Tasked
with hitting hard and ensuring what is hit stays
hit, Strike Command's role is to maintain a Churchillian strategy of
"offence in defence" for FLEET until Headquarters can find
a way to meaningfully hurt the Forces of Darkness and their allies
beyond heavy raiding actions. This gives it de facto
command over all capital ships in the Solar system, and Strike
Command currently organises them along wolfpack lines - dispersing
them to provide support and intelligence over as much area as
possible, and concentrating them for major operations.
In an interstellar navy, these units
would be prestigious commands for flag officers, but with relatively
few experienced personnel available (especially in such a mismatched
force, where the differences in capabilities and doctrine between two
ostensibly-identical starships can be massive) the Admiral has left
command of FLEET warships in the hands of their captains and given
overall leadership of Strike Command to Commodore Haidan, a career
rationalist whose opponents claim is unaccustomed to the weird nature
of the world at large. The Commodore retorts that local insanity is
all very well, but there are only so many ways to run a campaign
regardless of what the civilians say.
For all it may look impressive, Haidan
and his staff consider their command badly undermanned – dozens
of capital ships are all very well, but they would vastly prefer more
assault transports and dedicated orbital monitors over their current
vessels, most of which were built for deep space. The commissioning
of the first production runs of Fanworks BBs has
gone some way to solving this, and every officer knows any starship's
guns can simply be pointed down, but even looking at the most
conservative estimates of enemy strength (if one can even class them
as an enemy force...what the hell are these Boardies ON?) from
Intelligence, Haidan would like there to be a lot more of them.
Around 500 would be a good start. And a few dozen more marine
regiments. Then they'd be able to properly demonstrate that
one can curse the darkness with a laser as much as a candle...
Being operated by crews with rather
more sober attitudes than their fighter-based counterparts, Strike
Command's squadrons tend to be given simple, easily-understood
callsigns, often colours ("Red Squadron", "Gold
Squadron"). They range from swarmlike gunboat flotillas to
immense supercapital dreadnoughts or carriers. |
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