Canon Facts Backstage Info  Speculation

Notes : Since their very first journey into the alpha quadrant in 2364, the Borg have been an implacable threat to every species that they have encountered. That first contact resulted in the destruction of two Federation Starbases and an unknown number of Romulan installations on the edge of the Neutral Zone. A further contact in 2365, initiated by the Q entity, led to an unprovoked attack on the Enterprise-D by the Borg which resulted in the death of eighteen crew members and near destruction of the ship.

The next Borg attack on the Federation destroyed the New Providence colony and the Starship Lalo. Subsequently the battle of Wolf 359 resulted in thirty nine Starfleet vessels being destroyed with eleven thousand people killed or assimilated. Subsequent encounters have been even more destructive.

Borg vessels generally appear to follow a very similar design philosophy, with the exception of the single vessel created by the Borg under the direction of the android Lore. All other Borg vessels are cubical, with all onboard systems distributed evenly throughout the ship. The entire vessel is protected by an adaptive shield system that is highly flexible and powerful; once the shields have adapted to a weapon no known force is capable of overcoming them. Starfleet has attempted to shortcut this problem by designing weapons which re-tune after each discharge and these have met with some success, but even so the distribution of systems makes the vessels extremely damage resistant. A Borg cube can function even if 80% of it is destroyed completely; in the Typhon sector battle an entire fleet plus heavy reinforcements succeeded in inflicting damage only to  the outer hull of the Borg cube despite continuous heavy attacks over a prolonged period.

Even if the vessels main functions fail due to extensive damage, the nanotechnology-based repair systems can continue to rebuild from a severely damaged hulk. Should members of the crew escape, a single Borg is capable of establishing a collective and spreading outwards from there.

Borg offensive weaponry is as potent as their defensive capacity. Their standard tactic is to use a high energy tractor beam or specialist warp capable energy weapon to drain the shields and disrupt the warp field of a target vessel, then to cut it up into sections with a laser cutting beam. These sections are then taken inside the Borg vessel, where the technology is analysed and then broken down and used in the Borg ship. If the vessel is thought to present a direct threat to the collective then the cutting beam or plasma weapons are used to destroy it once the shields are down.

Starfleet continues to field new technologies and more powerful Starships in order to overcome threats such as the Borg. But given their nature it is unlikely that they can be defeated by the Federation in any military sense. Establishing some form of Diplomatic settlement also seems unlikely, but in the final analysis this may be the only realistic option.