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A Brief History of Starfleet
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Written 2265
Starfleet, the military and scientific arm of the United Federation of Planets, has its roots in the United Nations Peace Forces, a multi-national police organization formed during the destructive Eugenic Wars on Earth. The jurisdiction of the UNPF was later extended to include supervision of national arms and technology, and after the Clone Wars of the 2030's, it replaced national militias entirely. At about this time, another UN organization, the United Earth Space Probe Agency (UESPA), became prominent with the development of Cochrane's faster-than-light drive. Decades earlier, the UNPF had placed defensive outposts in the outer solar system armed with asteroid-based lasers, which also provided propulsion for UESPA probe spacecraft. When the warrior Kzinti invaded Sol system in 2049, all UESPA spacecraft (the most advanced with the DY-500 space freighter with ion-impulse propulsion) were commandeered for military use.
The Kzinti invaded Sol four times I fifteen years, and the "temporary" consolidation of UESPA with the UN security forces became a necessary and permanent one. When the Bonaventure and other Galactic Survey Cruisers left Earth to explore nearby star systems, they were manned by the same soldiers that had been fighting in space for over a decade. In retrospect, historians have condemned these military expeditions as presenting a distorted view of the human race to other civilizations' and indeed, the races contacted, including the Andorians and Tellarites, were to view humans with suspicion for half a century to come. But when Earth vessels encountered the Vegan Tyranny in the last 21st century, the caution was shown to be justified, and only through the decisive actions of cruisers like the Cochrane and the Krushchev was a major interstellar war prevented.
The militaristic elements that had characterized the UESPA were diminished during the 22nd century, largely through the influence of Vulcan technology and philosophy. A UESPA much closer to today’s Starfleet became the dominant military power in the explored galaxy, the Treaty of Sirius (and the later Treaty of Vega IX) guaranteeing the multi-racial makeup of Starfleet crews. Although the Kzinti maintained a small fleet of police craft, the Vegans, never fully understood by Earth sociologists, elected for racial suicide, leaving the planet open for colonization. Many other colonies, including Ophiuchus, Benecia, New Paris, and Beta Five, were founded during this period, the colonists transported in renovated freighters that took years to reach their destinations. With the scattering of the human race, any kind of centralized police force became impossible. Contrary to prediction, an Earth-based empire never developed, the individual colonies generally assuming responsibility for their own government. During this period of expansion, the UNPF was phased out entirely, and the UESPA enlarged to encompass both the semi-military Terran Space Academy (an academy was opened on Vulcan in 2134) and the Earth-based space fleet.
Not until the ratification of the Articles of Federation in 2127 did Starfleet become the organizational name for UESPA, as well as for a string of seventeen star bases provided for in the articles. The military forces of all five Federation members (and those of subsequent member systems) were consolidated under Starfleet, with a military chain of command roughly based on that used by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the 20th century.
Today, all military and commercial traffic in interstellar space is regulated by Starfleet Command, which is responsible to three Federation agencies: the Bureau of Colonization, the Bureau of Commerce, and the Bureau of Space Exploration (successor to UESPA, which was disbanded in 2262). The Starfleet Armed Forces include over eight thousand vessels, ranging in size from Class F shuttlecraft to Constitution class starships, and employs personnel in excess of five hundred thousand.
Starbase Command currently administers a total of twenty-eight starbases, seventeen deep space stations, and 741 outposts and monitor stations, with a total complement in the area of eight hundred thousand. Seven Starfleet Academies distributed throughout Federation space support a permanent faculty of 14,038 and a student population of 85,397 (2260 survey). Two Starfleet headquarters, one located in the astrographic center of Federation space and the other in the Terran city of San Francisco, together house a permanent population of 18,500.
Prof. John Gill
Patterns of History, Rev. ED.
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