Victories were few and far between, the Alliance losing an average of five ships for every Minbari ship destroyed. Furthermore, Minbari sensor systems were capable of overloading the shielding on Earthforce power systems, rendering their jump drives inoperable - thus eliminating the possibility of escape.

In addition, their ships had considerably greater maneuverability and acceleration.

While Earth ships had enough firepower to cripple or destroy Minbari vessels, the Minbari warcruisers were equipped with highly advanced stealth systems which prevented Earthforce warships from achieving target lock.The Minbari, on the other hand, had no such problems, and had weapons capable of destroying their enemies in single hits. In these twelve seconds the Minbari destroyed every one of the attacking Earth vessels, allowing only one fighter to survive, so it could return home to tell its people of their impending doom. Despite being well within range of the Minbari's weapons, the Minbari ShLekkTha fleet allowed the Earth vessels to close into range and fire the first shot. The Minbari fleet consisted of only twelve War-Cruisers, to the Earth Alliance's forty starships, which consisted of Heavy Cruisers and Dreadnoughts. The Earth fleet entered the Minbari star system of ShLekkTha (Vega) and slowly entered weapon range of a waiting Minbari fleet. This was to be the first major battle of the war. Earth's intentions were to strike with a fleet of forty starships and destroy the Minbari base, thus proving to the Minbari that they were powerful, and force the Minbari to the bargaining table. Hoping that they could prove to the Minbari they were a power not to be trifled with, Earth launched a strike against a Minbari mid-range military base. The war lasted for two years and ended, in 2247, with the unexpected Minbari surrender at the Battle of the Line. The Human fleet commander misinterpreted the Minbari warrior caste's tradition of approaching a ship with gun ports open as hostile action and fired on the Minbari vessels without provocation, from the Minbari's point of view. The Earth-Minbari War began in 2245 when Earthforce expeditionary fleet damaged and destroyed vessels in the Grey Council's fleet, killing Dukhat.

Babylon 5 earth alliance ships