First Battle of Chin'toka

The First Battle of Chin'toka was the first offensive launched by the allied forces of the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Star Empire into Cardassian territory during the Dominion War.

Planning
The inclusion of the Romulan Star Empire into the Federation Alliance stretched the Dominion's forces opening up the possibility for an invasion of Cardassian territory. Despite initial reluctances by the Romulans to commit to a costly and lengthy campaign in the Union when they were winning a defensive war they eventually agreed to take the war to the enemy.

The Chin'toka system was selected as the target. It lay in the crucial Dorvan sector and was only defended by five squadrons of Jem'Hadar attack ships. The allies started to gather their forces at Deep Space 9 in preparation for the attack. This included the Starfleet Ninth Fleet and Starfleet Task Force 59. During the preparations the allies learned that a new planetary defense system had been deployed within the system, the orbital weapons platforms were heavily armed and would make the attack far tougher then expected. The allies agreed to deploy as soon as possible.

The fleet departed the station and only then did the bulk of the fleet learn of their target.

Space battle
The fleet arrived in the system to find the platforms still disabled. The meagre Dominion forces engaged the Klingons, despite being heavily outnumbered they caused significant damage to the Klingons by ramming their vessels. The fleet continued on and engaged the outer platfroms, easily destroying them. The fleet drove into the system only to find the platforms come to live all round them. The platforms hammered the fleet, though the fleet continued to advance they were suffering heavy casualties.

The USS was able to find a weakness with the system. They all shared a single power source. The Defiant was successful in destroying the powersource, instantly disabling every single platform. The fleet then destroyed the rest of the system, except for three, which were kept for further study.

With the space around the planets secured the allies went about the second phase of the operation, the capture of the planets. The allies brought in the invasion force into the ship, which carried the thousands of ground troops and equipment necessary for the operation.

Planetary invasion
The fleet bombarded the planets' surfaces destroying military bases and installations, this was overseen by Federation officers to make sure that there were minimum civilian casualties, before launching the ground invasion. Tens of thousands of troops descended on the planets. The main operation went fairly quickly with the allies securing the major population areas.













The Aftermath
The Dominion was able to bottle up the alliance in the Chin'toka system, stopping a grand push into Cardassian territory. The system would turn into an almost constant battleground with Dominion forces constantly trying to rench back control of the system.

On the planets themselves surviving Dominion and Cardassian troops waged a guerrilla campaign against the occupying forces. The Dominion sent suicide forces to breach the allies defences so to get close enough to the planets to beam down troops and supplies for their forces so to quick as many troops as possible dedicated to keeping control on the planet.

The allies would eventually be forced from the system almost a year after they first took control during the Second Battle of Chin'toka. 

Participating starships

 * USS
 * USS
 * USS
 * Starfleet Task Force 59
 * Starfleet Ninth Fleet