Authors: Mark Kalina
The
Defense Force uses a simple and stripped-down rank structure.
All officers begin as enlisted
personnel. Those personnel who choose to remain in the Defense Force for more
than the minimal two year term of service are evaluated for suitability for
promotion to NCO rank. Proven NCOs may then be invited to take courses at
Officers Schools for their particular Corps. Graduates of these schools become
officers.
The
Arcadian Defense Force Table of Ranks:
—
Recruit
; a newly inducted conscript who
has not yet completed basic training and has not been permanently assigned to
one of the Corps.
—
Private
; a soldier who has completed
basic training and been assigned to one of the Corps. Many conscript soldiers
spend their two year terms as privates.
—
Corporal
; a soldier who has shown
notable aptitude at their job in their assigned Corps. Some conscripts are
promoted to Corporal, in some cases, quite quickly. Other corporals are
selected from among soldiers who choose to stay in the Defense Force for longer
than the minimal term.
—
Sergeant
; an NCO (Non-Commissioned
Officer) selected from the most capable corporals who have shown leadership
potential. All sergeants are long-term volunteers who have chosen to stay in
the Defense Force for longer than the minimum term. A sergeant will generally
be given a leadership role, in command of equipment and people on the order of
a single vehicle, or a single squad of soldiers.
—
Chief-Sergeant
; a senior NCO. This is
not a common rank. It is assigned to sergeants who have shown notable and
unusual ability and leadership potential. Chief-Sergeants are assigned to
positions of leadership where they may assist officers in supervising other
sergeants, or have to act as leaders of other, sergeant-led, small units.
Chief-Sergeants often act as executive officers to a lieutenant commanding a
platoon, in addition to their own leadership role of their squad.
—
Lieutenant
; the most junior rank of
officer in the Defense Force. Talented sergeants (and chief-sergeants) who are
seen as having "officer potential" may be invited to attend Officers
School; if they graduate, they become lieutenants. Lieutenants are placed in
positions of authority over a platoon of soldiers or of some other, roughly
equivalent, degree of responsibility.
—
Captain
; captains are promoted from
those lieutenants who have shown particular ability, leadership and aptitude in
their roles. Captains are put in command of companies or other units that are
roughly equivalent to a company in terms of degree of responsibility.
—
Major
; again, these are promoted from
captains who have shown particular aptitude. Majors in the Defense Force can be
seen as a sort of "chief-captain" or "senior captain."
Majors are usually assigned as executive officers to colonels, while at the
same time acting as leaders of their own company-scaled force. Alternately, a
major may be assigned to command of a particularly crucial company-sized unit.
—
Lieutenant-Colonel
; in command of
battalions or of other units that are roughly equivalent to a battalion in
terms of degree of responsibility.
—
Colonel
; act as a more senior version
of a lieutenant-colonel, serving as executive officers to general-grade
officers while also commanding their own battalion-scale units. Alternately, a
colonel may be assigned to command of a particularly crucial battalion-sized
unit.
—
Brigadier-General
; in charge of largely
ad-hoc units of multiple battalion strength. Alternately, part of the command
staff of their Corps.
—
General
; the highest rank in the Arcadian
Defense Force. Generals make up the command staff of each Corp, as well as
being selected to lead the unified command staff of all active duty or all
reserve Defense Force elements. Seniority among generals is based on their
assignment and their time in rank. In most cases, a given assignment clearly
establishes seniority; where it does not, the general with more time in grade
is counted as being senior. This means that actual degrees of authority vary
considerably within this rank.
Anti-Air Laser Weaponry and the Evolution of Air
Combat Aircraft.
One
of the most fundamental changes to the battlefield of the mid to late 21st
century came about due to the introduction of directed energy weapons —in
the form of high power lasers— and the radical revolution in air combat
technology that this caused.
Combat
lasers had been tested starting in the late 20th century, but by the 2030s,
viable combat lasers became a wide-spread presence on the battlefields of Earth
(and shortly after, with the discovery of gate technology, on battlefields of
other worlds.)
Currently
fielded combat lasers are large, bulky weapons. The need for a power source and
—just as crucial— the need for a powerful cooling system, means
that there are limits to how small a viable combat laser weapon can be. Weapons
that are scaled down too far are simply not able to deliver enough energy to be
effective.
In
general, the largest and most powerful lasers are those emplaced at fixed
defensive locations or mounted on large seagoing warships or on large orbital
security vehicles (OSVs, which are, in effect, space warships.)
Smaller
"portable" lasers are mounted on large ground vehicles to provide
mobile anti-air and anti-artillery capability, as well as being mounted as the
main weapon of air-superiority aircraft.
Most
combat lasers are solid-state adaptive-optics capable weapons with outputs in
the 500 kilowatt to 1 megawatt range. At those outputs, a dwell time of only
one or two seconds is enough to burn through the skin or armor of lightly
armored targets such as combat aircraft. Missiles or artillery shells require
even less dwell time. Combat lasers of this sort can attain enormous precision
at ranges of up to several hundred kilometers and are capable of rapidly shooting
down any aircraft within this range, limited only by line of sight. Allowing
for cooling, target acquisition, tracking, and engagement time, even the early
generations of combat lasers could destroy as many as five airborne targets per
minute. Modern, front-line combat laser weapons have increased this to anywhere
from ten to twenty airborne targets per minute.
Combat
lasers are extremely effective at shooting down airborne targets (aircraft,
missiles and artillery shells.) However lasers are much less effective at
engaging ground or sea surface targets. Part of this is due to the limited
armor protection that can be carried by any aircraft or missile (too much armor
and even large aircraft suffer critical reductions in payload and performance,
and missiles and shells are even more vulnerable.) The other reason for the
effectiveness of lasers against airborne targets is that even relatively
moderate damage can bring such a target down; (for instance, a ground vehicle
that loses a wheel may be stopped, but an aircraft that loses a wing will
likely crash.) Against missiles and shells, of course, the destructiveness of a
laser is enhanced by the fact that the target is usually full of explosive of
one sort or another.
