Solomani Confederation (Military)

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Solomani Military: Span of Attention

Player and narrative wise, a squad is about the right size for any military adventure.

That's why Aliens works, because you have enough time to be introduced and interact with the Colonial Marines and get to know them a little.

Platoons are kinda awkward, because in most cases you have a lot of faces, but not really enough support weapons to really make a difference. Then, you have to babysit some greenhorn in command, doing his apprenticeship.

Teams are okay on the other end of the scale, but once you start taking casualties, acceleratingly ineffective. Same with squads of six.

Moving on to the monkeyspheric company, most members become a blur, but a reinforced one has more than enough men and firepower to get the job done.

Modern warfare does seem to be moving to lower numbers of trained troops, rather than levee en masse. The Solomani Confederation doesn't have mass conscription, though individual Home Guards might; the Confederation has more than enough volunteers for it's military, and the Confederation Marines, Solomani Navy and Solomani Army can pick and choose. The Navy's problem is to create a pool of experienced spacers that they can dip into when they start taking casualties, and to man new construction from accelerated wartime ship building programmes.

Battalion command is pushing units around, brigade the same, but on a larger scale, depending on how many men are entrusted to any particular brigadier.

Since experienced Confederation Marines are leading SpaceTrooper units, their effectiveness and cohesion are likely to remain far more likely in tact, than by the time they hit the critical fifty percent margin, though quite a lot of units start getting antsy at five percent losses, and worried at ten percent in a single encounter.

 

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Solomani Confederation Mobile Corps: Cavalry Brigade

> Cavalry
-> Carbineers
--> Dragoons

After some consideration, especially with my tack that the Solomani Army would be heavily armoured and mobile, I'm coming around to the idea that the Navy and Marines would sponsor fast response light infantry, the Army would go more vehiclized troops, lightly armed; so a little re-organization is in order, though light cavalry would be Hussars.

The initial echelon would be basically troops roaming around in jeeps, the second echelon should be air-mobile units; I'm wondering if the third would be battlemechs. Something short of ultra heavy grav tanks.

So you have light troops with assault shuttles at one end, and SolSec controlling troops trained for urban security and military operations in built up areas, culminating in covert operations commandos.

 

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Solomani Confederation Mobile Corps: Transport

At it's most basic level, and really the foundation of the corps, it would be the buggy, the jeep or the range rover.One thing that surprised me about Little Big Horn, was that the Indians scared away Custer's contingent's horses, leaving him flatfooted and forced to hold his ground.

The Solomani military prefers a mobile approach to warfighting, but faces two obstacles; for the Navy especially, the Confederation has no strategic depth, and some of the ideological purists, especially in SolSec, view tactical or strategic withdrawals with great skepticism. Probably one of the reasons that for their primary units, the Navy and Army have chosen a hard armoured, heavy hitting core of dreadnoughts and tanks respectively, in order to minimize the number of times they are forced to choose that option.

The light transport capability can be used everywhere, even on the orbiting Starport, where electrical buggies can deploy StarTrooper cells quickly around the station, since relying on lifts and tube trains might not be possible if the transport system gets shut down, either through sabotage or damage.

Next up would be wheeled armoured vehicles, that could act as a combination battle taxi and support weapon platform. Rotorcraft round off transport, giving an air capability.

Tracked vehicles tend to be a rarity, beyond a combat engineer tractor, an assault tank, or environment specific vehicle, such as one required for snow and ice, or a submarine.

The Navy provides assault shuttles, which can be used to drop troops close to a target and provide air support, though they seem mostly used as intercontinental and orbital transport. The Army provides air/rafts as aerial reconnaissance vehicles and low orbit observation satellites, as well a small contingent of grav tanks and grav APCs.

 

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Solomani Confederation Mobile Corps: The Art of Armoured Fighting Vehicle Combat

Since true armoured fighting vehicles are relatively rare in proportion to the size of the SCMC, assigned personnel to the panzer units are trained in the martial art of Tankwondo; surprisingly, most armoured personnel seems overwhelmingly female, and have become remarkably adept in squeezing out the utmost performance of their AFVs.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Confederation Mobile Corps: Span of Attention

It may not be entirely by accident that the classic Roman Legion has eighty men centuries, consisting of ten eight men tent groups and two servants each, organized into nine cohorts with six centuries each, and a First Cohort with either twelve centuries, or five double strength centuries (probably evolved into this as easier to control and able to absorb more casualties). Cavalry turmae had thirty plus, and the older maniples had two centuries with either sixty or thirty men.

