Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;

"Espatier" is a twofer. Its formation exactly parallels "Marine" (also French-derived, as are nearly all basic military terms), and it also parallels the English word "spacer," but with a nice shade of meaning — a spacer is anyone who lives/works in space; an espatier is a space soldier.

While the suggested "Ess pa tee yea" isn't especially unlikely, the French would be much closer to "Ess pa cee yay", as the t in the French "spatial" is pronounced like an s or a soft c.

The English adaptation would almost certainly end in "yea", because that's what usually happens to French words, but the c sound would likely remain, IMO.

Of those American vessels near the Argonne when first contact was made with the enemy, only the Washington was sufficiently massive to go out in a blast of yonder size and shape. If that was the case Captain Martin Diaz of the United States Astromilitary Corps was a dead man. The other ships of the line were too distant, traveling on vectors too unlike his own, for their scout boats to come anywhere close.

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“Good day, Captain Diaz,” he said, speaking English with little accent. “Permit me to introduce myself: General Leo Ilyitch Rostock, Cosmonautical Service of the People of United Asia.”

• 

(ed note: This article was written in 1979 and is admittedly a little dated. But most of it is still true.)

      The Third Industrial Revolution is going to create two areas of concern and interest to military planners in the next thirty to fifty years.

     One of these is new technology that will create new problems of defense and military operations. Space industrialization will produce new and less expensive space transportation systems. Space industrialization will produce radically new materials that will have military implications in terms of increased strength, decreased weight, and various other physical properties. Space industrialization will also produce very large energy collectors and transmission devices in space.

     The second area of concern involves the fact that the Third Industrial Revolution will create property of value in space—communications satellites, information-handling satellites, crewed space laboratories, crewed and uncrewed space factories, solar power satellites, lunar mining stations and outposts, lunar and orbital catapults or "mass drivers," and other facilities. There will be human activity in space connected with each of these. These facilities will also have commercial value, property value, and even military threat value. Where there exist arenas of human activity and inter-relationships and property, there will be disagreements and conflict. We cannot expect these aspects of human nature to change in the next fifty years.

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     Therefore as we go into space we will have to take our highly-evolved cultural heritages and societal organizations with us to forestall disagreements and to resolve conflicts. There are the rules, codes, regulations, laws, and treaties that we have individually and collectively agreed to observe. But they are effective only when the majority of people involved agree to abide by them, and when means exist to enforce compliance with them.
     These means of enforcement include the military police organizations. There is a very fine line of distinction between a military organization and a police organization. In some cultures and nations, the distinction cannot be drawn at all. In our Anglo-American culture, the police handle the affairs of internal compliance while the military organization handles the enforcement of trans—national agreements including protection of property from seizure or destruction by other nations.
     Therefore, the Third Industrial Revolution is not only going to require military/police protection of space property but will present military organizations with new technology. Both of these involve new military doctrines for use in earth-luna space … or cis-lunar space, that being the portion of space that exists between the Planet Earth and the orbit of its satellite, the Moon.
     Protection of space property is very dependent upon the basic military rationales, doctrines, and operational realities of cis-lunar celestial mechanics. Celestial mechanics involves the way objects move in space with relationship to various gravitational fields. it is no longer a subject for mere academic discussion or scientific utility in aiming space probes. Celestial mechanics becomes the cornerstone of space strategic and tactical doctrines.

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     There will be military operations in space above and beyond those necessary for protection of space properties.

     Historians Will and Ariel Durant have pointed out, “In every century the generals and rulers (with rare exceptions like Ashoka and Augustus) have smiled at the philosophers’ timid dislike of war … War is one of the constants of history, and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history, only 268 have seen no war."
     Anthropologist Dr. Carleton S. Coon has succinctly summarized the prevailing philosophy of the majority of the peoples (and therefore their governments) of the world in what he terms the “Neolithic philosophy: You stay in your village and I will stay in mine. If your sheep eat our grass we will kill you, or we may kill you anyhow to get all the grass for our own sheep. Anyone who tries to change our ways is a witch and we will kill him. Keep out of our village!”
     This Neolithic philosophy was successful for its time as an attempt to cope with a world where shortages and outright lack of basic survival necessities have been the norm. It created the “Atilla Syndrome," a least-effort way of acquiring what one wants and does not have: “Take it by force."

     The rational antithesis of the Atilla Syndrome has existed only briefly in recent history. It came into being about 250 years ago as a philosophical buttress to the First Industrial Revolution and it was a better least-effort solution: "Make it, don't take it, and everybody has more." This may be termed “The Industrial Syndrome.”

     Until the Neolithic philosophy of Coon disappears from the human race (if it ever does; it may be an important long-term survival trait), it would be folly to believe that mankind will disarm and settle all disputes by negotiation. The arts of diplomacy and politics are not yet rigorous enough to prevent us from killing each other all of the time … just some of the time. It is a very delicate evolving system that requires the lubrication of learned responses and manners. It is very susceptible to sand thrown in the works by charismatic leaders, "men on horseback." Its effectiveness is supported only by the veiled threat of physical force that could or might be brought to bear should diplomacy fail.
     Until we manage to eradicate the Neolithic philosophy and its Atilla Syndrome from the majority of the human race—if we ever do—there will be military implications to everything we do, like it or not.

     This led to late pioneer futurist, Dandridge M. Cole, to formulate in 1960 his famous “Panama Theory” of the military utilization of space. This theory is briefly stated:

     "There are strategic areas in space—vital to future scientific, military, and commercial space programs—which could be excluded from our use through occupation and control by unfriendly powers. This statement is based on the assumption that in colonizing space, man (and/other intelligent beings) will compete for the more desirable areas…

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     When this is applied to military space operations in the Earth-Moon system, the prime strategic doctrine is that of the "gravity well."

     The gravity well is a concept first put forth by Dr. Robert S. Richardson, then of Mount Wilson Observatory, and reported by Arthur C. Clarke in his pioneering 1950 book on space, Interplanetary Flight. Because of Earth's gravity field, our planet can be considered as being at the bottom of a tapering well some 4000 miles deep. Near the bottom of the well, the walls are very steep; as one reaches the top of the "gravity well," the sides become less steep until, at the top of this funnel, we have reached a nearly flat plain which is dimpled by another, smaller, shallower gravity well some 240,000 miles away, the gravity well of the Moon. While this is a simplification, it conveys the concept of the gravity well.
     To climb up the gravity well from the planetary surface requires a great deal of energy. Partway up the gravity well, it is possible to maintain the position of an object by making it spin around the surface of the funnel rapidly enough so that centrifugal force neatly balances the gravitational force tending to pull the object back to the planet at the bottom of the funnel. To get away from the earth, one must project an object such as a space vehicle up the side of the gravitational well at an initial speed of 7 miles per second; it then climbs the walls of the well and, if its direction and speed are just right, crosses the nearly level plain at the top until it falls into the gravity well of the Moon. Or goes on outward into the Solar System, in which case our gravity well model must be expanded to include the very powerful gravity well of the Sun. But since we are considering only the Earth-Moon system herein, the simple model will suffice.

     The strategic implications of the gravity well in military space operations require that one be at the top of a gravity well or at least higher up the well than the adversary.

     The planet-bound analogy to this is the doctrine of the “high ground." In naval tactics during the age of sail, it was the "wind gauge" (or weather gage); or getting upwind of the enemy. (Heinlein called the space war version the "gravity gauge")
     The salient feature of the gravity well doctrine is the fact that it provides both an energy advantage and a maneuvering advantage to the person on the high ground. It requires far less energy in the form of propulsion and propellants to operate high on the gravity well, and it is possible to maneuver with relative ease and flexibility at or near the top of it.
     A simple analogy indicates the basic military advantage: Put one man at the bottom of a well and the other at the top of a well. Give them both rocks to throw at each other. Which man is going to get hurt? Which man has more time to see his opponent's rocks coming and more opportunity to get out of the way? Which man has the greater opportunity to do something about the oncoming rock?
     In Earth-Moon orbital space the person having a base of maneuver on top of a deep gravity well or in a shallower gravity well than his opponent has a definite military advantage in terms of surveillance capability, energy required to affect a strike, maneuvering room, and the ability to activate countermeasures in reasonable time.

     The logical consequence of the gravity well doctrine leads inevitably to the most important military fact of the late 20th Century and the early 21st Century: with improvements in space transportation available and with the technology in hand to maintain long-term military positions in space, the control of the Moon means control of the Earth. In a like manner, according to this doctrine, control of the L4 and L5 Libration points in the lunar orbit means control of the Earth-Moon system.
     Control implies that one is able to regulate the flow of space-going commerce and other traffic, to protect one's own facilities in space, to deny the use of other critical military and/or commercial orbital areas to others, to launch strikes against any target on the surface of the Earth or the Moon or in any orbit in the Earth-Moon system, or to detect any oncoming threat and take counteraction in time.

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• 

     The gravity well doctrine dictates the general considerations for space weapons systems that would be most effective. However, one must first take a careful look at the basic concept of a weapon.
     A weapon can be broadly defined as a means of imposing one’s will upon another. Thus, a weapon need not have a physical reality; the threat of the use of a weapon is itself a weapon—if the opponent believes the said weapon exists and will be used.
     Heinlein defines a weapon as a machine for the manipulation of energy. But it has a broader definition than that. The following categorization of weapons may be useful in determining those that would be most useful in various operational zones of the Earth-Moon system and may also provide a key to the discovery of new and heretofore unsuspected space weapons that could be developed and used with the technology of the Third Industrial Revolution.

     Mass manipulators: Produce damage through the use of the basic inertial characteristics of mass and the conversion of energy of position (potential energy) to energy of motion (kinetic energy): mass projectors, penetrators, detectors, and decoys.

     Energy manipulators: Produce damage through the application of high energy density or the sudden release of large amounts of energy: projectors, concentrators, releasers, screens, and detectors.

     Biological manipulators: Produce damage to organic life forms or other chemical agents: gases, poisons, disease vectors, etc.

     Psychological manipulators: Produce alteration of the mental state of the enemy in a desirable fashion that reduces the will or capability to resist: propaganda, counterintelligence, brain-washing, covert manipulation of the information media, mood-altering drugs, consciousness-altering drugs, mind-altering drugs.

     Some weapons are a combination of one or more of these basic types, and some require a vehicle to transport them to the point of use or application.

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     Use of these weapons in. accordance with the strategic doctrine of the gravity well requires in turn that we consider the Earth-Moon system to consist of a series of definite military operational areas. These are basically zones within the gravity well or, for a better mental view, a series of concentric spheres with the Earth at the center. These are no so much well-defined spheres with distinct boundaries, but rather zones of operation that fade into one another. In a sense, they resemble the energy levels of electrons around an atomic nucleus. Briefly, these zones may be defined as:

     Near Earth Orbit (NEO) extending from an arbitrary level of 50 kilometers above the Earth's surface to approximately 200 kilometers—well below the lower limits of the Van Allen radiation belts.

     Cis-lunar Space (CLS) extending from about 200 kilometers above the Earth's surface to the geosynchronous orbital altitude of about 39,000 kilometers.

     Lunar Surface/Orbit (LSO) extending from geosynchronous orbit to the lunar orbit about the Earth and including the Near Lunar Orbits with an arbitrary altitude of about 100 kilometers from the lunar surface.

     Translunar Space (TLS) extending from the lunar orbit out to an arbitrary distance of approximately one million kilometers from the surface of the Earth (actually Hill Sphere is more like 1.5 million kilometers from Terra) at which distance an object can be considered to be in orbit around the Sun due to the much greater influence of the solar gravity field at that distance.

     Each operational area has unique military considerations that affect tactical doctrine, tactical operations, and weapons systems within each area.

     Near Earth Orbit is a valuable military operational area for earth-launched, earth-oriented activities and of course is already being used as such; it is an area that is easily reached from the earth's surface by spacecraft capable of attaining velocities of about 25,000 feet per second. So far during this decade at least six nations have begun conducting reconnaissance and surveillance operations there—and at least two nations operate crewed spacecraft in the area. In the years to come NEO could be used for quick-look and high-detail surveillance, satellite hunter-killer operations, a staging area for crewed surface-to-surface troop strike transports, and “quick dip” hypersonic skimming into the upper atmosphere for surveillance, reconnaissance, or offensive purposes. Thus, NEO is basically a tactical scouting area for earth-centered operations and a maneuvering area for surface-to-surface operations. It is also the area through which surface-to-surface ICBM's must travel during the ballistic portion of their flight and therefore the area in which they are most vulnerable to intercept by orbital-launched interceptors or orbital beam weapons. Although NEO is reasonably far up on the sides of the gravity well funnel in terms of the energy requirements needed to reach the area from the earth’s surface, current technology permits the deployment of rapid-ascent satellite interceptors. Thus NEO is an area where it is difficult to respond to threat: a nearness to counter-weapons on the surface or in orbit, and large energy expenditures are required for maneuver in the area. The possibility of basing a large crewed military space station in NEO should be dismissed; it would be a very large target in a predictable trajectory and would be destroyed in the opening moments of any war in which its presence could be a factor.

     Cis-lunar space, however is a more valuable zone of maneuver and reconnaissance. Not only is less energy required for maneuver but geosynchronous orbit lies in CLS, making it a prime location for surveillance, navigational, communications, data transfer, meteorological, and energy satellites. Geosynchronous orbit is already crowded. As of mid-1977, there were more than a hundred uncrewed satellites located in geosynchronous orbit. Because of orbital crowding and the possibility of frequency interference caused by beam overlapping, these numerous small satellites will be replaced in the late 1980s and the 1990s with large, multi-purpose platforms which will be militarily vulnerable.
     However, facilities in CLS are more secure from earth-launched offensive operations because of the time required for vehicles to climb the gravity well. Various location and detection systems sited in NEO and CLS may be used to identify any potential threat with sufficient early-warning time to permit initiation of counter-activities.
     The primary consideration of CLS from the military point of view is the strategic importance of the Trojan libration points in the lunar orbit. More of this later.

     Lunar surface/orbit has quite different military characteristics. Because of the mass of Luna, it is a prime location for a military base on or probably beneath its surface. It is the prime location for one of the most important space weapons systems we can now foresee, a weapon system that is basically very old. This device is the catapult, usually referred to in current terminology as a "mass driver.” Whatever term is used to identify it, it is a rock-thrower. The Moon is the best site in the Earth-Moon system for such a device because the mass of the Moon provides ample ammunition for the mass driver as well as a very large and stable base to improve its accuracy. Launching very large masses at speeds of a mile per second or more produces some massive reaction forces which would misalign or reorient any mass driver located on its own in orbital space.
     The lunar mass driver is a critical system requirement for the overall industrialization of the Earth-Moon system. Although an Earth-based mass driver is a potential commercial cargo transportation system for terrestrial materials launched into space, the energy requirements are very large because of the Earth’s atmosphere and the very deep gravity well; the lunar mass driver is the most economical cargo r transportation device now envisioned for providing materials for space industrialization, including the materials to construct large space structures. It will undoubtedly be built in several locations on the lunar surface for providing lunar materials for deep space operations in the Earth-Moon system. However, it has a military utility that cannot and must not be overlooked.
     A large lunar mass driver capable of hurling masses of up to one ton can be converted into an earth bombardment system. It is a non-nuclear weapon and not subject to existing UN treaties!The results of the sudden dissipation of large amounts of kinetic energy should not be lightly dismissed. The Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona was created by the impact of an estimated 80-foot diameter nickel-iron meteorite; the impact was roughly equivalent to the detonation of 2,500,000 tons of TNT—read that as a 2.5 megaton bomb.
     Small lunar mass drivers can be used as weapons systems against space facilities. Such small mass drivers can be considered as space Gatling guns. Such a small mass driver is envisioned as throwing a mass of a couple of kilograms, but throwing such small masses in very rapid succession. The impact of a one kilogram mass travelling at several miles per second can do considerable damage to a space facility—such as when several hundred or thousand such masses impact a solar power satellite, the iridescent solar panels of a reconnaissance satellite, or the pressure hull of a crewed space station.
     No explosives are required for such space weapons; the conversion of kinetic energy to heat is quite sufficient.
     The military capabilities of mass drivers built and used for commercial purposes are such that they will require protection against seizure or destruction, wherever they are built and operated.

     The area of military operations beyond the lunar orbit that we have tagged "Translunar Space" is a zone of maneuver and rendezvous for military space vehicles with very large propulsion and maneuvering capabilities. There is a location in this area, however, that could be used as a military staging point. Beyond the Moon’s orbit along the Earth-Moon line lies a zone in space where the gravity fields of both the Earth and the Moon balance one another; this is known as the L2 lunar libration point. Anything placed at the L2 point will stay there, hidden from view of anyone on the surface of the Earth or on the earthside of the Moon.

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• 

     There are two other locations in the Earth-Moon system that are of the utmost military importance. These are the so-called “Trojan” lunar libration points. They are the result of a special and unique solution to the classical "three body" problem in celestial mechanics. There is a zone in the Moon's orbit 60-degrees behind or following the Moon in the orbit and 60 degrees ahead of the Moon; these are stable points where the gravity field of the Earth and the Moon are balanced or equalled-out. An object placed in either of these two libration points—labeled L4 and L5 for convenience—will stay there. L4 and L5 are the two most stable of the libration points in the Earth-Moon system.

     The importance of the L4 and L5 libration points from a military viewpoint is the fact that neither has a gravity well and both sit at the top of the gravity wells of both the Earth and the Moon. From the L4/L5 points, one can control the gravity wells of the entire Earth-Moon system.
     These libration points have no gravity wells. A zero gravity well means the greatest capability for maneuver with the minimum amount of energy and denies the use of a gravity well to an adversary for his purposes.
     At L4/L5, one sits on top of the hill, so to speak. These points are the most difficult places to reach in the Earth-Moon system from the energy expenditure point of view. They are therefore the best places to site any military bases because they are defensible. They are the best locations for small mass drivers and high-energy beam weapons.

     L4/L5 are proposed as the locations of large future space settlements by O'Neill and the L5 Society. Nowhere in the extensive literature about this proposal is there to be found any discussion of the military implications of these L4/L5 sites. If the military implications were considered, they were either dismissed as unimportant or simply ignored for philosophical/ideological reasons.
     There is no guarantee that any space settlements at the L4/L5 locations—or on the Moon either, for that matter—will remain peaceful industrial or commercial activities. Writers such as Heinlein and Bova have already speculated on scenarios involving revolutions and seizures of such space settlements. There are any number of grievances that can and have triggered military uprisings. There are any number of reasons or lessons from history wherein an industrious, hard-working group of close-knit people have taken a sharp turn in their external affairs to become a military threat.
     And there are any number of scenarios that can be developed around the seizure and takeover of a large L4/L5 space settlement for military reasons. These reasons might include control of the settlement's product of value—energy or materials—or straightaway military control of the facility to exert military pressure on nations on Earth.

     There are therefore two roles for military space operations involving the space settlements at L4/L5: (a) military protective force or presence, similar to that of the U.S. Army in the American West following the Civil War, for the purpose of protecting the settlements against takeover or prevention of the use of military force by the inhabitants of the settlements, or (b) straightforward use of part of the L4/L5 space settlements as an admitted military base of operations for control of the Earth-Moon system.
     This last will be argued vehemently. However, are we very certain that the space settlements under consideration will be built or even occupied forever by the sort of hard-working, industrious, peace-loving Anglo-American types now envisaged as populating these settlements by advocates?
     One must point out that there are social characteristics of many basically militant Oriental cultures that would make their people optimum space settlers, characteristics such as the ability to live in high-density quarters with little or no privacy, subjugation of the individual to the group, highly structured manners and other inter-personal interfaces, and unquestioning willingness of the individual to follow the directives of authority figures. The military in these cultures now lies barely beneath the surface of the culture, hidden from recent conquerors in some cases.
     How will this situation be handled? The author can only point to the problem. It will take the best minds and the most careful diplomacy of the next fifty to one hundred years to begin to find workable solutions to the basic problem.
     The L4/L5 points may be declared demilitarized international zones; this may work for a time, but from a historic point of view, treaties are rarely inviolate for as long as fifty years and practically never in force a century after their signing.
     By international agreement, a balance of power situation may be established with adversaries controlling the two lunar libration points in a carry-over into space of the current USA-USSR balance of strategic power.

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     We may also find that the Third Industrial Revolution takes into space many of the current industrial security activities that surround most business operations in a quiet, unobtrusive, but highly effective manner. The military may indeed be present in space as they already are. There may also be another type of organization in space connected with space industrialization: a police force, the security guard, and company cops.
     It is often easier to get into a secure military base than it is to gain access to a factory. Industrial security is much more stringent than military security; this is a statement of observed fact.
     We may find that firms involved in space industrialization would rather hire mercenaries than depend upon military protection from a government. Firms such as Brinks, Wells Fargo, Purolator, and other private security organizations may end up in space along with many of the industrial firms they presently protect.

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     Each advance of humanity into new and different environments has created new types of social organizations to handle the new problems presented by the advance. Our expansion into space in the Third Industrial Revolution is no exception. We are beginning to see the development of new types of social organization to handle the knotty problems of raising large amount of capital to finance high-risk, long-term projects such as solar power satellites. The Third Industrial Revolution presents other difficult problems, as we have seen. We must therefore anticipate the development of new types of military organizations that might evolve to handle the very difficult problems arising from the military implications of our expansion into space.
     We cannot ignore the reality of the military implications of space any more than we can ignore the reality of our home town lives by disbanding the town police force. We can attempt to build a universe of law where matters of human conflict can be solved by judgment, arbitration or negotiation. But this universe of law must be backed up by the means to enforce the rules through application of physical coercion. This will always be the case as long as the Atilla Syndrome exists in the human race …and that may be for a very long time to come if we meet, Out There, another species that is as mean, as nasty, and as highly competitive as we are.

• 

New Secretary of the Air Force (SecAF) Heather Wilson and three top Air Force space leaders told Congress today that space no longer is just an enabler and force enhancer for U.S. military operations, it is a warfighting domain just like air, land, and sea.

Just 24 hours after being sworn in as the 24th SecAF, Wilson testified to the Strategic Forces subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC).  Joining her were Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force Space Command commander Gen. John Raymond, and Air Force Space and Missiles Systems Center commander Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves.   The topic was military space organization, programs and policy and the Government Accountability Office's (GAO's) Cristina Chaplain was another witness.  She especially addressed long standing DOD and Air Force organizational challenges to effectively develop and implement space programs.

A major theme was that space no longer is a "benign" environment that supports the warfighter, but a warfighting domain itself.  In their joint written testimony, the Air Force officials said:  "Clearly, freedom to operate in space is not guaranteed.  In fact, space is now a warfighting domain, similar to the more familiar air, land, and maritime domains our men and women are fighting in today."

(ed note: I could be misunderstanding, but I take that to mean that "supports the warfighter" means "GPS satellites are a big help for the Air Force combat in the atmosphere" while "warfighting domain" means "the enemy will be targeting GPS and other spaceborne assets so we must defend them")

Asked whether he thought it was time to create a Space Corps analogous to the Marine Corps to better focus attention and resources on what is needed for space, Goldfein said no — the timing is not right precisely because of this transition in thinking about space from a benign environment to a warfighting domain.  "Anything that leads to separating space instead of integrating it" into the overall military framework would "slow us down," though it might be considered in the future.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) asked whether the United States should engage in an "international conversation about an international code of conduct."  Wilson replied that is a policy issue that reaches beyond the Air Force.  From her perspective, the Air Force's role is to be sure the United States can prevail "irrespective of consensus on international norms because there will be players who do not abide by those norms."

