Thats....a WAREY good point. Sure would have preventet some deaths. And maybe Engeneering should wear speciel Gasmasks? I mean how many times did they had a Kuulik leak (I probably spelled that wrong) on the Enterprise D? Not sure if masks would have helped but...maybe?
Would this have not also prevented armor for the Klingons and other armored races presented on the show? Perhaps it was the reason in the original Star Trek and then with a bigger budget that they decided to differentiate between human and nonhuman but I believe that the andorians don't wear armor either. Perhaps they use it as a shorthand indicate which races have a war-like personality?
Forget armor, they barely even go to places wearing environmental protection suits. I can name more than few eps where these morons can beam down to places that show up in their scanners as having MINIMAL LIFE SUPPORT - and they go there anyway despite knowing an away team would probably die without any protection. The only forward thinking (aka common sense) was shown when in an ST Voyager ep where they sent the doctor on a singular mission to beam over a ship that was too ”toxic” or not applicable for biologics to beam to. It's like they BARELY use spacesuits at all in the series!
@@insomniacbritgaming1632 that didn't stop them from getting killed, getting gassed, and getting infected. In TOS, Kirk and company got mind controlled by flowers FFS. What good were their sensors if shit like that kept happening? In Naked Now, not even the transporter's bio-filters were able find a virus that even turned an android into a loopy sex toy for Yar to play with until most of the crew got infected. I partly blame the writers for the wackiest scenarios they end up in that could have easily been solved by them wearing environmental suits, or armor.
I don't know about that. It seems kind of pointless. Unless they were in fully enclosed and possibly pressurized individual suits I doubt some of the standard in universe armor would matter much against a console exploding. So what is you're wearing a vest or Kevlar jumpsuit when a console explodes inches from your exposed face and neck.
Circuit breakers and fire suppression systems always fail when the plot requires it. It makes for less dramatic entertainment when the ship is supposedly falling apart around the bridge, but the Captain is still sitting in his comfortable chair with full systems control consoles, inertial dampening column, shiatsu back massager, and cupholder with obligatory beverage mug.
it's not just the console exploding, it's the plasma conduit that is powering the console that is either overloading or exploding. That is why they get covered in burn wounds instead of shrapnel wounds, and why once they move the injured person away from the console their replacement can still use the console half the time.
Klingons pretty much wear armor to stop themselves getting shanked in duels against straight up swords & knives. It's never once stopped anything more powerful than that.
@@BlazingOwnager But has it really stopped even swords and knives? I've seen Klingons killed by blades many times in the television shows, they probably just wear it out of tradition.
Red Shirts... Natural, Organic, and in the future. Where no Starfleet person gets paid, very cheap... Job satisfaction, is the futuristic call for work. Not money. TH-cam: Star Trek no money... th-cam.com/video/8rh3xPatEto/w-d-xo.html TH-cam: Improve yourself... th-cam.com/video/jp3OhC3NoMk/w-d-xo.html Red Shirts life... No money, no TV, upper management hogging the Holosuits, stuck in a small room, until its your turn to die... The future is bright for the, Not So Intelligent folks in the future. Between jobs options. 1. Sit in your room. 2. Listen to Riker, play his Trombone. 3. Go to the Gym. 4. Get drunk.
Seems like Warhammer 40k's Imperial Guard doctrine. Effective Gear is expensive, Human Lives... aren't. Mind you, this only applies to Penal Legions (whose lives are forfeit anyway) and Memes. Imperial Guard equipment is actually pretty efficient, especially compared to IRL Military hardware, once you get into the lore.
Something interesting. Around the WWII time the military started using helmets in the field. There was a complaint about the massive uptick in head damage and talk about removing the required helmet. It turned out that without a helmet they would've been dead.
We DO see a type of armor in use in DS9, during the time when the Federation & Klingons were at war. It appeared briefly in the episode 'Nor the Battle to the Strong'. It looked like a tough rubberized armor designed to protect against bladed weapons & shrapnel. However, it obviously wasn't strong enough to protect against disruptor fire, given that it was burnt and shredded. I suspect that's the reason we never really see armor. Because phasers & disruptors are powerful enough to punch through almost anything, & anything strong enough to withstand their blasts would be too heavy to use as personal armor.
Wearing armor when fighting Klingons makes some sense for the same reason Klingons wearing armor makes sense, and that's their love of getting into bladed weapon melee combat.
@@Perserra I seem to remember some barely being mentioned in ds9 on one of the episodes taking place on earth, of personal shields being issued to starfleet patroling the streets. I'm not sure if I'm not remembering correctly, hopefully I can find the time tonight to watch the 2 or 3 episodes that I'm thinking of (the one's where sisko's dad goes on a rant about over paranoia). I personally think it's just the writers not mentioning it.
If I remember correctly, in _Star Trek: the animated series,_ Kirk and crew did wear personal energy fields. They even provided environmental protection, as there were examples in which the crew were able to survive underwater and even in vacuum space.
Huh intresting. Maybe the Technologie is still kinda faulty and unreliable wich is why its so rarley yoused...ora more rather they forgot it was ever inventet. But can it deflect Fazers and Disruptors?
@@neptuneplaneptune3367 Energy fields inherently deteriorate with each hit and eventually need to be powered down to reset. It is also possible that multiple hits in close proximity can damage the emitters and cause holes in the energy field. This means there would need to be backup emitters that get toggled on when energy field weakens. When that switching happens, there is short moment that the affected area is unprotected, otherwise the reset of the field wouldn't happen.
@@CsykKrit well actually in that case seatbelts provide only a minor increase in protection. As in most cases the seat infront of you is suitable enough to prevent you from dying.
@@joshuahillerup4290 All these randomly exploding consoles disagree. Though, that seems to only happen when the shields are down, so there might not be much consideration for exploding control panels.
@@joshuahillerup4290 Not only is there definitely a lot of shrapnel in Star Trek, there's a ton of other physical threats. Close combat being a notable example. What about falls or bumps to the head during high intensity movement like shocks to the ship? Why don't runabout or shuttle pilots wear helmets? Don't be silly.
I too think that armor is basically uselss: - The ones of Klingons, Cardassians and even Jem'Hadar seems to be about intimidation. Maybe shrapnell proteection. With the Jem's possibly tying into their "shroud" ability. - Polarized hullplating is really just the poor mans shield. When they got the option to get a shield, ENT humans never hesitated to take it. Now Hirogen and those TOS Movie security officers are a special case in that they might have been effective against the intended targets: - Hirogen are mostly hunters. While they prefer intelligent prey, they are not above hunting animals wich are a bit lacking in the energy weapon department. They also had uniquely powerfull armor on their ships wich also scatered sensors, they might ahve used the same tech on their body armor. - the security officers Armor works, if you consider they are the only ones usually equipped with phasers. They are more likely to deal with people trying to club them over the head (or Nerve Pinching them) then being shot at. *Especially* if you consider how often both things happened in TOS. They are more like police or prision officer wests, then combat armor
Klingons: Practical. They wear something akin to leathers, and they constantly knife/sword fight. It serves a real purpose there. Cardassians: Ceremonial. I doubt it even functions as armor. Jem'Hadar: They are often sent in to rip up primitive screw heads in Dominion territory, so maybe?
I personally think it's the author frantically explaining things away: Consider the problem of a phaser. It is powerful, yes, but it is a electronic device. A firearm can be taken through conditions a device may not survive. It also can be stealthy. Further, consider that Star Trek's NotALasers explode on impact. This might inconvenience someone. To that end, armored uniforms capable of repelling shot and frag would be in order, as well as perhaps neat glasses for combat duty. Give everyone sunnies! It's also noted to me that with a handheld capable of generating that level of juice, a device perhaps twice its size would be able to easily repel its rounds. But those emotional punches gotta happen somehow.
I vaguely recall a line in DS9 about energy-resistant materials being woven into the Starfleet uniform - part of explaining why the late-era uniform had so many bulky layers (jacket + vest + tunic). It might have been that episode where Jake and Bashir are supporting a group operation.
Maybe they realized that armor might actually be worthwhile against a race that wants to get into stabbing range with you instead of obliterating you from orbit.
AS a guy who wears armor 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, I can tell you that it its almost better to not wear it for comfort's sake rather than worrying about the one rare time you might actually get shot in the areas it protects.
I mean, imagine being a desk guy but you sit next to something that seems to be filled with a small hand grenade as your job. Would you like a climate controlled EOD suit now?
@@KoishiVibin Sure, gimme :) - yeah, the consoles made of explodium just piss me off, too (they destroy my immersion sometimes...I mean yes, damage needs to be shown, but not by exploding consoles IMHO)
"Bro motorcycle gear is uncomfortable bro, Id rather not wear it bro.." nek minnit "Bro, my head is all f**ked up...and my arms got shredded from the gravel. But hey at least I was comfortable bruh."
I always just assumed armor in ST was either cultural, decorative, or specifically for non-energy weapon concerns (like security officers wearing some padded armor for handling people who don't have energy weapons without stunning them, crowd control, environmental hazards, etc) since, y'know, ray guns.
You're right. The times they do wear armor (outside of the Cardassian military uniform) it's specifically when concerned about bladed melee weapons. Klingons wearing armor is the only one that makes total sense.
The only practical armour that could be deployed against the range of threats seen by Starfleet officers, would likely be adaptive energy shielding, probably reverse engineered from Borg tech.
Borgs didn't invent any technology themselves, they assimilated it from other cultures... As such adaptive energy shielding was most likely invented by some creatures other than the Borg. It might be possible that Borgs did combine technologies from more than one culture, but that doesn't mean they invented them.
@@Monni95 agreed, however the combinations and applications are likely unique to Borg gear, until broken down, examined and repurposed by Starfleet or others.
Ground combat in Star Trek locks any sort of vehicle, ground or air. The logical explanation I have for this is that the Starship has become the main infantryman support weapon system. If they can hit targets from hundreds of kilometers away in space then they can probably provide orbital bombardment that would destroy most large installations and defenses. The transporter allows them to pin point drop troops in most situations. I still think gunships would relevant.
@@dexdrako Nah, a shuttle couldn't take out a Constitution or Excelsior class ship without plot armor. Those starships _so_ have physical armor, and it does stop smaller phasers and such.
They can actually do way more than that. As we have seen ship weapons stun a continent on a planet, and even the tractor beam can cause earthquakes if used right.
@@-JustHuman- Actually, they stunned a city block. Granted, that's because Kirk specifically told him to "fire a burst in a one block radius around these coordinates", but a city block is a city block.
I think Gene Roddenberry answered this to some degree in some interview, documentary or something. He had see the atomic age come to fruition and with it the realization that at any given level of technology it's destructive capabilities would far out perform it's defensive. Even the small pistol hand phasers in the TOS era are described as having massive destructive capabilities. Captain Tracey of the Exeter had killed several hundred of local inhabitants on a planet he was marooned on in a single skirmish. 2 depleted phaser batteries were recovered from the scene. Armor in the Trek Universe ( especially the ones Roddenberry imagined ) had little practical value and was mostly retained for cultural, and ceremonial purposes. It is arguable that the Klingons who put a heavy emphasis on hand to hand fighting may have some practical use from it's TMP uniforms.. but it didn't do much against energy weapons.