The classic Legion cavalry contingent was four turmae at one hundred thirty two men, with an independent cavalry wing of five hundred to eight hundred men, organized supposedly into sixteen or twenty four turmae.

Though the SCMC would act more as auxillaries or limitanei, and when combined with the the more powerful Army and Marine units, act to protect their rear and flanks, and probably reconnaissance.

 

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Solomani Confederation: Component Military Forces

The problem with the Home Guard is that it's conceptualized as planetary or system defence forces, keeping an invader occupied while the Solomani Navy consolidates itself around strong enough task forces to wrest back command of space and safely lands Army units to retake the planet.

That doesn't really make them all that useful for interstellar power projection, especially for training and logistical reasons you'd want ground forces that act the same and are equipped the same.

And the Solomani would want numbers to make up for deficiencies in technology, especially against their primary opponent, the Imperium.

Most Home Guard soldiers didn't join up to go recovering lost worlds, they want to defend their planet friends and family. And likely only on a part time basis, since they're supposed to be militia.

This is also a stumbling block for planetary regimes with more expansive foreign policies; that implies that they'd want a professional military to carry out the continuation of policy as it transitions to a more forceful form of diplomacy, and whose chain of command can't be usurped by a decree from the Secretary General and/or the General Assembly, and whose loyalty rests primarily with their head of state, not the Confederation.

Some planets might just have upgraded paramilitary law enforcement agencies, to deal with civil unrest outbreaks and especially to crew their spaceships that patrol and defend their system. A system alliance might maintain their own navy.

 

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Solomani Army: Doctrine

I'm going to have a go and try to define it.

I've said that the Solomani Army at it's core is basically heavily armoured panzergruppen, and centered around the heavy grav tank. The heavy grav tank still has the traditional four man crew, driver, gunner, sensor/remote operations operator, and vehicle commander, unlike their Imperium counterparts with two and three men crews.

That's because the grav tank has a complement of drones attached to it, used primarily as scouts, though some could act as additional weapon platforms, and part of a heavily networked data and sensor exchange system that includes other vehicles in their unit, and transmitting the data life back to headquarter elements. If this sounds familiar, it's what the Air Force hopes the F-35 will evolve into.

Against competitors with better tech (read the Imperium), the Army plans to enact massive jamming across the spectrum, hoping that numbers and better training will tilt the scale in their favour.

The armoured columns will be supported by specialized units whose job is to shoot down anything flying registered as hostile, before it comes into range, while Navy aerospace fighters fly cover; heavy infantry will accompany the grav tanks, mostly to take out ground emplacements equipped for the anti-tank role.

Infantry is meant to hold ground, and for that it has to dismount; the panzer grenadiers are too specialized, highly trained and valuable for that mundane duty, which is where the activated Home Guard units come in, or more likely, the SCMC, also to besiege bypassed strong points, to minimize their capability to effect the battlesphere, before being reduced by artillery or taken by assault pioneers.

Ground combat in extreme climates would be tasked to Home Guard units trained in those environments, military operations in urban terrain would be the responsibility of SolSec, while underground operations would tend to get pushed to the soldiers most experienced in those potentially claustrophobic conditions, SpaceTroopers.

 

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Solomani Security: Military Operations in Urban Terrain

You might be wondering why the Solomani Army to a greater extent, and the Solomani Navy to a lesser, would defer to SolSec on military matters during combat, specifically regarding operations in urban areas, not fairly underpopulated rural regions, or less dense suburban districts.

I see the Solomani Army specialized in armoured warfare, and no such force wants to get sucked in a Rattenkrieg. The ground forces controlled by the Navy could give a good account of themselves, but they're trained for short and sharp combats, willing to perform a frontal assault, if necessary, but once having achieved their mission, they're not expected to hold it, but withdrawn and replaced by more expendable troops.