The Air Force leaders stressed the need to modernize space systems to maintain space superiority — "a core USAF mission" — to address gaps in space capabilities, strategy and  policy.  Although progress has been made on mission assurance and resiliency, work is needed on deterrence and 21st Century requirements.  Asked what countries pose the greatest threat to U.S. space assets, Goldfein not surprisingly identified Russia and China.  The open hearing did not delve deeply into those threats because details are classified. …

…The organizational problems within DOD and the Air Force for space activities are well known.  Many reports have been written about them dating back at least to the 2001 Rumsfeld Commission report.  In October 2015, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work created a new position of Principal DOD Space Adviser (PDSA) to be filled by the SecAF and reporting to the Secretary of Defense (SecDef).  SecAF Deborah Lee James was the first to fill it and there were rumors she also would be the last because it almost immediately came under criticism for being ineffective.

Wilson announced during the hearing, however, that she is the "principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense for space," so it appears SecDef James Mattis will keep the structure as it is for now. 

GAO issued a report in July 2016, prepared at congressional direction, saying that it was too early to judge the office's effectiveness.  However, it noted that there are 60 stakeholder organizations across DOD, the Executive Office of the President, the Intelligence Community, and civilian agencies involved in national security space activities, fragmenting leadership responsibilities. 

Chaplain indicated today that little has changed since that report was issued.  Among the consequences of fragmented responsibilities is ineffective program execution. For example, the satellite segment of a system may be completed well before the associated ground system, which "wastes capabilities."

Chaplin's written statement summarizes cost growth and schedule delays in a number of Air Force space programs, but the one that got the most attention at the hearing was the Operational Control Segment (OCX) for the new GPS III series of positioning, navigation and control satellites.  OCX is nearly $2 billion over budget and 4 years late.  Asked if it was "too big to fail," Raymond and Greaves both said no, that the program was designed with milestone-driven "off ramps" in case there are further delays or the program is cancelled. 

Wilson added "we're not out of the woods" yet.

      WASHINGTON — Lawmakers on Tuesday took the first step towards establishing a ‘Space Corps’ within the Air Force — similar to the way the Marine Corps functions in the Navy — by drafting legislation that would require the new organization to be set up by January 1, 2019.
     As the House Armed Services Committee prepares to vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the strategic forces subcommittee — which oversees military space matters — released its proposed additions to the bill. The subcommittee has scheduled a formal legislative mark-up session for its portions of the bill on Thursday.

     The subcommittee’s top Republican, Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, and top Democrat, Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, said the subcommittee’s mark would require the Air Force to establish the Space Corps to serve “as a separate military service within the Department of the Air Force and under the civilian leadership of the Secretary of the Air Force.”
     “There is bipartisan acknowledgement that the strategic advantages we derive from our national security space systems are eroding,” Rogers and Cooper said in a prepared statement. “We are convinced that the Department of Defense is unable to take the measures necessary to address these challenges effectively and decisively, or even recognize the nature and scale of its problems.”
     “Thus, Congress has to step in,” the statement continues. “We must act now to fix national security space and put in place a foundation for defending space as a critical element of national security. Therefore, our Mark will require the creation, under the Secretary of the Air Force, of a new Space Corps, as a separate military service responsible for national security space programs for which the Air Force is today responsible. We view this as a first, but critical step, to fixing the National Security Space enterprise.”

     The Space Corp would be led by its own chief, who would sit on the Joint Chiefs of Staff with a six-year term, the bill says. It would be a position equal to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and would answer to the Secretary of the Air Force.
     The subcommittee’s markup of the bill would also set up a U.S. Space Command that would be a sub-unified command under U.S. Strategic Command, a move lawmakers hope would improve the integration of space operations in warfighting.

     The subcommittee’s action on the NDAA is one of the early steps in a lengthy legislative process. The bill would still need to get approval from the full committee before it could be debated by the House, but the chamber isn’t expected to vote on the NDAA until after the Fourth of July holiday. The legislation would also need to pass the Senate, which is working on a defense authorization bill of its own. The House and Senate must pass identical bills before sending the legislation to the White House to be signed into law by the president.
     The Senate Armed Services Committee is not scheduled to hold its full markup of the NDAA until June 28.

     Current Air Force leadership opposes setting up a Space Corps. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee in May, Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said he believes the move would only cause confusion.
     “I don’t support it at this time,” the general said. “Right now, to get focused on a large organizational change would actually slow us down…Whether there’s a time in our future where we want to take a look at this again, I would say that we keep that dialog open, but right now I think it would actually move us backwards.”
     In a statement sent to SpaceNews, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said the service is taking steps to bolster space operations.
     “I could not agree more that now is the time to address the threats our nation faces in space, which is why the Air Force has proposed a 20 percent increase in space funding in this year’s budget, and announced last week a reorganization that integrates, elevates and normalizes space,” the secretary said.

• 

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Air Force leaders generally agree that the service will need more skills in three key areas: space, cyber and intelligence. Where that talent will come from is still a matter of debate.

Lt. Gen. Maryanne Miller, chief of Air Force Reserve, says many of the specialized space and cyber operators the Air Force hopes to add to its ranks are likely to be part-time reservists.

Miller recently sat down with Gen. John Raymond, commander of Air Force Space Command, to discuss this very topic. The command is leading a long-term project to sharpen space warfare skills in the Air Force and prepare for future wars against peer competitors.

A central challenge that Raymond faces, said Miller, is “How do you take the space domain and convert it into a war fighting environment?”

There is no simple answer to that question, Miller told SpaceNews at the Air Force Association’s Air Space Cyber conference. She believes the same effort that the Air Force has put into training and nurturing aircraft pilots now needs to be applied to the military space business.

The space mission is becoming more complex and more intertwined with other areas of warfare, said Miller. “There is more focus on intelligence gathering. How do we build the capacity for space intelligence?” she asked. “We grew up in the intelligence arena with aviation. We are experts in that. So how do we build that same capacity in the space environment?”

Given the success the Air Force has achieved in air warfare, the same force-development model should work for space, said Miller. But she cautioned that this is easier said than done. “It’s a challenging time as we look to go from space awareness and monitoring to space war fighting.”

On any given day, about 6,500 Air Force reservists are performing duties in space, cybersecurity and other disciplines. As demand grows in these career fields, one of the ongoing debates is the possibility of allowing civilians to join the Air Force Reserve. “Can we tap into that civilian capacity in a part-time way?” Miller asked. “We are looking into that.”

It is a tricky issue to have people serving in the military who are not required to be in uniform, but it may turn out to be the most practical way to get talent, Miller said. “Not everyone has to be in a blue suit.”

• 

Amazingly, the coronavirus crisis has not had any effect on the political and bureaucratic fight over the new US Space Force. The conflict currently includes issues such as creation of a Space Force National Guard component and a new Space Force intelligence agency.

In spite of efforts to complicate the issue, the National Guard question is simple. A Space Force with a National Guard component has a lot more political independence from the Air Force than does a Space Force without one. Today, Air and Army National Guard units are closely connected with the elected leaders of their respective states. It has been reported that only seven states have units that are eligible to become part of the Space Force National Guard. At the moment the stakes seem low, but if the new service is to become truly independent it will need all the clout it can get.

The Secretary of Defense and his office cannot make policy decision for Guard units without consulting Congress and state governors. This sometimes makes life difficult for the Pentagon’s so-called “E Ring Elephants” but it is essential to the well-being of our reserve forces and, more importantly, it reminds out military leaders of the reality of our republican form of government. The Constitution says that Congress has the power “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States.” A Space Force National Guard is obviously constitutional, and would be a small but valuable addition to our system of checks and balances. The question is now whether Congress and the Defense Department have the will to work together to create this small, but useful addition to America’s military power in space.

In the long term, the nature and mission of the Space Force’s intelligence organization is going to determine whether the new service can accomplish its mission “to provide space capabilities to the joint force.” Once the United States Space Force was established, it became obvious that it would have to have its own intelligence organization, and that this organization would be the 18th member of the intelligence community in the US. The argument now is over the new organization’s scope and mission.

One idea is to limit the Space Force’s intelligence service to studying and tracking satellites, space junk, and objects that are reactively close to the Earth, out to geosynchronous orbit. To some extent this is natural, as military activity is now concentrated in these orbits, but this could change rapidly. For example, a few years ago it was suggested that the US deploy space satellites, such as ones for the GPS system, that would be placed well beyond geosynchronous orbit to protect them from attack. When needed, they could be moved to more conventional positions. Ours in not the only nation with the capacity to place spacecraft in out-of-the-way locations. Such orbits might also be ideal places to hide killer satellites that could approach targets closer to Earth from “above,” so to speak.

At the very least, Space Force Intelligence must have the mission and ultimately the ability to observe and classify every bit of human made “stuff” in the Earth-Moon system. What used to be called Space Situational Awareness and is now called Space Domain Awareness cannot be limited to current military space practices.

In the US, the tracking of objects in space is currently the exclusive job of the military. With the expansion of commercial space activity, this mission may eventually be shared with civilian organizations such as the Office of Space Commerce. There is also an extensive network of amateur observers who work to track hard-to-spot space objects, as well as those not included in US military catalogs. This may help make the Space Force’s intelligence operations easier, but it will never relieve them of the duty to keep tabs on what is going on out there, especially on objects that might threaten US space assets.

There will be other controversies the Space Force and its supporters will have to deal with. Its role in missile defense is going to have to be clarified and defined. Its relations with spy satellite operators and users at the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency will need to be clarified. The Defense Department and the Congress are going to be struggling with Space Force issues for a long time to come—assuming we come out of the pandemic alive.

• 

• 

Protecting NASA
The 144,000 acres of KSC (Kennedy Space Center) is co-located on the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, with wetlands and waterways including 25 miles of coastline. About 14,000 NASA and contract workers staff the KSC administrative, research, maintenance and launch facilities on a daily basis. In addition, 2 million visitors come by cars and buses every year, making the KSC Visitor Center a top Florida tourist attraction. What this all means is that KSC has every kind of terrain and issue that any major law enforcement agency encounters, with the added responsibility of protecting some of the highest value assets that America is proud to have. The KSC security police force and in particular the KSC Emergency Response Team (ERT) is well staffed, equipped and led to ensure that workers, visitors and America’s unique spaceport is well protected.

The KSC ERT is a full-time, armed response team that has at least five operators and one leader on duty at any time. When not engaged in actual special operations, training or supporting one of the many Space Shuttle Orbiter evolutions that require ERT protection (last Shuttle flight was July 21, 2011), the officers engage in routine activities that support the site’s security program. In order to fully support all the law enforcement duties that such a complex area requires, each sworn officer has arrest powers with the ability to enforce not only federal statutes, but state and wildlife conservation laws as well. Under the auspices of the NASA Security and Law Enforcement Program, the KSC security police force and ERT also closely work with the FBI and Regional Domestic Security Task Force on specific investigative and intelligence issues.

Built Upon a Select Few
To get on the KSC ERT, one must apply as part of the NASA security force, or outside the agency and be accepted for the in-house ERT training school run by Captain Dan Magetteri. The course is run at NASA’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Academy that has been recently upgraded to include a “rifle-grade” shoot house, a portable, tactical “shoot-back” trailer for cover and concealment drills, automated running targets and a new classroom. These improvements were in addition to the already existing three firearms ranges, “pistol-grade” shoot house with seven rooms and two hallways, obstacle course and rappel tower. The operators selected as the designated snipers are trained at nationally recognized and accredited sniper schools as well as fulfilling all NASA initial and requalification training requirements. Every KSC ERT candidate must pass the physical, shooting and classroom portions of the 88-hour course in order to join the team, with every grade greater than 90%. Even though the candidates who start the school are uniformly experienced, the school begins at a basic level with training that includes the following:

Weapons qualification for all weapons
– Crisis resolution
– Assault planning process
– Dynamic entry
– Covert entry
– Basic marksmanship
– Vehicle assaults
– Climbing and rapelling
– Escalation of force options

The result is that every team member is fully qualified at every job, so if needed, whoever is first on the scene can immediately evaluate, assess, plan and execute an assault without waiting for assistance. The ERT in-service training curricula include eight hours of S.W.A.T. training per operator per week to maintain proficiency and teamwork.

Sharp Tactics and Weapons
Each operator, including team leaders, must maintain their weapons qualification on all the weapons that KSC ERT uses, which currently include the HK 416 in 5.56×45 NATO as their primary weapon and the 9mm Glock Model 17 as their sidearm. The ERT snipers use the Remington 700 and Armalite AR-10T in 7.62×51 NATO. The semi-auto AR-10T is for precision shooting from moving vehicles like NASA’s Bearcat armored vehicle, boats like the Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) recovery ships, the Liberty Star and Freedom Star, or one of the Huey-II helicopters the ERT uses. The versatile Hueys enable the ERT to rapidly deploy anywhere in their area of responsibility and can be equipped with one or two FNH M-240D’s to provide immediate direct protection against ground or airborne threats to the Orbiter in transit or sitting on the launch pad. In fact, whenever the Shuttle is preparing for launch or being transported on-site, the ERT provides 24/7 protection. This includes the eight-hour trip from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to pad 39A, the last operable Shuttle launch pad, using the massive 1-mile-per-hour crawler.

Crew Protection

The ERT mission of guarding valuable national assets also includes providing protection for the primary flight crew for Shuttle missions whenever they are on-site or when they leave the facility as part of their NASA duties. When the flight crew suits up and travels to the Orbiter in preparation for launch, the motorcade includes an armed and armored ERT escort. In addition, if there is an emergency landing or an incident with the Orbiter, the KSC ERT is responsible for the immediate securing of the scene and protection of the astronauts. The ERT is designated and equipped to respond to certain launch emergency scenarios including entry of the launch tower to extract the crew.

NASA is unique because it alone embodies our national hopes and dreams of expanding our horizons beyond this planet. The KSC ERT is the first responder to protect those hopes and dreams by keeping our spaceport, spacecraft and astronauts safe. They are way beyond Han Solo, Captain Kirk and Starbuck combined—the KSC ERT is the real protector of our future in space.

• 

The Space Force debate covers a wide range of topics, from “who will be in charge?” to “what color will the uniforms be?” The one topic, however, that should be paramount to all in this debate should be, “how can we create a Space Force culture supportive and worthy of a separate service?” Without such a culture, I believe, we cannot truly realize the full potential and strength of a separate service dedicated to the protection and defense as well as peaceful and prosperous utilization of space. This overarching space force culture that I propose here would be the foundation for the greater culture to be developed and honed, that of a Space Warfighter.

The foundation of this Space Force culture I propose here is based on three principles:

1. Know and appreciate the history and heritage of US space technology, engineering, and operations.
2. Develop and devote ourselves to a set of guiding principles of conduct that all Space Force personnel can identify with.
3. Have an unrelenting quest for space domain comprehension, knowledge, and expertise on all the systems and capabilities we wield.

History and heritage

First, we must reach back and learn the lessons, challenges, and triumphs of past military and national space endeavors. There is considerable history about others who have been on this road we travel. Acquiring our own knowledge of this history will foster the development of a space culture in which we understand and benefit from the successes and failures of space patriots who have come before us.

For example, the US has pursued offensive space control concepts since the late 1950s. For example, Program 437 (declassified in 2010) was the Air Force’s first operational anti-satellite system (1964–1974). The F-15/ASAT test team of the 1980s leveraged lessons learned from Program 437 that contributed to success in multiple flight tests and readiness demonstrations.

There are many other historical pursuits of space control systems we can learn from. There is a treasure trove of lessons learned in rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO). The first ever RPO, accomplished in December 1965 between Gemini 6 and 7, has not only astrodynamics lessons, but also showcases a relentless determination in the face of adversity. The Air Force Experimental Satellite System (XSS)-10, XSS-11, and Automated Navigation and Guidance Experiment for Local Space (ANGELS) RPO experiments likewise gives valuable insight into the early systems and operations. If you want some “heart pounding, hands sweating” history, checkout the detailed stories of the failed DART experiment or the Progress/Mir collision. These provide insight into how not to pursue RPO objectives. Most of these past efforts are unclassified.

To further increase awareness of our heritage, I believe the nation needs to review and declassify more past programs as the benefits will go far beyond historical insight. Awareness, appreciation, and respect for the past will inform and help us in our future and motivate all future Space Force warriors in their assigned roles. General (ret.) James Mattis, an avid reader and student of history, reinforces this point as he states, “Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the Sun.” Others have trod the paths we today navigate; let’s learn from them.

Guiding principles

At the stand-up of the US Space Command, their culture was summarized as “combat effectiveness in, from, and through space.” This singular focus is on combat: quite an effective rallying cry. I feel there is a need for a common set of guiding principles for everyone to guide their conduct and dedication in their roles. It’s something everyone, no matter your Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC) or whether you are acquisition, intelligence, operations, or some other skill, can identify with. Our human spaceflight colleagues at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) have lived by a great example of this concept. The Foundations of Mission Operations are a set of core values and guiding principles that govern everything the Flight Operations Directorate does as they plan, conduct mission control, astronaut and flight controller training, and mission planning, design and assessment tasks. Human spaceflight pioneers like Chris Kraft and Gene Kranz get well-deserved credit for establishing these foundations in the early days of US human spaceflight.

The original four tenets of the Foundations of Mission Operations are introduced to all JSC personnel as follows: To instill within ourselves these qualities essential to professional excellence: “Discipline, Confidence, Responsibility and Teamwork.” Following the Apollo 1 fire in 1967, “Toughness and Competence” were added by Gene Kranz as essential to the work they do. “Vigilance” was added after the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia as a reminder to be “always attentive to the dangers of spaceflight; never accepting success as a substitute for rigor in everything we do.”

Two additional guiding principles join the seven tenets described above; these are:

“To always be aware that suddenly and unexpectedly we may find ourselves in a role where our performance has ultimate consequences,” and

“To recognize that the greatest error is not to have tried and failed, but that in the trying we do not give it our best effort.”

A surefire way to develop a Space Force culture is for everyone on the team to believe, without a doubt, that the “suddenly and unexpectedly” and “performance has ultimate consequences” principles are essential to the mindset needed in the present military space arena, especially the future as adversaries develop and field lethal capabilities. No matter what your role or job is, you could find yourself living the principle out in some sudden and unexpected event while on duty within Space Force. Going in with that mindset is essential. In what we face today and expect in today’s and tomorrow’s contested space arena, odds are high that you will but put to the test many times. It might be a critical acquisition decision, or a rapid intelligence assessment that will drive the “seconds count” go-ahead for employing an operational tactic. Guiding principles can be the foundation for how to respond and deliver.

We must especially embrace this “sudden, unexpectedly, and ultimate consequence” prophecy as we field agile, responsive, and lethal means to control the high ground and keep it safe. While Space Force is not NASA—the two have very different missions—we can leverage their cultural strengths to achieve our own purposes and aid us in supporting the joint and combined fight. NASA Mission Operations fostered and lived their “Foundations” that enabled a culture of highly reliable decision making and success in an extraordinarily difficult field. The Space Force of the future and today’s US Space Command likewise face an extraordinary and dangerous arena in space today.

Comprehension

Last but by no means least, is the issue of comprehending all that we do. There are radically new space systems and new threats out there. They will require a deeper technical understanding of what we do and how our systems work. From astrodynamics to electromagnetics to orbit engagement systems with decisive and irreversible capability, we need to set the bar higher in our expectations, education, and expertise in all of our roles. Our Navy colleagues in the nuclear submarine arena offer a great view into the past development of that cadre’s culture, which remains strong today. Theodore Rockwell, the biographer of Hyman Rickover, captures Rickover’s thoughts succinctly as he called for a unique culture among a new cadre of Navy professionals:

“Rickover’s solution went far beyond the usual on-the-job training. He was not content to teach procedures and techniques. He wanted to teach principles and fundamentals, and he wanted to create a change of mind—a whole new way of approaching the job. It was a program of unprecedented scope and depth.”

It is Rickover’s demand for understanding that enabled sailors to do the impossible because they understood their weapon systems’ capabilities far beyond the confines of a checklist or with contractors at their side. A similar level of understanding would rightfully enable the space warrior to seize and control the “sudden and unexpected” as our submariner peers have done for decades. In their call for a “Brilliant Space Force,” Owen Brown and Gordon Roessler, two Navy nuclear submarine veterans who went on to become respected space project leaders, reinforce what’s stated above. “What is needed goes beyond tactics, techniques, and procedures. Procedures and checklists may not suffice. Just as no plan stands contact with the enemy, no checklist can deal with surprise. Space warfighters must have true expertise in the physics, engineering, and operational challenges unique to space. Any new space warfighting cadre must be deeply educated, not just trained. It must be brilliant.”

We have operated in the past and still do with allegiance to procedures and techniques and the mastery of checklists, with the discipline to follow them. That has worked superbly in our ICBM past and in the maintenance and operation of military spacecraft on orbit. However, we must surpass that standard of excellence by diving deeper into “what exactly does this keystroke do?” with a new sense of curiosity and expectation to know, understand, and comprehend. Near-future systems, those that come with a keystroke or mouse-click of lethality, will be anchored in procedural discipline. However, engineers, intelligence experts, and operators will also face sudden and unexpected surprises when there simply may not be time to build slides to summarize the situation, brief them, review them, and staff the action approval process. Space and intel patriots placed at the helm may encounter “failure is not an option” situations and will be required to act immediately, fully knowing the likely consequences of their actions.

We have Rickover and the nuclear Navy culture as one example of what takes place when a whole new approach to achieving our craft is applied. But we also have historical examples within the Air Force: legendary Air Force leaders that formed culture-enhancing organizations like the Air Corps Tactical School, Weapons School, and Test Pilot School. Deep-dive comprehensive education and hands-on learning are underway in the areas of orbital engagement, RPO, and space domain awareness. These are steps in the right direction of technical rigor and understanding. Let’s honor our space patriots by having them delve deeper into their trade and the awesome capability they will wield. The result will be the unleashing of the invincible Space Force culture.

The time has arrived for us to answer the call to step up and serve with this bedrock of heritage, guiding principles, and comprehension in place. The three principles I have introduced can be the launch pad for taking a Space Force culture to the next level of greater importance: a space warfighting culture that is worthy of a separate service.

Thank you for your dedication, determination and passion to serve our great nation as space patriots.

Going off of a very rough historical comparison to WW1 and earlier naval organizations try:

Squadron = More than 3 ships of same type/class/mission.

Flotilla = more than 1 Squadron operating independently under one commander.

Division = same as a Flotilla except operating as part of a Fleet.

Fleet = Multiple Divisions.

The logistical support ships, cargo, colliers, oilers, etc. usually operated to support the battle Fleet (Flotilla etc) and could be called a Division, Squadron, or Fleet Train. Some support vessels were never organized into units at all.

The US Navy still uses Squadrons, but formed units are generally called Battle Groups or Task Forces when operating alone, though they are still part of the Fleet.