That sounds like the logical answer right there. When firearms became commonplace, infantry armor was useless against them unless it was built too thick and heavy to use. It wasn't until synthetic materials like nylon and kevlar invented centuries later that an effective armor against firearms could be developed. So give it a couple centuries and we'll see phaser-proof vests and the like.
@@DkSchadow I think the Borg and a few other Star Trek aliens have already answered that problem. Personal Shield emitters. No need for actual bulky armor when you can get it done with a piece of jewelry, belt buckle or something similar to act as the emitter and power source. Heck I think that even Worf managed to jury-rig his Star Fleet communicator into a basic shield emitter capable of stopping ballistic projectiles when he was stuck in the holodeck. It's a a lot more cost effective for a TV show to just write in a small handheld prop that can do the magic than it is asking for the prop department to make up a whole bunch of combat gear for everyone on screen..
@@johnohara4788 Why would they? Wars/battles are decided in space. Even the science ships from the Federation can destroy entire cities from space. Infantry combat is probably reduced to a niche role, i.e. when some takes hostages.
rake483 if you have weapons powerful enough to destroy cities mounted on ships you can, contrary to popular belief, mount those same weapons on planets to deter orbital bombardment and force a ground war. In addition planetary shields which can resist those weapons are a thing which can also force a ground war. It’s actually in your best interest as a defender to force an enemy to spend years worth of resources destroying a single colony rather than letting the war only be decided in space so your enemies can rampage around destroying lots of colonies.
@@johnohara4788 Not to mention that destroying something is often not a preferred outcome, you'd rather capture something so you don't have to rebuild EVERYTHING. Also, if you can put a city destroying weapon on a mobile platform where it has to share power with myriad other systems, think about what you could do with a stationary ground or orbit based one with its own power system...
Angry Irishman that’s a good point, barring the Dominion none of the Federation’s enemies are genocidal in the same way as something like Halo’s Covenant, where they just annihilate everything from orbit, most want to actually capture planets intact. In addition even the Cardassians, some of the most militaristic people in the alpha quadrant, are unwilling to suffer 7 million dead, for comparison in World War II the soviets alone lost 20 million people, but to be fair the Cardassians had just fought a war with the Klingons so that may skew it, but you’ve still gotta imagine these nations with tens of billions of citizens would be able to sustain millions of losses, especially the authoritarian ones
A thought about military armor: when armor was reintroduced to militaries during ww1 with the shrapnel helmet, it was not meant to protect against everything. The name shows what it was for, it was specifically for protecting against shrapnel from artillery shells hitting the head. what this shows: This example, amongst just about all other examples of armor supplied to modern soldiers in large numbers are only meant to protect them to a certain degree which in turn shows that armor needs only to protect to a desired or satisfactory level in order to be deemed effective. You do not need to be turned into a god by a set of armor in order for it to be deemed effective.
Even this doesn’t make much sense because star fleet is constantly encountering lesser developed cultures that still use everything from spears to guns. For instance, every soldier in the US army prior to the mid 2000s was issued a flack vest. This vest couldn’t stop any bullet more powerful than a pellet from an air gun but did provide some protection from shrapnel and other flying debris. Helmets worn by the soldiers even today won’t stop bullets but they’re worn to protect from other threats like simple falling debris. Hell, even construction workers need to wear helmets. Maybe they simply don’t put a high value on personnel safety when compared to their ships.
In canon, they sort of do. The Starfleet uniform is futuristic, tough and durable. Its just not going to stand up to a phaser blast, no matter how thick the weave.
Its nice that the Mass Effect series utilizes armor and personal shields, on top of kinetic barriers. And yet many characters are still being shown taken down with one shot from a pistol in cutscenes. Hm.
@@weldonwin yes remember that you only really see the big merc groups and citadel goverment a military forces have everyone running around with kinetic barriers. even then only the best had shields that could take more then a hit or 2 before going down
Technically though ME weapons are still ballistic not projected energy. It fires a sliver of metal fired through a mass effect field basically it's a mini rail gun using energy to propel a round not gunpowder. Only the Protheans had hand held energy weapons. So armour/kinetic shields in ME make sense as you are trying to stop ballistic/kinetic energy.
@@paulgrattan3885 geth weapons are energy based too, along with warp fields working in a similar way to disruptors (tearing something apart at an atomic level) though it is specifically good against armour
No mention of the armor worn by that M.A.C.O. (🤔) trooper in "...Nor the Battle to the Strong" ? If you recall there was a scene where Jake Sisko came across an injured Starfleet / M.A.C.O. soldier, whom he tried to help. The soldier appeared to be wearing some form of, maybe plastic or semi-metallic, ballistic armor over his uniform.
This is very similar to our real world history of the widespread use of firearms and the decline of body armor until recent (last 40ish years) advancements in ballistic armors. Once a early matchlock musket could kill someone in a steel breastplate armor soon became ceremonial and armor was abandoned until advancements were made. The "sword-sheild" arms race never ends.
yeah, when the weapon makes a massive leap like from sword and bow to firearm, or from firearm to directed energy weapon, armor has always lagged behind and was basically abandoned until advancements caught up because not only was it ineffective, but it slows you down and tires you out with extra weight. Heck, from the time of plate mail up until WW1 no one even wore a helmet into battle until they realized 'hey, a steel helmet can deflect a bullet and possibly save your life' so they started to issue helmets to the soldiers in the trenches. even then, the helmets didn't do much other then maybe deflect the bullet enough that you wouldn't be instantly killed if your head popped above the top of the trench.
@@Rembanspellsong the first helmets, like the early Kevlar vests were for stopping shrapnel not ballistic projectiles. AR500 armor plates have only lately become cheap enough for mass adoption as basic armor, same with the helmets. We can even afford to buy the stuff as civilians now but it's heavy except for the less effective soft armor security guards and cops wear.
Each member planet probably has their own army, and they are the ones who are supposed to deal with all the ground combat during a conflict, so starfleet don't care about armour and stuff because it's not really their responsibility
@@haroldsaxon Star Trek DS9 mentions that all local planetary militaries are incorporated into Starfleet upon joining the Federation. As Kirk said: "we're a combined service". Picard is just too pacifistic.
You would think, that with Seven of Nine and her knowledge of Borg tech, she might have came up with a way to help create portable shielding. She has after all, helped in many ways with utilizing Borg knowledge, to reinforce the ship shielding and even beef up the Delta Flyer.
I wondered if the uniforms themselves had energy dissipating material woven in as standard. By spreading the energy out you get a mild cooking sensation rather than the atom rending power of a disrupter. The STD armor could function as a big energy sink. This also explains why bladed weapons are so effective as they simply cut through the fibers.
that would work if they only used heat as the damaging effect. The disruptor, as was stated in the video, attacks the molecular bonds between atoms. the only way to armor yourself would be to find a material that was resistant to the effect.
@Luc Collin if phasers use heat as the damaging vector, then it might help. I don't know if phasers use that. But blocking thermal energy would not help with a disruptor at all. a phaser at least leaves burn marks on the uniforms and armor we see get hit, a disruptor just hits them and they fall over and die.
@@Rembanspellsong So you're suggesting the disrupter uses some future science to simply "turn off" atomic bonds. Yeah I guess they could be that. Though you could also speculate that the federation may use future science of their negate or dampen the effect. The general point I was making was that maybe the federation incorporates special materials into their uniforms that increase survivability when hit with energy weapons.
In the TNG episode Fistful of Datas, Worf is able to improvise a personal forcefield powered by his communicator. I could see not using it for first contact missions to appear more peaceful, but if these fields are so easy to build, the security teams at minimum should have them as standard issue.
In "A Fistful of Datas", Worf fiddled with his combadge and turned it into a temporary shield against bullets. Surly they could have produced a slightly larger version of that that would last longer. And yes, I know, don't call you Shirley.
You're underestimating the sheer protective power of Starfleet's experimental plot armour. Unfortunately it always seems to fail when ever anything red is nearby...
@@seanm4095 Clearly by the 24th century, Starfleet had solved the red problem. Only issue was in doing so they seemed to make it fail near yellow things instead...
That was the original model. Later models found a weakness against yellow, and was more effective directly related to the number of pips on your collar.
Personal theory, the amour is actually integrated into all Starfleet uniforms. It's there but it's also optimized to look inconspicuous and friendly, like all things Federation. The reason why there was visible armour pre-Picard but not afterwards is because of technical progress. They hadn't figured out how to make it thin and flexible until the Picard era. We even see further iterations of the technology as the Picard era progresses: the integrated armour is still uncomfortable at the beginning, necessitating the Picard Manoeuvre.
As Starfleet was never a military entity it never focused its attention on personal protective gear other then that fancy football helmet, but and this is pure speculation I can see the federation start to reconsider there position on this field especially after the recent battles they have been in and enemies fought. I also since Voyager's return and its many encounters with other cultures especially the Borg as additional motivation for "personalized protection".
I always found it funny that the federation "were never a military entity/organization", yet they are always the ones fighting the wars. Romulan war, Klingon war, federation - cardasian war, Xindi war. Some of these wars spanned multiple seasons of a show.
The most important armour is the helmet. And it's most important not for dealing with fire, but to prevent things falling on your head from giving you a concussion or worse.
I'm going to assume this "ironman suit" didn't have a helmet? I can't imagine most other races would be interested in something that was made for a Ferengi head.
Ballistic resistant material uniforms would do the trick for most of them, face shields could cover most of the rest. However, the lack of safety equipment used while working on plasma systems in Trek is an OSHA nightmare.
You forgot that armour from that dying guy in that episode of ds9 where jake goes and witnesses the horrors of war or such firsthand during the Klingon war bit, that clearly at least kept him alive, although barely, from a Klingon disruptor shot, but is never mentioned again, or even shown.
Until very recently, the US did not issue body armor that would stop bullets. The PASGT armor was strictly a flak armor meant to stop shrapnel. The reason? Shrapnel killed and injured more people than bullets. Mortars and especially grenades were devastating in combat. Overhead detonated explosives could take out entire platoons with ease. Flak armor made soldier impervious to these even at close ranges which greatly reduced mortality rates. I don't see many explosives being used throughout the series so flak armor may not have been needed. Full energy weapon proof armor might not have been feasible as you noted. Although surprisingly weapons tech tends to go through phases and there were many times when I noticed an old fashion hand grenade would have made a huge difference.
I always though it would be cool to have one really powerful, warp capable power armor. I know it's not very Star Trek, but can you imagine something like Iron Man with starship weapons showing up to a battle?!
This is described a bit in DS9 when Sisko's talking about the Defiant's capability. Armor that was sturdy enough to keep people alive against a phaser on max was insanely difficult to make, even for starships, so for personnel, its even more difficult. It would be far easier to craft a shield generator, but even then, the power would be extremely limited.