The Solomani art of war is to identify a strategic or weak point and commit overwhelming forces to take it. If that point is an urban area, large civilian casualties would be expected, that makes it a political question, due to the foreseeable ramifications. The Navy would prefer to bombard dirtside targets, and only send in Marine laden assault shuttles to truly critical cee three nodes, so they punt the responsibility to SolSec.

SolSec then has to make the determination if the urban target can be flattened, or must be taken with minimal civilian casualties, whether due to diplomatic, political or humanitarian reasons. The naval commander on the spot could make this determination, but getting SolSec to sign off on the option he prefers or make unpalatable choices gives him a get out of jail free card.

Artificial space habitats are within the Navy bailiwick, since they're in space and not dirtside, and space trained troops would be used for any assault, which means this would be a hot potato the naval commander can't really drop, though he may consult the SolSec liaison. Generally speaking, a threat to punch a hole anywhere is sufficient for the habitat's authorities to surrender, and given enough time, combat engineers would be able to map the entirety of the habitat's passageways.

As mentioned before, a heavily armourized Solomani Army will not be enthused to send it's troops into an urban area, and only reluctantly for it's auxiliaries to do so. The generals will want for someone else to take responsibility for the expected casualties.

Outside of which, the urban area is the playground for SolSec in it's mission to politically harmonize the peoples of the Confederation, police dissent, and remove disruptive elements, for which they have troops specialized in urban security operations. SolSec can, of course, call on the resources of the Army and Navy to help accomplish such missions, and consult them as to the best way to make use of these resources and successfully carry out their responsibilities, like nuking them for orbit, just to be sure.

 

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Solomani Confederation: Starports

Starports in the Confederation are owned and run by a civilian bureau, and are a holdover from the Imperium period, but retained because they offer a number of advantages to the Confederation and it's agencies.

The starports offer a focus for trade, which the Confederation believes is in everyone's' interest to maintain and develop, promotion of the idea and ideals of the Confederation, and a way to help economic and technological development in the systems they are based in.

For Solomani Security, a legitimate reason to maintain a presence, and have a base where they can monitor the subpolities and their respective electorates; and maybe perform some minor extraordinary renditions and tweak public sentiment.

For the Navy, it's the communications link to the express boat network they operate and maintain, as well as the primary port of call for transitioning Navy ships, as well as a way to keep track of all the starships in Confederation space.

Usually, there's only one orbital facility, protected by the Solomani Navy, and one Downport dirtside, protected by the Solomani Army, though planetary regimes can sanction any number, termed spaceports, but due to the cost of construction and maintenance, less so orbital facilities.

The Confederation prides itself on maintaining first rate starports to ensure interstellar traffic prefers to park there, rather than any competing system spaceport (which in any case, would be under increased scrutiny by SolSec agents).

Class Ay ports would be equipped and built at tech level fourteen, with a minimal SpaceTrooper Brigade as station and system security.

Class Bee ports would be equipped and built at tech level twelve minimum, with a company of SpaceTroopers as security.

Class See ports would be equipped and built at tech level nine, so that at least repairs for starships would be feasible; security would be a detached SpaceTrooper platoon, with a Confederation Marine lieutenant in command, on a character building tour.

Class Dee ports would be equipped and built by whatever technological base can maintain a satellite in orbit; security by the Navy would be sufficient that their facilities are secure from the riffraff.

In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit whose job was to supervise the dirt patch where starships could land.

 

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Solomani Navy: Midway Class SuperCarrier

So canonically, the Midways are dispersed structures, ye modernish Romulan warship designs could well be described as such; or nutcrackers.

Since I've pretty much decided that capital ship sized Solomani warships would resemble stardestroyers, being the choice of Terran naval architects nine out of ten times, the Midways break the mold, so it's well within the bounds of possibility that they could look like this.

Some might wonder why.

That central hole can act like a well dock, allowing easier and faster handling of smallcraft, possibly enclosed within a gravity field.

 

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Solomani Army: Structure

Initially, I thought the Solomani Army would be a bunch of activated Home Guard units organized into divisions and corps, and deployed where needed, especially when Solomani Navy squadrons appear to have adopted the identities and lineages of all the famous Terran combat ground units.