• 

There's a decent functional space to discuss here.

Most navies really have three sizes of ship.

• Small ships
• Medium sized ships
• Capital ships

Most navies have two roles that ships are designed for:

• Independent patrol
• Main battle fleet

Independent patrol sacrifices firepower (and sometimes protection) for cruise endurance and multi-mission capabilities.

Main battle fleet requires ships to be 'honed to the bone' — anything that doesn't make the ship more capabile in a fight is usualy a luxury.

History hasn't been kind to independent patrol capital ships. They're generally too expensive for the benefit they give the navy (something that eats independent cruisers for lunch and can do commerce raiding. Jackie Fisher's Battlecruisers in WWI and the German pocket battleships are two examples.

So this leaves:

• Frigate (Small ship, independent patrol)
• Destroyer (Small ship, main battle line)
• Cruiser (Medium ship, independent patrol)
• Armored Cruiser (Medium ship, battle line)
• Battlecruiser (Capital ship, independent patrol)
• Battleship (Capital ship, battle-line)

Within each role, you have specific missions, and you'll have different sizes of ships within each niche, depending on what specific navies did with their doctrines.

The frigate is the smallest thing that can be armed with guns capable of doing shore bombardment.

The destroyer may have less armament than a frigate; it's job is to shoot down threats to the bigger ships in the battle fleet.

The cruiser is a frigate that's generally got more armament, more armor, and more survivability. It usually has greater endurance.

The armored cruiser trades endurance for enough armor to maybe survive a hit from a capital ship's gun without being mission killed, and usually has the same number of guns as the cruiser with heavier throw weights.

The capital ship has Massive Firepower and the armor to stand up to it. Endurance is usually traded off somewhere.

	Independent patrol	Main battle fleet
Small sized ships	Frigate	Destroyer
Medium sized ships	Cruiser	Armored Cruiser
Capital ships	Battlecruiser	Battleship

• 

Rick Robinson: If you have some space war tech that a) requires crewed ships, and b) makes combat missions suicidal, you are really pretty much outside the scope of historical experience. The kamakazes are not a real counterexample, because Japan did not go to war expecting to use them. The Bushido warrior was fully ready to die for the Emperor, but like Patton he far preferred to kill the other poor bastard for the Emperor.

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Ken Burnside: Unless you have enough faith in your AIs that you'll let them run completely autonomously, there will be a crewed ship somewhere in the flotilla of cruise missiles.

At which point, that crewed vessel becomes the prime target.

At which point, it turns into "everyone launches their cruise missiles at the crewed ship on the other side", and we can both generate more inbounds than can be plausibly stopped...

So, it's a mutual suicide pact....which for most forces is a completely unacceptable outcome.

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Rick Robinson: I just need enough faith in my AIs to keep the crewed control ship behind the flotilla, just far enough back that if its flotilla loses it can bug out.

Simplistically, but not too simplistically, I flush my pod, you flush yours. The missiles meet in the middle, most of them blow each other up. Whoever has a few missiles that get through the scrum, they've won, and the other control ship bails.

It won't be a thriller tactical game, but it would be nice easy tactical play in a strategic game, with a few possibly interesting subtleties about holding missiles back for a second strike or later use.

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Eric Henry: Your missile flight might also include a laser armed missile. That missile's job is to whack inbounds vice target the opposing control ship. That variable means you cannot be confident that more missiles than the other guys means you'll have enough missiles.

Even today we don't build UAVs for one way missions. We arm them but expect them to come back. I envision this will continue for any space conflict. a laser drone can still be used as a kinetic weapon of course. But that would likely be a last resort response.

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Rick Robinson: Mixing beams and missiles sexes up tactical combat some, but under Realistic^tm assumptions it is probably still too Lanchesterian to be playworthy in its own right. (ed note: Lanchesterian means whichever side has more combat units in the battle automatically wins. As a game, this is boring.) Some kind of tactical microrules might still enrich a strategic/operational game.

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Anthony Jackson:

(Ken Burnside: At which point, it turns into "everyone launches their cruise missiles at the crewed ship on the other side", and we can both generate more inbounds than can be plausibly stopped...)

No, we can't. You can block torch missiles with torch missiles, so what happens is that the side with more torch missiles wins. (ed note: torch missiles are missiles that have a spacecraft-sized propulsion system. They have far more delta V than a conventional missile.)

Rick Robinson said:

It suddenly strikes me that this whole very interesting thread is not really quite about "space fighters" in the usual sense, though it is very much about space fighters in the sense of "people who fight in space." :>

Your observations are essentially about the role of the human in the loop of tactical space combat.

I see a hierarchy of decision-making levels, roughly as follows from "lowest" to "highest:"

     1 - Weapon manipulator (gun crew member)
     2 - Weapon controller (gun crew chief)
     3 - Platform controller (fire control officer, CO in fleet formation)
     4 - Tactical decision-maker (CO in independent ops / melee)
     5 - Operational/strategic decision-maker (admiral)
     6 - Policy decision-maker (CINC, Chief of Staff, king)

Obviously these often blur together. Moreover, the higher functions aren't necessarily confined to high ranks. In a counterinsurgency war, for example, the individual grunt often has to make rules-of-engagement decisions that are essentially political: "Is that car speeding toward my checkpoint a suicide bomber or a terrified family that took a wrong turn?"

In space war, however, there will probably be less intermixing of levels — fewer situations where the guy behind the gun has to make a snap decision on rules of engagement. (Presuming that space yachts won't often blunder into the middle of a battle.)

Level 1 seems almost certain to be automated. I just can't see guys spinning wheels to slew a laser cannon around, let alone shoving photons into the breech. :>

Levels 2 and 3 may be automated at a cybertech level not much above what we already have — depending on how many ambiguities arise in combat, and at what scale. I can easily see all human decision making confined to the bridge and CIC, with turrets operated by some mix of automation and remote control. And — depending on range, light lag, and other comms factors — the turrets might well detach from the ship and maneuver in formation, still controlled from bridge and CIC. (In other words, combat drones at least partly controlled from a mother ship.)

Levels 4 and 5 are a much taller order. I have speculated, though, on what I call the "legate" concept, in which the only human decision-makers are essentially policy representatives of the government. The only military orders a legate gives are, in effect "authorized to fire" and "cease firing." Everything in between is automated.

Level 6 can only be automated if you have fully sentient AI that not only can vote, but be elected (or functional equivalent).

Levels 4+ can only be automated at a cybertech level that is not only way above what we have, but (so far as I know) beyond what we can even speculate about in any informed way. We do now know how human judgment and intuition — "the Force" — work, so we haven't the first clue of how to replicate it. I don't rule it out in the future (i.e., I'm not ready to fall back on semi-mystical assumptions about the human mind), but I don't see it as a "foreseeable" tech in the way that, say, fusion torches are.

Level 3 is also pretty dicey — however, depending on your specific tech assumptions, remote control may well be viable at this level. For example, in my setting combat is at ranges on order of 100,000 km, but unfolds as a slow pavane, with maneuver and firing taking place on a scale of hours. In that environment, it's quite plausible to have uncrewed weapon platforms whose Level 1 and 2 functions are automated, while their Level 3 functions are performed by operators in safer positions a few light seconds away.

Now, how does all this relate to "space fighters" in the usual sense? I take that sense to imply small tactical spacecraft with a small crew (usually one or two) and limited habitability/endurance — the crew is in a cockpit, not a cabin.

Whether space fighters are viable depends on two things: First, are vest-pocket space warcraft of any value at all, and if so, do they benefit substantially from having humans *on board*, rather than being *either* automated or controlled by remote operators (or some combination).

I'll further note that "fighter" is — at least in the WW II naval analogy — a misleading term; fighters (and all aircraft) operated in an entirely separate environment from ships, and had radically different performance characters: They could go ten times faster than any ship, though they could not heave-to even for a moment. :> "Space fighters" are, in most techs, much more analogous to torpedo boats.

If beam weapons are dominant, miniature space warcraft seem pretty useless whether crewed or uncrewed — their small size must limit their weapon installations to peashooters, useless against large ships. (Two exceptions: compact but enormously powerful beam weapons, or beam combat ranges near 1 light second, so that small craft can jink while larger ones cannot.)

If kinetics are dominant, small warcraft may be viable if useful missiles are even smaller (so that they can carry a few) — and especially if one hit one kill is the rule, so that a bigger ship is merely a richer target.

However, then the question is whether these small platforms need an onboard crew, or can be handled by a combination of remote control and onboard expert-system AI. My own take is that for most Plausible [TM] tech and tactical scenarios, there's little reason for putting humans aboard small platforms, especially since putting the human-in-the-loop elsewhere allows them to be cheaper and semi-expendable.

The space marine, an archetype of military science fiction, is a kind of soldier that operates in outer space or on alien worlds. Historical marines fulfill multiple roles: ship defence, landing parties, and general-purpose high-mobility land deployments that operate within a fixed distance of shore. By analogy, hypothetical space marines would defend spaceships, land on planets and moons, and satisfy rapid-deployment needs throughout space.

• 

Semper Fi: The Imperial Legions – while obviously there is no direct causal connection – do have many things in common with the Marines. (Apart from the obvious troperiffic ones – yes, we all know they’re a Proud Soldier Race all their own, commanded by Colonel Badasses, the truest devotees of The Spartan Way, and almost a Church Militant… although they’re more Warrior Poets than Blood Knights (except the kaeth… no, even the kaeth), lack Drill Instructor Nasties for the reasons suggested under Mildly Military, and most of their commanders, at least, aren’t General Ripper. Except for the Sargases, as usual.) Certainly aspects of the attitude and the mythos.

But also, despite their origins in the army of a land power, in later days (due to that land power allying with a major sea power) they did do most of their fighting as an amphibious rapid-reaction force, and, of course, when the Empire went into space – see, obviously, Space Marine – as the orbital equivalent of such a force. And since imperial annexations of anything resembling a major world work very badly across interstellar distances, most of the Legions are optimized for a similar rapid-reaction, tip-of-the-spear, in-and-out role.

So differences in culture and tech aside, they’d probably recognize each other, I do believe.

When you boil it all down, here’s what you need to know as an officer:

Divide your command into three elements.

When you contact the enemy, pin him with one element while you use the second to try to maneuver around a flank.

Hold the third element in reserve to exploit any successes the first or second elements may achieve, or to cover their retreat in case of disaster.

It works for platoons, it works for companies, it works for divisions. There are a few refinements, which we’ll cover in the rest of this course, but if you can remember that one basic tactic, you’ll do fine.

The gallery, when the jeep emerged onto it, was empty except for casualties, a few still alive. The side of the airboat was caved in; the lifter-load of ammunition had gone up with the bomb. He moved the jeep to the right of the shaft and waited for the vehicles behind him, suffering a brief indecision.

Never divide your force in the presence of the enemy.

There had been generals who had done that and gotten away with it, but they'd had names like Foxx Travis and Robert E. Lee and Napoleon—Napoleon; that was who'd made that crack about omelets! They'd known what they were doing. He was playing this battle by ear.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Rick Robinson:

(Nick Maggs: So once the space battle is over the 'winner' needs to enforce their will on the newly obtained planet (or whatever) does it still come down to the marines / army?)

Depends on my objectives, and your will to resist. If my intent is punishment (or genocide), I inflict it and leave. If my intent is to disrupt and dominate your trade, I don't need to land on your planet. If you wanna trade with the rest of the universe, I'm sure we can make a deal.

If I want you to pay taxes, or convert to Scientology, or whatever, then I have a more complicated choice. From space I can't actually exact obedience; absent your compliance I can only kill you. On the other hand, the more extreme my demands, the more I may be willing to kill whole bunches of you as an example to the rest. "Bombing only stiffens our resolve" failed its one test against nukes.

So I'm not sure there's really a place for space marines or not. It seems to me that, beyond what is essentially police work, space marines are only useful if you are ruthless enough to conquer planets, but not ruthless enough to do it by sheer terror.

---

Jon Brase: As far as I'm concerned, planetary defenses can be pretty powerful and well protected (you can have big missiles, lots of propellant for them, big lasers, big generators and heat sinks for the lasers, and everything can be very well armored by the huge amount of rock available), to the point that to soften the defenses to where they can't stop space marines from landing means slagging the planet to the point that there isn't much of value left. So your options with an enemy planet are

A. blockade them, and don't let them trade with anybody until they let you land marines and take over.

B. threaten to slag them unless they let you land marines and take over.

C. slag them.

---

Rick Robinson: I pretty much agree. Given anything like the sort of techs we generally imagine here, a planetary landing and surface fight against serious resistance is horribly expensive and difficult. You have to spacelift large amounts of troops and munitions, then soft-land it all, fat slow targets coming down against defenders with surface concealment. The armament of your deep space warcraft may be be more or less useless against surface targets, requiring an additional force of fire support ships.

Sure, troops can land in remote areas — but then they are in remote areas, facing a long surface slog on a planet where the locals know their way around a lot better. And no matter where you land, shuttles coming down have a long re-entry trajectory during which they are extremely conspicuous and extremely vulnerable.

---

Ken Burnside: See the article in Nexus Journal #1 for a lot of information on this.

---

Wilhelm Fritz: With all these discussions about conquering planets — isn't there a big difference between a full blown home-planet of some species and a colonial planet?

I think, even after a few centuries of colonisation, these planets should have a typical COLONIAL infrastructure. That is, they have one or two big cities, a few major mining and industrial centers and the connecting railways, highways or ports between them.

So conquering a colony seems to me the task of taking some central points and blackmailing the rest of the inhabitants with some orbital nukes.

Whatever the colonials intend, they might only have the choice to surrender or retreat into the wilderness, which is — in most cases regarding interstellar colonisation — not the very human-friendly outback of olden days of America or Australia.

---

Rick Robinson:

(Wilhelm Fritz: I think, even after a few centuries of colonisation, these planets should have a typical COLONIAL infrastructure. That is, they have one or two big cities, a few major mining and industrial centers and the connecting railways, highways or ports between them.)

Good point. I admit that my mental image of "planetary conquest" is something like a space Normandy against the equivalent of a major industrial country — a population on order of 100 million people.

Against a colony with population of a few million — what your description evokes — is obviously an order of magnitude or two smaller, and can bring in qualitative changes as well. A small colony with limited industries will not have a multidivision defense force with lots of heavy equipment, unless someone is helping them.

(Wilhelm Fritz: So conquering a colony seems to me the task of taking some central points and blackmailing the rest of the inhabitants with some orbital nukes.)

Quite some overkill against farmhouses! :>

Control a few central points and you probably control lots more — even outback farmers have to come to town to sell their crops and buy equipment. Outback guerillas may be tough to deal with out of all proportion to their numbers, but the problem depends on your objectives, your ruthlessness, etc.

If the population is not particularly hostile (you're just another tax collector, no better or worse than the last or next one), you may be able to land and garrison a planet with quite a small force, especially if you can rely at all on local cops.

---

Jon Fellows: There is another situation that discussion of plantetary assault has to consider. Liberation of a friendly planet that has surrendered to foreign forces. Obviously a threat to slag the planet is not available. Likewise chasing off the enemy orbital garrison might not be sufficient — you might still have to dig the enemy out, particularly if he's been there for a while.

---

Rick Robinson: On the other hand, the enemy garrison is cut off. Unless relieved, they will have to surrendereventually unless they can hold out indefinitely as a tyrannical local government. This is possible, especially if the motive for the enemy conquest was ideological.

In most cases, though, once their prospect of relief is eliminated, stranded garrisons on hostile planets are not super motivated to hold out forever. Moreover, whoever sent them may prefer to negotiate to get them back rather than have the dubious honor of having conquered a planet from which they can draw no benefit, or even communicate with.

But the real trick question here is, what is the desired force mix for a star empire anticipating war with another star empire? You have three basic force components you can purchase: space forces, ground forces, and assault spacelift for the latter. (Assuming that grunts and gyrines are otherwise interchangeable.) Whatever you buy of any, you have less of the other two.

(ed note: "grunts" is a jocular derogatory reference to "army trooper", while "gyrines" is a jocular derogatory reference to "marine")

If you are planning a war of planetary conquest you will eventually need ground troops and spacelift for them — but only after you have won in space. Maybe you should only build space forces until you have won control of space. Anything you spend on the army and spacelift going in comes out of your fleet budget, making it less likely you'll win the all important space battles. After you've won those, then you can mothball most of your warships and buildup invasion forces. Your enemies, already defeated in space, cannot support each other, so you can pick off their planets one at a time.

If you are planning a defensive war over multiple planets, what do you build? Certainly not much assault spacelift, because you have no intention to invade planets. You may eventually have to reconquer planets, but that is not a main consideration going in. Defensive garrisons are inefficient, because you haveto garrison every likely invasion target, while the attacker can pick themoff one at a time.

Surely your best defensive option is to build a powerful space force, and lightly garrison your planets so you don't face that embarrassing situation where your Invincible Space Fleet is stranded becauseall your planets were occupied by battalion-strength assault teams carried aboard corvette transports. :>

Long story short: Given techs anything like the broad informal consensus around here, interstellar warfare is like island warfare, and sea power trumps land power. Yes, island warfare in the Pacific in WW II involved lots of ground combat, but so far as I can see itwas almost entirely because the US needed island bases for ground-based aircraft. Otherwise we could have just cut them off and left them to die on the vine once the IJN was defeated at sea.

Another factor in the mix may be that armies and space forces draw on quite different resources. Space forces draw (probably) for the most part on space-specific industries, e.g. shipbuilding, and may have a very small recruitment footprint. An army probably needs a lot more manpower, on the one hand, and may get mucht of its materiel from fairly light planet-based industries.

Both presumably cost money, and that is a tradeoff, but you can build up your ground forces even if your shipyards are already maxed out.

• 

“Fall out, Wiszorik!” Calvin ordered. “Lay out your kit.”

“Sir!” Private Wiszorik might have smiled thinly, but if he did Bannister missed it. He swung the packframe easily off his shoulders and stood it on the ground. The headquarters squad helped him lay out his nylon shelter cloth, and Wiszorik emptied the pack, placing each item just so.

Rifle: a New Aberdeen seven-mm semi-automatic with ten-shot clip and fifty-round box magazine, both full and spotlessly clean like the rifle. A bandolier of cartridges. Five grenades. Nylon belt with bayonets, canteen, spoon, and stainless cup that served as a private’s entire mess kit. Great-cloak and poncho, string net underwear, layers of clothing—

“You’ll note he’s equipped for any climate,” Falkenberg commented. “He’d expect to be issued special gear for a non-Terran environment, but he can live on any inhabitable world with what he’s got.”

“Yes.” Bannister watched interestedly. The pack hadn’t seemed heavy, but Wiszorik kept withdrawing gear from it. First aid kit, chemical warfare protection drugs and equipment, concentrated field rations, soup and beverage powders, a tiny gasoline-burning field stove—“What’s that?” Bannister asked. “Do all the men carry them?”

“One to each maniple, sir,” Wiszorik answered.

“His share of five men’s community equipment,” Falkenberg explained. “A monitor, three privates, and a recruit make up the basic combat unit of this outfit, and we try to keep the maniples self-sufficient.”

More gear came from the pack. Much of it was light alloys or plastic, but Bannister wondered about the total weight. Trowel, tent pegs, nylon cordage, a miniature cutting torch, more group equipment for field repairs to both machinery and the woven Nemourlon armor, night sights for the rifle, a small plastic tube half a meter long and eight centimeters in diameter—“And that?” Bannister asked.

“Antiaircraft rocket,” Falkenberg told him. “Not effective against fast jets, but it’ll knock out a chopper ninety-five percent of the time. Has some capability against tanks, too. We don’t like the men too dependent on heavy weapons units.”

“I see. Your men seem well equipped, Colonel,” Bannister commented. “It must weight them down badly.”

“Twenty-one kilograms in standard g field,” Falkenberg answered. “More here, less by a lot on Washington. Every man carries a week’s rations, ammunition for a short engagement, and enough equipment to live in the field.”

“What’s the little pouch on his belt?” Bannister asked interestedly.

Falkenberg shrugged. “Personal possessions. Probably everything he owns. You’ll have to ask Wiszorik’s permission if you want to examine that.”

• 

(ed note: this game is a sequel to the tabletop game StarForce: Alpha Centauri. Due to the odd background universe, literally the only valuable thing a planet has to offer is the colonists. Therefore in the game StarSoldier, the soldiers have to avoid causing civilian casualties at all costs.)

"Teleships" are starships, their faster-than-light movement is called "shifting". A "StarGate" is a sort of orbital fortress defending the planet from invading Teleships. The "Heissen Field" is a weapon that allows starships in orbit to render everybody on the planet unconsious. Everybody that is unprotected, defending StarSoldiers are unaffected.)

[20.0] ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT

COMMENTARY:

Undisputed control of local space is a doctrinal prerequisite to any attempt by a StarForce to induce a Heissen Field and land StarSoldiers on an unfriendly planet. It is therefore usually the case that only one side—the side attacking, in the strategic sense—that will be able to call upon off-surface support. And being extremely destructive, Orbital Ground Support is only utilized in extreme circumstances. In any event, the provision of support bombardment by even "unopposed" StarForces is somewhat problematic, as the presence of automated and StarSoldier crewed defensive missile batteries and laser banks on the surface of the planet has the capacity to make things difficult for orbiting Teleships. A StarForce may not move or defend itself telesthetically within the proximity of the gravity fields which characterize solar systems, and so is dependent upon "conventional" kinetic drive (Energy Modulation Packs) and computer-directed laser interception for those tasks. Faced with a powerful surface defense utilized to capacity, Teleships generally adopt variable geometary orbits, which allow them to approach closely to the planet for brief and unpredictable passes. At least two StarForces (eight TeleShips) are required to provide effective ground support under such circumstances.

• 

[27.1] PATROL SITUATION

25th Century-style ground combat features mobile, extremely independent troops and highly sophisticated data-gathering and data-dispersing systems. Given that, the classic territorial-oriented 20th Century infantry patrol activity will be unheard of, based as it is on the concept of a "front." There will be no "front" when individual soldiers, with only intermittent and minimal logistical dependency, can transport themselves at speeds in excess of 4000 km/hour.

Nevertheless, relatively immobile ground bases will be present. These bases will perform a multitude of functions: shield selected key civilian personnel from the effects of the invader-induced Heissen Field, provide repair and equipment stations for StarSoldiers in the field, perform tracking functions, provide planetary defense against the Invaders' orbiting Teleships (or against the defender's orbiting satellites), and so forth. To some extent, the bases will be concealable from off-world detection, so long as energy emissions are effectively shielded. Actual surface searches will be necessary to pin down the locations. Much of the ground combat will center around the search for, protection and defense of and assaults against these bases. The Patrol Situation represents an outer-perimeter defense of such a base pitted against a probing search/patrol. The probing force will hereinafter be referred to as the "Alpha Force," the defending force as the "Bravo Force."

Depending on such factors as the size and purpose of the base and the availability of orbital intelligence info, the Alpha Force will have a more or less vague knowledge of the location of the base. The purpose of the patrol will be to determine the location within a specific sector of the planet's surface.

