I often see comparisons of the US military to other militaries in terms of spending or total number of troops/fighters/etc., but I've never seen a comparison in terms of actual capability and force projection. Anyone know of such comparisons that would be understandable to a layman?

Wait, what? You're joking right? There are people who argue a an Iowa-Class battleship could sink a Kirov? That's like saying you can shoot down an A-10 with a .22 Short. Well, unless we're only talking about the 3 of 4 currently moored for scrapping or retrofitting. They might get lucky then. Otherwise, well ... yeah.

Trekkies claiming the Enterprise can beat the Death Star. No amount of evidence to the contrary can supress this nonsense.

People actually spend time arguing these things?

People actually spend time arguing these things?

People actually spend time arguing these things?

I love it when things go kabloowey.

And yes at least the NCC 1701D and greater can take on the death star (the NCC 1701 was reported to have enough armament to destroy an actual planet and the NCC 1701D had considerably higher yield weapons). It is likely capable of doing it without actually "raising shields" as the navigational shields are enough to stop light making lasers (the mainstay weaponry of all classes of star wars attack craft) ineffective.

Ion cannons are another story, we have no idea how ion cannons of star wars would react faced with standard or multi-phasic shielding though I would argue multi-phasic shielding would render ion cannons useless as multi-phasic shielding can survive in the suns corona where a tremendous amount of high energy ions are present.

And yes at least the NCC 1701D and greater can take on the death star (the NCC 1701 was reported to have enough armament to destroy an actual planet and the NCC 1701D had considerably higher yield weapons). It is likely capable of doing it without actually "raising shields" as the navigational shields are enough to stop light making lasers (the mainstay weaponry of all classes of star wars attack craft) ineffective.

It is difficult to estimate photon torpedo yields because there has never been a substantive quantification of their output. However, the TM indicates that a photon torpedo carries 1.5kg of antimatter which presumably reacts with an equal amount of matter. This allows us to determine that the upper limit for photon torpedo yield is 2.7E17 joules (64.3 megatons), since Einstein's Theory of General Relativity predicts that E=mc²

Naturally, Federation cultists use this figure as a benchmark, assuming (for example) that if a GCS fires 10 photon torpedoes at a ship, then the target vessel will be hit with 643 megatons of energy. However, this is incorrect. The 64.3 megaton figure is an upper limit, and not necessarily a realistic estimate. Upper limits are extremely generous methods of estimation- for example, the upper limit for a Death Star blast, based on the Alderaan explosion, is well over 1E40 joules!. There are two principal assumptions incorporated into this particular upper limit:

1. The antimatter within the torpedo will react with matter at 100% efficiency. In other words, not one solitary atom or subatomic particle of antimatter will escape and be hurled out into space by the explosion.
2. All of the reaction products will contribute to the destructive effect of the torpedo. In other words, every single particle and erg of energy in the entire blast will directly affect the target vessel, with no useless particles and no wasted energy.

The overall impact of a photon torpedo on its target is therefore an amount of energy, in the form of superheated matter, gamma radiation, thermal radiation, and highly energetic subatomic particles, which is less than or equal to 32 megatons in quantity for a direct impact, and as little as 10 megatons in quantity for a medium-proximity blast (decreasing with increasing distance, based on the radius beyond which charged pions decay into useless neutrinos). If we use the 74% efficiency estimate derived from the DS9 TM, we can determine that a photon torpedo should deliver roughly 24 megatons for a direct impact and as little as 7 megatons for a medium-proximity blast.

A Star Destroyer used its light trench-mounted guns to vaporize 40 metre wide asteroids in TESB with 1/15-second bursts (see Brian Young's Turbolaser Power page for more information), resulting in a lower limit of 22,500 TW for light turbolaser output. Note that this only applies to light turbolasers. If the ratio of light to heavy turbolaser output is proportional to the size difference, then heavy turbolasers must therefore output roughly 2.8 million TW. Some Federation cultists claim that the asteroids in TESB were actually disintegrated rather than vaporized, but they apparently did not notice that the "debris" (small coalesced blobs of superheated liquid that were metastable and in the process of vaporization) evaporated into invisible gas within a fraction of a second, while solid visibly glowing debris would have continued to be visible for at least 10 seconds as it cooled.