How do you explain for the armour in Deep Space Nine when Dr Bashir and Jake go to a planet where the federation is fighting the Klingon the soldiers are wearing armour
Simple: They were fighting Klingons, one of the only races that wants to get in and get stab happy. Romulans, for example, would never be trying to get into knife range.
This is an old discussion that goes back to “Star Trek: The Motion Picture “ which, as you indicated in this video was worn by Enterprise security personnel. So the question is how do you defend individual personnel from a 10k degree Celsius beam of energy? Here’s one possibility you didn’t mention in this video....a “Life Support Belt” as seen in The Star Trek Animated series. One of them protected Kirk in the episode “Beyond the Farthest Star”. Check it out.
@@alanbear6505 I dont know about what is considered cannon anymore(except that I will never accept STD or STP) The life support belts were used in several of the old novels though. Im sorry I cant remember exact titles.
@@grayeaglej Fair enough my friend. For Star Trek the general rule is if you saw it one screen it's canon, and if you didn't it's not. The Animated Series is an exception where only the episode Yesteryear is considered canon. Also, the recent movies have been declared an "aberrant timeline". They can't keep it simple. :)
@@alanbear6505 Well I have to agree that recent things calling themselves Trek have certainly been Aberrant O.o I guess only Mr Roddenberry could say definitively whats what, at least I would trust the creators opinion rather than a bunch of CBS and Viacom lawyers. And I think Roddenberry would consider Axanar and Star Trek Continues to be cannon over the corporate drek thats been pushed out in the last decade. I personally dont know what he thought of the Animation or the books that were written before he passed. As far as I know the only one he had any hand in was the novelised version of Star Trek The Motion Picture. O.o Sadness.
The armor not being effective part might be the most logical answer. It's the same that happened during the Napoleonic war: French soldiers didn't use plate armor like in the medieval period anymore, because that one was ineffective against muscet projectiles. And there was still a long way to go until bulletresistant kevlar was developed. In the Startrek universe, I have read TOS-novels during the 90s, were crew members made use of "survival belts" that provided a person with a personal shield and life support system. It would enable them to walk around in space or withstand damage by meelee or energy-based impacts. But I guess, it was not cannon. Energy shields probably use too much power to provide a portable emitter even with the borderline-magical energy cells.
Also plate armour, even at the height of its use, was incredibly expensive with only the richest soldiers, such as noble, knights, and any who were able save up for it, wore full plate armour, and when nations started to utilise standardised military and as armour started to become less effective with weapons such as muskets, and cannons, full plate armour wasn't worth the cost of production.
Can you do a comprehensive starship list from 90 to 400 meters at their longest point? Star Trek and Wars of course being the big two, but any others would be awesome too.
They do use armour. The episode of DS9 where Jake and Julian were on a planet together during a battle against the Klingons, the wounded (marine?) soldier that Jake stumbled into was wearing body armour. Supposedly disrupter resistant, absorbing energy based weapons although not completely, you get a hole through you vs being vaporized, and thus can offer a higher chance of survival. We don't see that often though, infact I'm also not sure if there was another case of this or not. We could just chalk this up to show revolving around DS9 and The Defiant who aren't primary infantry nor expected to engage on the ground.
My take on it is Starfleet for armor has the mindset of real world military organizations back during the world wars. Sure there are options however it's either light and does nothing or it's too bulky for most humans.
Some troops in DS9 wore armour, (dont remembrr the name but its the episode where Jake gets chased round a cave by Klingons, hides under a table and some Star fleet officer phasers his foot to get off the front line) looked like soft armour of some kind most likely to reduce impact from Klingon blades, was hideously ineffective and makes me again wonder why no one every glanced at a historical archive and downloaded a nice plate carrier (something I've often wondered about when they fight the Borg, Picard proved a Tommy gun works so why not replicate up a few M4's and get to work, gotta be better than messing around around with phaser settings as you get assimilated)
The episode of DS9 where they had a Starfleet admiral plotting a coup against the Federation government he listed off the military gear they'd stock piled to equip a for realzies army. Like thousands of phaser rifles and personal force fields. So that's why no armour, personal force fields.
I've never seen them in action in Trek outside of the Borg. If they exist they should showcase them more, they make a ton of sense and are what you'd need to stop sci-fi guns.
I know I've said it a few times in this thread, but Klingons fight all the time with bladed weapons. Them wearing armor makes a huge ton of sense. It's not practical in war, but it sure is practical in stopping your 1st officer from shanking you because you didn't suicide charge the enemy.
It appears in the distant future, we forget how to make Kevlar. Pretty sure that could be used to line standard uniforms to cover at least vital organs.
@@georgeryan8267 Not much point in it, with doctors that can fix everything except death. Shrapnel, while potentially lethal, it's primary purpose is to injure.
@@Random_Chiroptera *_"Shrapnel, while potentially lethal, it's primary purpose is to injure."_* Shrapnel 1: Woah woah buddy what are you doing, you're not supposed to kill that guy bro, we're shrapnel bro. WE're only supposed to injure bro." Shrapnel 2: "Oh no bruh, I mean I was travelling pretty fast and I shredded this dude's face, and throat and mabye some vital organs bruh. Oh no bruh what do I do bruh?" Shrapnel 1: "S'okay bruh...just... just don't do it again, okay?"
More (plot) convenient to have your away team's engineer rig his do-everything-corder to emit some kind of EM wave that disables the fuel cells in the enemy's weapons.
The reason is money. Always money. That's also why they supposedly have awesome pieces of tech they never ever use, like personal forcefields, life support belts, and phaser rifles. Well, I guess Voyager started using their rifles when they realized they couldn't get a fresh load of redshirts from the next starbase...
Watsonian reason why we don't see them is because we follow bridge crews who don't, or at least *shouldn't*, get into ground combat that would require armor or heavy weapons. Doylist reason, the series is not about ground combat so they are not going to waste budget on armor that might be seen for two minutes in one episode. Also, canonically(though obviously not shown on TV) a TOS era heavy hand phaser atomizes a tank several settings below that. A phaser rifle at max power removes *hills* with one shot. The main reason why shootouts involve crouching behind boxes and poking your head out instead of disintegrating the enemy and everything around them is probably that the energy release would kill the shooter too at those ranges.
Azraiel213 If you ask me phasers are way too overpowered to be realistic. Also, in that case, what makes starships survive phasers on setting 16 anyway? Your logic doesn’t fly. If starships can survive phasers then sure as hell a tank can, too.
@@peterkrochmalni673 They survive by having deflector shields designed to tank multiple hits from the Death Star and structural integrity fields that make the hull material even stronger than normal. Also by being about million times bigger than a tank, even fantastic scifi follows some basic logic. That said, an overloaded hand phaser exploding inside a starship could cause serious damage and is usually best dealt with a transporter sending it outside the deflector shields before it blows up.
It sends the message that "Hey, we make for good target practice" 🎯 Personal energy shields work for the Borg pretty well. ~~Live Long &Prosper 🖖🏻👽🛸✨️ 🌌🔭
Even if they don't have too powerful of batteries for personal shields, their collective or local computing powers can probably calculate when to activate their shield and selectively activate segments of the shield while keeping it power off for most of the time.
@@MandalorV7Yes! "A 'collective' battery." Each & every drone adds a tiny percentage to the overall collective power. Energizer Borg Bunny Batteries? 🐇⚡😮😬😟
Borg personal energy shields work great once they know the energy profile of the attacking weapon. Hit them with something random and their shields are worthless. The Borg accept loosing a few drones to get a reading on enemy weapons.
@@williampeebles3218 Marines and Navy are two different branches with different operational objectives. Plus the last thing you want to be wearing if you have to abandon ship (always a possibility in battle) is armor.
*_"Starfleet isn't supposed to be military, though it has a military arm"_* Then where is this mysterious 'military arm' when it comes to the wars we see Starfleet fighting? Where were they when the Borg invaded Earth? Where were they during the Dominion War?
I think that the best compromise, as seen in a few other franchises, would be an energy riot shield. Only activated when cover is needed and Only covers a small fraction of the full bubble that a full energy shield would. It could be integrated into the the arm of the uniform or in the weapon itself depending on the power source.
I suppose when you’ve got hand weapons that can vaporise rock, wearing future Kevlar body suits probably doesn’t matter and would just slow you down. Didn’t Worf “invent” a portable force field in that Western holodeck episode? Why was that never put into production and made to last (and not run off a commbadge)? Starfleet has plenty of time to design new shuttles every time they launch a new ship (and some with a speedo that goes to infinity) but personal protection? Nah...
Yeah I thought of the same thing. Best reason not to use such tech would be that the shield would only work against stuff on the Holodeck. A bit hand wavy but that might explain it in universe. Perhaps the shield disrupted the forcefields that were controlling the flight of the bullets? The holodeck is an odd mixture of generated props and holographic illusions, so its hard to say.
I believe in the Deep Space 9 episode where Sisko is on Earth and they lose power, they deploy security forces and you can see them activate personal force fields after they beam into the streets. I think it was called paradise lost or something like that.
Rembanspellsong Never noticed that, but when I tried to confirm what you said on Memory Alpha I got this from the Homefront/Paradise Lost episodes: “In 2372, Admiral Leyton told Federation President Jaresh-Inyo that Starfleet Security had been stockpiling personal force fields on Earth in case of a planet-wide emergency. (DS9: "Homefront")” Well colour me surprised. I never picked up on that!
Worf did that in a Holodeck. It's entirely possible that his design relied upon drawing power out of the Enterprise's systems to fuel that thing. The Laws of Physics are out to lunch when someone's in the Holodeck.
Michael Oliver Possible, but didn’t the commbadge only power it for a few seconds? If it was tied into the Enterprise, I’d have though my it’s last longer, but I don’t know. I never had Worf down as an improvisational engineer either...
Lols makes me wonder how they would respond to seeing a 40k space marine battle barge with a half to full company on board EG 50 to 100 plus fully armed and armored bipedal tanks with anger mangagment issues xD
I mean that makes sense until you think about away teams being beamed down with phasers (as a precautionary measure) yet guns are threatening. O.o so Idk why they don't wear armor as a precautionary measure. (Besides the boring 'props are expensive/tedious to make' reason)
Considering Starfleet is an exploratory organization, armour would actually be quite useful, so as to provide protection against environmental debris, primitive weapons, and animal attacks. And besides, they could just lightly armour themselves subtly. Maybe by armouring those vests that we sometimes see under the uniforms.
I remember reading a Star Trek novel, not the name, but the setting was that there was a failed colony of primitive Klingons whose planet was being destructively mined by some armour clad aliens, which the Federation attempts to stop, for the sake of the primitives. I don't remember the exact words of the Federation protagonist, but he pretty much gave a bullshit diatribe about how wearing armour and face covering helmets/masks is antithetical to everything that both Starfleet and the Federation stand for, which can be pretty much summed up as: *"Only Evil people want to wear scary warmongering armour & dehumanising scary helmets, probably painted a scary black too because they're Evil and the complete and total opposite of everything that is good, which is us!"* But they're "A OK!" with personal energy shields, _because reasons!_ mainly because it doesn't make them look like bad guys, which is the stupidest reason ever. Period.