• 

[42.0] DESIGNER'S NOTES

Much of the background history for StarSoldier was derived from a previous SPI game. StarForce, which provided a general strategic framework in which the various Races could Telesthetically "shift" across interstellar distances to fight short-term wars to determine the economic and political control of planetary systems. With the strategic pattern set, it was still necessary to answer a number of tactical questions before StarSoldier could proceed. First off, why do StarSoldiers try to conquer planets at all?

Basically it is assumed that a normal attack on a planetary system would follow these general lines: a number of Friendly StarForces would shift into the area of the target system, driving off any defending Enemy StarForces, and neutralizing the Enemy StarGate (which acts as both a transfer point and defensive stronghold). Once control of local space is assured, Heissen Fields would be directed at the inhabited planets, rendering the "civilians" unconscious, (but not affecting StarSoldiers, who are protected by their Active Battle Dress).

Finally, Friendly StarSoldiers that have been carried in the StarForces would debark onto gravity sleds and assault the planetary system. After a short fight (from 12 to 24 hours), there would have been sufficient casualties so that one side or the other would surrender. (Remember, except for the Xenophobe Wars, these conflicts are not "fights to the death.").

Obviously a large amount of technological restraint is being practiced throughout, as it is within the abilities of both sides to effectively end all life on a planet should they choose to do so. (Indeed, present-day technology could probably come close to achieving this). Casualties among civilians are minimized for "humanitarian" reasons, and in order to provide a broad population base from which to draw Telesthetics. In the short run, it is also necessary to suppress Enemy StarSoldiers in order to prevent Low Energy Assaults on a Friendly StarGate in the system. Such assaults would be carried out by a small number of Soldiers making a shipboard "Newtonian" approach to the StarGate (i.e., actually traveling through space at a constant acceleration of about 30 Gs) and attempting to disable it.

Knowing both the causes and results of a Star Soldier attack, it was then necessary to determine exactly how they fight. Basically, since no one can predict conditions 500 years in the future anyway, the technology was developed to meet the situation. The trend throughout history has been to reduce the density of soldiers per given area of terrain. Thus the game scale is quite large, about one kilometer per hex, with a correspondingly low unit density. The ability to cover these vast distances is achieved through the use of high-speed travel, especially in Airborne Mode. Since units may move at top speeds of over 2500 MPH (and in an atmosphere, no less), it is assumed that a method of frictionless flight has been developed.

Moreover, because they are cyborgs (i.e., "men" adapted to make full use of a comparable technology of fairly intelligent machines), Soldiers can deal with an immense amount of information and tasks at all times. This allows them to function without the panic and disorientation that occurs (especially at the personal level) in present-day warfare. Their Active Battle Dress is more than just a convenient "combat suit." Rather, it is a complete mobile environment, equipped with its own limited level of conscious awareness. (Androids are the extreme extension of this principle). Soldiers also have a virtually unlimited source of energy (their Energy Conversion Pack), and the ability to efficiently transform one type of energy to another (neatly avoiding problems of inertia and ammunition supply).

Players will note that there are no Scenarios showing the ferocious onslaught of aroused natives on a poor outnumbered StarSoldier squad. (Except for the Dinkblog, which is a creature with certain obvious unusual abilities). Such Scenarios are not included because such an event would be, uh, unrealistic. That is, an individual who can travel at 2500 MPH in an atmosphere, can screen his own energy emissions to the point where he is no longer visible to the unaided eye, who can survive enormous G forces and both use and survive the use of terribly sophisticated weaponry is unlikely to be affected by some poor fellow armed with a medieval crossbow (or an F-14 fighter, for that matter). Murphy's Law would dictate that this would happen occasionally, but it would be on a very low order of probability. Put simply, élan has never been much of a match for competently applied technology, and never will be.

Incidentally, the technology itself is changing in the game, as the period covered is several hundreds of years. In fact, because the rate of change is considered to be fairly even, coupled with conscious efforts to prevent the technology from getting out of hand, all that actually occurs is that the game scale is probably expanding in the later Scenarios.

• 

• 

• 

“You’re Liiriani, yes?” The recruiter eyed the tattered uniforms on those crowding into his prefab. “Ex-military. Wait… you’re Temple Guard? The ones left behind after the fall of Mantaniir?”

“Yeah. I was at Mantaniir. We all were.” The scarred veteran’s lip curled, and he spat. “Proud Mantaniir. Glorious Mantaniir. Mantaniir the Unfallen, Guardian of the Holies, all of that. Well, it didn’t fall, or we’d be dead. It was swept aside like it was nothing.”

“The first day could have been the last day. We —“

…were prepared, we were ready, we were the last line of defense for Iliir itself, and we knew they were coming at dawn. They’d told us that much. But we heard nothing. Saw nothing. Not until dawn.

We’d never fought a space war before. No-one understood what it meant that we’d lost the high orbitals. Not until the k-rods started falling, and then it was too late to help us. The minefields down-valley went in the first wave — to give us time to see what was killing us. The flak towers went in the next, along with communications and sensors. Then they started drunkwalking their shots around the valley, blasting walls, barracks, everything left of the fortress flat. What was left of us had run for the bunkers by then, and down through them into the deep tunnels. Couldn’t so much as get a shot off. We were down there for days — any time someone made a run for it, or poked so much as a nose-tip above ground, they dropped a k-rod on them. We had no power — if any generators started up, that bunker got a k-rod within minutes. Just hiding in the dark.

And then the machines hit us, wolves and spiders. From both sides — we heard later that their stormtroopers bypassed us and dropped on Iliir directly. Wolves, the little ones, ‘bots that run in packs, wall, ceiling, or floor, see in the dark, spit bullets or tear a man’s leg off themselves. And then the spiders, big eight-legged bastards with fire and cutting torches and rockets. All howling to each other like the gods below. And they wouldn’t die! Enough explosive might stop one, but if it wasn’t torn apart, it’d fix itself — or the rest of them would — and come after you again.

So we surrendered. The spiders herded us outside again, up among the craters, and fenced us in with electrowire. A couple of us tried to make a break for it. They didn’t get past the perimeter. Spiders didn’t care — they just sat there watching us, day and night. A couple of days later, one of their armor boys came by to look us over, and left us a crate of rat-bars and a medkit. Then he left us there with just the spiders to watch us. That was the only enemy we saw in the entire battle.

Two weeks later, we got word that the war was over, the Council had been captured, surrendered, were killed, one of those. The spiders all marched back into a shuttle and left us alone, then, so we scavenged what we could, tried to stay alive. A week after that, the new Council had all of us who’d let Iliir fall through our ‘heretical incompetence’ shoved aboard an old ore freighter and dumped us on this craphole planet.

“— are what’s left of the Liirian Temple Guard, yeah. Seventh Fist Ileer, commanding. And me an’ the boys’ll fight for you. Nothing else left for us now. But only if we’re fighting men. Nothing that don’t bleed and won’t die.”

— Sagivv’s Company recruitment interview, Márch, eight months after the Liir Conflict

• 

      One of the cruel realities we have always had to live with is that our bodies, in themselves, are not very respectable fighting machines beyond the level of throwing rocks and clubbing opponents to death with tree limbs. We don’t have teeth, claws, or hooves that are very useful for fighting. We don’t have the inch-thick protective hides possessed by most animal predators. We don’t have decent night vision, and we can’t smell anything at all, for God’s sake. Our liver, kidneys, spleen, bowels, and genitals are wide open to easy assault; vital organs such as lungs and heart have only the flimsiest of bony cages for protection. True, our brains—the only effective natural weapons we have—are protected a little more cleverly than the rest of us, housed in a solid bony vault, yet that protective vault with all its vital support conduits is stuck up on a soft five-inch-diameter stalk that any enterprising barbarian could cut through with a dull flintstone.

     This, of course, is one major reason that warfare has always been such a messy business for individual humans throughout history. Armor to protect the soft, vulnerable organism inside has never really worked: it has merely slowed the soldier down and made him easier to catch. Every time somebody thought up better, stronger, lighter armor, somebody else would think up more violent projectiles, better explosives, or more effective ways to pry it open, infiltrate it or disable it.

     This is also why the more modern individual dogface soldier, no matter how fine his mind might be, has counted for so little on a thousand battlefields. His only real contribution in most cases has been collective, as one of a mass of bodies, of which a certain (usually high) percentage are expected to be sacrificed to achieve any given objective. Of course, there are special situations—frogmen mining destroyers, for example, or small commando squads blowing strategic bridges—in which each individual plays a vital role, but such actions are always clandestine, fast-strike-and-get-out operations, extremely dangerous to each individual, and under circumstances where they have no support, medical or otherwise, in the field. The massed-bodies-hurled-against-guns has been far the more common pattern in recent centuries, and you don’t need too many resounding disasters such as Pickett’s Charge to become convinced that massed human bodies do not necessarily solve the military problem.

     Considering how ineffective massed bodies have proven in fairly unsophisticated past warfare, it's puzzling how many fine science fiction novels (Haldeman’s The Forever War, Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Busby’s Rissa Kerguelen spring instantly to mind; there are a million others) continue to present whole armies of individual dogface soldiers fighting en masse as vital factors in very sophisticated future warfare. Certainly in future wars involving planets, star systems, or galaxies, this concept is going to have to be reexamined. The sheer logistics of transporting whole armies of men plus their bewildering array of weaponry plus their life-support systems from Earth to Xenora I, 47 light-years away, with the notion that they are going to do anything effective when they get there makes the whole idea just short of laughable; especially if we're going to adhere to the principles of Einsteinian physics as we understand them and put aside such fantasies as space-warps, faster-than-light travel, time-contraction-suppressors and other fanciful delights. (Okay, we might—conceivably—have these things one day, but if the Xenorians are suddenly coming after us, we’d sure better not plan on having them).

     Of course future wars may be conducted on the same idiotic principle of massed bodies hurled at the enemy which has prevailed in past wars—in which case, future military medicine, as in the past, will have to concentrate on salvaging the one soldier out of a thousand who isn’t torn completely to ribbons. But there is a much more likely form of warfare in which medicine could play a far more constructive role. Already we see definite moves toward this concept: turning the fighting over to machines and getting the men off the battlefield. In future conflicts in distant areas of space or time, rather than sending out huge armies of cannon fodder, it seems more likely that warfare would involve sending out a very few superbly trained, superbly supported, and superbly protected humans to oversee the deployment of huge numbers of machines that do the actual fighting.

     These few humans would not be expendable— anything but. There might not be many of them, but they would be the ones that kept the war afloat. With ever more sophisticated fighting machines equipped with ever more sophisticated computers for guidance and direction and a thousand other dynamic functions, we wouldn’t need huge numbers of men in the field—they would just get in the way and get killed—but the few that we had we would really need to supply the judgemental decisions, interpretations, assessments, reconsiderations and all the other beyond-computer functions of the human brain. These few would be scattered about in far-flung places, and they would have to have the things they needed to keep alive right out there with them. And it is here that medicine would be able to play a vital role in future warfare.

Soldier as Physician

     Medicine has three main functions during warfare, as far as combat troops are concerned: (1) Field treatment of injuries to preserve life; (2) Restoration of the fighting man’s physical integrity; and (3) Rehabilitation of the soldier to combat readiness or retirement from the field, as the case may be. In the case of future warfare, item (1) may present some peculiar problems that will require some ingenious solutions.

     Problem: You have a lone man or woman soldier in a ship or on a station, far removed from any others and charged with operating and deploying an army of mechanical juggernauts throughout half a star system. The soldier is light-years away from any support system and far out of reach of even effective communication with base medical resources. How then do you field-salvage that soldier in event of severe injury—or even in event of relatively minor injury which might develop into a life-threatening or fatal situation? (Consider that in such a case something like a crushed thorax, a lacerated femoral artery or a sublethal exposure to neutron radiation might qualify as “a relatively minor injury.” Presumably he’s not playing for peanuts out there.)

     Solution: You field-salvage the victim by making him his own physician with his own complete, personal medical center literally built into his body, or within easy reach of it.

     This does not mean handing the soldier a box of Band-aids and saying, “There you are, Bud, it’s up to you”—the common technique of twentieth-century'warfare. Nor does it mean sending every soldier to medical school—in which case he’d be of far more value working back in a Restoration Center than out in the field. It would mean, first, giving each front-line soldier brief but highly concentrated training in life-support techniques, anatomy, physiology and hold-the-fort type medicine, using the most effective forced-learning techniques you have available at the time; and second, equipping him one way or another with all the medical technology necessary to use that knowledge when he needs it to save his own life or others. Some of the technology could be built directly into his various support systems (pressure suit, ship, pillbox or what-have-you). Some, however, would better be built into him.

     External support systems would, for example, need to contain miniaturized but functionally effective cardiopulmonary resuscitation mechanisms sufficient to maintain life (respiration and heart function) for a prolonged period, and triggered to go into operation instantly upon physiological evidence of need—decreased or absent respirations; decreased cardiac output; decreased, irregular or absent pulse; a drop in constantly monitored hematocrit; and so forth. In everyday life there is unfortunately a life-threatening lag between somebody’s calling the aid car and the aid car’s getting to where it's needed. That lag is a killer. Once the aid car gets there, the salvage rate is remarkably good—but you cannot resuscitate a dead man. In future warfare, our soldier can’t afford that lag; the medical goal must be resuscitation every time. With external support ready to move instantly when he needs it and wherever he is, the future soldier can be in a position to survive primary assault long enough to be able to do something to help himself later, whatever his injury.

     External support could be continued in other areas as well. Shock solutions and stimulants could be in place and ready for automatic use on the basis of sensory or physiological triggers. Whole blood or packed red cells could also be on standby. Problems of long-term blood storage should long since have been solved. The problem of cross-matching could be handled before th soldier is sent out—or better yet, obviated completely by prior collection and storage of his own blood. This is already a ridiculously simple state-of-the-art procedure, except for the preservation problem: essentially, you draw two units of the soldier’s blood, wait three weeks, then return one unit to the body and draw two more. This gives you three units. Wait three more weeks, return the oldest unit to the body, and draw two more. This gives you four units in storage. Put three in permanent preservative, return one to the body and draw two more. Keep this up until you have whatever supply you want in permanent preservative. Then, much later, when blood is needed, zip, in it goes—the soldier’s own blood, no transfusion reactions, no pyrogenic reactions, no nothing.

     Certain built-in support systems could supplement these external supports in a variety of ways and, assuming the achievement of certain technologies we do not yet have, could add a whole series of additional dimensions to front-line warfare medicine in the future. One simple example would require only minor refinement and enhancement of existing technology: a whole built-in pharmacopoeia of basic medicines, drugs, and hormones emplanted within the soldier’s body for release in basic-dosage increments whenever the occasion demanded. Implant capsules could be rendered permeable or impermeable either by soldier-controlled electrical charge or triggered by the release of drug-specific synthetic activating hormones. The implants themselves could be located anywhere—there’s lots of excess storage space in the human body (abdomen, thigh, pelvis, thorax, etc.) Release controls, much like tiny pocket-calculator keyboards or combination lock dials, could be carried under the skin of the chest (cf. present-day pacemakers], flank, or thigh.

     Standard drugs might include analgesics to deal with moderately severe pain, hypnotics to help with rest, diuretics, and antihistamines; nitroglycerin, digitoxin and propranolol; anti-inflammatories, antibiotics and antivirals— make up your own list. For special problems, the pharmacopoeia could contain eye drops for glaucoma, insulin for diabetics, T3 and T4 for hypothyroids, uricosurics for gout, hormones for contraception in event of team operations, even the ubiquitous cyanide for fates worse than death (although one might hope that might be triggered from a separate keyboard to prevent mistakes]. Quite aside from sparing the harried soldier the indignity of trying to chase escaped pills around a free-fall cabin, such a system would keep a wide range of medications available precisely where they were needed in the exact increments that they were needed in.

     Such a system, too, could lend itself to greater and greater sophistication and usefulness as the technology—and our knowledge of basic physiology, biochemistry, and endocrinology— evolves. It stands entirely to reason that the extraordinary demands of front-line fighting in future war could place extraordinary demands upon the front-line soldier—incredible energy demands, hyperactive mental acuity, extraordinary demands for cell repair, hormonal function, biochemical activity, all prolonged far beyond the normal human capacity to hang together and keep functioning. Conceivably the same built-in system used for dispensing medications could be used to trigger the hormonal and biochemical supplements needed to render the soldier a super-functioning human when the need was present, to keep him functioning at extraordinary levels as long as necessary, and then to repair and restore him when the crisis point is past and the “super-functioning” soldier collapses like a rag doll. Ideally such a system might have a dual triggering capacity, with voluntary triggers to be used by the soldier when he is able to use them and recognizes the need, backed up by a fail-safe system of hormonal triggers to be activated automatically when the soldier’s body is signaling needs that he doesn’t recognize, or when he has lost the capacity for voluntary triggering.

Soldier as Self-Surgeon

     Such systems would have one serious disadvantage: they would not have direct access to the soldier’s brain or nervous system at all. So far we have not found any way to achieve direct electronic-neuronal contacts or hookups effectively juxtaposing nonliving electromagnetic machine with living nerve tissue (short of electroshock therapy, which might perhaps be a little coarse for real usefulness in future warfare). The problem of making such contacts of sufficient delicacy is going to be a mean one, but there is no fundamental law of nature that says it can’t ultimately be done down to any degree of delicacy you might want. There is just not that much difference between electronic impulses and neurochemical impulses, and ultimately, direct contacts and feedbacks will be achieved.

     When they are, built-in support systems of far greater basic value to the front-line soldier would be possible. Consider that the human brain is perhaps the most remarkable portable medical center in existence. With direct electronic-neuronal contacts, using pushbutton or dial controls under his direct control, the soldier could, in cases of overwhelming, agonizing or continuing pain, trigger endorphin production for as long as necessary. Hunger could be turned off for prolonged periods by electronic tickling of nerve centers in the brainstem. Thirst could be “quenched” and body fluids preserved for days on end by stimulating antidiuretic hormone production in the pituitary. (The kidneys might not be too happy about that, but it might keep the soldier alive). If the soldier needs sleep—real sleep, fast and deep, between assaults, he can dial S for sleep and bang, he’s out like a poleaxed mule—with a pre-set timer, of course, to wake him up again. If he wakes up and needs to be moving in top form and fast, he has access to the epinephrine-norepinephrine system. If he’s hurt, or infected, or hammered with hypothermia, or baking hot, or radiation-exposed, and has to keep moving no matter what, he can flag the adrenocortical system. And, perhaps equally useful, he can have direct control over emotional centers in much the same fashion; there may be times when getting really mad can save his life.

     A similar machine-brain contact could have an even more interesting application, assuming that the soldier had had that prior basic medical training we spoke of earlier. It's reasonable to assume that the vast majority of nondeath casualties among front-line soldiers in future war will be surgical casualties—lacerations, penetrating wounds, fractures, or burns of thermal, laser or radiation origin. We can also assume that there will be no M*A*S*H-type field surgery units within easy reach (unless, of course, 20 light-years is “within easy reach,” which seems unlikely). But suppose the soldier has a small brain-machine connection built in, analogous to a tiny telephone jack, perhaps located at the base of the skull, which will accept some sort of prerecorded communication device—call it a “recording cube”—with microcomputer capacity to respond and select according to the soldier's own input via remote-control switching and microphone. Then suppose that his support system carries a library of such recording cubes packed with person-to-person directions recorded by expert surgeons to guide the soldier through the performance of his own life-saving surgery, from diagnosis of the procedure that needs to be done to completion of the operation.

     Let’s say the soldier has a right femur which has been shattered at mid-shaft and must be pinned. Other medical-support systems have kept him alive long enough for him to reach his recording-cube bank. Now, with the proper cube or cubes jacked in, the surgeon first directs stimulation of brain endorphins plus sufficient suitable counterirritation of the back of the left hand to produce effective deep anesthesia of the right leg from the groin down, pausing at each logical branch-point for the soldier to signal satisfactory response or performance. Then the surgeon would direct the soldier to the external landmarks, direct the incision he is to make, direct hemostasis with the proper clamps and electrocoagulation, then stimulate physiological arteriospasm of the femoral artery directly through the brain.

     The artery seems to be intact—but it must not be severed or torn, or a different kind of crisis altogether will be precipitated, so the surgeon by preplanning of the recording cube enters into a running dialogue with the soldier—perhaps something like this:

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     Surgeon (per cube): You’ve got to find and protect the artery. First of all, gently separate the large bundles of the quadriceps muscle with those dull, rounded Silverberg retractors. Go easy, don’t tear the muscle. Signal when done.
     Soldier (voice over to cube): Okay, they’re separated.
     Surgeon Now secure the retractors so the muscles stay separated. Use those Niven hooks to hold them apart.
     Soldier They’re secured.
     Surgeon Fine. Now you should be able to feel the femoral artery deep down in the wound. Put your finger on it and respond when you feel it.
     Soldier I can feel it.
     Surgeon How fast is it pulsating?
     Soldier It isn’t pulsating.
     Surgeon Is there lots of blood coming up in the wound? Respond.
     Soldier Hardly any. It’s pretty dry.
     Surgeon Then you haven’t found the femoral artery. Or else it’s completely severed and retracted way up into the groin. Do you feel a big lump in the groin? Signal.
     Soldier No.
     Surgeon Then feel and look into the wound again for a pulsating artery. Signal.
     Soldier I don’t feel anything—wait. Yes. It’s buried under a smaller vessel and a pink cordlike thing.
     Surgeon The smaller vessel is the femoral vein and the pink structure is the femoral nerve. Tell me how fast the artery is pulsating.
     Soldier About sixty per minute.
     Surgeon Okay, it’s intact. Now use those blunt Bova separators to loosen the whole vessel bundle for about seven or eight inches up and down. Very gently, just free it up. Signal when done.
     (Long pause)
     Soldier I think it’s done.
     Surgeon Can you see the fracture underneath?
     Soldier Yes, it’s right under there. A sharp bone edge just cut my glove.
     Surgeon Then stop everything and change gloves. (Pause) Now go back to the femoral artery again. Take the Nourse shield and curve it in under the whole freed-up length of that bundle of vessels. Wrap it around loosely. Signal when done.
     Soldier That’s done.
     Surgeon Now bring the elastic end of the shield clear around and tack it to the back of your leg with a Bretnor biter. You want those vessels out of the way, clear out of the way. Signal.
     Soldier It’s done.
     Surgeon Okay, now you’re ready to tackle the bone itself—

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     Ultimately, in this fashion of self-surgery, the femur is pinned and glued, the unharmed blood vessels and nerve released, the muscles replaced, the wound closed and the healing begun—and a soldier in a future war will soon be back fighting whereas he otherwise very probably would have died. Never mind that the surgeon who spent eight solid months structuring that one single particular computerized recording cube has been dead for 200 years, or that standard treatment of that injury at a major hospital center at that time might involve total replacement of the femur with a better-than-natural artificial one, with full ambulation the day after surgery—that wouldn’t help the soldier a bit. In the field he must use what he has, and this is just one possible type of support system he might have available.

Resurrection and Reconstruction

     Of course, in terms of future warfare, everything we have been talking about so far, up to and including an open self-reduction of a fractured femur in the field, falls strictly into the category of First Aid. It all goes on far from home, far from doctors, far from hospitals, far from any kind of definitive medical backup. The soldier under field conditions in future war is going to have one foot in the grave from the very start; the best that medical innovation can possibly do is try to help him keep the other one out. The goal will be to patch him up, keep him going, get him back to fighting if at all possible or, barring that, keep him alive long enough to get him to real medical help.