Let's assume this was an anomaly or a passing fad.

After the Solomani Navy has secured command of near planetary space, and judiciously blasted some of the obvious military installations dirtside, it's time to drop Solomani Army formations configured to rapidly destroy the remaining military ground units and installations, especially those that can still pose a threat to Solomani Navy major combatants.

You really don't get much of an impression of the flexibility of the Solomani Army, though to be fair, you don't get much of an impression of the Solomani Army at all.

This isn't a problem.

The Confederation Marines could be the primary raiding and commando force of the Solomani, just have to increase their numbers from what I thought would be a million, to ten million, still elite and easily absorbable into the military budget. And they are high tech light infantry, trained to operate in battle dress and fight in tight quarters.

Flexibility in this case means that the Solomani Army proper comes with a lot of baggage, since they've completely panzered up, highly mobile but using heavily armoured vehicles to move about, the primary strike force being grav tanks, accompanied by panzer grenadiers, and teched up support units. Their primary goal would be to isolate strongholds to be assaulted by combat engineers, and destroy the cohesiveness of the enemy by breaking through their lines and rampaging around their rear areas, then pinning down any remaining enemy units, and eliminating them.

Since this would be the likely scenario in any campaign to liberate the occupied planets from the Imperium, the Solomani Army is likely to be built around heavy armoured units, with the occasional light forces for reconnaissance and infiltration.

The other three likely instances that ground forces would be needed would be bug hunts, such as rooting out Aslan colonists who think the Confederation is an easy mark, which could be done by and under Confederation Marines supervision, rear area security once a sizable region has been secured by the Solomani Panzergruppen, which could be handed over to Solomani Security Interior troops, since the specialized Panzertruppen would be wasted doing sentry duty and policing the liberated populace. The third one is counter insurgency, where a traitorous demographic had riled up the proletariat against the Solomani Cause, following up after the insurrection is crushed, and where massive deployment of SolSec sponsored soldiery, supported where necessary by the Solomani Army and Navy units, would have a better grip and understanding on the populace, and the measures necessary to reintegrate them into the Solomani commonwealth of planets, allowing the Solomani Army to regroup it's troops and remain an effective deterrence, not really possible if it remained bogged down in any number of brushfire campaigns.

 

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Solomani Military: Vehicles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNpqdFBhgp8

It's a size comparison between the various vehicles found in Deserts of Kharak.

The first part is mostly wheeled or tracked, which would make them interesting for SCMC use.

The second part has some interesting fighter and strikecraft designs.

When we get to the big boys, you notice that they tend to be rectangular box designs, literally; they're pretty much a hull around an empty (w)hole. And the carriers have deck parking.

I tend to think that Solomani Navy light and escort carriers would look like that.

Another thought is, usually when I was trying to make a smallcraft jump capable but compliant to the minimum tonnage, my solution was to add volume by covering up the space between strategically placed superstructure. For starships trying to squeeze out every drop engineering power, the solution would be the opposite, before transition, the ship would start opening up and reducing volume.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Cruiser Gap

The current Solomani Navy order of battle only recognizes four types of cruisers:


(Deep) Strike Cruisers

While jump factor five would define it as deep strike from a tech level fourteen viewpoint, the adjective deep has been dropped, as no other major combatant in the Solomani Navy currently is described as a strike cruiser, normally a jump factor four usually tech level thirteen heavy cruiser.

The hundred odd strike cruisers are of the improved Beijing class, or preceding batches that have been refurbished to this standard.

Like all Solomani major combatants, they have extensive command facilities, allowing a Solomani Navy flag officer to coordinate the activities of mixed naval groups and squadrons, whether of the Solomani Navy, client states, member worlds, or naval Home Guard units. While Strike cruisers aren't normally assigned to this role, the fact that they are rapid reaction units, they are usually the first on the scene of a developing situation, and are not considered expendable, but may be the most powerful and modern unit in the area, so would be the natural contender to be the system flagship.