If they have power sources small enough to fit in the smaller type 1 key fob phaser with enough energy to vaporize a humanoid, they can use said power source to build a personal shield for their security personnel. If armor had fallen by the wayside as technology progressed and everyone just forgot about it as material and shield technologies progressed then the first faction to build some kind of shielded exo armored suit would dominate in engagements.
BuT tHe FrEqUeNcY. But on a serious note, thats why the borg make such a strong combat force IMO, they are semi armoured and shielded, surprised that starfleet wouldnt try to replicate that.
@@mitchverr9330 Federation dogma has prevented them from becoming a force to be reckoned with. It's that delusional thinking of utopia that kept them blinded to the external threats like the borg.
I have never been shot but I can tell you that the primary objective of body armor is not to stop injury. It is to prevent DEATH. So the primary design goal should be to reduce the injury caused by the attack, rather than completely defeating it. Phasers appear to be something between a Particle Beam and Laser (do not quote Riker to me, he's a moron) and as such likely do most of their damage through thermal and some kinetic effects. Kinetic impacts are relatively easy to defend against, since it mainly involves slowing down the projectile. Developing a high strength version of Kevlar should be well within the capabilities of Starfleet and could even been integrated into uniforms. There are many forms of Kevlar vests in existence today that are designed to be worn underneath clothing, typically worn by plainclothes bodyguards. It is the thermal damage that is more difficult to defend against but, again, should be well within the capabilities of Starfleet. The easiest way I can think of to defeat weapons reliant on thermal effects to inflict damage is reflective or ablative armor. It is actually one of the reasons why Star Wars Clone and Storm Troopers wear White armor. Its reflectivity greatly reduces the thermal effects of blaster shots. It is plausible that some similar armor could be devised that is designed primarily to reflect and disperse the thermal energy from a phaser shot. Now, a reflective armor is probably not going to be easy to integrate into duty uniforms but some way to disperse the thermal energy, thereby lessening its effects, could very easily be integrated. In both cases, there is no guarantee that injury will be avoided but it is at least more likely that the injury will be survivable. Disruptors are a lot more difficult to defend against. Now both phasers and disruptors basically disintegrate their targets on maximum setting but, beyond that, appear to act in similar ways. The main difference is that Disruptors appear to fire a plasma projectile as opposed to a particle beam. As such, Disruptors have far more kinetic effects than phasers will, while simultaneously having significant thermal effects, among other things (The US military experimented with a plasma weapon back in the 90s. The effects on the target included thermal and EM damage, so definitely not a fun thing to even be near). The biggest thing to be defended against is the thermal damage. Kinetic energy can be dissipated in a number of ways, many being the same as with phasers. Against a disruptor, though, ablative armor would be almost required in order to avoid having a lot of Starfleet personnel go from Rare to Well Done. It won't stand up to more than one or two shots but, then again, the kinetic effects have probably knocked the wind out of them so let's take what we can get. Body armor is definitely more useful in some situations than in others. During a first contact scenario, it would be far more useful if the body armor can be concealed under the duty uniform. However, in scenarios where hostile contact is probable, it is better to be prepared and so more bulky body armor designed to at least survive one hit from a phaser or disruptor would go a long way. At the end of the day, all that needs protection is the head and torso. Limbs can be replaced. Brains and hearts, not so much.
like stepping on a nail, getting shot HURTS!...as in A LOT!!! not in the same way of course; the shock and trauma of each are vastly different as is the kinetic force experienced but you are not going to enjoy either one nor are you going to be able to make witty commentary during or afterwards....
Disruptor would actually be quite easy to stop if a bit uncomfortable for the wearer, as they most disruptors only aim at destroying molecular bonds the idea would be just to put as much mass between the bolt and the person, and if it was plasma it be very much if the only thing added being something more thermal resistant. surprisingly this kind of armour has been used before in a ways, in ww1 the allied forces of france and the uk had developed thick Iron body armour that could survive a good number of rounds. so much so they actually recorded one of their soldiers wearing and being shoot at in it with the soldier and armour being shown to be okay and mostly undamaged after. the problem is with it was it was too heavy for the average soldier in a prolonged battle. the same thing is likely for the armour needed to face a disruptor as the mass needed no make sure the energy doesn't damage the wearer would make what ever was needed heavy. so more than likely its possible but impractical unless they make some form of super material that can absorb the damage and not loose it's bonds or develop a armour that would only last a few shots as it purposely absorbs the energy in a way that protects the wearer but looses material as it's hit like most modern armour
The Movie-era security armour makes sense if you imagine that their biggest jobs will be either repelling enemy boarders or responding to an emergency as part of damage control. In the case of boarders you can imagine close fighting and possible hand to hand combat, where the armour would give some protection. In the case of damage control you're sending rescue teams into fires, unstable sections, etc. Some protection for the head and vital areas from incidental harm would be very useful. I always wondered why the standard uniform wasn't more protective. Considering the materials technology of the ST:TNG era you'd think the regular suits would include some degree of protection from fires and puncture wounds. Not enough to stop a disruptor blast, but hardly anything is.
For me personally, I liked the idea of the MACO. It would make sense to send down a small team of trained marines to provide protection for the navy. I know Gene did not want it to be military and you had to concentrate on a story of a small number of people, but nearly all Star Trek had poor OPSEC along with poor tactics.
The biggest gripe I have in damn near every sci-fi series is that their standard uniforms are not sealable environment suits. Armor against shrapnel and just getting smacked into things is number two personal problem to getting spaced or put into a hostile environment.
StarFleet Personnel uses a Polycarbonate Layered Occlusive Tritanium Armor or P.L.O.T. Armor for short. It sewn into every bridge officer's uniform.
It just doesn’t work with red shirts.
Funny that you should word it that way, considering it doesn't work against bridges.
Except Tasha Yar. It's in the replicator they said.
Right until a evil-incarnate oil monster writes you out
Masterful acronym. :-D
Considering how literally rocks fall down from the ceiling when Voyager gets hit, the bridge crew should wear mandatory construction helmets.
Ger Tar Wearing a welder’s mask is far more practical when operating a bridge console.
Its space asbestos
ROTFL
Thats....a WAREY good point. Sure would have preventet some deaths. And maybe Engeneering should wear speciel Gasmasks? I mean how many times did they had a Kuulik leak (I probably spelled that wrong) on the Enterprise D? Not sure if masks would have helped but...maybe?
Now all I can see are bridge crew wearing hard hats....because not even the Federation could kill the power that is OSHA.
Real Reason: Because that would make the costumes cost too much.
Would this have not also prevented armor for the Klingons and other armored races presented on the show?
Perhaps it was the reason in the original Star Trek and then with a bigger budget that they decided to differentiate between human and nonhuman but I believe that the andorians don't wear armor either.
Perhaps they use it as a shorthand indicate which races have a war-like personality?
@@macmcleod1188 Star Fleet members are always on screen, Klingons and Borg less so. The cost angle still makes sense.
But think of the profits from marketing. Even TOS gave Spock the IDIC as a marketing scheme.
/video
@@macmcleod1188 4
Forget armor, they barely even go to places wearing environmental protection suits. I can name more than few eps where these morons can beam down to places that show up in their scanners as having MINIMAL LIFE SUPPORT - and they go there anyway despite knowing an away team would probably die without any protection. The only forward thinking (aka common sense) was shown when in an ST Voyager ep where they sent the doctor on a singular mission to beam over a ship that was too ”toxic” or not applicable for biologics to beam to.
It's like they BARELY use spacesuits at all in the series!
No armor, no space suits, no brain cells!!!
All the planet's they landed on were often M class planets, thus had a survivable atmosphere
@@insomniacbritgaming1632 that didn't stop them from getting killed, getting gassed, and getting infected. In TOS, Kirk and company got mind controlled by flowers FFS. What good were their sensors if shit like that kept happening? In Naked Now, not even the transporter's bio-filters were able find a virus that even turned an android into a loopy sex toy for Yar to play with until most of the crew got infected.
I partly blame the writers for the wackiest scenarios they end up in that could have easily been solved by them wearing environmental suits, or armor.
I love Galaxy Quest.
th-cam.com/video/kcPouxFqUFA/w-d-xo.html
Is there air? You don't know.
They only had like four space suits though... I mean... their in space. How often will they need space suits?
Considering how many consoles explode sending shrapnel everywhere, the standard uniform should have some ballistic properties eh?
you would think that would be near the top of starfleet's "things to do" list
I don't know about that. It seems kind of pointless. Unless they were in fully enclosed and possibly pressurized individual suits I doubt some of the standard in universe armor would matter much against a console exploding. So what is you're wearing a vest or Kevlar jumpsuit when a console explodes inches from your exposed face and neck.
I mean, circuit breakers and the like would be even more effective for that.
Circuit breakers and fire suppression systems always fail when the plot requires it. It makes for less dramatic entertainment when the ship is supposedly falling apart around the bridge, but the Captain is still sitting in his comfortable chair with full systems control consoles, inertial dampening column, shiatsu back massager, and cupholder with obligatory beverage mug.
it's not just the console exploding, it's the plasma conduit that is powering the console that is either overloading or exploding. That is why they get covered in burn wounds instead of shrapnel wounds, and why once they move the injured person away from the console their replacement can still use the console half the time.
i imagine a federation captain telling a klingon " get on my level without any armor coward "
@Ryan Gordon imagine anyone saying anytihing at all.
Klingons pretty much wear armor to stop themselves getting shanked in duels against straight up swords & knives. It's never once stopped anything more powerful than that.
@@BlazingOwnager But has it really stopped even swords and knives? I've seen Klingons killed by blades many times in the television shows, they probably just wear it out of tradition.
They use natures armor: expendable redshirts.
good quality armor is expensive and known for excessive chaffing
Red Shirts... Natural, Organic, and in the future. Where no Starfleet person gets paid, very cheap...
Job satisfaction, is the futuristic call for work. Not money.
TH-cam: Star Trek no money... th-cam.com/video/8rh3xPatEto/w-d-xo.html
TH-cam: Improve yourself... th-cam.com/video/jp3OhC3NoMk/w-d-xo.html
Red Shirts life...
No money, no TV, upper management hogging the Holosuits, stuck in a small room, until its your turn to die... The future is bright for the, Not So Intelligent folks in the future.
Between jobs options.
1. Sit in your room.
2. Listen to Riker, play his Trombone.
3. Go to the Gym.
4. Get drunk.
And then they drop them from orbit, like in Last Jedi. ...
Seems like Warhammer 40k's Imperial Guard doctrine. Effective Gear is expensive, Human Lives... aren't.
Mind you, this only applies to Penal Legions (whose lives are forfeit anyway) and Memes. Imperial Guard equipment is actually pretty efficient, especially compared to IRL Military hardware, once you get into the lore.
We in XCOM call them TAAs - Tactical Ablative Armour. Occasionally TAA-TAAs
Something interesting. Around the WWII time the military started using helmets in the field. There was a complaint about the massive uptick in head damage and talk about removing the required helmet. It turned out that without a helmet they would've been dead.