     The job of real medical help will be to take whatever is left when it gets back (which may be precious little) and either resurrect it or reconstruct it—whichever is more appropriate in any given case. If what comes back is essentially an externally maintained heart-lung preparation with a few shreds of nervous tissue still connected, the decisions will be far different than if the soldier has merely had his entire body avulsed at the level of the 5th dorsal vertebra (severed at about waist level) (and hopefully has brought the avulsed part back with him in a perfusion tank).

     Precisely how such injuries would be dealt with would obviously depend on the level of medical and bioengineering technology available at the time. Salvage or nonsalvage might well depend upon just which war you were in—or even on which end of the same war you were in. We know, for example, that 45,000 U.S. soldiers died of tetanus during World War I, but only 13 during World War II. Similarly, high percentages of wounded died of shock during World War II, while shock losses were much lower in Korea and lower still in Vietnam—all because of advancing technology.

     Given a basic living organism to work with, however, a great deal may be possible, utilizing various techniques and materials for reconstruction. In just the past few decades, enormous strides have been made in the preparation and insertion of human prosthetic parts, and this technology is certain to progress rapidly. Currently on the shelf we have prosthetic replacement hips, knees, ankles, wrists, elbows, finger joints, and toe joints—although one must admit than not one of these is exactly perfected as yet. We have artery reconstruction materials, implantable heart valves and penile prostheses, all state-of-the-art. We can surely foresee implantable prosthetic hearts, implantable artificial kidneys, tracheas, esophagi, large and small intestines, Fallopian tubes, uteri (presumably functional) and so forth. Later, prosthetic livers and lungs may follow to help reconstruct damaged bodies, and whole-bone or whole-limb prostheses will replace piecemeal joint reconstruction. A facsimile visual organ is already on the drawing board; a true functioning, implantable prosthetic eye will have to wait for direct electronic-neuronal connections and a few biochemical miracles as well, but sooner or later may well be achieved.

     A word of caution should be said, however, about using prosthetic parts, particularly if one has the idea of using them to “improve” the human body in the manner of the 12-Billion Dollar Man (due allowance being made for inflation). There can be serious problems involved in giving human flesh and blood extraordinary powers through prosthetic tampering. Let a man leap suddenly into the air with those jet-driven, superpowerful prosthetic legs and his liver will be shoved straight down through Poupart’s ligament and lodge somewhere in his calf-and then when he lands from that leap, hoo, boy, what a mess! Both legs driven up into his chest. Give him an X-ray eye, and the scatter radiation is liable to fry his brain the first time he uses it unless he’s provided with ¾-inch lead shielding. Even today, with all the experience orthopedic surgeons have had, total hip replacements still have a nasty way of eroding. through the patient’s pelvis and “wandering” up into his abdomen after a few months’ use. Unfortunately, prosthetic materials are not always as soft, pliable, and resilient as living materials. And, for this very reason, surgeons in the future may, in the long run, much prefer live-organ replacements for restoration of the war-maimed than any prosthetics we might imagine.

     But here we come up against a different problem: a physiological law of nature which may well prove to be just as stubborn and unmodifiable as Einstein’s physical speed-of-light law— the law of Self vs. not-Self. Organ heterografts aren’t going to work. For all that have been tried, the only ones with a halfway decent serious record have been kidney transplants (and, of course, blood transfusions). A few heart transplants have survived, but the endurance record is nothing to cheer about. More to the point, in terms of future warfare, the heterografts that work at all do so thanks only to continual, carefully monitored immunosuppression techniques which, in effect, render the graft recipient a lifelong immunological cripple—certainly not the stuff that effective future soldiers will be made of.

     The truth is that the body doesn’t like anything but itself. There is no other physiological and/or biochemical principle that I know of which seems to be so universally true and so doggedly applicable to virtually all living organisms. Not-Self is poison, and Self will literally destroy itself trying to throw out not-Self. Thus, in the long run, it seems most probable that surgeons seeking serious replacements for destroyed or missing parts or organs are going to come to organ homografts (trigger warning, medically disturbing photos). We are going to have to replace missing pieces of Self with replacement pieces of Self.

     The name of that game is cloning, and once we have a better grip on the physiology and microtechniques of cloning, it’s not going to be all that tough. Every soldier in future wars—in fact, just about everybody, period—could easily have snippets of tissue stored in permanent banks, the tissues chosen being those that keep best for cloning purposes. There won’t be any grisly scenes in the jungle with helpless Indian women raped of their ova and then used as human incubators. Ordinary epithelial cells could be sucked free of their nuclear content, the clone genetic material inserted and the whole thing grown like Chicken Little in a tank of soup. Frequently required parts could be severed at the stage of embryonic differentiation and nurtured separately. True, the injured soldier might have to be life-supported for months or years until needed replacement parts are grown to the necessary stage of maturity, but time may not be of the essence when it takes half a lifetime to get to the site of battle. And above all, the replacement parts would be Self and nothing else, with no rejection problems.

The Mind/Machine

     There will, of course, be cases in which the damage is so gross or so total that even homograft replacement will not be able to do the job. If the soldier's brain has been destroyed, for instance, I think the medics are going to be up a tree— technology or no technology. Even if techniques for direct neuronal connections with a cloned brain were possible, you would still have a human organism with a chicken dumpling for a brain until you had devoted years to teaching it something—and even then, considering human development time, you’d be likely to have a happy but useless child-adult on your hands. Everything in the original brain would obviously be irrevocably lost. If all of the soldier except the brain were destroyed, you might have better going, but you’d still have to wait half a lifetime for a clone-grown body to mature—and it would be anybody’s guess what might happen to the brain psychologically in the meantime.

     An alternative, the ultimate prosthetic repair or creation of a cyborg, might be plausible provided the problem of direct electronic-neuronal connections can be solved. Although we discussed this earlier, it deserves a word or two more at this point. Next to the solution of the Self/not-Self problem (if it is inherently soluble, which I doubt) it seems to me that the problem of the direct E-N connection is one of the most massive challenges that medicine faces in the future, not only in terms of future warfare but in terms of future evolution of human capability. In the simplest possible terms, we have brains and nervous systems which operate on neurochemical impulses mediated by hormones, enzymes, amino acids, fatty acids, and so forth. Those brains and nervous systems are enormously subtle and sophisticated in their function. On the other hand, we have ever more subtle and sophisticated electronic machines— computers, switches, recording devices, broad-casting devices, receivers, etc.—which operate on electrical impulses mediated by electromagnetic forces. We understand the electronic systems pretty well, but we cannot join the two systems together into interconnecting, functioning units because we don’t understand the neuronal system worth sour green apples. We can join the two systems only indirectly through our human senses, which are our windows to the outside-Self world. We see a signal on a screen and signal back by means of the gross motor intervention of pushing a button, thus altering the electronic system. It’s clumsy and terribly inadequate, however much it may have advanced us technologically. And it’s going to remain clumsy and inadequate until we learn how to join electronic and neuronal systems into fully integrated, functioning, intercommunicating units. Only with this can man and machine become man/machine and begin exploring his/its mutual potential.

     This, of course, would be the ultimate cyborg. This would be an advanced way of restoring war-ravaged human individuals to continuing effective life and usefulness. This would also be a way of pooling the capacity of man and machine so that each could potentiate the other into a super-capable entity with more-than-human potential, but with the human qualities intact because they are part of the machine (and vice versa). In terms of future warfare, this would be a means of transforming ordinary, soft, easily squashed human beings into formidable fighting machines, a step beyond biomedical science. Whether it would be the right step—or a good step—might depend on the nature of the future war.

     Certainly this is a staggering challenge to biomedicine now and in the future, and for better or for worse, two things might safely be said about it:

     (a) When a way is found to make mind/machine connections, it is going to change the nature of every human life, war or no war.

     (b) We’ve got our work cut out for us, finding out how.

KipKaro, medic in the U.S. Army, displays the contents of a combat medic's bag (go to his imgur album to see the full-sized images). Naturally it is optimized for medical emergencies commonly encountered on a battlefield.

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A military base is a facility directly owned and operated by or for the military or one of its branches that shelters military equipment and personnel, and facilitates training and operations. In general, a military base provides accommodations for one or more units, but it may also be used as a command center, a training ground, or a proving ground. In most cases, a military base relies on some outside help in order to operate. However, certain complex bases are able to endure by themselves for long periods because they are able to provide food, water and other life support necessities for their inhabitants while under siege.

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The name used generally refers to the type of military activity that takes place at the base.

A military base may go by any of a number of names, such as the following:

• Armory
• Arsenal
• Barracks
• Casern
• Combat outpost (COP)
• DoDAAC
• Facility
• Fire support base (FSB, FB)
• Forward Operating Base (FOB)
• Fortification
• Garrison
• Installation
• Joint base
• Magazine
• Main Operating Base (MOB)
• Marine Corps base
• Military airbase, airfield or field
• Military camp
• Naval air station
• Naval base
• Naval dockyard
• Outpost (OP)
• Presidio
• Proving ground
• Reservation
• Shipyard or yard
• Station

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Example of a permanent military base is a Main Operating Base

Examples of non- or semi-permanent military bases include a Forward Operating Base (FOB), a Logistics Base (Log base) and a Fire Base (FB).

A military base may also contain large concentrations of military supplies in order to support military logistics. Most military bases are restricted to the public and usually only authorized personnel may enter them (be it military personnel or their relatives and authorized civilian personnel).

Military bases usually provide housing for military personnel, a post office and dining facilities (DFACs). They may also provide support facilities such as fast food restaurants like Burger King, or AAFES snack bar, a gas station, chapels, schools, a hospital or clinic (dental or health clinics), shopping and convenience retail stores such as a Base/Post exchange (BX/PX) or shoppette, beauty salon, and laundromats. Family, Morale, Welfare and Recreation (FMWR) provides facilities such as fitness centers, libraries, athletic fields, basketball hoops, child development centers, automotive workshops, hobby/arts and crafts centers, bowling centers, and community activity centers.

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Military and government

A command center is a central place for carrying out orders and for supervising tasks, also known as a headquarters, or HQ.

Common to every command center are three general activities: inputs, processes, and outputs. The inbound aspect is communications (usually intelligence and other field reports). Inbound elements are "sitreps" (situation reports of what is happening) and "progreps" (progress reports relative to a goal that has been set) from the field back to the command element.

The process aspect involves a command element that makes decisions about what should be done about the input data. In the US military, the command consists of a field - (Major to Colonel) or flag - (General) grade commissioned officer with one or more advisers. The outbound communications then delivers command decisions (i.e., operating orders) to the field elements.

Command centers should not be confused with the high-level military formation of a Command - as with any formation, Commands may be controlled from a command center, however not all formations controlled from a command centre are Commands.

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(ed note: in a space station, these would be various habitat modules or sections of a hab module.)

A military building is any structure designed to house functions performed by a military unit. General types include:

• Administrative Facilities
• Ammunition Storage Facilities
• Commissary Facilities
• Correctional Facilities
• Fortifications
• Hospitals
• Housing
• Mess
• Military Intelligence Facilities
• Museums
• POL (Petroleum, Oils, & Lubricants) Storage and Handling Facilities
• Pinga House
• Recreation Facilities
• Research Facilities
• Training Facilities
• Utility Structures
• Vehicle Repair, Maintenance, & Storage Facilities
• Weapons and Ammunition Production Facilities

The Role of  the Military Space Station

• Warehouse: Any military operation is going to require logistical support, especially in the far reaches of interstellar space. Much like the Federation Starbases, the military space station allows for our future military organization to have a safe port to gather supplies away from the frontlines. Commercial vessels would use the military space station has an hub to delivery their cargo, instead of attempting to met the warship in unprotected space. This warehouse-in-space would also be an range extender for the supply chain to deep space military units. 
  
  
• Oasis: Serving onboard a ship, either now, in future, or even the past, crews need a change of scenery from the drab grey bulkheads and endless blackness. Military space stations would a place where they could relax, get a drink, met new people, take advantage of rec centers, and the merchants, and each other. Just think of how nice it was when you were playing Mass Effect to come back to the Citadel, or that speech from Romilly in Interstellar when he talked about missing green. 
  
  
• RV Point:  Military space stations could also be seen as an common assembly point for an massive military operations, as was the case with Starbase 375 during Operation: RETURN from ST:DS9 or the Fleet battle stations from SST. These space stations would be the central hub for the assembled units and serve these vessels and soldiers in a secure location. 
  
  
• Strike Base: To borrow a phrase from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, space is big, really big, and the realistic distances between targets could be massive. Much like the RV point role, the military space station could also be an strike base for rapid response units, like the space forts from Enemy Mine. If you place your space fortress near an area of threat, you can rush forces there much quicker than coming dozens or hundreds of lightyears to get there. This reason is more concrete when we consider the horror of light speed travel and time dilation, if there is no soft sci-fi hyper drive to save us from that consideration. Much the space stations in The Forever War, these strike bases would be within "local time" of the enemy.  
  
  
• Symbol of Power and Ownership: The military space station is a great way for saying "that I own this and this is mine because I put this space station here". When planted around a planet or within a star system, the military space station symbolizes your government's authority and power over this area of space. This also forms an anchor for your claim and a target for your enemies.  
  
  
• Drydock/Repair station: Along with getting a beer, a tattoo, some more MREs, and some strange; the military space station will be a place to repair your battered warship. As seen in Star Trek, orbital space installations could offer drydock repair facilities for everything from a simple 3,000 lightyear tune-up or replacing whole sections of your starship after some superman from the 20th century tried to take revenge for the death of his beloved wife.
  
  
• Headquarters: There are a number of works that project that future military organizations will make their primary HQ on a military space station, or even a regional HQ given that space is big...really big. An military sparefaring organization could construct military space stations, like Starbases, to be the regional or sector command base for operations.  
  
  
• Hospital: Much like major urban medical centers with more extensive services and ability than the smaller regional hospitals, the same will be true in space. Smaller military outposts or even warships will not offer the medical facilities that a military space station will, and this makes the military space station a busy central hub during times of conflict with patients being shipped back to the space station trauma centers. This was well done in the 1997 Starship Troopers film and in Enemy Mine.       

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The Military Space Station as an Invasion Platform

     Some sci-fi creators have envisioned the military space station as an mobile platform for planetary invasions or even extensive operations in an certain star system. We have seen this with the Tet from Oblivion and the Fleet Battle station Ticonderoga from SST. Unlike a space naval taskforce, which mostly likely would have the space combat equivalent of an amphibious landing assault ship, the space station would serve as a the keystone for the invasion, offering greater services and abilities to the ground forces dirtside.
     Consider that these invasion space station platforms could have first-rate medical services, on-demand manufacturing, R&R services, docking stations, and greater space for supplies and equipment. Of course, the bitch of the thing would be transporting the space station to the objective and the expensive of construction and maintenance.  The other element to consider is an hostile space station in orbit over the planetary combat theater would be a juicy target for the defenders. A good clean KEW hit or even a smuggled nuke could destroy the station and taking thousands of lives with it...not to mention the overall invasion operation.

In fairness, I've met few military intelligence specialists who clearly understood that their role is not the same as a military historian's.

I meant that many MI analysts are content to record and interpret what has already happened, rather than provide the operations side with useful projections of what might happen next and — most importantly — what they might be able to do about it.

As for why that is, some of it is a lack of intellectual rigor (prediction is inherently much harder than postdiction), some of it is careerist unwillingness to "bet one's bars" on predictive scenarios (compounded by a zero-defect attitude among commanders), some of it is failure to understand the operators' requirements (since few MI have worked the other side first). Most of it is a lack of good predictive tools at the tactical/operational level, especially for unconventional warfare. If MI had the "killer ap" that let them map relationships and resource flows (information, money, logistics, personnel, etc.), they might be better positioned to focus ops on taking out this linkage or propping up that ally, and what effect it would have.

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Even as the beams did their work, a web of pinhole optical cameras wired into Hangzhou’s hull studied them. The cameras fed data to a defensive control computer, which compared the information to its files on ships of Asakaze’s design. The computer deduced the precise origin of the beams, and ordered an array of counterbattery lasers to fire “up the beam” of the attacking cannon. Asakaze let its lasers linger too long on Hangzhou, and Chinese counterbattery beams slashed into the Japanese ship’s unarmored optics, disabling two cannon and damaging a third before its shutter could close. The Chinese counterbattery computer updated its records in hopes of improving its chance for a hit should the lasers hit again.

Less than half of a second had passed since the laser officer on Asakaze had fired the weapons.

In the San Jacinto’s CIC, Neil watched in fascination. Counterbattery response time was prized intelligence. He flagged the data for Space Force analysts before returning to the camera view of the Hangzhou.

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“How did we find out about it?” he asked.

“Sources and methods, Neil.”

“I’m sorry?”

Donovan smiled. “First lesson of intelligence: Don’t ever expect an answer to a question about our sources of information or our methods in obtaining it. That’s the stuff we have to protect the most; if we burn a source, we very likely lose that source of information for good. Word gets out we burn sources, and fewer people want to talk to us.”

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“One last question,” Neil said. “The XO said you requested me as your liaison. Any particular reason?”

Donovan said, “What’s the strategic value of AD Leonis?”

Neil’s response was almost immediate. It took him more time to form the sentences in his head than to recall the information.

“Well, the star itself is a red dwarf and a flare hazard. It has a few planets, but I’d have to look up how many and their types. I have never heard of any mining there, so I would gather that the strategic value is that it serves as a critical keyhole junction for the Hans and the Kims, part of the path to both Korean planets, plus Kuan Yin and Entente. It also links to American space, so it’s a trade hub.”

Donovan said, “Well done. I’d overheard you talking to some of your colleagues on the hop to Vandenberg and later on the station. You have a pretty solid command of how intelligence works. Most of your colleagues probably wouldn’t know half of that about AD Leonis. Your recall isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good. While anyone can look up almost anything, intrinsic knowledge is the key to the quick analysis your superiors will want. If you know something, you can think about it. But more importantly, you phrased your response like an intelligence officer, despite your limited training. You not only answered the question, but you told me what you knew, what you didn’t know, and you distinguished your facts from your opinions. That’s the proper way for intelligence officers to deal with information, Neil. It usually takes quite a bit of training for someone to organize their mind properly like that, but it comes to you pretty naturally.”

     Intelligence and the Star Wars universe

     Since its release in 1977, Star Wars has spawned arguments and discussions about how galactic warfare would be conducted – everything from the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (such as the Death Star), through to Counter-Insurgency and irregular warfare (such as the Ewoks). Across this spectrum, we witness an array of examples that range from dogfights between starfighters; fleet engagements between capital ships; and landwarfare between armoured, artillery, and armoured units. The ‘Wars’ in the ‘Star Wars’ title is a plural for good reason.
     One key warfare element that deserves attention is the military intelligence war that plays out throughout these films, especially within the Original Trilogy. Since 1977, Star Wars has been as much an intelligence war as it has been a battle between X-Wings and TIE Fighters. Throughout the films, both the Empire and the Rebel Alliance exploit an array of different information-gathering practices to bolster their otherwise conventional warfighting capability.
     Both sides are using military intelligence to address a shortfall within their warfighting ability. In the case of the Rebel Alliance, it’s a fight for survival – without intelligence on the Empire, they risk being eradicated. Further more, the relatively small band of Rebels can use intelligence as leverage against a larger, better equipped Empire, an organisation that they can not fight on equal terms. It’s this information that tells them what to attack and how best to strike it.
     The Empire, meanwhile, needs intelligence…
     The first ship we see in the Star Wars films is transmitted plans for the Death Star before its crew is captured, making it an intergalactic equivalent of the USS Pueblo.
     The Empire, meanwhile, needs intelligence on a largely de-centralised Rebellion that has literally the entire Galaxy to hide amongst. Intelligence provides the Empire with the means to seek out the key instruments of the Rebellion (namely, its senior leadership), so that they can be shut down for good.

---

     All three films are pretty even in their examples of using intelligence for military purposes. In A New Hope, the plans for the Death Star are stolen and smuggled by the Rebellion (a story that will be illuminated come December 2016 with the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story). The end game of this intelligence smuggling operation isn’t so that the Rebellion can build its own Superlaser, but rather, so that it sift through pentabytes of data and find a fatal weakness within the Death Stars design.
     Conversely, we see some old school intelligence gathering techniques in A New Hope – namely, the sharing of information by the spy Garindan (AKA Long Snoot) as he stalks Obi Wan and Luke to the Millennium Falcon.
     R2-D2’s venture onto the Death Star later in the film could conceivably be an exploitation of poor cyber security on the Empire’s behalf. Indeed, if R2-D2 were half the programmer that intelligence organisations use today, he would have delivered the intergalactic equivalent of a stuxnet virus into the Death Star’s memory banks, and caused the superlaser to detonate itself the next time it attempted to fire.

---

     The Empire Strikes Back takes the intelligence campaign further. Imperial Probe Droids – the drones of the Star Wars universe – are dispatched throughout the Galaxy (I want to know about how the Empire disseminates all of the information from these Probes and decides what videos that Captain Piett will view from the bridge of his Star Destroyer).
     The end result of this Probe Droid program is the discovery of the Rebel Base on Hoth, whose destruction yields a significant blow against the Alliance. Later in the film, the Empire goes to the private sector, commissioning freelance bounty hunters to locate the Millennium Falcon and attempt the capture of Rebel senior leadership.
     The conclusion of The Empire Strikes Back sees Luke using the Force to get information that leads him to Bespin, and his fateful confrontation with Darth Vader. Based on nothing more than a vision of ‘A City in the Clouds’, Luke travels halfway across the Galaxy and falls into his father’s trap, despite Vader making no physical attempt to contact him. Any academic who attempts to write a history of the Star Wars galaxy is likely to come up frustratingly short on answers when they question why certain decisions were made, if for no other reason than ‘the Force’.

---

     In Return of the Jedi, a number of Rebels plant themselves as agents within Jabba’s Palace to mount the rescue of Han Solo (arguably more of a Special Operations mission than Intelligence activity). Never-the-less, such an operation would have required careful study of disguises for Leia and Lando, who both slip into the palace in cognito.
     That operation is a success, bringing us to the film’s second and third act – a massive military operation against a Second Death Star. We learn that many Bothan Spies died to bring us the information presented in the briefing room of the Home One. What they don’t realise is that the intelligence on the Second Death Star is merely a counter-intelligence operation from Emperor Palpatine himself, intended to lure the Rebels into a trap. In three films, we’ve seen quite a robust exploration of how both sides use intelligence to their advantage.

     The Prequels warrant a mere paragraph in the intelligence stakes – not a reflection on the quality of the films, but rather, an acknowledgement that these films have no real intelligence grounding. In The Phantom Menace, the Trade Federation uses malware coded within a distress message to track the Queen’s Starship to Tatooine. Obi-Wan does some gumshoe detective work to find a Clone Army and Droid Foundries on Geonosis in Attack of the Clones, whilst ‘Clone Intelligence’ gives a few tidbits on the Separatists in Revenge of the Sith. Throughout this trilogy, Palpatine is also playing the galaxy’s greatest double agent. Perhaps The Prequels would have been considerably improved if they took a greater focus on intelligence.

