The Dalriadan Alliance border reaches its closest point to Federation claimed space a mere 30 light years away from SB OMEGA. The Alliance is the largest (known and contacted) government native to this region of space, numbering over 100 star systems.  (The Sidhe Imperium is far larger, but remains largely mysterious and unknown to the Federation.)

Their technological development level is on par with the Federation, but derives from a somewhat different base.  This means the Federation, especially in the early stages of the conflict, will not be prepared to handle Dalriadan warships.  After all, the Dalriada have made exceptional efforts, for undisclosed reasons, to keep their unique technological base hidden from the Federation.

When within range of Federation ships, worlds, and systems, Dalriadan ships use "conventional" normal-space warp drive systems (rather than the dimensional drive), ion-based impulse drives (rather than the gravity wedge), cocooning gravitic shields (rather than the impenetrable gravity wedge which protects the top and bottom of the ship and weaker sidewalls), phasers (rather than the massive plasma and particle beam emplacements of most Dalriadan warships), photon torpedoes (instead of gravity impeller (that is wedge) driven missiles), etc.