WWI actually.
[insert image of airplane showing locations hit]
Starfleet deploys the feared and coveted plot armor technology for their most important and capable officers.
Always hated plot armor/armour, makes me itch.
Northern Ape they hide them behind redshirts.
@@jamesdaniel1376 redshirt, meat shild... potauto potaito
yep and the red shirts lack plot armor so they always die.
@@spark300c red shirts ARE the plot armor. If they didn't take the hits, the Main Characters would have to . . .
We DO see a type of armor in use in DS9, during the time when the Federation & Klingons were at war. It appeared briefly in the episode 'Nor the Battle to the Strong'. It looked like a tough rubberized armor designed to protect against bladed weapons & shrapnel. However, it obviously wasn't strong enough to protect against disruptor fire, given that it was burnt and shredded.
I suspect that's the reason we never really see armor. Because phasers & disruptors are powerful enough to punch through almost anything, & anything strong enough to withstand their blasts would be too heavy to use as personal armor.
Wearing armor when fighting Klingons makes some sense for the same reason Klingons wearing armor makes sense, and that's their love of getting into bladed weapon melee combat.
Yeah I 'member that one. Sort of a padded jacket thing. I was hoping it would be mentioned.
Then again he was dying and proves his point that they don't really work and were more likely used as a placebo kind of way.
Why not personal force fields then? We know they exist by the TNG era and aren't considered a super-advanced or exotic technology.
@@Perserra I seem to remember some barely being mentioned in ds9 on one of the episodes taking place on earth, of personal shields being issued to starfleet patroling the streets. I'm not sure if I'm not remembering correctly, hopefully I can find the time tonight to watch the 2 or 3 episodes that I'm thinking of (the one's where sisko's dad goes on a rant about over paranoia). I personally think it's just the writers not mentioning it.
If I remember correctly, in _Star Trek: the animated series,_ Kirk and crew did wear personal energy fields. They even provided environmental protection, as there were examples in which the crew were able to survive underwater and even in vacuum space.
and it's canon, worf uses one in the show.
Yay some other people remembered!! :D I been searching for these comments.
Huh intresting. Maybe the Technologie is still kinda faulty and unreliable wich is why its so rarley yoused...ora more rather they forgot it was ever inventet. But can it deflect Fazers and Disruptors?
@@neptuneplaneptune3367 Energy fields inherently deteriorate with each hit and eventually need to be powered down to reset. It is also possible that multiple hits in close proximity can damage the emitters and cause holes in the energy field. This means there would need to be backup emitters that get toggled on when energy field weakens. When that switching happens, there is short moment that the affected area is unprotected, otherwise the reset of the field wouldn't happen.
@@jesusmora9379 The one Worf used was made from a comm badge and whatever could be scrounged up from a simulation of a wild west town.
Armor? I'd be impressed if they used seatbelts.
The designers of the safety systems hail from the ancient line of school bus drivers of Earth centuries ago.
Along with design choices for shuttles that wouldn't endanger the passengers.
These guys also helped the Empire design their "Walkways over bottomless pits with no railings".
@@CsykKrit well actually in that case seatbelts provide only a minor increase in protection. As in most cases the seat infront of you is suitable enough to prevent you from dying.
After cap janeway hit the floor for the 13th time. I started wondering why they didn't have basic lap belts.
Cannon: 'Armor dosent protect from phasers." Shrapnel: *sad sounds*
There isn't a lot of shrapnel in most of Star Trek either
@@joshuahillerup4290
All these randomly exploding consoles disagree.
Though, that seems to only happen when the shields are down, so there might not be much consideration for exploding control panels.
@@joshuahillerup4290 Not only is there definitely a lot of shrapnel in Star Trek, there's a ton of other physical threats. Close combat being a notable example. What about falls or bumps to the head during high intensity movement like shocks to the ship? Why don't runabout or shuttle pilots wear helmets? Don't be silly.
@@patliao556 why don't real world navy's wear helmets too?
@@joshuahillerup4290 ....they do when they're in the equivalent of a runabout or a shuttle...
I too think that armor is basically uselss:
- The ones of Klingons, Cardassians and even Jem'Hadar seems to be about intimidation. Maybe shrapnell proteection. With the Jem's possibly tying into their "shroud" ability.
- Polarized hullplating is really just the poor mans shield. When they got the option to get a shield, ENT humans never hesitated to take it.
Now Hirogen and those TOS Movie security officers are a special case in that they might have been effective against the intended targets:
- Hirogen are mostly hunters. While they prefer intelligent prey, they are not above hunting animals wich are a bit lacking in the energy weapon department. They also had uniquely powerfull armor on their ships wich also scatered sensors, they might ahve used the same tech on their body armor.
- the security officers Armor works, if you consider they are the only ones usually equipped with phasers. They are more likely to deal with people trying to club them over the head (or Nerve Pinching them) then being shot at. *Especially* if you consider how often both things happened in TOS. They are more like police or prision officer wests, then combat armor
Klingons: Practical. They wear something akin to leathers, and they constantly knife/sword fight. It serves a real purpose there.
Cardassians: Ceremonial. I doubt it even functions as armor.
Jem'Hadar: They are often sent in to rip up primitive screw heads in Dominion territory, so maybe?
Hirogen armor is also an environmental suit tough enough to survive the surface of a star.
I personally think it's the author frantically explaining things away:
Consider the problem of a phaser. It is powerful, yes, but it is a electronic device. A firearm can be taken through conditions a device may not survive. It also can be stealthy.
Further, consider that Star Trek's NotALasers explode on impact. This might inconvenience someone. To that end, armored uniforms capable of repelling shot and frag would be in order, as well as perhaps neat glasses for combat duty. Give everyone sunnies!
It's also noted to me that with a handheld capable of generating that level of juice, a device perhaps twice its size would be able to easily repel its rounds.
But those emotional punches gotta happen somehow.
I vaguely recall a line in DS9 about energy-resistant materials being woven into the Starfleet uniform - part of explaining why the late-era uniform had so many bulky layers (jacket + vest + tunic). It might have been that episode where Jake and Bashir are supporting a group operation.
No. It's because of budget constraints in early Star Trek and that set the precedent. Did you notice how poorly fitted most of their costumes were?
Lieutenant Uhura outfit was the perfect size.
On Next Generation the costumes were originally made one size too small deliberately
There was one Starfleet fella in DS9 using armour. He was an injured command division officer. Jake Sisko fell down a rocky slope and found him.
Maybe they realized that armor might actually be worthwhile against a race that wants to get into stabbing range with you instead of obliterating you from orbit.
It’s so straightforward. Officers don’t need armour as the redshirts will draw the enemy fire.
The thing that I think would make even more sense is having an onboard combat uniform that could be sealed against vacuum incase of a hull breach.
AS a guy who wears armor 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, I can tell you that it its almost better to not wear it for comfort's sake rather than worrying about the one rare time you might actually get shot in the areas it protects.
The crews should wear armor and hazard suits when on dangerous mission. Makes sense not to have it during peace time.
I mean, imagine being a desk guy but you sit next to something that seems to be filled with a small hand grenade as your job. Would you like a climate controlled EOD suit now?
@@KoishiVibin Sure, gimme :) - yeah, the consoles made of explodium just piss me off, too (they destroy my immersion sometimes...I mean yes, damage needs to be shown, but not by exploding consoles IMHO)
My armor changed what would have been a triple hit of mass insta-kill to spine injuries. Ill take that
"Bro motorcycle gear is uncomfortable bro, Id rather not wear it bro.."
nek minnit
"Bro, my head is all f**ked up...and my arms got shredded from the gravel. But hey at least I was comfortable bruh."
I always just assumed armor in ST was either cultural, decorative, or specifically for non-energy weapon concerns (like security officers wearing some padded armor for handling people who don't have energy weapons without stunning them, crowd control, environmental hazards, etc) since, y'know, ray guns.
You're right. The times they do wear armor (outside of the Cardassian military uniform) it's specifically when concerned about bladed melee weapons. Klingons wearing armor is the only one that makes total sense.
The only practical armour that could be deployed against the range of threats seen by Starfleet officers, would likely be adaptive energy shielding, probably reverse engineered from Borg tech.
Agreed.
Borgs didn't invent any technology themselves, they assimilated it from other cultures... As such adaptive energy shielding was most likely invented by some creatures other than the Borg. It might be possible that Borgs did combine technologies from more than one culture, but that doesn't mean they invented them.
@@Monni95 agreed, however the combinations and applications are likely unique to Borg gear, until broken down, examined and repurposed by Starfleet or others.
I was looking for this comment!
Thanks!
Ground combat in Star Trek locks any sort of vehicle, ground or air. The logical explanation I have for this is that the Starship has become the main infantryman support weapon system. If they can hit targets from hundreds of kilometers away in space then they can probably provide orbital bombardment that would destroy most large installations and defenses. The transporter allows them to pin point drop troops in most situations.
I still think gunships would relevant.
Star Trek shuttles _are_ gunships, what with their shields, phasers and torpedoes.
@@Idazmi7 a star trek shuttle technically has enough fire power to take out a capital ship if it can get through its shields.
@@dexdrako
Nah, a shuttle couldn't take out a Constitution or Excelsior class ship without plot armor. Those starships _so_ have physical armor, and it does stop smaller phasers and such.
They can actually do way more than that. As we have seen ship weapons stun a continent on a planet, and even the tractor beam can cause earthquakes if used right.
@@-JustHuman-
Actually, they stunned a city block. Granted, that's because Kirk specifically told him to "fire a burst in a one block radius around these coordinates", but a city block is a city block.
I think Gene Roddenberry answered this to some degree in some interview, documentary or something. He had see the atomic age come to fruition and with it the realization that at any given level of technology it's destructive capabilities would far out perform it's defensive. Even the small pistol hand phasers in the TOS era are described as having massive destructive capabilities. Captain Tracey of the Exeter had killed several hundred of local inhabitants on a planet he was marooned on in a single skirmish. 2 depleted phaser batteries were recovered from the scene.
Armor in the Trek Universe ( especially the ones Roddenberry imagined ) had little practical value and was mostly retained for cultural, and ceremonial purposes. It is arguable that the Klingons who put a heavy emphasis on hand to hand fighting may have some practical use from it's TMP uniforms.. but it didn't do much against energy weapons.
That sounds like the logical answer right there. When firearms became commonplace, infantry armor was useless against them unless it was built too thick and heavy to use. It wasn't until synthetic materials like nylon and kevlar invented centuries later that an effective armor against firearms could be developed. So give it a couple centuries and we'll see phaser-proof vests and the like.
@@DkSchadow I think the Borg and a few other Star Trek aliens have already answered that problem. Personal Shield emitters. No need for actual bulky armor when you can get it done with a piece of jewelry, belt buckle or something similar to act as the emitter and power source.
Heck I think that even Worf managed to jury-rig his Star Fleet communicator into a basic shield emitter capable of stopping ballistic projectiles when he was stuck in the holodeck.
