Mr Brown,
We've seen in recent episodes that the Ghatazhak have begun to serve as the Alliance's primary assault and occupation forces, but does a role still exist in the Alliance for the former Corinari soldiers that accompanied the Aurora back from the Pentaurus Cluster or have they been regulated to purely secondary duties such as security details? And what role could the former Special Operations soldiers of the EDF have in the Alliance?
To Butt in I see The Ghatazhak More like the Special Forces Elite of the Alliance, (EG the SEALS, SAS and so on) The Fact that we se them as the main Ground Forces in Part one is just due to their availability which as noted their numbers won't be increasing. I can see the Spec Ops being trained on Earth becoming more like the Main Troop Body of the alliance with the Ghatazhak Handling the speciastist high importance missions.
@palmer I agree with you that the Ghatazhak are like Special Forces, however I disagree with you on the role of the EDF SpecOps. Like the Ghatazhak, the EDF Special Operations branch was Earth's Special Forces (i.e. small teams of operators operating covertly when deployed on high-importance missions). Earth's regular troops were most likely the Marines deployed aboard EDF ships and around the planet or some kind of unmentioned EDF Army branch. Mr Brown hasn't posted an "Earth Defense Force Organizational Chart" anywhere, so we don't know. More than likely, a more believable possibility for a main Alliance ground infantry component would be something to develop from the security forces that the Ghatazhak are training at Porto Santo with the Ghatazhak returning to their role as Special Forces alongside the old SpecOps operators in a joint military command with the Alliance.
The EDF had 3 main branches. Space Operations, Intelligence, and surface operations. For space operations, they had spaceships. For Intelligence, they had ground based analysts, space based recon equipment (scout ships) and covert ops on foreign worlds. (Spec-ops) For surface combat operations, they had Marines. (The Marines role was primarily security, and the defense of home turf in case of invasion, not the invasion of other worlds.)
Every EDF ship (except scouts) had a detachment of Marines for ship's security, and a detachment of Spec-ops for boarding actions and away missions. (Kind of like the ship's on personal SEAL teams.) While all spec-ops had training in covert actions, not all of them were chosen for such actions. Most of them served on ships. Spec-ops also served on the surface under the intelligence division, helping to find and eliminate Jung spies on Earth, although such activity was always kept secret.
After the Earth was invaded, there were not a lot of spec-ops left. Maybe 100, and of which went underground per Admiral Galiardi's backup plan. More than half of them died during insurgent actions. Others were captured, or turned using Jung nanites. (That's how President Scott got captured.) BTW: The EDF never knew about the Jung nanites.
The handful of spec-ops that are left would not be enough to do anything for the Alliance. Most of them are currently serving as security for President Scott.
Are there plans to ramp up the numbers of Marines and Spec op's personnel again now that the Earth is becoming more stable?
What if any of the senior ranking EDF ground forces leadership still exists?
Is there a Spec Ops person of higher rank then Jess?
Can you answer any of these questions or are they spoilers of whats to come in Ep15?
@rykbrown The role you describe for the EDF SpecOps does sound like a cross between the United States Navy's VBSS (visit, board, search, and seizure) teams and the SEALs. At least when describing the shipboard detachments. The SpecOps serving on Earth sound more like a counterintelligence unit than an intelligence unit.
But, I am curious to know the answers to @four-islands question about whether more Marines and SpecOps personnel would will be trained. I would assume that a recovering Earth would eventually reestablish its own military rather than rely solely on the Alliance.
I'm all for the Earth having it's own global military again. The Ghatazach are currently training troops for the individual nations of Earth. I see the Ghatazach continuing to train the regular troops, and possibly assisting the Spec Op's people training a new brunch of commandos.
When the nations of Earth are more secure, I can easily see the surplus troops of secure nation being assigned to a Global Force and being deployed as peacekeepers into the less secure regions.
As Earth becomes more secure, those additional units would then be available for use in a more aggressive role with the Alliance.
I imagine that going forward troops would be assigned to the Alliance from all of the alliance worlds for tours of duty.
Which could mean assisting in assaulting Jung controlled planets or being deployed as a force of peacekeepers stationed on a recently liberated worlds to insure that they are not destabilized by pro/anti Jung civil war or just being posted on Alliance warships as security/in case of another boarding opportunity.
I know It's very hopeful of me but part of me hopes that the earth unifies under one banner, I don't like that so much division at home.
I don't see how Earth will ever have a unified singular leadership. The closest we have been able to get is the United Nations and Europe. (I'm Irish / pro UN & pro EU)
Historically the Colonial British Empire came closest to "unifying" the world, covering 22.6% of the Earth's land mass with 20% of the worlds population at the time (in 1922 / less then 100 years ago!!). Look at Britain now, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, 0.16% of the Earth's land mass.
Please note that in 1922 the Republic of Ireland was not a part of the Empire as we had in our infinite wisdom decided to rise up against one of the dominant world superpowers of the time... and by the power of Potatoes, we beat them and took back our little country (well most of it and the fact that World War One had been on at the time might have helped...)
interesting research material:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires
http://world.bymap.org/LandArea.html
I think you're straying from the topic of the thread.
I'm not going to comment on future events in the story on the forums. That would be the ultimate spoiler.
Quite frankly, it really doesn't matter much to me what happens with the Earth's military. The Earth is just one world amongst many.
