Welcome to the home of The 3rd Expeditionary Force, sometimes called an Expeditionary Strike Force, would enable the starfleet to
cover more parts of the Alpha Quad effectively, by providing highly mobile, self-sustaining forces that are able to undertake missions
across the entire spectrum of operations without other parts of fleets or support for long periods of time. The force is made up of
marine support ships, cruisers, destroyers and escorts. The reason for such a force came from the war with the Dominion, Borg
and Romulans which use large ground forces as part of military operations. Since Starfleet is not a military aggressor, a unit was
needed to match any force that would or have attacked Federation forces in any degree. While this made the unit more of a
military force, it kept the other forces of starfleet able to do their prime objective of exploration and diplomacy.

Why is 3rd EF stationed off a starbase? There are 2 types of units in starfleet, standing fleets and mobile fleets. There are a total
of 27 standing and mobile fleets and several specialized fleets. The 3rd EF is one such force listed as a Rapid Response Fleet. It
is a new and relatively controversial addition to starfleet. Combining the flexibility of a mobile fleet with the stability of a static fleet.
Ships assigned to rapid response fleets are expected to be the first ships to respond to a crisis in a remote locale of any nature.
Such ships as the Steamrunner, Akira, or Sovereign classes reports directly to the Executive Admiral of starfleet and thus circumvents
the usual chain of command. New ships are starting to takeover the Steamrunner and Akira roles.

The 3rd EF is headquarter off Alexandria Station in the Sauria System some 37 light years towards the galaxy core from sol.
The flagship is an Excalibur design class that allows the fleet to use the various departments of starfleet in the field from
diplomantic to Coveret personal from Intelligence. Even the Marine corp has a whole deck just for operations of the 3rd's EF
Marine corp force. The rest of the force is made up of Defiant class, Akira refit, Kelvin refit, Promethus class and one Chariot Class.