It's a a lot more cost effective for a TV show to just write in a small handheld prop that can do the magic than it is asking for the prop department to make up a whole bunch of combat gear for everyone on screen..
its the peacock affect. Klingon wants to be seen as a warrior/honorable and it the same for other races. it's all show no substance
It really doesn’t seem like anyone in Trek has any idea how to fight a prolonged ground war
@@johnohara4788 Why would they? Wars/battles are decided in space. Even the science ships from the Federation can destroy entire cities from space. Infantry combat is probably reduced to a niche role, i.e. when some takes hostages.
rake483 if you have weapons powerful enough to destroy cities mounted on ships you can, contrary to popular belief, mount those same weapons on planets to deter orbital bombardment and force a ground war. In addition planetary shields which can resist those weapons are a thing which can also force a ground war. It’s actually in your best interest as a defender to force an enemy to spend years worth of resources destroying a single colony rather than letting the war only be decided in space so your enemies can rampage around destroying lots of colonies.
@@johnohara4788 Not to mention that destroying something is often not a preferred outcome, you'd rather capture something so you don't have to rebuild EVERYTHING.
Also, if you can put a city destroying weapon on a mobile platform where it has to share power with myriad other systems, think about what you could do with a stationary ground or orbit based one with its own power system...
Angry Irishman that’s a good point, barring the Dominion none of the Federation’s enemies are genocidal in the same way as something like Halo’s Covenant, where they just annihilate everything from orbit, most want to actually capture planets intact. In addition even the Cardassians, some of the most militaristic people in the alpha quadrant, are unwilling to suffer 7 million dead, for comparison in World War II the soviets alone lost 20 million people, but to be fair the Cardassians had just fought a war with the Klingons so that may skew it, but you’ve still gotta imagine these nations with tens of billions of citizens would be able to sustain millions of losses, especially the authoritarian ones
A thought about military armor: when armor was reintroduced to militaries during ww1 with the shrapnel helmet, it was not meant to protect against everything. The name shows what it was for, it was specifically for protecting against shrapnel from artillery shells hitting the head.
what this shows: This example, amongst just about all other examples of armor supplied to modern soldiers in large numbers are only meant to protect them to a certain degree which in turn shows that armor needs only to protect to a desired or satisfactory level in order to be deemed effective. You do not need to be turned into a god by a set of armor in order for it to be deemed effective.
How about Corbomite armor, "I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you shoot at me bounces off and sticks to you!"
Does it come in Red ?
A bluff, at least when originally mentioned, as I recall.
Corbomite was just made up and didn't exist in the story.
Just one of Kirk's many ploys to fool more powerful antagonists. Don't play poker with Jim.
Even this doesn’t make much sense because star fleet is constantly encountering lesser developed cultures that still use everything from spears to guns.
For instance, every soldier in the US army prior to the mid 2000s was issued a flack vest. This vest couldn’t stop any bullet more powerful than a pellet from an air gun but did provide some protection from shrapnel and other flying debris. Helmets worn by the soldiers even today won’t stop bullets but they’re worn to protect from other threats like simple falling debris.
Hell, even construction workers need to wear helmets.
Maybe they simply don’t put a high value on personnel safety when compared to their ships.
In canon, they sort of do. The Starfleet uniform is futuristic, tough and durable. Its just not going to stand up to a phaser blast, no matter how thick the weave.
Eh, I've seen Starfleet get killed in all manner of ways through their space pajamas. It doesn't seem to be capable of stopping a sharpened spork.
Starfleet Security guards have armor in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock . They look like an homage to the Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s.
The Star Trek movie made more sense as far as weapons, spacesuits and armor. The tv series were simply too cheep, with the acception of Enterprise!!!
Its nice that the Mass Effect series utilizes armor and personal shields, on top of kinetic barriers. And yet many characters are still being shown taken down with one shot from a pistol in cutscenes. Hm.
In Mass Effect, personal kinetic barriers are not universal, in fact across the Terminus Systems they were pretty rare
@@weldonwin yes remember that you only really see the big merc groups and citadel goverment a military forces have everyone running around with kinetic barriers. even then only the best had shields that could take more then a hit or 2 before going down
Technically though ME weapons are still ballistic not projected energy. It fires a sliver of metal fired through a mass effect field basically it's a mini rail gun using energy to propel a round not gunpowder. Only the Protheans had hand held energy weapons. So armour/kinetic shields in ME make sense as you are trying to stop ballistic/kinetic energy.
@@paulgrattan3885 you right, also all the weapons in ME seem to having heating problem!
@@paulgrattan3885 geth weapons are energy based too, along with warp fields working in a similar way to disruptors (tearing something apart at an atomic level) though it is specifically good against armour
No mention of the armor worn by that M.A.C.O. (🤔) trooper in "...Nor the Battle to the Strong" ?
If you recall there was a scene where Jake Sisko came across an injured Starfleet / M.A.C.O. soldier, whom he tried to help. The soldier appeared to be wearing some form of, maybe plastic or semi-metallic, ballistic armor over his uniform.
This is very similar to our real world history of the widespread use of firearms and the decline of body armor until recent (last 40ish years) advancements in ballistic armors. Once a early matchlock musket could kill someone in a steel breastplate armor soon became ceremonial and armor was abandoned until advancements were made. The "sword-sheild" arms race never ends.
yeah, when the weapon makes a massive leap like from sword and bow to firearm, or from firearm to directed energy weapon, armor has always lagged behind and was basically abandoned until advancements caught up because not only was it ineffective, but it slows you down and tires you out with extra weight. Heck, from the time of plate mail up until WW1 no one even wore a helmet into battle until they realized 'hey, a steel helmet can deflect a bullet and possibly save your life' so they started to issue helmets to the soldiers in the trenches. even then, the helmets didn't do much other then maybe deflect the bullet enough that you wouldn't be instantly killed if your head popped above the top of the trench.
@@Rembanspellsong the first helmets, like the early Kevlar vests were for stopping shrapnel not ballistic projectiles. AR500 armor plates have only lately become cheap enough for mass adoption as basic armor, same with the helmets. We can even afford to buy the stuff as civilians now but it's heavy except for the less effective soft armor security guards and cops wear.
@@Rembanspellsong
The helmets were useless against bullets, shrapnel and falling rocks is what it protected against.
The animated series had personal shields that were very effective.
worf did improvosed version in show too
The also did in sttng...
So did the borg!
Each member planet probably has their own army, and they are the ones who are supposed to deal with all the ground combat during a conflict, so starfleet don't care about armour and stuff because it's not really their responsibility
"probably".
colonies reguire starleet for protection unless it has gangs
@@TheJarric Colonies aren't going to be able to field an army, unlike somewhere like Andoria, which already has the Imperial Guard
@@haroldsaxon they coud if allowed thats why gang militia came to be
@@haroldsaxon
Star Trek DS9 mentions that all local planetary militaries are incorporated into Starfleet upon joining the Federation. As Kirk said: "we're a combined service". Picard is just too pacifistic.
You would think, that with Seven of Nine and her knowledge of Borg tech, she might have came up with a way to help create portable shielding. She has after all, helped in many ways with utilizing Borg knowledge, to reinforce the ship shielding and even beef up the Delta Flyer.
I wondered if the uniforms themselves had energy dissipating material woven in as standard. By spreading the energy out you get a mild cooking sensation rather than the atom rending power of a disrupter.
The STD armor could function as a big energy sink.
This also explains why bladed weapons are so effective as they simply cut through the fibers.
Makes sense.
that would work if they only used heat as the damaging effect. The disruptor, as was stated in the video, attacks the molecular bonds between atoms. the only way to armor yourself would be to find a material that was resistant to the effect.
@@Rembanspellsong or use ablative armor so each shot only takes out one or at the most, two layers of the armor.
@Luc Collin if phasers use heat as the damaging vector, then it might help. I don't know if phasers use that. But blocking thermal energy would not help with a disruptor at all. a phaser at least leaves burn marks on the uniforms and armor we see get hit, a disruptor just hits them and they fall over and die.
@@Rembanspellsong So you're suggesting the disrupter uses some future science to simply "turn off" atomic bonds. Yeah I guess they could be that. Though you could also speculate that the federation may use future science of their negate or dampen the effect. The general point I was making was that maybe the federation incorporates special materials into their uniforms that increase survivability when hit with energy weapons.
In the TNG episode Fistful of Datas, Worf is able to improvise a personal forcefield powered by his communicator. I could see not using it for first contact missions to appear more peaceful, but if these fields are so easy to build, the security teams at minimum should have them as standard issue.
Never wear armor when pajamas will do. 😊
I don't think any uniform other than Enterprise's was very comfortable
In "A Fistful of Datas", Worf fiddled with his combadge and turned it into a temporary shield against bullets. Surly they could have produced a slightly larger version of that that would last longer. And yes, I know, don't call you Shirley.
You're underestimating the sheer protective power of Starfleet's experimental plot armour. Unfortunately it always seems to fail when ever anything red is nearby...
Maybe the red uniform are made of a cheaper material. Except wasn't Picard uniform red oops how'd they miss that one!
@@seanm4095 Clearly by the 24th century, Starfleet had solved the red problem. Only issue was in doing so they seemed to make it fail near yellow things instead...
That was the original model. Later models found a weakness against yellow, and was more effective directly related to the number of pips on your collar.
@@Fff99901 DOLT!!
@@Fff99901 haha they dont out protection in yellow shirts
Personal theory, the amour is actually integrated into all Starfleet uniforms. It's there but it's also optimized to look inconspicuous and friendly, like all things Federation. The reason why there was visible armour pre-Picard but not afterwards is because of technical progress. They hadn't figured out how to make it thin and flexible until the Picard era. We even see further iterations of the technology as the Picard era progresses: the integrated armour is still uncomfortable at the beginning, necessitating the Picard Manoeuvre.
As Starfleet was never a military entity it never focused its attention on personal protective gear other then that fancy football helmet, but and this is pure speculation I can see the federation start to reconsider there position on this field especially after the recent battles they have been in and enemies fought. I also since Voyager's return and its many encounters with other cultures especially the Borg as additional motivation for "personalized protection".
I always found it funny that the federation "were never a military entity/organization", yet they are always the ones fighting the wars. Romulan war, Klingon war, federation - cardasian war, Xindi war. Some of these wars spanned multiple seasons of a show.
The most important armour is the helmet. And it's most important not for dealing with fire, but to prevent things falling on your head from giving you a concussion or worse.
Quark in ds9 demo'd a ironman like suit when he was an arms dealer
I'm going to assume this "ironman suit" didn't have a helmet? I can't imagine most other races would be interested in something that was made for a Ferengi head.
The best armour in Star Trek is to have a red shirt standing next to you.
When you watch Star Trek space battles, many bridge casualties could be prevented by the use of armor.
Ballistic resistant material uniforms would do the trick for most of them, face shields could cover most of the rest. However, the lack of safety equipment used while working on plasma systems in Trek is an OSHA nightmare.
You forgot that armour from that dying guy in that episode of ds9 where jake goes and witnesses the horrors of war or such firsthand during the Klingon war bit, that clearly at least kept him alive, although barely, from a Klingon disruptor shot, but is never mentioned again, or even shown.