---

     Which brings us to The Force Awakens. We should probably begin by acknowledging the geopolotical (astropolitical?) state of play in this film, with New Republic having signed a peace treaty with Imperial remnants. The New Republic has largely gotten rid of its military so that it can instead spend its budget on managing the Galaxy. That leaves the Resistance, a quasi-legal military force, to take the fight against Imperial remnants that did not go quietly into the night – namely, The First Order, which has been building its forces in secret.
     It’s a classic hawk-and-dove scenario between the Resistance and the New Republic, suggesting a kind of political nuance that the Star Wars films don’t often get credit for. Much like Europe in the 1930s, the New Republic is too busy trying to recover from the last war, and not acknowledge grim realities. A resurgent First Order is practicing a very disciplined information game – consolidating its strength, but not so obviously that the New Republic judges it necessary to re-arm itself. Had the New Republic (much less The Resistance) have known of just how powerful the First Order really was, it’s doubtful they would have allowed them to go unchecked. Just imagine if the Axis had have had a viable nuclear weapon program in the 1930s.
     Like the original trilogy, The Force Awakens demonstrates a good grasp of intelligence supporting a larger and more conventional war. This film doesn’t just illustrate the strengths of intelligence, however – it also demonstrates that organisations who ignore or de-prioritise intelligence do so at their own peril. We see examples of HUMINT (on-the-ground informants working for the First Order and Resistance at seen at Maz Kamata’s bar) through to Intel-gathering platforms operated by the Resistance. Snap Wexley pilots an Electronic Intelligence ship (possibly a mission-specific T-70 X-Wing variant) that brings back an accurate picture of the Starkiller Base, shields and all.
     In the meantime, both sides follow intelligence leads – whether they’re from The Force, through interogations, or from defections – to look for map for Luke Skywalker.

---

     What can we judge from each side’s intelligence capability? The First Order is, arguably, far superior in this regard. It is disciplined and well resourced. It appears to have more agents throughout the galaxy working for them, judging from the Guavian Death Gang’s tip-off that Han Solo is in possession of BB-8. The First Order keeps the construction of Starkiller Base a secret, its existence only revealed when it reaches out and destroys New Republic’s capital planet. Say what you will about The First Order repeating the mistakes of the Empire by building another resource-intensive superweapon – Starkiller Base decapitated the New Republic’s government.
     The Resistance – and the New Republic – largely demosntrate a shortfall in adequate intelligence throughout much of The Force Awakens. The disappearance of Luke Skywalker some 15 years earlier intelligence failure, given their inability to find him. When it has its first solid lead to discovering Skywalker’s location, The Resistance sends a mere single pilot to retrieve that information.
     In fact, it’s entirely possible that the obsessive search for Skywalker likely distracted The Resistance from intelligence that could have led to the discovery of Starkiller Base. If Luke had not have gone missing in the first place, the New Republic might still be alive today. Talk about your intelligence failures.
     The intelligence that the Resistance is able to garner about Starkiller Base is largely drawn from the defection of FN-2187, and a handful of reconnaissance sorties flown by X-Wings. Through sheer luck and a little bit of talent, it’s sufficient information for The Resistance to destroy Starkiller Base. Once again, blind luck also leads the map fragment containing the location of Luke Skywalker to be decoded by The Resistance.

---

     What we don’t see however are the repercussions of these intelligence successes and failures, and we wont know much more until December 2017 – the new release date for Star Wars Episode VIII. Disney and Lucasfilm recently announced this film would have the benefit of another six months in production time, during which I hope Rian Johnston finds the opportunity to include more ‘intelligence’ examples within the film.
     What can we expect to see? There’s nothing better than idle speculation, but the real world has a host of examples that I hope are drawn upon. R2-D2 returning to the fold as an exploiter of cyber-security shortfalls, for one. An entire starship given over to the use of COMINT, ELINT and SIGINT – our very own First Order variant of the RC-135 Rivet Joint – would be a sight to see. But there’s one intelligence cliche that, surprisingly, we don’t see in the Star Wars movies – it’s the secret agent.
     There’s a lot of characters in the Star Wars trilogy who work in the intelligence domain, but they’re largely pilots, soldiers, informants or technical specialists. None of them are a professional agent. On the one hand, I applaud the screenwriters for making seven films rich in intelligence examples without resorting to a cinematic cliche of James Bond/Jason Bourne/Jack Bauer.

An intelligence service was as important as a new secret weapon—more important; no matter how fantastic and powerful a weapon might be developed from Dr. Ledbetter's researches, it would be no help until they knew just where and how to use it against the enemy's weak points. A ridiculously inadequate military intelligence had been the prime characteristic of the United States as a power all through its history. The most powerful nation the globe had ever seen-but it had stumbled into wars like a blind giant. Take this present mess: the atom bombs of PanAsia weren't any more powerful than our own but we had been caught flat-footed and had never gotten to use a one.

We had had how many stockpiled? A thousand, he had heard. Ardmore didn't know, but certainly the PanAsians had known, just how many, just where they were. Military intelligence had won the war for them, not secret weapons. Not that the secret weapons of the PanAsians were anything to sneer at particularly when it was all too evident that they really were "secret." Our own so-called intelligence services had fallen down on the job.

Logistical Considerations

      Several logistics requirements play important roles in allowing space forces to be employed to best advantage. Space-based supply points will be one of the most important requirements. As already noted, such points will be necessary to lessen dependence on terrestrial sources of supply. A subsidiary requirement, but one worth being mentioned in its own right, is a space refueling capability. This requirement will be important in sustaining maneuvering force elements and in increasing the range of space vehicles. Another supply requirement that demands special attention is water. The most severe limiting factor on manned operations in space is the need for water. One problem with water is lifting its weight and volume. A second problem is that it is not completely recoverable and recyclable even in totally closed spacecraft systems. Whatever the problems, man cannot long exist without water so these problems must be overcome if man is to fully exploit space.

     Three more logistics requirements are an on-demand launch capability, increased launch capability, and high-power sources. On-demand launch capability is important to flexibility in space support operations. On-demand launch will provide the ability to meet unforeseen contingencies and emergencies. It will also be necessary to provide a rapid surge capability in periods of heightened tensions.

     Increased launch capability means both more launch vehicles and more launch sites. Increased launch capability will be required to meet the demands of constructing and supporting a fully developed space force structure. It will also contribute to the development of a surge capability. Increased security and defenses for launch sites are a vital sub-element of this requirement.

     Compact high-power sources will be important for meeting the power demands of space forces. This is particularly true for maneuvering assets and assets requiring reduced detectability. In these instances large solar arrays would not really -be practical. Also, since a significant portion of space weaponry is likely to be in the directed-energy category, high-capacity power supplies will be essential to sustaining these weapons in combat.

     For the terrestrial support elements of space systems, two major points to be considered are endurability and redundancy. The primary terrestrial support elements are launch sites and ground terminals and control centers. The United States presently has two primary space launch sites at the Kennedy Space Center and Vandenburg AFB. Both sites are located on coastlines and are relatively vulnerable. What is needed is another launch site located at an isolated interior location in the western United States that can be well defended. Obviously, the major problem with interior locations is range safety. While there must be some tradeoff in range safety for defense considerations, there are steps that can be taken to minimize this tradeoff. One step is to locate facilities in the centers of such low population density areas as the Nevada-Utah border. Another step is to concentrate normal usage at KSC and Vandenburg and to maintain a third location principly for surge and survivability purposes. A third step, and the one that could do the most for making interior launch sites viable, is to develop a single-stage-to-orbit capability. If interior launch sites could be proliferated, endurability would increase not only through better defensibility, but through redundancy as well. 'Increasing redundancy would also contribute to building a surge capability that does not currently exist.

     The other terrestrial support element is the ground segment consisting of tracking and communication sites and control centers. Many tracking stations and ground terminals are in vulnerable overseas locations. These stations should be relocated to more defensible locations in the continental United States. Cross-linking between satellites and the use of tracking and data relay satellites can make this possible. Not only does the ground segment need to be located in the CONUS, it also needs to be made more survivable through the proliferation of mobile ground terminals with survivable communications links to command centers.

(ed note: Phil Pournelle is one of Jerry Pournelle's sons. The discussion is about Attack Vector: Tactical {AV:T})

Phil Pournelle:

I’ve been lurking and reading the Realistic Weapons thread for a while and have enjoyed the discussion, though I have not really done the math required to fathom it completely. I generally understand the math regarding acceleration and fuel requirements.

Merchants will run around at a maximum of 0.1Gs acceleration, military drives could possibly top out at 1G for a short period of time at an incredible expenditure of resources. Obviously the energy costs to do all this increase as the mass of the ship increases.

Which brings me to a critical point about ship design that I don’t know has been covered here.

Spaceships with a human crew will require a significant investment in life support. Working on a ship in the water, I have a great appreciation for this. Here we can draw upon the medium we float on to generate fresh water (Reverse Osmosis, etc) and fresh air around us. In the age of sailing ships, they had to carry almost everything with them, but then they could subsidize their food stores with fish caught in the ocean and rain falling from the sky. Additionally, maritime nations went to great lengths to develop resupply stations around the world, on land.

This has two important implications: Mass of the starships and the impact of logistics on spacial battles.

Life Support systems able to sustain a crew for extended periods of time would require significant mass devoted to organics, hydroponics, water, scrubbers, etc. Being on a ship I can attest to the value to the crew of large common areas, particularly for extended periods of time. Larger ships can sustain people for longer periods of time, look at a carrier versus a mine sweeper… In the Ten Worlds Universe you could go a year before reaching a port of call with air in your hair and grass at your feet. Trust me you can keep a crew reasonably sane if you can stop at a small island place like Tinian or Catalina once in a while. It is a completely different if all you have to offer is another Spam can.

So now you have ships hauling around a large mass of life support systems. These sustain you during the month of boredom but become a significant liability in the minutes of terror in battle. I think the implications could turn the AV:T assumptions on their head. Rather than carry the mass of the life support systems around with you, leave them behind. During the short time devoted to combat, you need a short amount of life support. Employ a craft that only requires you to sustain the crew for a few hours. Battle Riders are the classic designs from Traveler. But then Battle Riders really are fighters, just a question of what is the mass difference between a fighter and a battle boat.

The second implication of all this is the impact of logistics on the operational level on spacial battles. If even warships are limited in the amount of thrust they can expend in battles, then the forces with the best interior lines of communication (resupply) will dominate the operational level of conflict. If two opposing forces of equal combat effectiveness begin an engagement, then the defender (assuming he is closer to his resupply bases) can maneuver radically or salvo large numbers of expendables and force the attacker to have to respond in kind. Exhausted the attacker must retreat, he cannot resupply. Thus the old saying returns, amateurs discuss tactics, experts discuss logistics. I view the potential Ten Worlds battles not so much as the Age of Nelson, but the age of Nimitz.

Again all of this may have been covered before I joined this group, so please let me know.

Ken Burnside:

Phil Pournelle: Life Support systems able to sustain a crew for extended periods of time would require significant mass devoted to organics, hydroponics, water, scrubbers, etc.

We ran numbers on this during one of your intermissions from the list, but...

In AV:T, one hull space (25 tons, nominal) of support cargo has the supplies needed to keep one person healthy, alive and somewhat sane for 160 weeks. Multiply surviving support cargo by 160, divide by the people in the crew, round the fractions up, and you have the cruise duration in weeks. (We use fortnights, so divide by 80, and you're fine.)

There is a separate installation that provides, for lack of a better term, "sewer plant features" and air scrubbing.

A third type of installation is an interior garden to give very long range endurance.

The numbers were taken from submarine usage, and (in a rough sense) quadrupling the amount of water and multiplying the stored air by about 200x. We also have fairly automated ships (to keep the crew levels down) and actually worked out the packed volume of a cargo support space to make sure the densities worked. We looked into hydroponics and found that for the (admittedly) small sized crews we had, they only made sense when you had about half the crew size and expected to be out for several years between port calls. We still statted them out.

Some nations build their ships with pod docks to do exactly what you describe — leave the lunch pail behind the ship before you go to fight — which means you could lose it if something slips past you. Other nations are a bit more paranoid and try to pack the support supplies internally. Still others use tenders and gunboats (your tender and battle rider part, that I snipped) as their primary doctrine, but it's a doctrine on the way out due to manpower requirements and the short life expectancy of the gunboat crews if the balloon goes up.

That being said, a gunboat tender is a very flexible ship; swap out some of its gunboats with supply pods, and you have a very long endurance ship for showing the flag, convoy escorts, relief missions, and all sorts of Missions Other Than War.

Phil Pournelle: The second implication of all this is the impact of logistics on the operational level on spacial battles.

Supply nodes are pretty clearly marked on the Ten Worlds route maps, including who owns them, who has rights for basing at them, and which ones will sell (or be coerced) support to all comers.

Every can city that hosts a permanent population has a hydroponics belt, and most all of them have a greensward, and spin gravity. It's not quite being on a planet, but sometimes the planets just aren't convenient to get to or from. And yes, pulling up to a can city for liberty does happen...and captains have the authority to accept recruits from can cities as well, inducting them into the service, usually with an enlistment term that boils down to "10 years in the Navy, and citizenship when we get you home."

(For the kids growing up in the can city, ANYTHING can seem like a better deal than growing old with the same old faces you already dislike surrounding you. Plus, as the Three Generation Rule kicks in...

Sometimes "accept recruits" and "Throw a party, get a bunch of the brighter kids drunk and have them wake up with a hangover and a Gunny yelling in their face as the ship is outbound" can get a bit blurry.)

But back to supply nodes.

Supply nodes are worth fighting over, not just with warships, but with treaty obligations. The Saladin War expanded for the Olympians when they attempted to cut the Medinan's line of supply on their flank...and Chinese didn't take kindly to the joint base being hulked by an overzealous Olympian commander.

The real issue with supply nodes is that unlike a base on an island, there is no real analog to coastal fortifications to make them secure. The only way you protect your base is to engage the enemy far enough away from it that he can't hurt it without defeating the defending force.

A defending force in its home system will be expected to trot out the nukes and apologize later if their polity survives. Nukes are about the only effective "defender force multiple" we've been able to come up with.

Nukes are banned by treaty; this treaty is nigh unenforceable, but its anemic enforcement provision means that when two warships meet in the back of the beyond, they swap junior officers for an inspection of ordnance logbooks, a dinner party, and a thorough debriefing by their XO and INTEL officer when they get back. This "courtesy call" is as much for the "know your counterpart in the opposite service" as it is for the supposed inspection regime.

An important mind set in the Ten Worlds is that within living memory, something like 99.9% of the human race vanished with the Loss. There is a strong cultural taboo (right now) against War to the Knife. It's war to specific objectives, it's war with the expectation that the negotiations afterwards will be the final determinant of who won or lost. The Chinese Drop Brigade is one of those things that makes people nervous and is primarily a deterrent. It's the lone force that could concievably drop on an enemy planet and perform an Afghanistan-type operation, and much effort and attention is paid to which camo patterns its vehicles are painted with at any time...

Another point is that in spite of this taboo, leading up to the Saladin War, every single major power had a much larger fleet than they could comfortably support, due to holdovers from Earth and the general inflation of intelligence estimates of capabilities. It was seriously impacting economies throughout the Ten Worlds, and one of the foci of the treaty ending the Saladin War is a Naval Reduction Treaty.

However, if the naval forces drop below their current levels, there are going to be systems and trade routes uncovered, and piracy may rise again...

• 

      Most of those present had strapped themselves into seats bolted to the curved deck, while several clumps of officers floated free to consult with one another.  As Drake entered, acceleration alarms began to hoot and a disembodied voice announced the imminent return of spin gravity.  Drake quickly used the “overhead” handholds to move to his position at the table that had been set up at the front of the compartment.
     There he joined Grand Admiral Georges Terence Belton, who was already strapped into his seat.  The admiral was reviewing his notes.  At Drake’s approach, he looked up and nodded gravely.

     “Welcome, Drake.  How was the trip from Alta?”
     “Hurried, sir.  I wish the lizards had given us another month to prepare.”
     “Hell, why not ask for another year?”
     “No sense tempting the fates, sir.  A month would have been sufficient.”
     Belton rubbed his chin, and then nodded.  “You might be right.  I know I would have been more prepared for this coming fight.  Still, while we are wishing, we might want to ask for another hundred orbital fortresses.”
     “Just get us the ones we already have in time to do some good, sir.”

     G.T. Belton was in overall command of the Spica Operation, and Drake’s boss, even though he would not be going within a hundred light years of the fleet’s objective.  Belton had done a brilliant job in bringing a billion disparate elements together to mount the invasion.  However, like General Groves of the fabled Manhattan Project, Belton’s skills were that of an organizer more than a warrior.  Now that the time had come to put his planning into practice, he would continue in overall command — as much as a sop to the politicians of Earth as for military necessity — but a younger, more vigorous commander would take over direct operational responsibility for the invasion. (i.e., Richard Drake)

     “Ready to give the lizards a swift kick in the tail?” Belton asked as he buckled in.
     “Yes, sir,” Drake replied.  “And thank you for the trust you have shown in supporting me for this command.”
     “You may want to hold your appreciations until you have a few engagements under your belt.  Being at the sharp end of the spear can be a thankless job, especially when you have to deal with REMFs.”
     “REMFs, sir?”
     “Old terrestrial navy expression, Drake.  Its roots are obscene.  It refers to the assholes back at base who won’t give the man in combat what he needs unless he asks in triplicate.  You can rest assured, by the way, that so long as I am on the job, there will be a minimum of that sort of bullsh*t.”

     While Drake led the bulk of humanity’s offensive fleet into the heart of enemy space, Grand Admiral Belton would establish the bases and infrastructure needed to keep the fleet supplied.  As Bethany, Drake’s historian wife, had remarked when he told her of his appointment to operational command, Belton was to be General George C. Marshall to Drake’s George Patton.  Richard knew who General Patton had been, of course.  One of the ships in the fleet was named Patton.

     He had never heard of George C. Marshall.

• 

      Whatever the case, he was glad Khalid was on his way to break the news to Captain Norris that, in addition to C-transit still being down, engineering had fabbed only sixteen missiles from the asteroid they’d commandeered upon entering the Grendel system—a fraction of the number they’d spent at Descartes. The old man was already cranky enough, being trapped in sickbay while the grafts took on what were left of his legs.

     Biermann switched on a confident attitude as he climbed the ladder down to the CIC. He would have found the expression easier to manifest had he been going up to the main bridge, but with the bridge blown all to hell …

     Biermann knew he shouldn’t fret—at least not publicly. Drives and weapons rated a lot higher than starting to grow a new bridge. At least it smelled a bit less like hot metal and melted plastic in the CIC than it did in the rest of the ship.

---

     It would be particularly true when they spun up the singularity set and it began radiating into C-space. Otherwise, a ship that doesn’t want to be found can avoid it pretty easily. Normal space is enormous; ships are tiny. A disabled ship that wants to be found is a difficult target, even if they can make themselves look like a bright spot against the backdrop of space. Most beacons are directional, and if they set a beacon on a slow scan they have to hope that another ship’s fast-scanning antenna is looking in their direction at the right time. The odds are against it, unless that other ship knows just where to look.

     Biermann continued, “We’ll have to hold off spinning the baubles much faster until we’re ready to move, or else we’ll shine brighter than Grendel to their detectors. That means sticking with our deployed arrays for now. Hopefully the only thing they have looking this way are coarse star sensors—but since Grendel’s a flare star you know they have some other sort of observations going on. We’ll yaw a few degrees to port before we clear the star, to try to minimize any reflection off the arrays.” He pictured their orbital transit in his mind: They were much smaller than a star spot, but would cross the surface slowly enough that any observer would know they were in orbit and not on the star’s surface. He said, “If we can’t get the drives going in, say, four hours, is there any way you can task a couple of riggers to distribute some of that asteroidal material around, so we look like something natural? It’s okay that we’re three-axis stabilized, it just looks like we’re tidally locked, but we don’t need to show too many sharp edges if we can help it.”

     “Only if we stop extractions, sir, which means we won’t be growing any more missiles.”
     “That’s okay, Chief,” Biermann said. “We’ll never have enough missiles to take on more than a couple of ships. Just make sure the ones we have are rigged fast and hot.”
     “Aye, sir, will do.”

---

     The idea of the Nine Grounds went all the way back to Earth, several hundred parsecs and many more hundreds of years away. Biermann found the chapter and skimmed the text, wishing his memory was as good as the captain’s so he wouldn’t have to look up the references.

     Frontier ground was a sally into enemy territory, and serious ground was a deeper run at the enemy: One was advised not to stop in the frontier, and once in deep had to resort to plunder to keep supplied. It was a problem that had plagued invaders from the earliest wars, and the logistics of space had only made the situation worse. Sure, with fabrication equipment a ship like Tigris could catch an asteroid and mine it to make spare parts and components, or skim a gas giant for volatiles, but that was good only up to a point; the piece of apple still in his teeth reminded him they couldn’t plant and grow fresh fruit as quickly, for instance. It meant long supply lines, vulnerable to accident and interdiction, which was why outposts and colonies, and even spacefaring vessels themselves, had to be as self-sufficient as possible and to exploit resources as they came available.

Warning: spoilers for RENEGADE by Joel Shepherd

Walker sighed, and leaned both thick elbows on the balcony railing. They looked out at the passing parade. “Yeah. Fourteen years was enough for me. Of course, I wasn’t on the sharp end like you…”

“You were sharp enough. You know what it’s like.” Walker had sat Scan on a hauler. They weren’t armed, but they often carried arms into hot spots, where god-knew-what was waiting for them. All in all, Erik was sure he’d rather be on a ship that could shoot back. Phoenix was certainly that. “Besides, I’ve only done three on Phoenix. The other seven years I was staffing, babysitting docks or serving on Firebird. The most action Firebird saw was the occasional solar flare.”

“All valuable work.” Walker patted his hand. “How are the tavalai taking it, do you think? Will the surrender last?”

Erik made a dismissive face. “Oh they’ve been sick of this war for decades. It should have ended fifty years ago Dad, you know that.”

“Sure. But wars in space move slow.” They did. The logistics alone took an incredible time. Anyone could strike a system from space, but the deeper you went into enemy territory, the harder it became to get back alive. To hit deep into enemy space, you had to capture systems, not just skip over them. That took huge time, energy and resources. Doing it repeatedly, system after system, took decades. It wasn’t all high-energy combat and casualties, a lot of it was quite boring, months and years of preparations, skirmishes and reconnaissance, punctuated by huge explosions of terror and death. It took a very stubborn people to do it for a hundred and sixty one years. Until this surrender, it was thought that the tavalai were the most stubborn species in the Spiral. Now everyone knew better.

If Wikipedia is to be trusted, apparently, US Civil War general Nathan Bedford Forrest never really said that... He did say, "git thar fust with the most men," which is close enough.

I bring this up because of Doug's comment on an earlier post that the Lanchester equations are so abstract that they merely say the obvious — if you're gonna hava a fight, it's good to have more guys. Those are the odds. Tactics are how you beat the odds. Yet one of those standard military sayings that gets bandied around is amateurs study tactics, professonals study logistics. The mark of a great general is not so much beating the odds as loading the dice.

