Anti-Borg technology and tactics

[Timo]

1) They don't HAVE any superiors.

That sounds really, really implausible. They have a space station and a starship, both Starfleet issue, and they report to Admiral Kirk in at least some capacity. By the looks of the security arrangements, their research is behind generic Starfleet seals, rather than in Kirk's private archives. And they toy with entire planets.

If anything, I'd think they do a lot more paperwork than the average skunk works that only develops weapons one can test in a closed range a Klingon agent would be hard pressed to penetrate...

It was nobody's business but Carol's HOW Genesis worked, only THAT it worked, and to what extent.

With something this big, the standard procedure ITRW would be that Carol would have to give weekly urine samples and reports on who she had sex with, how, for how long, and what he said about it. If Carol tried to say "Trust me, I'm doing my job, you'll see the results when it's finished", ITRW they'd first have to fire her and then have to kill her.

Stage One was evidently completed without any Federation assistance at all

...Except for the entire setup where Carol gets a lab, a team and a planetoid, eventually complete with a cave that must cost the taxpayers a fortune in no-this-is-not-money if it tied down Starfleet's finest for so long. SCE would definitely say "no thanks" if Carol had nothing to show for her progress on Stage One.

IOW, they did NOT provide component-by-component reports on Genesis to the Federation because that data didn't belong to the Federation and they had no right to receive it in the first place.

To the contrary, there's no reason to believe Carol had any rights to the research she was conducting. It would be extremely rarely ITRW that somebody like her would. It's not a commercial product she's developing, it's the next Manhattan Project. David had the right idea all along: the research is Starfleet's to take, and they don't have to ask for permission from Carol's team or even the government because they know that Carol's direct boss is Admiral Kirk.

That is, it's clear the Reliant and its Captain Terrell don't have the authority to take Genesis, despite the big guns and the shoulder brass. But the name of Kirk changes everything. Carol despairs over the issue of "proper authorization", an issue where Kirk's word apparently is crucial - meaning he can give this authorization or deny it. Kirk (or the government through him) owns Genesis, Carol just works for him (that is, for the government).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

1) They don't HAVE any superiors.

That sounds really, really implausible. They have a space station and a starship, both Starfleet issue

They HAVE a space station. The Reliant has been placed at their disposal, but Reliant's commander answers to Starfleet, not Carol Marcus.

And Carol Marcus answers to no one, ESPECIALLY not to Reliant, and is understandably pissed when that situation suddenly changes without explanation.

and they report to Admiral Kirk in at least some capacity.

If by "report to" you mean "Make angry phone calls to your ex boyfriend who also happens to be a high-ranking Admiral in Starfleet."

By the looks of the security arrangements, their research is behind generic Starfleet seals

The PROPOSAL is behind generic seals. The actual research is absent from the computers of both Enterprise AND Reliant. Khan assumed Kirk would have more information because the Admiral would presumably have access to sensitive information like that; it's hardly the first thing Khan has been wrong about.

If anything, I'd think they do a lot more paperwork than the average skunk works that only develops weapons...

Except Genesis isn't a weapon, and the Genesis Team -- unlike Skunkworks -- isn't working under Starfleet's umbrella. Remember Carol's use of words here: "Project Genesis: a Proposal to the Federation."

IOW, it's a purely civilian project. Starfleet assistance is part of the funding she asked for; Starfleet OVERSIGHT was never part of the deal.

With something this big, the standard procedure ITRW would be that Carol would have to give weekly urine samples and reports on who she had sex with

IF she was a member of Starfleet and IF Genesis was a government program. But it isn't. It's a civilian program receiving government funding.

Genesis is the Polywell Fusion Reactor, not the Manhattan Project.

Stage One was evidently completed without any Federation assistance at all

...Except for the entire setup where Carol gets a lab, a team and a planetoid, eventually complete with a cave that must cost the taxpayers a fortune in no-this-is-not-money if it tied down Starfleet's finest for so long.

Stage One was completed in a laboratory before they got ANY of that; Regula-1 and Reliant were an answer to her proposal in funding for Stage Two.

SCE would definitely say "no thanks" if Carol had nothing to show for her progress on Stage One.

Exactly. She'd already completed stage one BEFORE she asked the Federation for funding. Thus Genesis started as a civilian project initiated with the 23rd century equivalent of "private funds."

IOW, they did NOT provide component-by-component reports on Genesis to the Federation because that data didn't belong to the Federation and they had no right to receive it in the first place.

To the contrary, there's no reason to believe Carol had any rights to the research she was conducting.[/quote]
Carol was the ONLY one with the rights to the research, hence the reason she was so pissed off when Chekov told her she was coming to get it. Hence the deleted lines (preserved in the Director's Cut) where she tells him "Genesis is a civilian project under my authority" and later tells him "I have no intention of allowing unauthorized personnel access to our work or materials."

"Unauthorized personnel" in this case means "You." E.g. "Starfleet." E.g. "People who do not work for me and I do not trust."

It would be extremely rarely ITRW that somebody like her would.

Dr. Robert Bussard did it for 30 years. Why would Marcus be any different?

It's not a commercial product she's developing

Yes it is. Again her proposal "When you consider the cosmic problems of population and food supply, the usefulness of this process becomes clear."

Genesis is a terraforming device, not a weapon.

 

[SarYehudah]

People posting pictures of tommy-guns and hailing these as the answer to combat the Borg always make me laugh. How stupid can you be?

The tommy-gun worked because the Borg Collective had never been shot at with a tommy-gun, not because some weapon from the 1920s is the holy-grail to defeating Borg drones.

You can't mow down hundreds of drones with them time after time because they adapt, just like how phasers work for a while.

Surely anyone with working brain can understand that?

The thing that's always bugged me about that line of thought is that it's somewhat hard to believe that not once, in all the worlds they have assimilated, have they encountered simple slug throwers. A bullet is a bullet is a bullet, they shouldn't have to adapt to every specific type of gun. They're also vulnerable to direct physical assault.

Is there an example in all of Trek where the Borg have adapted to attack by a weapon that is not energy based?

I don't believe they can adapt to physical force, which includes bullets, rockets, flamethrowers, etc.... You can kill them in hand to hand. It's not so much a matter of that i think. Most planets use energy weapons for defense and if the borg ever found themselves facing a ground army of tanks, rocket launchers, soldiers armed with assault rifles, they can simply destroy them when they are out of range. Also their Cubes can cut up pieces of a planet's surface and suck up the poor suckers to be assimilated. this is what happened in Vendetta.

 

[publiusr]

I loved that novel. The brute force apprach, a return to slug throwers, maybe a handful of Denobulans resistant to their tech makes the Borg go from assimilation to annihilation in the later novels--that and getting rid of the borg queen as a point of weakness.