While extensively used as a fast reactive force, with a reinforced company of Confederation Marine commandos, and a an organic force of assault shuttles, strikecraft and fighters, Imperium Navy Intelligence is certain their principal role is commerce raiding deep within Imperium space on the resumption of the Rim War, the strike cruisers infiltrated far beyond the Confederation borders, with a flotilla of support ships, disrupting lines of trade and communications, and raiding strategic but vulnerable targets.


Command Cruisers

Actually, all major combatants of the Solomani Navy could be and are termed as such, having undergone modification to embed flag command facilities onboard all cruisers, and adjusting the weapon systems mostly in defensive configurations. The command facilities are identical, allowing flag officers and their staffs immediate familiarity with the lay out and communication systems.

While the capital ships of the Solomani Navy also have these command facilities, and can act easily as flagships of squadrons and fleets, Solomani Naval doctrine believes that the primary role of the dreadnought was to hold the line, and not be distracted by trying to keep the squadron or fleet commander out of the line of fire. Dreadnoughts have organic squadrons of strikecraft and fighters, and could easily command them, but the entire order of battle is controlled by the ranking officer in the command cruiser.

This centralization isn't at the expense of initiative of the Solomani Navy officer corps, who are encouraged to practice and demonstrate it when required. Without cruisers, the line of battle tends to be without wings and cruiser squadrons to fill in any gaps, so those roles fall on the strikecraft, and easier to coordinate from one point.

By setting up what looks like a central point of failure in a more vulnerable vessel, less leery enemy commanders may attempt to blitz the command cruiser. The Solomani expect this, and tend to set up their ships to make it seem that it's possible, but actually it's a trap as any ship or group of ships would run a gauntlet. Command cruisers, who are mostly a legacy of the Rim War, despite their apparent importance, are considered expendable, though their crews are not.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy Cruiser Gap

The following sort of makes certain assumptions on the current direction of shipbuilding rules.


Light Cruiser

During the lead up to the Solomani Rim War, the Solomani defined light cruisers as straddling between eight to fifteen thousand tonnes, not always armed with a spinal mount.

This may be a throwback to the Interstellar Wars with the Vilani, as Terra slowly evolved it's technical base from nine to twelve. By tech level twelve, the largest starship that could be constructed (which is probably untrue) was one hundred thousand tonnes (as exemplified by the Solomani navy's own Victory class battlecruisers), fifty thousand by tech level eleven, which placed the Terrans at parity with the First imperium, and ten thousand at tech level ten. I tend to think the then prevailing software couldn't deal with creating a stable jump bubble for larger than listed volumes, and possibly the computer hardware wasn't fast enough at the same time.

It wouldn't have slipped by most Terran/Solomani politicians, naval staff, and naval designers, that volumes tended to match tonnages of warships from the era of the Great Patriotic War, though they'd have to admit, interstellar heavy cruisers would be the necessity of the armament they carried be at least twice as large as light cruisers. Light cruisers were fitted with smallest possibly sized spinal mount, but the Terrans stretched that definition, or perhaps it was only the Solomani as they started building up their naval forces, to include in that definition a five hundred tonne bay battery.

Using a five hundred tonne bay had certain advantages it was half the size of the smallest spinal mount, thereby allowing a warship that would only need to be half the volume of it's predecessor it would also allow easier maintenance and replacement of that weapon system.

The Solomani Naval Staff had already been moving to a preference of the big gun school, combined with Jeune Ecole, that paradoxically both tried to have it's cake and eat it too. The Solomani Navy was determined that they would be able to match anyone's line of battle, but this would leave gaps in the intermediate range of warships and the missions that they carried out, but since the Naval Staff felt that a mission kill would be a failure anyway, tasking lighter ships with these missions, who wouldn't be obliged to stand their ground against similar or stronger opposition, would still achieve the same results.

It's possible, for the Solomani Navy, anything that is five thousand tonnes and above, with a ceiling of probably twenty or thirty thousand tonnes, and with appropriate armament and performance, is a light cruiser.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Cruiser Gap

Are there any more variants than four that are within the Solomani Navy order of battle? I don't think so, since the Solomani like to give clear roles to their warships, and even if command cruisers are a collection of legacy ships that flow through the spectrum of major combatants, their role has been simplified to communications, command and control and intelligence collection, rather than that scouting and protecting the lines of communication.

