Reports RE: Naval Doctrine

UN Report MANIFEST/ICON RE: Transfer Orientation
Addendum to THEATER/ASSEMBLY

Battling in the void of space requires coordination and discipline. Ships often fire at targets a great distance away, visible only by the waste heat, radiation, outbound fire, and comms signatures they throw off – rarely do capital ships find themselves within organic visual range of one another. Hard cover and concealment are just as hard to find; naval combat is, generally, won by those who land the first hit.

These conditions require intense discipline. Aboard a capital ship, your foes are only glowing indicators on a terminal screen and the blow that strikes you down may only be telegraphed by a handful of seconds – if at all. Fighters and subline vessels, tangling with each other in the killbox between mighty ships of the line, might flash within visual range of the enemy, but this merely requires discipline of a different sort: that of seeing the enemy and killing them quickly, before they have a chance to retaliate in kind.

The realities of boarding actions, bombing runs, battery fire – even legionspace engagements – often instill in the people who engage in this warfare a rigidity unfamiliar to ground soldiers. A sailor (or "spacer", "cosmonaut", "astronaut", "suit", "crew", and so on) has an immediate relationship to death that ground-pounders do not. The very environment they operate in, if they were ever to be exposed to it, would kill them; likewise, the vessels that they crew – even in the course of normal maneuvering! – can easily turn them into paste if they aren’t careful. Even the otherwise "normal" procedures required for interstellar travel – stasis-holds for long burns between worlds and gates – might be ventures from which they won’t return. Death is close for the sailor and officer: discipline, regular order, triple-checking systems, and routine are what get them through each deployment.

Crashing against this regular-order impulse are the new weapons of naval warfare and the engagements in which they are employed. After the Deimos Event introduced NHPs to the galaxy and the First Interest War rewrote the facts – if not yet the rules – of naval combat, states and empires have not fully caught up to the changing nature of combat. This is precisely where [we sit]: in the conflict between old strategies and new technologies; the struggle between established doctrine and tactical adaptability; and the clash between the experience of line officers, pilots, and crew against the demands of rear-echelon brass.

[Commanders] will need to sit in this tension. From your vessel’s combat information center, you command not only your own ship, but the other ships in your section – distributing orders to one or more capital ships in order to win the day, rather than the moment. You might not be the one pulling the trigger, but the effect is the same.

[Commanders] are likely to have less freedom in their mission portfolios than [chassis pilots]. The discipline to which these sailors, pilots, and officers are subject is much more present, the field of battle much more conventional, and their commanding officers more used to – and reliant on – established doctrine. [You] should interact with these realities, pushing against them or accepting them, rejecting or relishing this paradigm.

Most all [commanders] will wrestle with dual truths: that their strategies and defenses do not match the weapons they wield and face, but in order to win and survive they must face and defeat the enemy.

UN Report THEATER/ASSEMBLY Excerpt
The Battlegroup
Battlegroups are led by officers of commander rank or higher and are the standard force composition in the Union Navy. The workhorses of Union’s fleets and the most common structure for patrols, battlegroups are equipped to respond first to any distress calls, provocations, or flashpoints within Union’s sphere of influence within a month. If Union is dispatching an auxiliary peacekeeping force, an interdiction force, or a DoJ/HR liberation team to address a critical scenario, it will be a force of battlegroup strength.

The presence of a Union battlegroup in an area acts as a demonstration of Union’s ability to rapidly transit forces to the theater: a battlegroup, even on its own, is never really alone; it is almost always in constant omninet communication with its parent fleet, which is in turn in communication with the ring fleet to which it belongs (see below). Though the full strength of Union’s naval forces might never be brought to bear in an engagement, each battlegroup represents just the point of a much mightier spear.

In addition to blink codebooks that allow them to bypass public queues at blink gates, Union’s battlegroups also benefit from onboard NHPs, which assist with navigation, ship management, strategy, and tactics. A battlegroup’s NHPs also have the ability to form a gestalt subjectivity called a fleet legion. The presence of a legion allows for near-perfect, instant information-sharing between ships, coordination, and power management, as well as predictive targeting and defense beyond what isolated NHPs can handle.