Base Delta Zero

Source Data:
According to the Star Wars Technical Journal, a Base-Delta-Zero operation is the act of melting the surface of a planet. The operation was performed on Caamas just after the Clone Wars (ref: Spectre of the Past), and it was so devastatingly ruinous that the planet was still totally uninhabitable forty years later. In fact, resettlement efforts of Caamasi survivors (presumably those who had been off-world at the time of the attack) were centred around the discovery of a new Caamasi homeworld, which would then be terraformed to Caamas' specifications. This indicates that it would have actually been easier to terraform a barren, uninhabited world than to make Caamas inhabitable again!
It is possible to generate a very conservative estimate by assuming a dry planet (no oceans) and assuming that this devastation will be caused by the melting of surface material to a depth of one metre. Therefore, if we use Earth as an example of a typical target planet, the Base Delta Zero operation must melt 5.1E14 m³ of surface material.
Energy Estimate:
The crust of a typical planet is composed mostly of silicates, so the thermodynamic properties of silicon dioxide can be used as a reasonable basis for estimating the characteristics of planetary crust material. The melting point of silicon dioxide (quartz microstructure) is 1883K, its density is 2220 kg/m^3, and its specific heat is roughly 1050 J/kgK at high temperatures (ref. Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer 3rd Edition by Incropera and Dewitt). The energy required to heat 5.1E14 m³ of rock from 300K to melting point is therefore 1.9E24 J. The latent heat of fusion for SiO2 is at least 250 kJ/kg (ref. CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics 50th Edition), which adds 3E23 J to the energy estimate. This leads to a grand total of 2.2E24 J. This operation must not take longer than 1 hour or so, otherwise significant numbers of planetary citizens would be able to evacuate. The power requirement is therefore at least 600 million TW.
Weapon Breakdown:
There are 12 heavy turbolasers and roughly 120 light turbolasers on an ISD1 (ref. SWICS). The heavy turbolasers are roughly 125 times bigger than the light turbolasers (which were seen vaporizing asteroids in TESB). If firepower is proportional to size (an unsubstantiated but not unreasonable postulate) then the sustainable power outputs of the heavy and light guns work out to 47 million TW and 375,000 TW respectively. Refire rates seem to be roughly 1 shot per 2 seconds, so the energy level of each individual blast would have to be 94 million TJ (22 gigatons of TNT) for heavy turbolasers and 750,000 TJ ( 179 megatons) for light turbolasers.
Addendum
It should not come as a surprise that Base Delta Zero figures come under almost constant attack by overzealous Federation cultists. If you are curious to study the subject further, visit the dedicated Base Delta Zero page.

Now, we have a formula for the total binding energy of a planet of uniform density, and all you need is the mass and radius of the planet in question. In the case of Earth, we can easily substitute G=6.6726E-11 m³/(s²·kg), M=5.97E24 kg, and r=6.371E6m to the above formula. The result is 2.2E32 joules, which anyone can independently verify with their own calculations. This represents a lower limit for the gravitational binding energy of a planet, because the density of a planet is not constant; it is always highest in the centre. Therefore, the ratio of mass to volume will increase as the outer layers are "peeled away" rather than staying constant. This will increase the gravitational binding energy.

The Alderaan debris cloud expanded at roughly 4% of the speed of light. If we assume that the inside of the cloud had an even simple distribution between 0 and 4% of the speed of light, its average velocity would be roughly 2% of the speed of light, so its kinetic energy would be roughly 1E38 joules. This is, of course, a staggering amount of energy. Try to imagine seizing the entire planet Earth and hurling it like a football at 6 million metres per second, or try to imagine how much power the Sun generates in eight thousand years, and you'll have some idea of how much energy it takes to blow apart a planet the way Alderaan was destroyed.

