various conflicts or hostage situations. One particular incident involved a MACO technical sergeant who took command (the remaining command staff were dead or busy preventing the ship from self-destructing) on the U.S.S. Intrepid after she lost her bridge during the final battle between Earth and Xindi forces.
Along with the remaining officers in the engineering section, she managed to get the ship to make a suicide run at a Xindi-Insectoid heavy cruiser while getting the remaining crew off of the ship aboard the ships shuttles and the MACO’s drop shuttles. The reason she had been able to do this was that she had cross trained with the ships navigator to lean basic starship piloting gave her enough of a skill in piloting to program the suicide run, ensuring her crew’s survival.
This, along with other examples, gave rise to the idea of a core of highly combat trained professionals that were also cross trained in standard Starfleet disciplines to act as an informal force multiplier that could be drawn upon by Starfleet captains when needed. And thus Special operations Group Command was born.
The initial training of the SOG officers and enlisted was carried out by MACO and Starfleet veterans who had worked together and came up with a criteria to meet Starfleet’s needs. A basic curriculum of small unit and personal combat in all environments (there were too many instances during the war of fighting in vacuum and other extreme environs for the veterans taste). When conferring with Andorian and Vulcan specialists, it was suggested that all SOG applicants be at least competent in two forms of martial arts and at least one form of melee combat to give the troops more flexability, as well as high competence in phaser and other ranged weapon use. Typical cadets at the end of training are able to enter a target room, discern the threat, eliminate the opposition while the save subjects are less than a foot from the ‘threat’ subject with standard weapons.
While a majority of Starfleet was leery of these ‘Commandos’, their utility became readily apparent by increasing border skirmishes with the Klingon Empire, culminating in a daring transporter raid and capture of a Klingon D-5 cruiser, as well as efficient infiltration and destruction of several Klingon sensor outposts along the border.
Captain Robert Hanson of the U.S.S. Unification, a Daedelus-class heavy cruiser, had made note of the various house factions that made up the empire and came up with the idea of using captured D-2 Birds of Prey and Raptor-Class scouts to hit various sensor outposts and shipdocks in various house spaces in a timed fashion, leaving evidence of enemy houses being the cause of the assaults. Most of the operations when off smoothly, with the exception of a newly commissioned D-7 of House Q’joq who had discovered the trick. In order to maintain the ruse, Team Omega, jammed the cruiser as best they could and rammed their raptor into the D-7’s engineering hull, causing the ship to self-destruct, with all hands lost.
The Klingons, being far too arrogant to consider the idea that the weakling humans could have pulled off such a deception, and being prone to in-house fighting, immediately turned on each other like wolves, removing the Klingon Empire from the list of concerns of the Federation for the moment.
It is with some irony that when the dust cleared in Klingon space and the Empire had been brought to heel under the new High Council, the new Klingon Intelligence Directorate examined what had happened. The end result was the unification of the Houses under the Klingon Military Command which lead to the monolithic war machine the Federation would encounter during the Cold War Era.

[more to come].

[Phoenix]

More to come...I'm waiting...Hopping Kzin you still there?

[BouncyCaitian]

Empire and Federation: The Cold War Era

The 2200’s provided no rest for SOG Command as it took time to breath and assess the current state of the galaxy and the Federation’s territory. It was in a word, messy. The Klingons were an unstable empire in name only and gave the Terrans an unpleasant reminder of the infamous Mongol Hordes from Early Terran history. Obviously, they would need monitoring and the SOG trained many of it’s Starfleet officer and enlisted candidates in basic Klingon psychology and tactics in case the Empire would rear it’s ugly head again and the groups would need to be reactivated.

The Romulans, while beaten back and secured by the newly formed Neutral Zone by a peace treaty, the Federation and Starfleet weren’t foolish enough to trust them and many listening posts and sharing of intelligence with Starfleet Intelligence Command provided the SOG with the ability to run unobtrusive observation along the border. But both of these threats didn’t materialize for the most part where the SOG’s would need to get involved.

The major problem would turn out to be internal to the Federation itself as it fitfully began integrating systems into it’s sphere of influence. While many of the early races were eager to join up with the five senior members, such as the Tarkellians and the Betelgusians (after an extended period of observation), there were of course factions that resisted integration into the Federation for a variety of reasons.

