That's all fine and your points are well taken for those scenarios. Your random trade vessel just wanted to trade. If we were using captured alien technology that makes it perfectly believable that we could stand toe to toe with them in "legitimate combat." My understanding of Solar Warden had come from a story long ago (and I can't find it now) that alleged the aliens are trying to wipe out humanity and the secret program was in operation to prevent that. Something like Stargate SG1. The British were not trying to genocide the Indians no matter what Indians claim, and I do believe the Spanish could have easily killed all The Aztecs had they set their minds to it and sent more than an expeditionary force. That's again ignoring that once you have FTL you can probably destroy a planet without any fighting at all.

But now I can't find anything about Solar Warden being anything but a secret military space program interacting with 'non-terrestrial officers'. No details about what they were doing beyond that. The most I can find is a HuffPost story from 2012 and nobody should be reading HuffPost. So it looks like I was mistaken and arguing with a strawman. Please forget what I said.