Seems like this is the most powerful weapon of all: transport your enemy into a bulkhead, planet, etc. Transport your enemy's ship inside a planet, etc.
Is there some technical reason that it can not be used this way?
Answer
Your basic assumption is correct. The transporter is "potentially" one of the most dangerous technologies the Federation and its allies could ever have. You could:
- transport Marines from one ship to another killing crew/disrupting systems (acceptable)
- transport biogenic weapons lethal to organic lifeforms (frowned upon)
- transport photon torpedoes or other timed ordinance to the enemy vessel (been done)
- disrupt the warp core by transmitting matter into the containment field (possible)
- transport the entire engineering crew, deckplates and all into space (possible)
Technical Considerations
I can think of a few others with only the tiniest bit of effort. So what stops this from happening? The primary defense against transporter technology is the shield technology used by nearly every race in the Galaxy. The few races that do not use shields have a hull that prevents locking on by using dense hulls and powerful electromagnetic energy fields within their hulls, i.e Species 8472.
The transporter requires a targeting lock, the ability to ensure transport between two locations, so the shields prevent such a lock and the ability to prevent the lock does not require the full power of the shields. As long as any power remains able to be diverted to shields, no transporter actions are possible. This is one of the most basic tactics in Alpha quadrant combat. Drop the shields, transport marines to the enemy ships. Klingons prefer this and the Dominions Jem'Hadar were also quite good at it.
A second reason is the difficulty in using the Transporter with the accuracy required for warfare. It has always been a technology that did not lend itself to crisis. It requires significant computing power, consider skill to lock and transport materials, particularly against moving targets (go New Chekov!) and considerable engine power to ensure effective transport. All of these things are less available when the ship is under fire. The transporter is also vulnerable to a host of environmental conditions, electromagnetic disturbances, ion storms, nucleonic fields, dense metals and rock and is limited by range 40,000 kilometers and relativistic effects (can't transport from/to warping vessels).
Ethical Concerns
More important to the Federation is its ethics in combat. Though I cannot think of what the equivalent of the Geneva Convention might be (Seldonis IV Convention treaty) I am certain the Federation has rules about how combat should be fought and what weapons and techniques should be used. We know that biogenic weapons were outlawed and only used by rogue agencies (The Maquis, for example, who created a biogenic weapon for use against the Cardassians).
The transporter is probably one of those tools that does not get used the way it could because many of the techniques would be considered "unsportsmanlike" since it was a common policy even among more aggressive foes to take and exchange prisoners. So, combat was usually a thing where once ships were rendered incapable of fighting, surrenders were declared, life support and medical attention was supplied and prisoners were taken. Anything other than this ends up being a war crime in the very structured society that is the Federation.
I imagine other races may not play as fair as the Federation or in periods of "no holds barred" survival against such enemies as the Borg or Species 8472, I suspect even the Federation may take a "whatever works - by any means necessary" approach, and even that may vary from Captain to Captain.
When Captain Jean Luc Picard had the chance to create a recursive algorithm against the Borg, using the drone called 3 of 5 (renamed Hugh) that could potentially destroy any collective group that came in contact with Hugh, he refused despite the wartime footing of the Federation against the Borg. He considered it improper to use a living person as a weapon of mass destruction. (TNG: Descent, part I and II)
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