Given the relative amount of tolerance by the Federation for dissent (Federation Senate meetings at the time, resembled British and Canadian ‘Question Time’ sessions more than anything else in eloquence, acid, and general disorder) the movements were allowed to vent their grievances and carry on as much as they wanted to. SOG Command received several requests for agents by several governments to have special agents put amongst the security and diplomatic staffs on the off chance something would go too far.

While the SOG was not a particularly closely held secret, it was obscure enough and off in it’s own little niche training Starfleet and diplomatic personnel quietly that it saw the opportunity to place agents for it’s own reasons in the diplomatic corps and within governments to allow it to keep it’s own finger on the pulse of the Federation and not at the mercy of Starfleet Intelligence or Starfleet Command. While this attitude was questionable at best, and legally grey (nothing in there charter said they couldn’t form their won intelligence network) at worst, SOG Command quietly acceded to the various governments requests, inserting agents where asked, gathering information and reporting to the governments with no reservations. This quiet support did much to improve the image with various member and non-member worlds that the Federation was to be trusted.

This imagery would prove useful during the various border skirmishes and brinkmanship games that Starfleet and the Klingon Navy would play with each other during the Cold War years. Starfleet Intelligence and SOG Command ran a sometimes desperate campaign to halt the influx of Klingon spies and agent provocateur into Federation space. SI had kept a careful eye on the SOG and found them to be useful when attempting missions where they normally could not get involved and the regular Fleet was too occupied to get their hands dirty. The SOG would do what was necessary and remain silent on the matter in the aftermath.

During this time, some of the more colorful operations committed by Starfleet were quietly backed by various SOG groups. The famous ‘Enterprise Incident’, where the legendary James T. Kirk and his crew managed to capture a Romulan cloaking device and abscond with it across the Neutral Zone border was enabled by a decidedly bloody purge by the SOG of Romulan assets in Federation Space as to distract Romulan Intelligence from noticing the Enterprise’s listed mission. Or even become aware of it.

The Director of SOG Command, Captain Sovak of Vulcan, came to a hard decision and had vetted “Operation: Hamfisted” to make as much ‘noise’ as possible with the SOG teams available while going after Romulan infiltrators. While his organization would probably come under the eye of the Public and the various intelligence agencies of the Alpha Quadrant, the change of getting their hands on a functional cloaking device to dissect and counter was too great an opportunity to pass up.

And so the plan went forth with intelligence files gleaned from SI’s databases (which they had not been informed about) and the SOG’s own intelligence gathering division (which it kept a very close lid on), with Romulan agents ending up captured or terminated by the SOG teams in a very public fashion.

The Romulan’s were more than a bit surprised by the level of thoroughness of what they presumed to be SI agents demolishing their spy network in a lightning-strike fashion. The SOG agents, listening in on the various and terrified reports of the Romulan agents, played up on this assumption, and used the SI codes that they had collected over the years to reinforce the image.

SI, to say the least, was furious at the SOG’s behavior, as many sources of information on the Romulan Empire were compromised, or disappeared all together, making their duties far more difficult than before. Sovak, by later explanation, explained that Romulan agents had been dangerously close to discovering the Enterprise mission and the SOG had provided a distraction to allow it to go off without a proper response from the Romulans.

The Tal Shi’ar had gotten the message about the mission, but the SOG’s purge had given them pause and redirected their forces near the border and had snarled communications to confuse them to the Federation’s real intentions, allowing the operation to succeed. Sovak also handed the Director a list, with considerable corroborative evidence, of three agents in SI’s Romulan Directorate who were double agents spying for the Romulan Empire.

SI allowed the matter to drop while the SOG went to ground and scattered as public condemnation began to ring from all quarters. The Director of SI, realizing that he’d been saved from making a huge mistake and realizing the utility of the SOG, publicly stating that the SOG’s activities were at the behest of SI to remove sleeper agents that were enaged in sabotage against the Federation. With the discovery of Romulan involvement with the Khitomer Incident in later years, this explanation would actually prove to be prophetic in the long run. As it was, the Director of SI was forced to resign quietly.

The SOG Command survived and quietly went back to it’s normal activities, providing competent and flexible force multipliers for the Federation’s Starfleet and Diplomatic Services when needed. Public scrutiny eventually died down and only occasional attempts by Klingon and Romulan spies were attempted upon the organization, which were removed and remanded over to SI.