Additionally, many battlegroups carry large detachments of marines and mechs aboard their carriers for conducting ground operations; even those battlegroups that are more purely naval in purpose still have decent complements of marines.

Battlegroups are typically composed of two to six capital ships and their escorts, not counting strike craft such as fighters or bombers.

When multiple allied battlegroups operate in a theater, they are collectively referred to as a fleet, which is itself commanded and coordinated by an admiral.

These ad hoc fleets are distinct from ring fleets, which are made up of the combined forces of an entire ring.

UNION RING FLEETS
Union ring fleets (URFs) are the largest naval forces a hostile power could expect to engage. Encompassing the entire naval and ground strength of a ring, a URF can bring thousands of capital ships to bear alongside tens of thousands of subline ships. A URF, should it be called, is commanded by a ring admiral, a temporary rank created specifically for such a purpose. In most cases, the ring admiral reports directly to CentComm and NAVCOMM, and enjoys priority access to GalComm iteratives. No threat faced by Union has yet justified the deployment of a URF, though contingency plans do exist based on low-confidence GalComm forecasts.

For the Union Naval Department, the URF is more of an administrative designation than a strategic or tactical one. On paper, it is possible to engage and defeat a URF, though unlikely and not without knock-on complications.

While not all of Union’s 11 rings are as built up as those closer to Cradle, any one of them could respond with strength should a URF from a neighboring ring be defeated. Another consideration is that, when engaging Union directly, one must plan to lose access to the omninet and blinkspace. As it stands, these advantages enjoyed by Union – size, communications, and logistics – make it all but impossible for an enemy force to chart a course to total victory.

Should a URF be deployed, it would be far too large to deploy in one massed battle (even acknowledging that the overall scale of engagements would be much larger than in conventional interstellar warfare). URFs stream into combat theaters in a steady, increasing accumulation of battlegroups and fleets. Bolstered by unfettered access to the omninet and blinkspace, URFs do not suffer from the logistical hazards and pitfalls one would expect from a fleet of such size; fighting one would not just mean fighting the collected strength of an entire ring, but fighting against the very infrastructure of what makes interstellar travel and communication possible in the galaxy.

Union Naval Department Protocol RE: Ship Designations Excerpt

Union naval vessels have the following designations:
• Frigates: UNS-LS (Union Naval Ship – Line Ship)
• Carriers: UNS-CV (Union Naval Ship – Carrier Vessel)
• Battleships: UNS-BB (Union Naval Ship – Battleship)

NAMING CONVENTIONS
Whether they are operating under the direct command of the Union Navy or in support of DoJ/HR missions, the names of specific Union ships, battlegroups, and fleets themselves tend to fall on the "dry" (or "professional") side. They are usually named after figures or events from history, geographic and geologic features found on Cradle, and other proper nouns. While there is some variance, some principles tend to remain true.

BATTLEGROUPS AND FLEETS
Union battlegroups typically adopt single-word codenames, usually proper nouns. There are few restrictions. Fleets are named in the order that they are raised.
Battlegroup examples: Battlegroup Comet, Battlegroup Ceremony, Battlegroup Orchard.
Fleet examples: 1st Fleet, 2nd Fleet, 3rd Fleet.

FRIGATES
Frigates are generally named for inland seas and lakes found on Cradle, seasons and months on Cradle, cities (extant or long gone) found on Cradle, and folk heroes and figures from labor history.
Frigate examples: UNS-LS Tahoe, UNS-LS November, UNS-LS Kinshasa, UNS-LS Joe Hill.

CARRIERS
Carriers are generally named for rivers and canals found on Cradle, forests on Cradle, folk heroes and events in labor history, capital cities (extant or ancient) on Cradle, and so on.
Carrier examples: UNS-CV Nile, UNS-CV Daintree, UNS-CV Tompkins Square, UNS-CV New York.