Next video: why doesn't Starfleet use computer passwords?
They do, but pretty much only on the self destruct device and the saucer separation system :/
Voice recognition software and authorization codes for the really sensitive stuff.
Until very recently, the US did not issue body armor that would stop bullets. The PASGT armor was strictly a flak armor meant to stop shrapnel. The reason? Shrapnel killed and injured more people than bullets. Mortars and especially grenades were devastating in combat. Overhead detonated explosives could take out entire platoons with ease. Flak armor made soldier impervious to these even at close ranges which greatly reduced mortality rates. I don't see many explosives being used throughout the series so flak armor may not have been needed. Full energy weapon proof armor might not have been feasible as you noted. Although surprisingly weapons tech tends to go through phases and there were many times when I noticed an old fashion hand grenade would have made a huge difference.
Helmets.
I always though it would be cool to have one really powerful, warp capable power armor.
I know it's not very Star Trek, but can you imagine something like Iron Man with starship weapons showing up to a battle?!
By the way. Am I correct to assume, there were no EVA suits prior to Enterprise (NX-01) series?
Why wear armour when you have shield technology ? Unlike Rodney McKay, I'm sure they can figure out how to turn it off.
For someone so smart, he sure could be dumb sometimes.
Nothing about Rodney's response to that shield technology was rational. That was the point.
Mixing up franchises? Naughty...
Shame they didn't do a crossover, while near impossible, it would be awesome to see Atlantis flying past the Enterprise's bridge :O
The borg uses personal shields, they're bad. They're effective in its short time of effectiveness on robotics.
This is described a bit in DS9 when Sisko's talking about the Defiant's capability. Armor that was sturdy enough to keep people alive against a phaser on max was insanely difficult to make, even for starships, so for personnel, its even more difficult. It would be far easier to craft a shield generator, but even then, the power would be extremely limited.
This sounds like such a good topic for a colab with Shadiversity :)
I have a feeling body armor isn’t very useful when many aliens have energy weapons that can disintegrate people.
How do you explain for the armour in Deep Space Nine when Dr Bashir and Jake go to a planet where the federation is fighting the Klingon the soldiers are wearing armour
Or Search for Spock in the Brig?
Maybe it was to provide slash protection against bat'leths?
Simple: They were fighting Klingons, one of the only races that wants to get in and get stab happy. Romulans, for example, would never be trying to get into knife range.
Starfleet Grunt: Can we maybe have some Protective gear sir?
Starfleet CO: Shut your mouth meat shield.
This is an old discussion that goes back to “Star Trek: The Motion Picture “ which, as you indicated in this video was worn by Enterprise security personnel.
So the question is how do you defend individual personnel from a 10k degree Celsius beam of energy?
Here’s one possibility you didn’t mention in this video....a “Life Support Belt” as seen in The Star Trek Animated series.
One of them protected Kirk in the episode “Beyond the Farthest Star”.
Check it out.
Yay :D I wondered who else would remember.
The Animated Series isn't considered canon, that's why we see real space suits in the later shows.
@@alanbear6505 I dont know about what is considered cannon anymore(except that I will never accept STD or STP) The life support belts were used in several of the old novels though. Im sorry I cant remember exact titles.
@@grayeaglej Fair enough my friend. For Star Trek the general rule is if you saw it one screen it's canon, and if you didn't it's not. The Animated Series is an exception where only the episode Yesteryear is considered canon. Also, the recent movies have been declared an "aberrant timeline". They can't keep it simple. :)
@@alanbear6505 Well I have to agree that recent things calling themselves Trek have certainly been Aberrant O.o
I guess only Mr Roddenberry could say definitively whats what, at least I would trust the creators opinion rather than a bunch of CBS and Viacom lawyers.
And I think Roddenberry would consider Axanar and Star Trek Continues to be cannon over the corporate drek thats been pushed out in the last decade. I personally dont know what he thought of the Animation or the books that were written before he passed. As far as I know the only one he had any hand in was the novelised version of Star Trek The Motion Picture. O.o Sadness.
The armor not being effective part might be the most logical answer. It's the same that happened during the Napoleonic war: French soldiers didn't use plate armor like in the medieval period anymore, because that one was ineffective against muscet projectiles. And there was still a long way to go until bulletresistant kevlar was developed.
In the Startrek universe, I have read TOS-novels during the 90s, were crew members made use of "survival belts" that provided a person with a personal shield and life support system. It would enable them to walk around in space or withstand damage by meelee or energy-based impacts. But I guess, it was not cannon. Energy shields probably use too much power to provide a portable emitter even with the borderline-magical energy cells.
Also plate armour, even at the height of its use, was incredibly expensive with only the richest soldiers, such as noble, knights, and any who were able save up for it, wore full plate armour, and when nations started to utilise standardised military and as armour started to become less effective with weapons such as muskets, and cannons, full plate armour wasn't worth the cost of production.
Can you do a comprehensive starship list from 90 to 400 meters at their longest point? Star Trek and Wars of course being the big two, but any others would be awesome too.
They do use armour. The episode of DS9 where Jake and Julian were on a planet together during a battle against the Klingons, the wounded (marine?) soldier that Jake stumbled into was wearing body armour. Supposedly disrupter resistant, absorbing energy based weapons although not completely, you get a hole through you vs being vaporized, and thus can offer a higher chance of survival.
We don't see that often though, infact I'm also not sure if there was another case of this or not. We could just chalk this up to show revolving around DS9 and The Defiant who aren't primary infantry nor expected to engage on the ground.
Wow, you totally skipped over the scene in Star Trek V where armor and handheld shields were used.
Then again, it is probably wise to skip Star Trek V.
In all fairness, that was a fairly unusual situation for Starfleet--they were going up against people who used, essentially, slug-throwers.
My take on it is Starfleet for armor has the mindset of real world military organizations back during the world wars. Sure there are options however it's either light and does nothing or it's too bulky for most humans.
Some troops in DS9 wore armour, (dont remembrr the name but its the episode where Jake gets chased round a cave by Klingons, hides under a table and some Star fleet officer phasers his foot to get off the front line) looked like soft armour of some kind most likely to reduce impact from Klingon blades, was hideously ineffective and makes me again wonder why no one every glanced at a historical archive and downloaded a nice plate carrier (something I've often wondered about when they fight the Borg, Picard proved a Tommy gun works so why not replicate up a few M4's and get to work, gotta be better than messing around around with phaser settings as you get assimilated)
maddlarkin “Nor The Battle to the Strong”.
@@mb2000 thank you
The episode of DS9 where they had a Starfleet admiral plotting a coup against the Federation government he listed off the military gear they'd stock piled to equip a for realzies army. Like thousands of phaser rifles and personal force fields. So that's why no armour, personal force fields.
I've never seen them in action in Trek outside of the Borg. If they exist they should showcase them more, they make a ton of sense and are what you'd need to stop sci-fi guns.
@@BlazingOwnager Coyboy episode of TNG Worf MacIver'ed one from his communicator. Didn't last long due to the size of the power source.
@@lars573 Didn't that only work because they were holographic bullets, though?
My assumption is that the other, armor wearing, species had a tradition of armor from times before energy weapons took hold.
Like how humans had a history of armor before energy weapons???
I know I've said it a few times in this thread, but Klingons fight all the time with bladed weapons. Them wearing armor makes a huge ton of sense. It's not practical in war, but it sure is practical in stopping your 1st officer from shanking you because you didn't suicide charge the enemy.
It appears in the distant future, we forget how to make Kevlar.
Pretty sure that could be used to line standard uniforms to cover at least vital organs.
In the far future they also forgot about shrapnel
@@georgeryan8267
Not much point in it, with doctors that can fix everything except death. Shrapnel, while potentially lethal, it's primary purpose is to injure.
@@Random_Chiroptera
*_"Shrapnel, while potentially lethal, it's primary purpose is to injure."_*
Shrapnel 1: Woah woah buddy what are you doing, you're not supposed to kill that guy bro, we're shrapnel bro. WE're only supposed to injure bro."
Shrapnel 2: "Oh no bruh, I mean I was travelling pretty fast and I shredded this dude's face, and throat and mabye some vital organs bruh. Oh no bruh what do I do bruh?"
Shrapnel 1: "S'okay bruh...just... just don't do it again, okay?"
They should use attack drones too, a single ship stand little by itself
For any of it's faults the last JJTrek movie pretty much showed why a million drones is way better than single starships.
More (plot) convenient to have your away team's engineer rig his do-everything-corder to emit some kind of EM wave that disables the fuel cells in the enemy's weapons.
Armor like seatbelts and aircraft carriers are just so yesterday.
They do. It's called the Red Shirt. Absorbs incoming damage brilliantly.
Starfleet's job is to make day to day life as dangerous as possible for their starship command staff.
I quess they seeking for a none dull ride. then :-)
The reason is money. Always money. That's also why they supposedly have awesome pieces of tech they never ever use, like personal forcefields, life support belts, and phaser rifles. Well, I guess Voyager started using their rifles when they realized they couldn't get a fresh load of redshirts from the next starbase...
In my headcanon, I like to think Starfleet gives their troops armor during a war. We just never see it on screen because of production budget reasons.
dojokonojo And tanks?
@@peterkrochmalni673 Will a tank survive a Phaser rifle on setting 16? Probably not, even with miniaturised shield generators.
Watsonian reason why we don't see them is because we follow bridge crews who don't, or at least *shouldn't*, get into ground combat that would require armor or heavy weapons. Doylist reason, the series is not about ground combat so they are not going to waste budget on armor that might be seen for two minutes in one episode.
Also, canonically(though obviously not shown on TV) a TOS era heavy hand phaser atomizes a tank several settings below that. A phaser rifle at max power removes *hills* with one shot. The main reason why shootouts involve crouching behind boxes and poking your head out instead of disintegrating the enemy and everything around them is probably that the energy release would kill the shooter too at those ranges.
Azraiel213 If you ask me phasers are way too overpowered to be realistic.
Also, in that case, what makes starships survive phasers on setting 16 anyway? Your logic doesn’t fly. If starships can survive phasers then sure as hell a tank can, too.
@@peterkrochmalni673 They survive by having deflector shields designed to tank multiple hits from the Death Star and structural integrity fields that make the hull material even stronger than normal. Also by being about million times bigger than a tank, even fantastic scifi follows some basic logic. That said, an overloaded hand phaser exploding inside a starship could cause serious damage and is usually best dealt with a transporter sending it outside the deflector shields before it blows up.
Kirk couldn't get his shirt torn off all the time if he wore armor, let alone have time to disrobe every other week for a quickie
It sends the message that "Hey, we make for good target practice" 🎯
Personal energy shields work for the Borg pretty well.
~~Live Long &Prosper 🖖🏻👽🛸✨️
🌌🔭
Though the borg are cyborgs and a hive mind. This probably allows them to have a more integrated and powerful battery.
Even if they don't have too powerful of batteries for personal shields, their collective or local computing powers can probably calculate when to activate their shield and selectively activate segments of the shield while keeping it power off for most of the time.