As new dreadnoughts come on line and natural attrition denude the Solomani Navy of their remaining cruisers, battlecruisers are slowly taking over this role for the FleetRons.

One variant would have been the Through Deck Cruiser, but that was really a politically driven designation, carriers and quasi-carriers are covered elsewhere.


Auxiliary Cruiser

While one would be tempted to term them merchant cruisers, they aren't, despite using commercial shipbuilding standards to ease production and cut costs, since they are built from the keel up to serve as naval vessels, rather than later conversions, whether or not provision had been designed into the hull to allow it.

Some might feel that the auxiliary cruiser concept is a touching faith by the Solomani Naval Staff that there won't be a major conflict with the Imperium in the foreseeable future, since most strategists don't believe that auxiliary cruisers can withstand the attentions of near peer escorts, let alone those carrying cruiser armament. For the Solomani Navy, the auxiliary cruisers fulfill cruiser roles but those of a purely combative nature, having more or less given up on this genre of warships, with the exception of flagships and rapid response, one more for the availability of hulls with existing active and passive defense systems, and the other due to the likelihood of a large well armed vessel being quite by it's lonesome in dealing with a crisis, requiring the requisite big stick for diplomatic negotiations.

Imperium Naval Intelligence is certain that the popularity of auxiliary cruisers in Solomani naval service is to keep up the numbers of large jump capable ships and a budget crutch, to compensate for the inordinate resources poured into the manufacture of their fast dreadnought class.

Unlike ships built to military specifications, where the Navy tries to standardize the configuration and design, auxiliary cruisers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. This is due to the fact that off the shelf commercial components are extensively used, thereby eliminating the usual logistical and maintenance penalties. It also makes it hard to pin down the performance parameters for any particular vessel met, especially since the Solomani Navy is not adverse to re-configuring it as regards to it's weapon systems and engineering, so it's quite possible that except for survivability, you could be facing a quasi light cruiser.

All auxiliary cruisers are capital ships, and usually don't exceed light cruiser tonnages, due to the modular nature of the engineering the Solomani Navy uses, creating a sort of a natural gap between thirty to seventy thousand tonnes.

Most auxiliary cruisers are meant to be a jack of all trades multi-role ship, with smallcraft facilities large enough to accommodate an aerospace group composed of fighters, gunboats and assault shuttles, plus being a tender for small scouting or reconnaissance vessels. And a complement of drones.

While the ship's crew during peacetime is kept at a minimum, sufficient provision is made for crew quarters to surge numbers, including reinforcing any onboard troop units.

While auxiliary cruisers may use the same hulls as that of escort or light carriers, they aren't, and tend to act more as a mothership for smaller vessels.

One variant is the rift configuration, where reliable tech level twelve equipped auxiliary cruisers have fuel tanks installed sufficient for two factor three jumps, with a comfortable margin for the power plant consumption.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Structure

Communications - administrating the Navy X-Boat routes, and training and supplying the communications, sensors and electronics personnel.

Gunnery - training and supplying the weapon and defensive systems personnel, and responsible for maintaining weapon and defensive systems.

Engineering - training and supplying the people who look after power, life support, plumbing and propulsion; technically, you should have a technical branch, but I figure that would be split between communications and engineering, since engineers should be interested in the holistic well being of the entire ship.

Flight - responsible for training and supplying pilots and astrogators, and administrating subsidiary craft and traffic control.

Medical - responsible for the psychological and physiological welfare of Navy personnel, and training and supplying medical staff.

Security - responsible for the training and supplying security personnel, the security o Navy vessels and facilities, the Shore Patrol, criminal investigations, internal affairs, and counter-intelligence.

Logistics - responsible for training and supplying logistics personnel, as well as supplying the Navy in general, and administrating Navy logistics vessels and facilities; also responsible for the cantine.

Line and crew - I think at this point, personnel skill requirements are too high, general crew would be technicians of one sort or another, so depending on aptitude, you'd be overstaffing communications, gunnery, security, logistics, or engineering. Command might be biased towards the Flight branch.

 

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Solomani Navy: Structure

Will the Solomani Navy ever need the equivalent of the Solomani Confederation Mobile Corps?