BATTLESHIPS
Battleships are generally named for naturalists and environmentalists, mountain peaks and canyons on Cradle, large geographic features on Cradle, theorists and writers, and so on.
Battleship examples: UNS-BB William Keith, UNS-BB Shasta, UNS-BB Highveld, UNS-BB Friedrich Engels.

SUBLINE SHIPS
Subline ships draw on a vast range of possible naming schemes, from cities and towns, to figures and creatures of legend and myth – anything deemed appropriate by the Union Naval Department Board of Names and Registers.

WINGS
Wings are typically given an alphanumeric designation: a letter based on their division placement (i.e., a ship’s first wing would be "A") and a number based on their proximity to their command element (the commanding officer of a wing, for fighters, bombers, and mounted mechs, or the commanding ship in the case of larger subline vessels; i.e., "1" for the commander).

For example, the command element ("1") of the UNS-CV Tompkins Square’s first wing ("A") would be "A-1". In voice and text comms, the officer or command vessel would likely respond to a phonetic corresponding to their "A" designation. As a wing, they would be known as "Able-One", "Assassin-One", "Archer-One", or something along those lines.

All other wings in the A group would be numbered consecutively from their command element: A-2, A-3, A-4, and so on. Individual pilots are referred to by their callsign, save for the wing commander, who is referred to as "[phonetic] Actual" (i.e., Able Actual, Assassin Actual, Archer Actual, etc).

UN Report THEATER/ASSEMBLY Excerpt RE: Military Ranks
Use the table below as a reference for ranks across the different navies.

The asterisk (*) next to some Armory ranks indicates commissions that can be purchased, avoiding the lengthy meritorious or "time-in" progression otherwise necessary to attain them.

Union ranks are identical across regulars and auxiliaries.

OPEN COMMUNICATIONS
Open-channel, ship-wide, and fleetwide communications – ALLCOMM (or ACM) text – share a simple format, usually dictated by commanding officers or those authorized to issue such messages. In ALLCOMM text, messages are relayed in all-caps and new speakers are introduced with an open channel symbol: >//

ALLCOMM text is a catch-all designation for all types of communications, and is specific enough for the kinds of communications that tend to take place in Battlegroup. Other formats – some more private, some coded differently, and so on – do exist, but ALLCOMM is the Union-space standard communications format.

MARKERS
ALLCOMM communications happen in real time, meaning they don’t need to be introduced with date, time, or location markers; however, if you would like to add markers (either at the time or in retrospect), then note the date, the purpose of the message, and the issuing authority using the following template:

TIMESTAMP:
CODE+++PURPOSE:
DISTRIBUTION:
MESSAGE TO FOLLOW:::

You might fill this marker out as follows:

TIMESTAMP: (4.3.5016u 0600 CrST)
CODE+++PURPOSE: TOWER GOLD+++MISSIVE TO BATTLEGROUP
DISTRIBUTION: TAG "BG_COMET"
MESSAGE TO FOLLOW:::

Here, "CrST" stands for Cradle Standard Time, a time system used throughout the Milky Way. Cradle Standard Time uses a month/day/year format for dates, but you can use whichever format works best at your table.

IDENTIFYING SPEAKERS
In ALLCOMMS messages, the speaker is indicated by a three-letter label and parenthetical official designation, all within square brackets, following the open comms marker, like so:
>//[AUG(UNS-LS_03272)]:: SEND MESSAGE

In this example, the message originates from a Union frigate, UNS-LS_03272 August. The ship’s short identifier, AUG, comes from its name (August), and its official designation, UNS-LS_03272, stands for "Union Naval Ship – Line Ship, hull number 03272". The identifier and the message are separated by two colons.

Initial responses follow the same format (i.e., a three letter label and a parenthetical official designation, both contained within square brackets). After this, both parties shift to an abbreviated format for condensed transcripts. In standard Union transcripts, the abbreviated format only lists the three-letter designation and the last two digits of the official designation, like so:
>//[AUG(UNS-LS_03272)]:: SEND MESSAGE
>//[MKH(UNS-LS_03738)]:: RECEIVE
>//[AUG72]:: WE HAVE YOU ON LRD SWEEP MKH38+++DO YOU SEE US?
>//[MKH38]:: AFFIRM+++WE SEE YOU

In subsequent messages, formal ALLCOMM conventions stipulate that the speakers be addressed using this shortened form.