@@MandalorV7Yes! "A 'collective' battery." Each & every drone adds a tiny percentage to the overall collective power. Energizer Borg Bunny Batteries? 🐇⚡😮😬😟
@@ArchOfWinter 🐇 "WE ARE THE ENERGIZER BORG BUNNIES! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!! 😃😄😅😂😅😂😅😂😅
I'm so funny, I amuse even myself 😘😉😝
Borg personal energy shields work great once they know the energy profile of the attacking weapon. Hit them with something random and their shields are worthless. The Borg accept loosing a few drones to get a reading on enemy weapons.
remember that the federation was originally a military alliance and only then starting to disarm in eras of peace
Starfleet isn't supposed to be military, though it has a military arm. Reminds me of how most people in the Navy don't wear body armor.
Marines do wear armor.
@@williampeebles3218 Marines and Navy are two different branches with different operational objectives. Plus the last thing you want to be wearing if you have to abandon ship (always a possibility in battle) is armor.
*_"Starfleet isn't supposed to be military, though it has a military arm"_*
Then where is this mysterious 'military arm' when it comes to the wars we see Starfleet fighting?
Where were they when the Borg invaded Earth?
Where were they during the Dominion War?
I think that the best compromise, as seen in a few other franchises, would be an energy riot shield. Only activated when cover is needed and Only covers a small fraction of the full bubble that a full energy shield would. It could be integrated into the the arm of the uniform or in the weapon itself depending on the power source.
I suppose when you’ve got hand weapons that can vaporise rock, wearing future Kevlar body suits probably doesn’t matter and would just slow you down.
Didn’t Worf “invent” a portable force field in that Western holodeck episode? Why was that never put into production and made to last (and not run off a commbadge)? Starfleet has plenty of time to design new shuttles every time they launch a new ship (and some with a speedo that goes to infinity) but personal protection? Nah...
Yeah I thought of the same thing.
Best reason not to use such tech would be that the shield would only work against stuff on the Holodeck. A bit hand wavy but that might explain it in universe. Perhaps the shield disrupted the forcefields that were controlling the flight of the bullets? The holodeck is an odd mixture of generated props and holographic illusions, so its hard to say.
I believe in the Deep Space 9 episode where Sisko is on Earth and they lose power, they deploy security forces and you can see them activate personal force fields after they beam into the streets. I think it was called paradise lost or something like that.
Rembanspellsong Never noticed that, but when I tried to confirm what you said on Memory Alpha I got this from the Homefront/Paradise Lost episodes:
“In 2372, Admiral Leyton told Federation President Jaresh-Inyo that Starfleet Security had been stockpiling personal force fields on Earth in case of a planet-wide emergency. (DS9: "Homefront")”
Well colour me surprised. I never picked up on that!
Worf did that in a Holodeck. It's entirely possible that his design relied upon drawing power out of the Enterprise's systems to fuel that thing.
The Laws of Physics are out to lunch when someone's in the Holodeck.
Michael Oliver Possible, but didn’t the commbadge only power it for a few seconds? If it was tied into the Enterprise, I’d have though my it’s last longer, but I don’t know. I never had Worf down as an improvisational engineer either...
I’ve heard “personal force fields” mentioned a hand full of times, but no particulars as to what that actually means.
Its explained in several episodes that armor is a hostile provocation.
Lols makes me wonder how they would respond to seeing a 40k space marine battle barge with a half to full company on board EG 50 to 100 plus fully armed and armored bipedal tanks with anger mangagment issues xD
Phenixtri The Enterprise is screwed...
I mean that makes sense until you think about away teams being beamed down with phasers (as a precautionary measure) yet guns are threatening. O.o so Idk why they don't wear armor as a precautionary measure. (Besides the boring 'props are expensive/tedious to make' reason)
Considering Starfleet is an exploratory organization, armour would actually be quite useful, so as to provide protection against environmental debris, primitive weapons, and animal attacks. And besides, they could just lightly armour themselves subtly. Maybe by armouring those vests that we sometimes see under the uniforms.
Didnt the Cartoon show have them have personal force fields when they needed them. And I cringe any time you use discovery as a source.
The life support belts, more of a spacesuit (mostly to save on new animation) than armor.
I have often wondered this. I just feel like in general the SF uniform was impractical. Even more so when they are in field operations.
Armor would have diminished Counselor Troi's "abilities"
in Final Frontier they use shields -- why don't they do that always?
I remember reading a Star Trek novel, not the name, but the setting was that there was a failed colony of primitive Klingons whose planet was being destructively mined by some armour clad aliens, which the Federation attempts to stop, for the sake of the primitives.
I don't remember the exact words of the Federation protagonist, but he pretty much gave a bullshit diatribe about how wearing armour and face covering helmets/masks is antithetical to everything that both Starfleet and the Federation stand for, which can be pretty much summed up as:
*"Only Evil people want to wear scary warmongering armour & dehumanising scary helmets, probably painted a scary black too because they're Evil and the complete and total opposite of everything that is good, which is us!"*
But they're "A OK!" with personal energy shields, _because reasons!_ mainly because it doesn't make them look like bad guys, which is the stupidest reason ever. Period.
... now that, that is beyond stupid.
That's why novels are excluded from the canon.
Peaceful exploration: I said load 32 torpedoes on board.
Laughes in Astartes
If they have power sources small enough to fit in the smaller type 1 key fob phaser with enough energy to vaporize a humanoid, they can use said power source to build a personal shield for their security personnel.
If armor had fallen by the wayside as technology progressed and everyone just forgot about it as material and shield technologies progressed then the first faction to build some kind of shielded exo armored suit would dominate in engagements.
BuT tHe FrEqUeNcY. But on a serious note, thats why the borg make such a strong combat force IMO, they are semi armoured and shielded, surprised that starfleet wouldnt try to replicate that.
@@mitchverr9330 Federation dogma has prevented them from becoming a force to be reckoned with. It's that delusional thinking of utopia that kept them blinded to the external threats like the borg.
I have never been shot but I can tell you that the primary objective of body armor is not to stop injury. It is to prevent DEATH. So the primary design goal should be to reduce the injury caused by the attack, rather than completely defeating it. Phasers appear to be something between a Particle Beam and Laser (do not quote Riker to me, he's a moron) and as such likely do most of their damage through thermal and some kinetic effects. Kinetic impacts are relatively easy to defend against, since it mainly involves slowing down the projectile. Developing a high strength version of Kevlar should be well within the capabilities of Starfleet and could even been integrated into uniforms. There are many forms of Kevlar vests in existence today that are designed to be worn underneath clothing, typically worn by plainclothes bodyguards.
It is the thermal damage that is more difficult to defend against but, again, should be well within the capabilities of Starfleet. The easiest way I can think of to defeat weapons reliant on thermal effects to inflict damage is reflective or ablative armor. It is actually one of the reasons why Star Wars Clone and Storm Troopers wear White armor. Its reflectivity greatly reduces the thermal effects of blaster shots. It is plausible that some similar armor could be devised that is designed primarily to reflect and disperse the thermal energy from a phaser shot. Now, a reflective armor is probably not going to be easy to integrate into duty uniforms but some way to disperse the thermal energy, thereby lessening its effects, could very easily be integrated. In both cases, there is no guarantee that injury will be avoided but it is at least more likely that the injury will be survivable.
Disruptors are a lot more difficult to defend against. Now both phasers and disruptors basically disintegrate their targets on maximum setting but, beyond that, appear to act in similar ways. The main difference is that Disruptors appear to fire a plasma projectile as opposed to a particle beam. As such, Disruptors have far more kinetic effects than phasers will, while simultaneously having significant thermal effects, among other things (The US military experimented with a plasma weapon back in the 90s. The effects on the target included thermal and EM damage, so definitely not a fun thing to even be near). The biggest thing to be defended against is the thermal damage. Kinetic energy can be dissipated in a number of ways, many being the same as with phasers. Against a disruptor, though, ablative armor would be almost required in order to avoid having a lot of Starfleet personnel go from Rare to Well Done. It won't stand up to more than one or two shots but, then again, the kinetic effects have probably knocked the wind out of them so let's take what we can get.
Body armor is definitely more useful in some situations than in others. During a first contact scenario, it would be far more useful if the body armor can be concealed under the duty uniform. However, in scenarios where hostile contact is probable, it is better to be prepared and so more bulky body armor designed to at least survive one hit from a phaser or disruptor would go a long way. At the end of the day, all that needs protection is the head and torso. Limbs can be replaced. Brains and hearts, not so much.
like stepping on a nail, getting shot HURTS!...as in A LOT!!! not in the same way of course; the shock and trauma of each are vastly different as is the kinetic force experienced but you are not going to enjoy either one nor are you going to be able to make witty commentary during or afterwards....
Disruptor would actually be quite easy to stop if a bit uncomfortable for the wearer, as they most disruptors only aim at destroying molecular bonds the idea would be just to put as much mass between the bolt and the person, and if it was plasma it be very much if the only thing added being something more thermal resistant.
surprisingly this kind of armour has been used before in a ways, in ww1 the allied forces of france and the uk had developed thick Iron body armour that could survive a good number of rounds. so much so they actually recorded one of their soldiers wearing and being shoot at in it with the soldier and armour being shown to be okay and mostly undamaged after. the problem is with it was it was too heavy for the average soldier in a prolonged battle. the same thing is likely for the armour needed to face a disruptor as the mass needed no make sure the energy doesn't damage the wearer would make what ever was needed heavy. so more than likely its possible but impractical unless they make some form of super material that can absorb the damage and not loose it's bonds or develop a armour that would only last a few shots as it purposely absorbs the energy in a way that protects the wearer but looses material as it's hit like most modern armour
The Movie-era security armour makes sense if you imagine that their biggest jobs will be either repelling enemy boarders or responding to an emergency as part of damage control. In the case of boarders you can imagine close fighting and possible hand to hand combat, where the armour would give some protection. In the case of damage control you're sending rescue teams into fires, unstable sections, etc. Some protection for the head and vital areas from incidental harm would be very useful.
I always wondered why the standard uniform wasn't more protective. Considering the materials technology of the ST:TNG era you'd think the regular suits would include some degree of protection from fires and puncture wounds. Not enough to stop a disruptor blast, but hardly anything is.
because they're like the jedi:
Their arrogance will be their undoing
Ancestor Empire I believe there is much truth to this statement. All other, more tangible military matters aside, it is often the secret sauce.
Why don't away teams have canteens or any survival gear?
For me personally, I liked the idea of the MACO. It would make sense to send down a small team of trained marines to provide protection for the navy. I know Gene did not want it to be military and you had to concentrate on a story of a small number of people, but nearly all Star Trek had poor OPSEC along with poor tactics.
the same reason they don't use space suites when visiting a new planet. It wasn't in CBS's budget.
but why oh why do they insist on designing them to look like jammies
The biggest gripe I have in damn near every sci-fi series is that their standard uniforms are not sealable environment suits.
Armor against shrapnel and just getting smacked into things is number two personal problem to getting spaced or put into a hostile environment.