In his next comment, however, Doug lets the cat out of the bag — confessing that the real problem with the Lanchesterian logic of deep-space combat is that it rules out cool stuff like space pirates. (Off-topic? Not in the least! This blog is fundamentally about Romance, which emphatically includes Pirates in SPAAACE!)

Logistics. The very word, like "economics," kills Romance and buries her in a shallow grave. ... Logistics and economics are both crucial to realistic worldbuilding — if you want a realistic flavor — because of the same principle: If you are a pirate, raiding galleons / starliners on their voyage each year to Cockaigne, you need to know how many galleons there are to raid.

This, however, is all in the background. The reader doesn't expect to see a table of Cockaigne's imports and exports — only to see a few of the choicest samples, when the rogueish heroes break open a chest or unseal a cargo pod. Even less do we expect to see the logistic underpinnings of warfare. We only hear about the Seabees when someone attacks them and they have to shoot back.

Yet logistics includes the time dimension — the fustest, as well as the mostest — and that is where Romance and logistics meet. Every time the cavalry pennons appear over the brow of the pass just as the fort is about to fall, it means that someone got them mounted up and on the road with the sun. That trumpet blast you hear is the triumph of logistics.

Logisticians are a sad and embittered race of men who are very much in demand in war, and who sink resentfully into obscurity in peace. They deal only in facts, but must work for men who merchant in theories. They emerge during war because war is very much a fact. They disappear in peace because peace is mostly theory. The people who merchant in theories, and who employ logisticians in war and ignore them in peace, are generals.

Generals are a happy blessed race who radiate confidence and power. They feed only on ambrosia and drink only nectar. In peace, they stride confidently and can invade a world simply by sweeping their hands grandly over a map, point their fingers decisively up terrain corridors, and blocking defiles and obstacles with the sides of their hands. In war, they must stride more slowly because each general has a logistician riding on his back and he knows that, at any moment, the logistician may lean forward and whisper: "No, you can't do that." Generals fear logisticians in war and, in peace, generals try to forget logisticians.

Romping along beside generals are strategists and tacticians. Logisticians despise strategists and tacticians. Strategists and tacticians do not know about logisticians until they grow up to be generals—which they usually do.

Sometimes a logistician becomes a general. If he does, he must associate with generals whom he hates; he has a retinue of strategists and tacticians whom he despises; and, on his back, is a logistician whom he fears. This is why logisticians who become generals always have ulcers and cannot eat their ambrosia.

Unknown Author

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Logistics..."embraces not merely the traditional functions of supply and transportation in the field, but also war finance, ship construction, munitions manufacture and other aspects of war economy."

Lt Col George C. Thorpe, Pure Logistics, 1917

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Logistics comprises the means and arrangements which work out the plans of strategy and tactics. Strategy decides where to act; logistics brings the troops to this point.

General Antoine Henri Jomini, Precis de l'Art de la Guerre (The Art of War), 1838

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Seldom will all logistics principles exert equal influence; usually one or two will dominate in any given situation. Identifying those principles that have priority in a specific situation is essential to establishing effective support.

Joint Pub 4-0, Doctrine for Logistics Support of Joint Operations, Sep 25, 1992

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Logistics...in the broadest sense, the three big M's of warfare--material, movement, and maintenance. If international politics is 'the art of the possible,' and war is its instrument, logistics is the art of defining and extending the possible. It provides the substance that physically permits an army to live and move and have its being.

James A. Huston, The Sinews of War: Army Logistics 1775-1953, 1966

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Throughout the struggle, it was in his logistic inability to maintain his armies in the field that the enemy's fatal weakness lay. Courage his forces had in full measure, but courage was not enough. Reinforcements failed to arrive, weapons, ammunition and food alike ran short, and the dearth of fuel caused their powers of tactical mobility to dwindle to the vanishing point. In the last stages of the campaign they could do little more than wait for the Allied advance to sweep over them.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, British Army Doctrine Publication, Volume 3, Logistics (June 1996) p. 1-2

“Logistic considerations belong not only in the highest echelons of military planning during the process of preparation for war and for specific wartime operations, but may well become the controlling element with relation to timing and successful operation.” — Vice Admiral Oscar C. Badger, USN

“Underway replenishment was the U.S. Navy’s secret weapon of World War II.”— Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, USN

“It is no great matter to change tactical plans in a hurry and to send troops off in new directions. But adjusting supply plans to the altered tactical scheme is far more difficult.”— General Walter Bedell Smith

“The history of war proves that nine out of ten times an army has been destroyed because its supply lines have been cut off…. We shall land at Inchon, and I shall crush them.”— General Douglas MacArthur

“Every unit that is not supported is a defeated unit.”— Maurice de Saxe, Mes Reveries, XIII, 1732

“Gentlemen, the officer who doesn’t know his communications and supply as well as his tactics is totally useless.”— General George S. Patton, USA

“Bitter experience in war has taught the maxim that the art of war is the art of the logistically feasible.”— Admiral Hyman Rickover, USN

“Amateurs think about tactics, but professionals think about logistics.”— General Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps) noted in 1980

“Sound logistics forms the foundation for the development of strategic flexibility and mobility. If such flexibility is to be exercised and exploited, military command must have adequate control of its logistic support.”— RADM Henry E. Eccles, Logistics in the National Defense (1959)

“The more I see of war, the more I realize how it all depends on administration and transportation . . . It takes little skill or imagination to see where you would like your army to be and when; it takes much more knowledge and hard work to know where you can place your forces and whether you can maintain them there."— General A. C. P. Wavell, quoted in Martin Van Creveld’s Supply War, Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (1977)

“And regulation entails organizational effectiveness, a chain of command, and a structure for logistical support.”— Sun Tzu

“There are five kinds of incendiary attack: The first is called setting fire to personnel; the second, to stores; the third, to transport vehicles and equipment; the fourth, to munitions; the fifth, to supply installations…In all cases an army must understand the changes induced by the five kinds of incendiary attack, and make use of logistical calculations to address them.”— Sun Tzu

“International logistic coordination must always involve some invasion of the economic rights, independence, and sovereignty of each nation of the alliance.”— Rear Admiral Henry E. Eccles: Logistics in the National Defense (1959)

"Logistics sets the campaign's operational limits. The lead time needed to arrange logistics support and resolve logistics concerns requires continuous integration of logistic considerations into the operational planning process. This is especially critical when available planning time is short. Constant coordination and cooperation between the combatant command and component staffs—and with other combatant commands—is a prerequisite for ensuring timely command awareness and oversight of deployment, readiness, and sustainment issues in the theater of war."— Joint Pub 1: Joint Warfare of the Armed Forces of the United States

“Above all, petrol governed every movement.”— Winston Churchill, on Allied operations during World War II

“It was a war begun as a fight for oil and ended by the lack of it.”— Asahi Shimbun, regarding World War II

“…any commander with three months to prepare before he is besieged, who lays in only six days stocks of ammunition deserves to be censured in the strongest terms.”— Julian Thompson, Lifeblood of War, concerning the French debacle at Dien Bien Phu

“He who owns the oil will own the world, for he will rule the sea by means of the heavy oils, the air by means of the ultra-refined oils, and the land by means of gasoline and the illuminating oils.”— Henri Berenger, French diplomat, 1921

“The war was decided by engines and octane.”— Joseph Stalin, referring to the outcome of World War II

“No matter how well fed, equipped, or officered, without oil and gasoline the modern army is a hopeless monster, mire and marked for destruction.”— T.H. Vail Motter, U.S. Army Historian

“The primary cause of our failure was a shortage of fuel.”— General Paul von Kleist, Commander, Panzer Forces, Army Group A in Russia

“Our ships sailed on water, but they moved on oil, and the demand never ceased.”— Rear Admiral W.R. Carter, U.S.N.

“The raids of the Allied air fleets on the German fuel supply installations were the most important of the combined factors which brought about the collapse of Germany.”— General Adolf Galland Commander, German Fighter Force

The crowd had thinned enough that the Slammers officer could trust other pedestrians to avoid him even if he glanced away from his direction of movement. "You go by Jack when you're with friends?" he asked, looking at the bigger man.

"Yes sir, I do," Scratchard replied.

He grinned, and though the expression wasn't quite natural, the noncom was working on it.

Mercenary units were always outnumbered by the indigenous populations that hired them—or they were hired to put down. Mercenaries depended on better equipment, better training—and on each other, because everything else in the world could be right and you were still dead if the man who should have covered your back let you down.

Tyl and Scratchard both wanted—needed—there to be a good relationship between them. It didn't look like they'd be together long . . . but life itself was temporary, and that wasn't a reason not to make things work as well as they could while it lasted.

      In Europe and especially in England, military history is a respected intellectual discipline. Not so here. I doubt there are a dozen U.S. academic posts devoted to the study of the military arts.
     The public esteem of the profession of arms is at a rather low ebb just now—at least in the United States. The Soviet Union retains the pomp and ceremony of military glory, and the officer class is highly regarded, if not by the public (who can know the true feelings of Soviet citizens?) then at least by the rulers of the Kremlin. Nor did the intellectuals always despise soldiers in the United States. Many of the very universities which delight in making mock of uniforms were endowed by land grants and were founded in the expectation that they would train officers for the state militia. It has not been all that many years since U.S. combat troops were routinely expected to take part in parades; when soldiers were proud to wear uniform off-post, and when my uniform was sufficient for free entry into movie houses, the New York Museum of Modern Art, the New York Ballet, and as I recall the Met (as well as to other establishments catering to the less cultural needs of the soldier).
     But now both the military and anyone who studies war are held in a good deal of contempt.

     I do not expect this state of affairs to last—in fact, I am certain that it cannot. A nation which despises its soldiers will all too soon have a despicable army.

     The depressing fact is that history is remarkably clear on one point: wealthy republics do not last long. Time after time they have risen to wealth and freedom; the citizens become wealthy and sophisticated; unwilling to volunteer to protect themselves, they go to conscription; this too becomes intolerable; and soon enough they turn to mercenaries.
     Machiavelli understood that, and things have not much changed since his time—except that Americans know far less history than did the rulers of Florence and Milan and Venice.

     For mercenaries are a dangerous necessity. If they are incompetent, they will ruin you. If they are competent there is always the temptation to rob the paymaster.
     Why should they not? They know their employers will not fight. They may, if recruited into a national army, retain loyalty to the country—but if the nation despises them, and takes every possible opportunity to let them know it, then that incentive falls as well—and they have a monopoly on the means of violence. Their employers won’t fight—if they would, they needn’t have hired mercenaries.

     The result is usually disastrous for the wealthy republic.
     After all, it should be fairly clear that no one fights purely for money; that anyone who does is probably not worth hiring. As Montesquieu put it, “a rational army would run away.” To stand on the firing parapet and expose yourself to danger; to stand and fight a thousand miles from home when you’re all alone and outnumbered and probably beaten; to spit on your hands and lower the pike, to stand fast over the body of Leonidas the King, to be rear guard at Kunu-ri; to stand and be still to the Birkenhead drill; these are not rational acts.
     They are often merely necessary.

     Through history, through painful experience, military professionals have built up a specialized knowledge: how to induce men (including most especially themselves) to fight, aye, and to die. To charge the guns at Breed’s Hill and New Orleans, at Chippewa and at Cold Harbor; to climb the wall of the Embassy Compound at Peking; to go ashore at Betio and Saipan; to load and fire with precision and accuracy while the Bon Homme Richard is sinking; to fly in that thin air five miles above a hostile land and bring the ship straight and level for thirty seconds over Regensberg and Ploești; to endure at Heartbreak Ridge and Porkchop Hill and the Iron Triangle and Dien Bien Phu and Huế and Firebase 34 and a thousand nameless hills and villages.
     It’s a rather remarkable achievement, when you think about it. It’s even more remarkable when you look closer and see just how many mercenary units have performed creditably, honorably, even gallantly; how many of those who have changed history on the battlefield have been professional soldiers. For despite the silly sayings about violence never settling anything, history IS changed on the battlefield: ask the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the Continental Congress, the Carthaginians, the Israelis, the Confederate States of America, Pompey and Caesar and Richard III and Harold of Wessex, Don Juan of Austria and Aetius the last Roman. Yet you could search through the armies of history and you would find few competent troopers who fought for money and money alone.

     This is the mistake so often made by those who despise the military, and because they despise it refuse to understand it: they fail to see that few are so foolish as to give their lives for money; yet an army whose soldiers are not willing to die is an army that wins few victories.
     Yet certainly there have always existed mercenary soldiers.

     We can piously hope there will be no armies in the future. It is an unlikely hope; at least history is against it. On the evidence, peace is a purely theoretical state of affairs whose existence we deduce because there have been intervals between wars. But I did not speak contemptuously when I spoke of pious hopes; nor do I find it an irony that the Strategic Air Command, whose commanders hold leashed more firepower than has been expended by all the armies of all time, has as its motto “Peace is our profession.” Most of those young men who guard us as we sleep believe in that, believe it wholeheartedly and give up a very great deal for it. I too can piously hope for peace; that we shall heed the advice of the carol we sing annually and “hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.”
     There is no physical reason why the human race should not endure for a hundred billion years; and on that scale our history is short, and all we have learned is little compared to what we shall one day know. There may well be a secret formula for peace, and certainly I hope we will find it.
     But to hope is nothing. When Appius Claudius told the Senate of Rome that “If you would have peace, be thou then prepared for war” he said nothing that history has not repeatedly affirmed. It may be wrong advice. Certainly there is an argument against it. But I think there is no argument at all against a similar aphorism: “If you would have peace, then understand war.”
     Which is to say, understand armies; understand why men fight; understand the organization of violence.

• 

Too often in history a mercenary force has disappeared a moment before the battle; switched sides for a well-timed bribe; or even conquered its employer and brought about the very disasters it was hired to prevent.

Mercenaries, for their part, face the chances common to every soldier of being killed by the enemy. In addition, however, they must reckon with the possibility of being bilked of their pay or massacred to avoid its payment; of being used as cannon fodder by an employer whose distaste for "money-grubbing aliens" may exceed the enemy's; or of being abandoned far from home when defeat or political change erases their employer or his good will.

---

A solution to both sets of special problems was made possible by the complexity of galactic commerce. The recorded beginnings came early in the twenty-seventh century when several planets caught up in the Confederation Wars used the Terran firm of Felchow und Sohn as an escrow agent for their mercenaries' pay. Felchow was a commercial banking house which had retained its preeminence even after Terran industry had been in some measure supplanted by that of newer worlds. Neither Felchow nor Terra herself had any personal stake in the chaotic rise and fall of the Barnard Confederation; thus the house was the perfect neutral to hold the pay of the condottieri being hired by all parties. Payment was scrupulously made to mercenaries who performed according to their contracts. This included the survivors of the Dalhousie debacle who were able to buy passage off that ravaged world, despite the fact that less than ten percent of the populace which had hired them was still alive. Conversely, the pay of Wrangel's Legion, which had refused to assault the Confederation drop zone on Montauk, was forfeited to the Montauk government.

---

Felchow und Sohn had performed to the satisfaction of all honest parties when first used as an intermediary. Over the next three decades the house was similarly involved in other conflicts, a passive escrow agent and paymaster. It was only after the Ariete Incident of 2662 that the concept coalesced into the one stable feature of a galaxy at war.

The Ariete, a division recruited mostly from among the militias of the Aldoni System, was hired by the rebels on Paley. Their pay was banked with Felchow, since the rebels very reasonably doubted that anyone would take on the well-trained troops of the Republic of Paley if they had already been handed the carrot. But the Ariete fought very well indeed, losing an estimated thirty percent of its effectives before surrendering in the final collapse of the rebellion. The combat losses have to be estimated because the Republican forces, in defiance of the "Laws of War" and their own promises before the surrender, butchered all their fifteen or so thousand mercenary prisoners.

Felchow und Sohn, seeing an excuse for an action which would raise it to incredible power, reduced Paley to Stone Age savagery.

An industrialized world (as Paley was) is an interlocking whole. Off-planet trade may amount to no more than five percent of its GDP; but when that trade is suddenly cut off, the remainder of the economy resembles a car lacking two pistons. It may make whirring sounds for a time, but it isn't going anywhere.

Huge as Felchow was, a single banking house could not have cut Paley off from the rest of the galaxy. When Felchow, however, offered other commercial banks membership in a cartel and a share of the lucrative escrow business, the others joined gladly and without exception. No one would underwrite cargoes to or from Paley; and Paley, already wracked by a war and its aftermath, shuddered down into the slag heap of history.

Lucrative was indeed a mild word for the mercenary business. The escrowed money itself could be put to work, and the escrowing bank was an obvious agent for the other commercial transactions needed to run a war. Mercenaries replaced equipment, recruited men, and shipped themselves by the thousands across the galaxy.

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With the banks' new power came a new organization. The expanded escrow operations were made the responsibility of a Bonding Authority, still based in Bremen but managed independently of the cartel itself. The Authority's fees were high. In return, its Contracts Department was expert in preventing expensive misunderstandings from arising, and its investigative staff could neither be bribed nor deluded by a violator.

• 

      Chane’s eyes strayed to the stun-gun the Earthman wore belted around his coverall. “You’re mercenaries, aren’t you?”
     Dilullo nodded. “We are. But you haven’t answered my question.”
     Chane’s mind raced. He would have to be careful. The Mercs were known all over the galaxy as as tough lot. A very high proportion of them were Earthmen, and there was a reason for this.

     Earth, long ago, had pioneered the interstellar drive that opened up the galaxy. Yet, for all that, Earth was a poor planet. It was poor because all the other planets of its system were uninhabitable, with ferociously hostile conditions and only a few scant mineral resources. Compared to the great star-systems with many rich, peopled worlds, Earth was a poverty-stricken planet.
     So Earth’s chief export was men. Skilled spacemen, technicians, and fighters streamed out from old Earth to many parts of the galaxy. And the mercenaries from Earth were among the toughest.

---

     For the first time, Bollard spoke, in the soft lisp that seemed so incongruous from his moon-fat face.
     “It’s too damn vague, John.”
     “It’s vague,” Dilullo admitted. “But it might just be done.” He thought for a minute, and then he looked across the table at the Kharalis and said, “Thirty lightstones.”
     They stared at him puzzledly, and he repeated patiently, “Thirty lightstones. That is what you will pay us if we succeed in doing this thing for you.”
     They looked first incredulous, then furious. “Thirty lightstones?” said the young Kharali lord. “Do you think we would give little Earthmen the ransom of an emperor?”
     “How much is the ransom of a world?” said Dilullo. “Of Kharal? How many of your lightstones will your enemies take if they conquer you?”
     Their faces changed, only a little. But, watching them, Bollard murmured, “They’ll pay it.”

     Dilullo gave them no time to reflect on the magnitude of his demand. “That will be the payment if we find and destroy the weapon of your enemies. But first we must learn if we can do that, and the learning will be very risky for us. Three of the lightstones will be paid to us in advance.”
     They found their voices this time, snarling their anger. “And what if you Earthmen take the three jewels and go your way, laughing at us?”
     Dilullo looked at Odenjaa. “You were the one who looked for Mercs to hire. Tell me, did you hear of Mercs ever cheating those who hired them?”
     “Yes,” said Odenjaa. “Twice, it happened.”
     “And what happened to the Mercs who did that?” pursued Dilullo. “You must have heard that, too. Tell it ”
     A little reluctantly, Odenjaa replied. “It is said that other Mercs took them, as prisoners, and delivered them over to the worlds which they had swindled.”
     “It is true,” said Dilullo, to those across the table. “We are a guild, we Mercs. Nowhere in the galaxy could we operate if we did not keep faith. Three lightstones in advance.”

     They still glared at him, all except the oldest man. He said coldly, “Get the jewels for them.”

• 

• 

Galek –

Your sept-boss says that you’re tired of fighting in other people’s companies and want to start your own, and told me to give you some advice. About damn time. Anyway, here’s what you need to know – and these aren’t rules, so don’t think they’re written down anywhere. The Iron Concord isn’t a set of official rules you can game, it’s a set of unofficial rules that can get a real army chasing you if you come too close to the edges, so be warned.

If you want to do merc work anywhere in the Worlds as a “bonded” mercenary, most polities you can base in want you to have a merc license, under some name or other, which costs money and usually comes with some pain-in-the-kveth rules and inspections and other crap. The Empire doesn’t, it just treats you like any other business, but if you want to be considered bonded, you’ve got to buy insurance from some outfit, and they’ll want to inspect you. You can avoid the whole mess if you base out of somewhere like the Rim Free Zone without hiring a bond-board or, Venirek burn you, Nepscia, but then you’re an unbonded merc, and you don’t get any of the little courtesies they save for real mercs, like not shooting you out of hand. Even if they don’t do that, if you’re bonded, you can get paroled and move along if you’ve got a repatriation ticket, but they don’t trust unbondeds to play by the rules.

And speaking of those, don’t ever forget that war has rules, even for mercs. If you even think about breaking the Ley Accords where anyone can see – and someone can always see – they will hunt you down and kill you. And if you get any psych cases on board, I suggest you take ’em somewhere discreet and introduce ’em to a bullet before they get someone looking to do it to you. Being in the killing business is no good reason to go around giving people excuses to take it personally.

Most of your employers will have their own rules they want you to fight by – some of them are fair enough, others’ll get you killed. That’s up to you, and you can usually get away with playing fast and loose with those without anything worse than losing your contract, but read ’em carefully before you start, ‘kay? Or get a good broker.

Ultimate Argument’s the big rakhan in that business. You can work for ’em or not – if you do, you’ll never be short of business, mind, they’ve got contracts and to spare, but some potential employers don’t like ’em much. Too corporate for their taste, and an Imperial starcorp to boot. Just don’t try playing both sides of the field – the Concord is not fond of mercs who try and hide their ownership or their contract history, and while most won’t work for an employer who turns on his mercs, if you lie about that, all bets are off. Too much bad history for it to be otherwise.

Anyway, there’s plenty of work around; everyone hires mercs. Governments, corporations, colonies, shipping lines, interest branches, they all hire, and they’re all pretty safe, and play by the rules. Then there’s privateering, which can be a good way to make money if you can get a letter of marque from a respectable polity. (Be careful if you can only get one from one of the more roguish nations – some navies see those as little more than a confession to piracy – and don’t bother with one from any of the people who’ll sell you one in the Free Zone. They’re just more of the kveth-lakh slash-traders peddle to gullible outies.) Rebellions are a bit more risky, but they’re not so bad by the time they’ve graduated to actual civil wars.

Filibusters too, sometimes, but rebellions, terrorists, black cartels – they’re all hiring, but they don’t play by the rules, they want you not to play by the rules, and so the people fighting them don’t either. However well it pays — and if they don’t kill you to save money — dead sophs can’t live to spend, and it’s hard to enjoy it on the run, too. Leave that for the unbondeds.

Here’s the top two rules. First, stay bought. No-one expects you to die for hire, but they do expect you to fight for the contract that brought you. Break it, however hard the fight or however good the money, and no-one’ll hire you again. Worse, some’ll try to kill you just on general principle. Everyone hates a defaulter.

