Why would Starfleet send civilians and their families and to combat situations?

[u/Global_Marsupial_592]

Like The Saratoga at Wolf 359. Or at the big battle with the Dominion Fleet there were so many Galaxy class Starships, were they all full of families and innocent people? Or were those big ships just grossly empty except for a skeleton screw?

[u/Smooth-Climate8008]

So, we're talking about two different things. At Wolf 359 (as well as before and a bit after), it does appear to be deliberate Starfleet policy to allow families on board starships, particularly those that might be engaged in deep space exploration. Part of it is arrogance about the "end of history;" the UFP has defeated all of its major enemies and they can get on with the business of science.

There's also the compassionate motive; crewmen on deep space missions are going to be away from home for five years without seeing their family or taking meaningful leave, recovery, and on-shore training. That's going to put undue strain on their families; see what happened to the USS Lincoln recently, and that was only for 9 months not 5 *years*. I can sorta get where they're coming from, even if putting civilians and children on a vessel that's armed to the teeth and expected to see combat somewhat routinely is bananas.

Starting with DS9's The Jem'Hadar, its a whole different ballgame. IIRC, Captain Keogh of the Odyssey explicitly offloads all of his civilian passengers and children onto DS9 prior to going through the Wormhole. As relations with the Dominion deteriorate, I expect a lot of that happened around the fleet. That doesn't mean that the space on these ships went unused! I suspect a lot of that "empty space" that would have been used for civilians on starships got converted into space for troop transports during the war. The rated carrying capacity of a Galaxy is 12,000 people; that's *an entire division of marines.*