system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Trek] Why is the Federation so bad at fighting the Borg?

The entire premise of the series seems to revolve around out-thinking more powerful opponents and yet the Federation seems to repeatedly use the same ineffective tactics encounter after encounter when facing the Borg.

For example, when dealing with drones they continue to use phasers in every encounter when from the very beginning it's been shown that after a couple shots the Borg adapt and render these weapons useless until they are manually "re-modulated".  Why has no one in the Federation created an "Anti-Borg" rifle?  Just off the top of my head it could include:

* Phaser with auto-remodulation
* Disrupter Ray
* Old fashioned Laser
* Kinetic rounds (conventional bullets or railgun)
* Holographic/forcefield  rounds (such as Picard's Tommy gun on the holodeck to kill two drones)
* Flame Thrower
* Bayonet 

If the Borg could just be immune to everything all the time then they already would be so clearly they have to be selective about their defenses.  Putting together a multi-purpose weapon like this should render their defenses futile.
gpt
Part of it really is that the Federation does not want to consider itself a military. Oh, it has the function of one, the structure of one, it is a military in most senses of the word. But 23rd Century Federation citizens want to believe that they are above such things. They hold to their ideals that Starfleet is a peacekeeping and exploratory agency primarily. 

As such, development into pure weapons and dedicated anti-Borg tactics is stymied by budget restraints. The Federation feels that if they admit that they need such research, that they admitting failure. That they can't protect the galaxy with just defensive and exploratory methods. 

There are plenty of things the Federation could do if they took war seriously. They don't.