IN-LINE PUNCTUATION
Instead of standard written punctuation, ALLCOMM chat uses a blend of replacement symbols and 1:1 punctuation marks drawn from written English (as a side note, Battlegroup, like Lancer, is written in American English, though the actual linguistic constructions used in the setting may be different).

The most important replacement symbol to know for accurate ALLCOMM chatter is that the period (".") is replaced with a series of three unspaced plus symbols ("+++"). This mark can function as a break and as a full stop, but, as in the following example, is not needed to end a message:
>//[AUG72]:: WE HAVE YOU ON LRD SWEEP MKH38+++DO YOU SEE US?
>//[MKH38]:: AFFIRM+++WE SEE YOU

By contrast, commas (","), question marks ("?"), and exclamation point ("!") all remain the same in ALLCOMM text.

LISTS
Lists of objectives, units, navigational points, and so on, are frequently found in ALLCOMM text. The beginning of a list is indicated three unspaced colons (":::"), with the list itself appearing in parenthesis and individual items separated by commas, like so:

>//[AUG72]:: [MKH38] PROCEED VIA THE FOLLOWING ROUTE:::(NAV 1, NAV 2, NAV 3)+++CONFIRM
>//[MKH38]:: WILCO+++PROCEEDING

Some commanders forego the formal construction and simply separate their lists with "+++". This is acceptable, though it can make for difficult record keeping down the line. If one were to apply this less formal method to the above text, it would look like this:

>//[AUG72]:: [MKH38] PROCEED VIA THE FOLLOWING ROUTE+++ NAV 1+++NAV 2+++NAV 3+++CONFIRM
>//[MKH38]:: WILCO+++PROCEEDING

ABBREVIATIONS
The text of messages following the speaker tags is abbreviated wherever possible; however, do note that text isn’t abbreviated simply for the sake of shortening messages, but to remove extraneous text while preserving the intended meaning (i.e., "objective" is often shortened to "obj", "torpedo" to "torp", etc).

There is nothing official about what is abbreviated and what isn’t; abbreviations (as well as acronyms, nicknames, and so on) are often implicitly agreed upon by the groups that use them. Text can also include links to data packets, formatted as necessary.

SUBTEXT
Unlike ALLCOMM messages, which are a simple back-and-forth, private communications between officers on the same ship or officers in the same battlegroup or fleet play out as threaded comments under an original or opening post. This is the officers’ subtext: a thread of comments shared by officers in private or open conversation amidst the clamor and general comms of battle. There are usually no more than two people engaged in any given thread, although a third or fourth may sometimes be brought in.

In any given subtext thread, the original post appears first and is identified with a single right arrow (">") followed by the usual two slashes ("//"). The next speaker is marked as ">>", the third as ">>>", and the fourth as ">>>>", like so:

>//hello world
>>//hello you
>>>//hello all
>>>>//goodbye
>//goodbye

In subtext, it is not usually necessary to indicate intext who is speaking, as the number of arrows fills this role. As with normal text communications, though, subtext can differ in format depending on the users interacting with it!

Subtext tends to use normal, American English punctuation (i.e., no "+++" or "===" notation, necessarily) and tends to be presented only in lower case, though case change is acceptable.

EXAMPLE CONVERSATION
Below is an example of what a standard, formal ALLCOMM text conversation looks like rendered on the page, with the "end transmission" punctuation ("===") included. This punctuation is used in transcription to indicate that a connection has been broken and transmission from the speaker has ceased.