Ion cannons are another story, we have no idea how ion cannons of star wars would react faced with standard or multi-phasic shielding though I would argue multi-phasic shielding would render ion cannons useless as multi-phasic shielding can survive in the suns corona where a tremendous amount of high energy ions are present.

Speaking of MOAR DAKKA; DE, you and your Eldar should come down for another visit sometime. =)

Its stated in one of the original episodes that the NCC 1701 is capable of entirely destroying a planet. We don't need to see the destruction, its simply noted.

Since we are dealing with fiction here DE it seems inane to bring physics into the picture. We have no way of knowing HOW they manage these feats, only that these feats are managed.

The shining, absolute proof of Graham Kennedy's refusal to acknowledge rationality or science is his adherence to the ridiculous "no laser" myth.

The navigations shields also posses another intriguing property; they are immune to attack from laser weaponry. This is due to the trans-static flux effect which occurs as a by-product of the deflection process.
Let us disregard the gratuitous technobabble for a moment and look at this claim. It is based on the infamous quote from "The Outrageous Okona" in which Picard snorted with derision at the laser weapons of a tiny, primitive spacecraft and muttered that "lasers won't even penetrate our navigational deflectors".

As a result, some trekkies have concluded that navigational deflectors are magically invulnerable to lasers, regardless of power. Note that Picard never said "no laser, regardless of its power level, can penetrate our navigational deflector." Kennedy assumes that Picard's statement contained the implicit words "of any power" while other, more reasonable observers conclude that the statement contained the implicit words "of that size". What do you think is more reasonable? Kennedy has actually claimed in public that a Federation shuttlecraft would shrug off a direct hit from the Death Star's superlaser! And this is someone who brandishes his little HND as proof that he knows something about science. <sigh> He may be more knowledgeable than a high school kid, but not much more.

Everything has limits. Science is largely based on finding those limits. But if we don't know what those limits are, how reasonable is it to conclude that they must not exist at all? It is unscientific, unreasonable, and has absolutely no basis in logic whatsoever. There is one obvious reason that Kennedy subscribes to this ridiculous myth about navigational deflectors being godlike in their immunity to lasers: he wants them to be, because he thinks that Star Wars weapons are lasers. No one with a remotely rational mind would assume that since Picard didn't elaborate on his statement, he must have meant that it was a universal law. No one with any grasp of logic or science would assume that in the absence of a known upper limit, there must not be any upper limit at all.

Lasers cannot penetrate the navigational shielding of the Enterprise D. That is a fact, and it is immaterial the power of the laser in question. One can try to imagine the how but the how is irrelvant in this kind of sci-fi discussion.

Suspension of Disbelief: it is scientifically impossible for any kind of shield to block infinite amounts of laser energy, because the second law of thermodynamics prohibits 100% efficiency devices and light carries momentum equal to U/c, so there are two mechanisms through which increased power levels would eventually overwhelm any blocking system. Therefore, Riker was either an idiot or he was taking the enemy ship's small size into account when he made his statement. Case closed.

"Captain Picard once said 'lasers won't even penetrate our navigational deflectors'. This is canon proof that no laser, even a laser of infinite power, could possibly penetrate the defenses of a Federation ship. Subspace technology is the key to making this possible, through <technobabble technobabble technobabble>. I defy you to disprove that theory."

"In 'The Omega Directive', Harry Kim found out that Captain Janeway wanted an 83 isoton warhead prepared, and he asked 'what's she planning to do, blow up a small planet'? This is canon proof that an 83-isoton photon torpedo can destroy a small planet."

"In ST6, Scotty shouted 'shields collapsing' just before the Klingon photon torpedo struck the Enterprise saucer. Notice that he said 'shields collapsing' instead of 'shields collapsed'. His precise choice of words indicates that the shields were still in the process of collapsing instead of having already collapsed, so Star Wars fans are wrong about the ST6 photorp hit being an unshielded hit. His console readout indicates that the shield strength is zero, but it probably incorporates a large safety factor which Scotty knew about, hence his precise choice of words. Remember, English is his first language so he wouldn't choose an inappropriate word."