In
contrast, against ground targets, lasers have two main problems. The first is
visibility; ground targets can often take cover or interpose counter-measures
(such as anti-laser aerosol or smoke) in the interval of a combat laser's
required "dwell time." Aircraft, even with radical maneuvers, cannot
manage this, as they cannot "take cover" and would almost instantly
outrun any defensive smoke or aerosol they could launch. The second problem for
combat lasers is that ground vehicles can be armored enough to make them almost
impossible for a laser to burn through in a reasonable time, and moreover, are
unlikely to be knocked out by a single burn-through; where the failure of the
structure of a wing or control surface will often bring down an aircraft, equal
damage to a ground vehicle might be quite minor in its effect.
Even
against infantry, lasers have limited tactical utility. It is relatively hard
to track a single soldier's signature to target a laser, and while unarmored
infantry can be burned badly with a laser, armored frame infantry can often
evade take cover even in the short time (often less than a second) that a laser
would take to burn through their armor.
For
this reason, laser weapons are usually tasked to engage airborne targets only
(though of course, improvised use of lasers against targets of opportunity
cannot be ruled out.)
Despite
the various limitations of combat laser weapons, their introduction (beginning in
the 2030s) rapidly had an enormous impact on the use, deployment and design of
combat aircraft. Conventional combat aircraft —either fighter-bombers or
(attack helicopter-style) "vertol" aircraft— were rapidly
proved to be non-viable in the face of combat laser weapons. Even assuming that
such aircraft stayed low enough to use terrain masking, they could still be
shot down as soon as they unmasked and attacked. Given the very high cost of
combat aircraft, no military could afford the extremely high attrition rate
that combat lasers imposed.
Instead,
an entirely new class of combat aircraft was designed in response to the use of
combat laser weapons, and has since come to dominate air combat and air
superiority operations. Given the effectively zero flight time of combat laser
weapons, the best possible defense against lasers proved to be stealth; if the
sensors used by the combat laser for targeting could not find the aircraft,
that aircraft could not be destroyed by the laser. Thus, the trend of
development of stealth as a primary attribute of combat aircraft was greatly
enhanced by the deployment of combat lasers.
However,
combat lasers could also be carried
by
aircraft, so long as those aircraft were large enough to house the bulky
weapon. Conventional agility and air combat maneuvering was of no use against a
laser-armed enemy; a conventional stealth-fighter aircraft, once detected,
could be engaged instantly, regardless of what maneuvers it tried to carry out.
Nor was "getting on the opponent's tail" of any real use, since a
single laser weapon apparatus could be set up with several laser emitters,
giving a 360 by 360 degree spherical weapons envelope. Moreover, inbound
air-to-air missiles were easily shot down by an airborne combat laser, making
it even harder for a conventionally armed aircraft to threaten a laser-armed
aircraft. In the same manner, air-to-surface missiles and bombs also proved to
be easy targets for surface-based combat lasers.
The
result was a move away from stealth-fighter bombers to a larger, multi-crew,
highly stealthy, laser-armed combat aircraft of a type that became known as a
"ghost." The basic requirements of a "ghost" combat
aircraft are that it is large enough to mount a combat laser weapon, that it
carries sensors that allow it to perform its reconnaissance mission and to
effectively find and target enemy "ghosts" and that is very stealthy.
These requirements have tended to create a set of common characteristics for
"ghost" type combat aircraft.
"Ghosts"
tend to be fairly large (about the size of a moderate-sized airliner) in order
to fit the needed sensors and laser weapon, and to allow for a multi-person
crew to run these systems. They also have to be very stealthy, often with
variable-geometry wings to allow for both supersonic transit flights and
"ultra-stealthy" unpowered, gliding flight in combat situations.
"Ghost" air combat tactics are based
on detecting the enemy without being detected. Unlike ground-based combat laser
weapons, airborne lasers have limited rates of fire due to issues of power and
cooling. This means that "ghosts" are not always capable of a rapid
follow-up laser shot or may have a limited number of rapid laser shots
available prior to a recharge and cool-down period. (It should, however, be
noted that defensive anti-missile laser fire is much less taxing in terms of
both cooling requirements and power requirements than long-range anti-aircraft
laser fire.) This makes an engagement between hostile "ghosts" have
more in common with a late-20th-century-Cold-War-era fight between attack
submarines than it does with a dogfight or an airborne missile engagement of
the sort that dominated air combat in the early 21st century. Enemy ghosts will
do their best to remain as stealthy as possible, often to the point of turning
off their engines and gliding, which, thanks to variable-configuration wings,
they are well able to do. Meanwhile they will search the sky for their foes.
Once detected, an enemy ghost is engaged by means of an airborne combat laser,
and the attacking "ghost" then desperately tries to minimize its own
signature and shift position, so as not to be detected in turn.
The
primary military role of "ghosts" is a combination of reconnaissance
and air superiority; since well armored ground vehicles are not very vulnerable
to combat lasers, while ground based combat lasers can intercept air-to-surface
missiles and bombs, "ghosts" do not have a strong ground attack role.
However, aerial reconnaissance remains crucial. "Ghosts" are thus
used in two ways; to obtain airborne reconnaissance and to shoot down other
"ghosts."
Although
"ghosts" have taken over from "fighters" as the cutting
edge of combat aircraft, the social role of "ghost" crews remains
similar to that of the iconic "fighter jock" of the 20th and early
21st century. Laser-armed "ghosts," like the "fighters"
they replaced, are still the fastest, most expensive, "hottest"
things in the sky.