TIMESTAMP: (4.3.5016u 0600 CrST)
CODE+++PURPOSE: TOWER GOLD+++MISSIVE TO BATTLEGROUP
DISTRIBUTION: TAG "BG_COMET"
MESSAGE TO FOLLOW:::

>//[AUG(UNS-LS_03272)]:: SEND MESSAGE
>//[MKH(UNS-LS_03738)]:: RECEIVE
>//[AUG72]:: WE HAVE YOU ON LRD SWEEP MKH38+++DO YOU SEE US?
>//[MKH38]:: AFFIRM+++WE SEE YOU
>//[AUG72]:: [MKH38] PROCEED VIA THE FOLLOWING ROUTE+++ NAV 1+++NAV 2+++NAV 3+++CONFIRM
>//[MKH38]:: WILCO+++PROCEEDING
>//[AUG72]:: FLASH COMMS WHEN YOU ARRIVE [MKH38]
>//[MKH38]:: WILCO+++COMMS AT ALL NAV POINTS?
>//[AUG72]:: CORRECT+++COMMS AT ALL NAV POINTS
>//[MKH38]:: WILCO+++REDSHIFTING, [MKH38] CLOSING COMMS
>//[MKH38]:: ===
>//[AUG72]:: ===

Union Codenames & Codephrases

ACCESS GREEN - Public consumption of this report is allowed, following review and clearance by officers (civilian or military) with minimum clearance approval. Common usage: sensitive (non-critical) civic communications, simple civic logistics, civilian/merchant shipping manifests, personnel records (civilian, enlisted military, municipal), and so on.

BLUE EXCLUSION - Military and Public Officers Only. Public consumption of this report is not allowed without redaction. May be cleared for total public release 10+ years post-event, though renewal of classification is allowed. Common usage: sensitive (critical) civic communications, critical civilian/merchant shipping manifests, personnel records (clandestine, sensitive municipal), exclusive (non-civilian) GMS requisition logs and associated data, protected (non-critical) military communications.

TOWER GOLD - Commissioned Officers, Tactical Personnel, Ranking Civilian Officers only. Public consumption not allowed without 90+ redaction of text. May be cleared for total public release 50+ years post-event, though renewal of classification is allowed. Common usage: military logistic records (hard and data), theater communications (military), minimum tier for all clandestine entity data — UIB, DoJ/HR, Far Field, NavInt, and so on.

WHITE WATER — high-ranking officers only. Public consumption not allowed. May be cleared for partial public release 100+ years post event, though renewal of classification is commonly sought and allowed. Typically only used among Far Field teams, ranking USB, UN, and CentComm members; existence of this tier is commonly denied. Common usage: common tier for clandestine entity data, common tier for Theater/Ring Officer communications, common tier for NHP-NHP communications, general classification for CENTCOMM and NAVCOMM inter-agency communications.

SOLEMN VIGIL — high-order classification, typically reserved for critical intelligence and communications meant for ranking military and civilian officers. Not for public consumption. Not for consumption by enlisted, non-commissioned, or sub-theater-tier officers. Information from Solemn Vigil reports can be disseminated after clearance on a need-to-know basis. Existence of Solemn Vigil reports commonly denied; classification applied by officers cleared to access, often as the primary contact and filing of report (Solemn Vigil events, phenomena, communications, and so on, generally arise from situations where the primary contact is an officer with SV clearance). Common usage: general high-tier communications from embedded Union Administrators to UAB, encrypted stratcomm between ranking UN officers and NAVCOMM, sensitive communications from clandestine agencies with Solemn Vigil approval from CENTCOMM, UIB, and NavInt.

SENDER UNKNOWN (HASHING CORRECT) — highest-order classification. Read-only to select, essential members of CENTCOMM, NAVCOMM, and the USB. Information contained within can prompt necessary permanent removal if revealed to parties without clearance. This classification only appears as a direct missive from Forecast/GALSIM

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Condition 1 - A call to action stations. Combat is imminent, or has already begun.
+++ Azure: A Condition 1 suffix instructing the crew to prepare for planetary operations: dropships, landers, marines, mechanized chassis, etc are prepared.

+++ Scarlet: A Condition 1 suffix instructing the crew to prepare for exoplanetary operation: fighters, bombers, spool weapons are prepared, mechanized chassis are mounted for space combat, boarding operations are anticipated, etc.

Condition 2 - A call to standby for action stations, called when anticipating or preparing for hostile action.

Condition 3 - A call for crew to stand down from combat-readiness.