Even more importantly, remember you’re paid to make war. Don’t ever try making it without being paid, or worse, try to get paid for not making it. The one unbreakable rule of the Concord is that we fight for money, not for loot, not for conquest, and not for extortion. We have a place in the galaxy because our employers find us useful. Mercs who turn pirate, conqueror, or blackmailer stop being useful, and shortly afterwards, stop being.

Don’t get anything shot off you’ll miss, boy. Your mother still has that kalsheklik flame cannon on her wall, and I like my face.

– mor-Lissek Wrokk

• 

Crofton’s Encyclopedia of Contemporary History and Social Issues (2nd Edition)

MERCENARY FORCES

Perhaps the most disturbing development arising from CoDominium withdrawal from most distant colony worlds (see Independence Movements) has been the rapid growth of purely mercenary military units. The trend was predictable and perhaps inevitable, although the extent has exceeded expectations.

Many of the former colony worlds do not have planetary governments. Consequently, these new nations do not possess sufficient population or industrial resources to maintain large and effective national military forces. The disbanding of numerous CoDominium Marine units left a surplus of trained soldiers without employment, and it was inevitable that some of them would band together into mercenary units.

The colony governments are thus faced with a cruel and impossible dilemma. Faced with mercenary troops specializing in violence, they have had little choice but to reply in kind. A few colonies have broken this cycle by creating their own national armies, but have then been unable to pay for them.

Thus, in addition to the purely private mercenary organizations such as Falkenberg’s Mercenary Legion, there are now national forces hired out to reduce expenses to their parent governments. A few former colonies have found this practice so lucrative that the export of mercenaries has become their principal source of income, and the recruiting and training of soldiers their major industry.

The CoDominium Grand Senate has attempted to maintain its presence in the former colonial areas through promulgation of the so-called Laws of War (q. v.), which purport to regulate the weapons and tactics mercenary units may employ. Enforcement of these regulations is sporadic. When the Senate orders Fleet intervention to enforce the Laws of War the suspicion inevitably arises that other CoDominium interests are at stake, or that one or more Senators have undisclosed reasons for their interest.

Mercenary units generally draw their recruits from the same sources as the CoDominium Marines, and training stresses loyalty to comrades and commanders rather than to any government. The extent to which mercenary commanders have successfully separated their troops from all normal social intercourse is both surprising and alarming.

The best-known mercenary forces are described in separate articles. See: Covenant; Friedland; Xanadu; Falkenberg’s Mercenary Legion; Nouveau Legion Etrangere; Katanga Gendarmerie; Moolman’s Commandos …

• 

(ed note: the Dorsai are the premier mercenaries of the galaxy. The city of Rochmont hired a battalion of Dorsai. They send them along with their own troops on a suicide mission attacking Helmuth. The idea was that Helmuth would lose lots of troops, but all the Dorsai would be killed, thus removing the need to pay them.

Rochmont was quite upset when the Dorsai actually defeated Helmuth. In a last ditch attempt to avoid paying the Dorsai, they seized the Dorsai commander Colonel Jacques Chrétien then falsely accused him of taking bribes from Helmuth and lying about winning the battle.

Then they hanged him.

Which turned out to be a mistake. Specifically their last mistake.

Behind the impregnable walls of Rochmont, the leaders sneered at the angry Dorsai outside, and dared them to do their worst.

The Dorsai did.)

They little knew of brotherhood,
The faith of fighting men,
Who once to prove their lie was good,
Hanged Colonel Jacques Chrétien.

One-fourth of Rochmont’s fighting strength,
One battalion of Dorsai,
Was sent by Rochmont forth alone,
To bleed Helmuth and die.

But look, look down from Rochmont’s heights,
Upon the Helmuth plain,
At all of Helmuth’s armored force,
By Dorsai checked or slain.

Look down, look down, on Rochmont’s shame,
To hide the wrong she’d done,
Made claim that Helmuth bribed Dorsai,
No battle had been won.

To prove that lie, the Rochmont lords,
Arrested Jacques Chrétien,
On charge he dealt with Helmuth’s chiefs,
For payment to his men.

Commandant Arp Van Din sent word,
“You may not judge Dorsai,
Return our Colonel by the dawn,
Or Rochmont town shall die!”

Strong-held behind her wall, Rochmont,
Scorned to answer them,
Condemned, and at the daybreak hanged,
Young Colonel Jacques Chrétien.

Bright, bright the sun that morning rose,
Upon each weaponed wall,
But when the sun set in the west,
Those walls were leveled all.

Then soft and white the moon arose,
On streets and roofs unstained,
But when that moon was down once more,
No street or roof remained.

No more is there a Rochmont town,
No more are Rochmont’s men.
But stands a Dorsai monument,
To Colonel Jacques Chrétien.

So pass the word from world to world,
Alone still stands Dorsai,
And while she lives no one of hers,
By foreign wrong shall die.

They little knew of brotherhood,
The faith of fighting men,
Who once to prove their lie was good,
Hanged Colonel Jacques Chrétien.

• 

(ed note: Shadowline is a science fiction retelling of the Norse myth of Ragnarok. Gneaus Storm is Odin, and the outlawing of the mercenary legions is Ragnarok)

A gust from the cranky air system riffled papers. The banners overhead stirred with the passage of ghosts. Some were old. One had followed the Black Prince to Navarette. Another had fallen at the high-water mark of the charge up Little Round Top. But most represented milemarks in Storm’s own career.

Six were identical titan-cloth squares hanging all in a line. Upon them a golden hawk struck left to right down a fall of scarlet raindrops, all on a field of sable. They were dull, unimaginative things compared to the Plantagenet, yet they celebrated the mountaintop days of Storm’s Iron Legion.

He had wrested them from his own Henry of Trastamara, Richard Hawksblood, and each victory had given him as little satisfaction as Edward had extracted from Pedro the Cruel.

Richard Hawksblood was the acknowledged master of the mercenary art.

Hawksblood had five Legion banners in a collection of his own. Three times they had fought to a draw.

Storm and Hawksblood were the best of the mercenary captain-kings, the princes of private war the media called “The Robber Barons of the Thirty-First Century.” For a decade they had been fighting one another exclusively.

Only Storm and his talented staff could beat Hawksblood. Only Hawksblood had the genius to withstand the Iron Legion.

Hawksblood had caused Storm’s bleak mood. His Intelligence people said Richard was considering a commission on Blackworld.

“Let them roast,” he muttered. “I’m tired.”

But he would fight again. If not this time, then the next. Richard would accept a commission. His potential victim would know that his only chance of salvation was the Iron Legion. He would be a hard man who had clawed his way to the top among a hard breed. He would be accustomed to using mercenaries and assassins. He would look for ways to twist Storm’s arm. And he would find them, and apply them relentlessly.

---

Gneaus Julius Storm was a powerful man. His private army was better trained, motivated, and equipped than Confederation’s remarkable Marines. But his Iron Legion was not just a band of freebooters. It was a diversified holding company with minority interests in scores of major corporations. It did not just fight and live high for a while on its take. Its investments were the long-term security of its people.

The Fortress of Iron stretched tentacles in a thousand directions, though in the world of business and finance it was not a major power. Its interests could be manipulated by anyone with the money and desire.

That was one lever the giants used to get their way.

---

The fires of the Ulantonid War had ignited a blaze of panhumanism of which Confederation was still taking full advantage. It was bulling its way into broad reaches of relatively ungovernmented space in apparent response to a set of laws similar to those defining the growth of organisms and species. Mercenary armies were among those institutions facing increasingly limited futures.

No government willingly tolerates private competition, and especially not competition which can challenge its decrees. The most benign government ever imagined has as its root assumption its right to apply force to the individual. From inception every government continuously strives to broaden the parameters of that right.

Storm believed he and Richard, if lured into a truly bloody Armageddon, would fight the last merc war tolerated by Confederation. The Services now had the strength and organization to disarm the freecorps. All they needed was an excuse.

---

Gneaus Storm’s agents dogged the service battlegrounds too, selecting men who had died well. Cryonically preserved, they were revived later and asked to join the Legion.

Most accepted with a childlike gratitude. A rise from a slum to the imaginary glory and high life of the Iron Legion, after having escaped the Reaper by Storm’s grace, seemed an elevation to paradise. The holonets called them the Legion of the Dead.

(ed note: this is the science fiction version of the Norse Valkyries choosing the valiant fallen warriors to be carried to Valhalla. There they battle by day til they die, are brought back to life, then they feast all night)

---

Cassius said there was a tacit agreement to avoid conflict Darkside. Blake would not hear the suggestion of direct strikes. He insisted that fighting be confined to the Shadowline.

“Idiots,” Storm muttered in a moment of bloodthirst. “Ought to run straight to Twilight, kick a hole in their dome, give them something to breathe when they surrender, and have done.” Then he laughed. No doubt Richard felt the same way.

Mercenary conflicts were seldom simple. Corporations, while willing to fight, seldom wanted to risk anything already in hand, only what they might someday possess.

• 

When the dominant species of a minor nine planet system revolving about a yellow sun known as “Sol”—situated close to the fringe of the Galaxy—gained knowledge of space flight and came out into our lanes of travel there arose a problem which Central Control had to solve, and speedily. These “men,” as they called themselves, combined curiosity, daring, and technical skill with a basic will-to-compete against other races and species, an in-born thrust to conflict. Their answer to any problem was aggressive. Had this “will-to-battle” not been recognized at once for what it was and channeled into proper outlet, infinitesimal as their numbers were among us, we have been told that their influence might have torn asunder the peace of the stellar lanes and plunged whole sectors into war.

But the proper steps were taken at once and the Terrans were assigned a role which not only suited their nature but also provided a safety valve for all other belligerents among the systems which make up our great confederacy. Having been studied and carefully evaluated by Central Control psycho-techneers the Terrans were appointed to act as the mercenaries of the Galaxy—until such a time as these too independent and aggressive creatures would develop for themselves some less dangerous calling.

Thus there came into being the “Hordes” and “Legions” we find mentioned again and again in the various solar histories of the period. These organizations, manned (males only) by either “Archs” or “Mechs,” carried on a formalized warfare for any planetary ruler who desired to enhance his prestige by employing them to fight his battles.

The Archs who comprised the Hordes were limited to service upon primitive worlds, being equipped with hand weapons and fighting in personal combat. The Mechs of the Legions followed technical warfare, indulging in it, however, more as a game in which it was necessary to make one’s opponent concede victory, often without actual battle.

When still in the newly hatched stage “men” were selected to be either “Archs” or “Mechs” by rigid aptitude tests. After a period of intensive schooling in their trade they signed on for “enlistments” under field commanders. A portion of each payment made to the individual Horde or Legion commander by his employer was returned to their home world, Terra, as a tax. In other words, this system exported fighting men and the materials for war and became merchants of battle. Within a generation they accepted their role among us, apparently without question.

Three hundred years later (all students turn, please, to folio six, column two—the date of “3956 A.D.” is a reckoning peculiar to Terra, we use it in your source material for this section because all reading will be based upon certain accounts written by the Terrans themselves) a minor Horde was employed by a rebellious native ruler on Fronn. While so engaged this organization uncovered a situation which changed history for their species, and perhaps for the Galaxy as well. Whether this change will operate for the general good for us all remains to be seen.

(From a lecture in “Galactic History XX” delivered by Hist-Techneer Zorzi at the Galactic University of Zacan—Subject of the lecture: Minor Systems’ Contribution to Historic Changes—presented first on Zol-Day, 4130 A.D.—Terran reckoning.)

• 

(ed note: The protagonist is in a specialized space warship called a "climber". This has a weird technobabble FTL drive, but it boils down to climbers being the scifi spaceship equivalent of World War II submarines. So one of their uses is for commerce raiding.)

“… convoy in zone Twelve Echo making the line for Thompson’s System. Ten and six. Am in pursuit. Eighty-four Dee.”

I estimate quickly. We aren’t that far away. We could get there if we hauled ass. Must be an important convoy, too. Six escorts for ten logistical hulls is a heavy ratio, unless they’re battle units coincidentally moving up. The other firm likes to kill two birds with one stone.

---

So why is everyone busy? Will the Commander get even by ambushing the first destroyer?

That wouldn’t please Command. Engaging escorts is considered a waste of kill capability. That’s supposed to be employed against the logistic hulls moving men and materiel toward the Inner Worlds, or against the big warships making it difficult for Navy to stand its ground.

---

Are they still after us? It’s been a long time since the raid. A long time since contact. Maybe they’ve overcome their emotional response and gone back to guarding their convoy.

What’s going on out there? We’ve had no news, made no beacon connections. The biggest operation of the war… Being out of touch leaves me feeling like my last homeline has been cut.

Has the raid given Tannian’s wolves the edge they need? Have they panicked the logistic hulls? Once a convoy scatters, no number of late-showing escorts can protect all the vessels. Climbers can stalk the ponderous freighters with virtual impunity. Some will get through only because our people won’t have time to get them all.

Uhm. If the convoy has scattered, the other firm might feel obligated to keep after their most responsible foe. They know this ship of old. Her record is long and bloody. She’s hurt them. Her survival, after what she’s done, might be an intolerable threat.

• 

A tonnage war is a military strategy aimed at merchant shipping. The premise is that the enemy has a finite number of ships and a finite capacity to build replacements. The concept was made famous by German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who wrote:

"The shipping of the enemy powers is one great whole. It is therefore in this connection immaterial where a ship is sunk—it must still in the final analysis be replaced by a new ship".

Most anti-shipping strategies have had a relatively narrow set of goals. A traditional practice of the Royal Navy during wars between Britain and France was the blockade. By concentrating naval forces near large French ports, the Royal Navy was usually able to impede French trade to the point of creating significant economic difficulties. The opponent may focus on ships carrying strategically vital cargoes such as hemp and timber or, in modern times, oil and iron. The aim might be to attack ships carrying particularly valuable cargoes such as treasure or munitions and ships carrying less important cargoes or steaming in ballast are at first ignored.

These narrow strategies require the attacker to establish substantial control over an area. The British blockades of France were only possible so long as the Royal Navy retained the ability to defeat any French squadron venturing out from port. During the Siege of Malta in World War II, Axis air forces had air superiority and were able to prevent many Allied ships from reaching Malta with supplies, putting the island fortress into grave danger.

A tonnage war is a broad strategy. As a form of attrition warfare, it does not require the attacker to establish control over an area, merely that he sink ships more rapidly than the defender can replace them.

• 

A convoy is a group of vehicles, typically motor vehicles or ships, traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support. It may also be used in a non-military sense, for example when driving through remote areas. Arriving at the scene of a major emergency with a well-ordered unit and intact command structure can be another motivation.

World War I

In the early 20th century, the dreadnought changed the balance of power in convoy battles. Steaming faster than merchant ships and firing at long ranges, a single battleship could destroy many ships in a convoy before the others could scatter over the horizon. To protect a convoy against a capital ship required providing it with an escort of another capital ship, at very high opportunity cost (i.e. potentially tying down multiple capital ships to defend different convoys against one opponent ship).

Battleships were the main reason that the British Admiralty did not adopt convoy tactics at the start of the first Battle of the Atlantic in World War I. But the German capital ships had been bottled up in the North Sea, and the main threat to shipping came from U-boats. From a tactical point of view, World War I–era submarines were similar to privateers in the age of sail. These submarines were only a little faster than the merchant ships they were attacking, and capable of sinking only a small number of vessels in a convoy because of their limited supply of torpedoes and shells. The Admiralty took a long time to respond to this change in the tactical position, and in April 1917 convoys were trialled, before being officially introduced in the Atlantic in September 1917.

Other arguments against convoys were raised. The primary issue was the loss of productivity, as merchant shipping in convoy has to travel at the speed of the slowest vessel in the convoy and spent a considerable amount of time in ports waiting for the next convoy to depart. Further, large convoys were thought to overload port resources.

Actual analysis of shipping losses in World War I disproved all these arguments, at least so far as they applied to transatlantic and other long-distance traffic. Ships sailing in convoys were far less likely to be sunk, even when not provided with an escort. The loss of productivity due to convoy delays was small compared with the loss of productivity due to ships being sunk. Ports could deal more easily with convoys because they tended to arrive on schedule and so loading and unloading could be planned.

In his book On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, Norman Dixon suggested that the hostility towards convoys in the naval establishment were in part caused by a (sub-conscious) perception of convoys as effeminating, due to warships having to care for civilian merchant ships. Convoy duty also exposes the escorting warships to the sometimes hazardous conditions of the North Atlantic, with only rare occurrences of visible achievement (i.e. fending off a submarine assault).

World War II

Atlantic

The British adopted a convoy system, initially voluntary and later compulsory for almost all merchant ships, the moment that World War II was declared. Each convoy consisted of between 30 and 70 mostly unarmed merchant ships. Canadian, and later American, supplies were vital for Britain to continue its war effort. The course of the Battle of the Atlantic was a long struggle as the Germans developed anti-convoy tactics and the British developed counter-tactics to thwart the Germans.

The capability of a heavily armed warship against a convoy was dramatically illustrated by the fate of Convoy HX 84. On November 5, 1940, the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer encountered the convoy. Maiden, Trewellard, and Kenbame Head were quickly destroyed, and Beaverford and Fresno City falling afterwards. Only the sacrifices of the Armed Merchant Cruiser HMS Jervis Bay and Freighter Beaverford to stall the Scheer, in addition to failing light allowed the rest of the convoy to escape.

The deterrence value of a battleship in protecting a convoy was also dramatically illustrated when the German light battleships (referred by some as battlecruisers) Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, mounting 11 in (28 cm) guns, came upon an eastbound British convoy (HX 106, with 41 ships) in the North Atlantic on February 8, 1941. When the Germans detected the slow but well-protected battleship HMS Ramillies escorting the convoy, they fled the scene rather than risk damage from her 15 in (38 cm) guns.

The enormous number of vessels involved and the frequency of engagements meant that statistical techniques could be applied to evaluate tactics: an early use of operational research in war.

Prior to overt participation in World War II, the US was actively engaged in convoys with the British in the North Atlantic Ocean, primarily supporting British activities in Iceland.

After Germany declared war on the US, the US Navy decided not to instigate convoys on the American eastern seaboard. US Fleet Admiral Ernest King ignored advice on this subject from the British, as he had formed a poor opinion of the Royal Navy early in his career. The result was what the U-boat crews called their Second Happy Time, which did not end until convoys were introduced.

Pacific

In the Pacific Theater of World War II, Japanese merchant ships rarely traveled in convoys. Japanese destroyers were generally deficient in antisubmarine weaponry compared to their Allied counterparts, and the Japanese navy did not develop an inexpensive convoy escort like the Allies' destroyer escort/frigate until it was too late. In the early part of the conflict, American submarines in the Pacific were ineffective as they suffered from timid tactics, faulty torpedoes, and poor deployment, while there were only small numbers of British and Dutch boats. U.S. Admiral Charles A. Lockwood's efforts, coupled with strenuous complaints from his captains, rectified these problems and U.S. submarines became much more successful by war's end. As a result, the Japanese merchant fleet was largely destroyed by the end of the war. Japanese submarines, unlike their U.S. and German equivalents, focused on U.S. battle fleets rather than merchant convoys, and while they did manage some early successes, sinking two U.S. carriers, they failed to significantly inhibit the invasion convoys carrying troops and equipment in support of the U.S. island-hopping campaign.

Several notable battles in the South Pacific involved Allied bombers interdicting Japanese troopship convoys which were often defended by Japanese fighters, notable Guadalcanal (13 November 1942), Rabaul (5 January 1943), and the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (2–4 March 1943).

At the Battle off Samar, the effectiveness of the U.S. Navy's escorts was demonstrated when they managed to defend their troop convoy from a much larger and more powerful Japanese battle-fleet. The Japanese force comprised four battleships and numerous heavy cruisers, while the U.S. force consisted of escort carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts. Large numbers of American aircraft (albeit without much anti-ship ordnance other than torpedoes) and aggressive tactics of the destroyers (with their radar-directed gunfire) allowed the U.S. to sink three Japanese heavy cruisers at the cost of one escort carrier and three destroyers.

Tactics

The German anti-convoy tactics included:

• long-range surveillance aircraft to find convoys;
• strings of U-boats (wolfpacks) that could be directed onto a convoy by radio;
• breaking the British naval codes;
• improved anti-ship weapons, including magnetic detonators and sonic homing torpedoes.

The Allied responses included:

• air raids on the U-boat bases at Brest and La Rochelle;
• converted merchant ships, e.g., Merchant aircraft carriers, Catapult Aircraft Merchantman and armed merchant cruisers
• Q-ships, submarine-hunters disguised as unarmed merchant ships to lure submarines into an attack
• more convoy escorts, including cheaply produced yet effective destroyer escorts/frigates (as corvettes were meant as a stopgap), and escort carriers;
• fighter aircraft (carried by escort carriers and merchant aircraft carriers) that would drive off German bombers and attack U-boats
• long-range aircraft patrols to find and attack U-boats;
• improved anti-submarine weapons such as the hedgehog;
• larger convoys, allowing more escorts per convoy as well as the extraction of enough escorts to form hunter-killer support groups that were not attached to a particular convoy
• allocating vessels to convoys according to speed, so that faster ships were less exposed.

They were also aided by

• improved sonar (ASDIC) allowing escort vessels to better track U-boats;
• breaking the German naval cipher;
• improved radar and radio direction finding allowing planes to find and destroy U-boats;

Analysis

The success of convoys as an anti-submarine tactic during the world wars can be ascribed to several reasons related to U-boat capabilities, the size of the ocean and convoy escorts.

In practice, Type VII and Type IX U-boats were limited in their capabilities. Submerged speed and endurance was limited and not suited for overhauling many ships. Even a surfaced U-boat could take several hours to gain an attack position. Torpedo capacity was also restricted to around fourteen (Type VII) or 24 (Type IX), thus limiting the number of attacks that could be made, particularly when multiple firings were necessary for a single target. There was a real problem for the U-boats and their adversaries in finding each other; with a tiny proportion of the ocean in sight, without intelligence or radar, warships and even aircraft would be fortunate in coming across a submarine. The Royal Navy and later the United States Navy each took time to learn this lesson. Conversely, a U-boat's radius of vision was even smaller and had to be supplemented by regular long-range reconnaissance flights.

For both major allied navies, it had been difficult to grasp that, however large a convoy, its "footprint" (the area within which it could be spotted) was far smaller than if the individual ships had traveled independently. In other words, a submarine had less chance of finding a single convoy than if it were scattered as single ships. Moreover, once an attack had been made, the submarine would need to regain an attack position on the convoy. If, however, an attack were thwarted by escorts, even if the submarine had escaped damage, it would have to remain submerged for its own safety and might only recover its position after many hours' hard work. U-boats patrolling areas with constant and predictable flows of sea traffic, such as the United States Atlantic coast in early 1942, could dismiss a missed opportunity in the certain knowledge that another would soon present itself.

The destruction of submarines required their discovery, an improbable occurrence on aggressive patrols, by chance alone. Convoys, however, presented irresistible targets and could not be ignored. For this reason, the U-boats presented themselves as targets to the escorts with increasing possibility of destruction. In this way, the Ubootwaffe suffered severe losses, for little gain, when pressing pack attacks on well-defended convoys.