I'm going to say no, because pure demographics versus berths would indicate they could recruit from the creme de la creme of Solomani applicants, and reject most of them; the strategic objective of their human resources policies would be to train as many applicants as possible to the highest degree of their potential capability, churn as fast as possible, and create a massive reserve pool that they can call up once the balloon goes up, and they need bodies to replace casualties and crew new construction in speeded up building programmes.

At present, they're only going to need a thousand commanding officers of major combatants, which would require the rank of Captain, which creates a bottle neck for promotions, and you can't really proceed to higher command without commanding a fast dreadnought, a deep strike cruiser, or a supercarrier, since the line of battle and massive utilization of fighters and strikecraft would be the three primary ways the Solomani Navy conducts battles.

 

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Solomani Military: Terms of Preferment

While Traveller character generation works on four year terms, three year terms might work better for a Solomani, since you could retcon it through his previous life cycle.

Generally speaking, life begins at eighteen, when you decide either to go for further education, or go career, having just graduated from three years of High School, and three years of Middle School before that, and six years (two terms) of primary before that. Three years of kindergarten seems a little excessive, but it gets you out of your mother's hair, having spent the previous three years as your personal maid.

For the Solomani Navy, you have a three year deployment cycle, first year reset, second year training, and third year deployment; the first term would be basic training, followed by really advanced training, and then they assign you to a spaceship.

So the Solomani Navy should have about four times as many personnel as ship berths, considering their reputation of overstuffing ship departments.

This would mean some adjustment of skills receivable and mustering out benefits.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Military: Terms of Preferment

The Solomani Navy would like to retain it's personnel for six to nine years, before throwing them back into the gene pool and strengthen the Solomani race and the Confederation's economy.

Three years is very close to national service, and would lose the Navy the services of personnel just when they become competent at their jobs; longer than nine years would prevent a new generation of enthusiastic Solomani recruits from acquiring vital skills, at an age where they mold their minds and attitudes, at the peak of their physical capabilities.

After three terms, there would be pressure for an up or out retention.

For five-year missions to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go where no Solomani has gone before, would require volunteers and s specific enlistment with caveat that it doesn't end until the exploratory mission returns to Confederation territory, reports to an appropriately high enough headquarters, and Naval Staff signs off on it.

 

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Solomani Navy: Carrier Evolutions

The Solomani have had a long naval aviation tradition, and that was responsible in large part in braking Imperium progress after the initial blitzkrieg pretty much gutted their capital ship units, and with the scattering of the Grand Fleet, left the Rim relatively defenseless. Carrier groups held the line while the Solomani reorganized and recalled their frontier fleets to face very much reduced Imperium forces, decimated by fierce resistance in the Sol system, led by dedicated defence fighter squadrons defending Terra.

Prebellum Solomani fleet carriers increased in size, though not necessarily due to the tonnage inflation of their embarked craft.

Warerborne aircraft carriers primary means of protection were security through obscurity, pre-emptive strike, larger nunbers of strikecraft, technological edge, multiple layered anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems, and finally, extensive damage absorption and control systems

Supercarriers

For a variety of reasons, the Solomani had/have bottlenecks on the manufacture of large space-going vessels, which meant they had a trend of continuously building larger and more capable warships to make up what they lacked in numbers.

This extended to building supercarriers supporting strikecraft and fighters numbering in the thousands.

The largest of these, commissioned in the decades preceding the War of Imperium Aggression, were the Midway class at twice the size of the Victory class battlecruisers; for reasons of economy, more efficient use of smallcraft stowage and handling, and ease of manufacture, these were built is a dispersed configuration, which limited acceleration and prevented the effective use of protecting the hull through thick layers of armour plating.

The Solomani discovered that their supercrarriers became sitting ducks, as you can't hide them in space, and even if you leave them behind the line of battle, light forces could bypass that, fight their way through combat aerospace patrols, and willing to take massive losses if they can close and attack the unarmoured and sluggish Midways.

The Imperial Navy had discovered that one of the vulnerabilities of the Solomani aerospace doctrine had been their over reliance on large numbers of strikecraft and fighters, deployed on and serviced by their massive carriers, which tended to make the supercarriers a single point of failure.