Yes, these are all genuine arguments, made by real people who expected to be taken seriously. Now, I could spend a lot of time breaking down each specific example and identifying weaknesses therein, but that's not the point and besides, I expect any intelligent reader to see through such obvious deceptions. The point is not to specifically attack these arguments one at a time, but to note that all of them fall into the "dialogue is everything" school of thought (the first one is a 2-for-1 deal, because it also includes the O.J. Simpson defense).
In real life, dialogue is utterly worthless as a source of scientific or engineering data. You can look through the entire width and breadth of serious scientific and engineering papers throughout history (not counting papers from diploma mills or from pseudo-science faculties like "social science"), and you will never see "so-and-so said this, and he happened to choose this particular set of words" as a piece of supporting evidence for a theory. You will find photographs, and you will find calculations, but you won't find any discussion of what anybody says or thinks. That's why I find it so amusing when people accuse me of over-analyzing screenshots and calculations instead of heavily analyzing dialogue- pictures and numbers are found in real-life scientific and engineering papers, but no one ever talks about dialogue.
It would be nice if we could ignore dialogue completely, but we are talking about science fiction television shows and movies after all, and there isn't a whole lot of empirical evidence to go on. As a result, we are forced to fall back upon dialogue in spite of its many weaknesses, but that doesn't give us a blanket authorization to ignore those weaknesses (see my Canon page for more discussion of this). At no time is there any justification for basing a theory about unseen capabilities exclusively on dialogue, nor is there ever any justification for microscopically analyzing someone's choice of words. Furthermore, when dialogue and visuals explicitly contradict one another, there is no reason to ever choose dialogue because that is not how it is done in the real world, and with good reason.

This [the lasers vs navigational shields incident -DE] is an example of a Trekkie confusing evidence with interpretation. Captain Picard, while looking at a pair of tiny ships on the viewscreen, heard that they were armed with lasers. He responded that "lasers won't even penetrate our navigational deflectors." The evidence is that Captain Picard uttered that line. The interpretation is that Federation ships have a technology which makes them immune to lasers regardless of power level. I can argue with this interpretation all day, and many others have.
However, the point of this particular note is simply to explain that we should remember to distinguish evidence from interpretations of that evidence. The author of the quoted argument feels that his interpretation of the evidence actually is the evidence, so if I ignore his interpretation, I am in fact ignoring the evidence itself. It is possible for Captain Picard to utter those words without our opponent's interpretation being valid, therefore it is logically fallacious to claim that one must accept his interpretation or be guilty of "ignoring evidence".
This tecnnique is used very heavily by newspeople, who confuse evidence and interpretation on a regular basis. For example, a medical researcher might find that there is a weak statistical correlation between childhood leukemia and living near electrical power transmission lines. A news reporter might find out about this study and declare on national television that "there is new scientific evidence that your chance of getting cancer will increase if you live near power lines." That would be incorrect- there is new scientific evidence of a statistical correlation between childhood leukemia and living near electrical power transmission lines, but the assumption that one causes the other is an interpretation (an unsupported one) rather than a piece of "scientific evidence."
I could go on at length about the specifics of the "power transmission lines causing cancer" health scare, listing objections such as the fact that the magnetic fields from the power wiring in your own house are more intense than the magnetic fields from power lines in an adjacent field, or the fact that people living near "power towers" tend to have lower incomes and accordingly different lifestyles, but I only wish to describe it as an example of journalistic incompetence and sensationalism, and how it relies on the same tricks often used by Trekkie "vs" debaters.

If you can find in-canon references to what the above person states then fine but I doubt you can otherwise you would have not resorted to imposing real world knowlege and physics on two fantasy settings. The technical manuals btw are not canon.

So what? That could just be a hyperbolic response to the above-noted ability to nuke all the major cities. So yes, we do need to see it, otherwise we go with what we observe.

Yes, these are all genuine arguments, made by real people who expected to be taken seriously.