UNICOM Maritime Commission

The UNICOM Maritime Commission (MARITCOM), sometimes called Maritime Operations, is an oversight division within the responsible for managing the the military's many maritime activities. Formerly more so part of the until its dissolution during the , the Maritime Commission was further consolidated under jurisdiction, including its personnel and assets.
The Maritime Commission is often referred to as the "Seaborne Force" or "Wet Fleet" in passing, based entirely on its dominion and mandate in seafaring. Associated most with the and , the organization's staff include personnel from all branches, often determined based on local needs rather than uniformity. The Maritime Commission is not a high-profile organization and is most known for its marginal seaborne security fleets and the unique mission capability of maritime craft orbital insertions. Outside the maritime community, the organization is often treated as a dead-end posting. Some members have a reputation as rebel-sympathizers or glorified police, carrying over from their colonial roots.
Headquartered in the UEG capital of on , the Maritime Commission serves as the highest authority on operations and policy for the individual maritime security organizations across human space. While branch authority has traded hands over multiple administrations, the organization remains a fixture under the (UNICOM).
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==Premise==
While seaborne forces are not often mentioned or visible in the UNSC arsenal, they are present in countless examples. The Maritime Commission serves as a way to unify their appearance and efforts as a public-facing office within the UNSC's military hierarchy. Due to the complexity of managing many distant and uncollaborative subsections within the UNSC seaborne forces, the Maritime Commission must exist as a loose umbrella organization - responsible for setting standards and coordinating efforts but far less bureaucratic than other UNSC branch fixtures because their place is rather ambiguous within the ranks of the UNSC Armed Forces.
For that reason, the Maritime Commission exists eternally in a state of flux with a very real in-joke postulating the eventual closure of the organization despites its long, underappreciated history dating back to before even emergent-spacefaring wars of Earth. The organization must be a catch-all, supporting a multitude of different interpretations of seafaring military doctrine into the twenty-sixth century. Despite this background-relegating role, it does not hold them back from playing a role in major staging actions during contemporary events and gradual tidal shifts like the Insurrection and .
To keep a guise of relevancy for the organization going, problems and novel solutions are extrapolated from issues existing that may require their response. The ability to insert seaborne vessels from low orbit like makes deployment and retrieval of maritime forces more timely to keep up with the changing face of contemporary warfare. Using seaborne vessels as power projection assets on colony worlds of disputed loyalties make for reasonable justification, especially when compared to the risks and tradeoffs of permanent Army garrisons or orbital starships. Giving submarines a niche role in fighting submerged vessels and having an edge over such starships keeps one of the most potent technology shifts in maritime history relevant in an age of ancient alien civilizations and galaxy-ending superweapons.
==Iconography==
Maritime Commission icons created by Halo Fanon user, .
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==Responsibility==
While not overly uniform like other UNSC military departments, the Maritime Commission takes after the old-Earth United States Navy in doctrine and ceremony. The origins of the Maritime Commission date as far back to the combined naval task forces featured in the South American , some with or without mandate back in the late twenty-first and twenty-second centuries.
The old United States of America and its successor, the United Republic of North America, played a founding role in predecessors to the UNSC Maritime Commission and served as the basis for future global naval practices through its international partnerships and relationships with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and other Earth militaries through the twenty-second century. The ancient Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) remained a key naval tradition into the twenty-second century and was recognized as a particular informing event that helped international cohesion against the anti-establishment, secessionist and movements through the twenty-second and twenty-third centuries.
In contemporary times, the UNSC Maritime Commission is tasked with maintaining, training, and advancing a battle-ready and task-ready maritime force capable of power projection and security throughout human space through the establishment of local bases, facilities, and outposts in the core worlds and colonies. The Maritime Commission is not strictly a military organization, however, it was treated as one even before the Insurrection period while involved in deterring open war with rebellious colonies and transitioned into a niche combat-support role during the . Mission capabilities and requirements from centuries before continue to be relevant to the Maritime Commission's greater relevancy in an Earth political climate that sees them as an arguably unneeded waste of expenditures in the government's defense budget.
===Mandates===
The three primary mandates of the UNSC Maritime Commission are as follows:
===Mission Capabilities===
*Maritime Aviation: The primary role of maritime operations, UNSC Air Force and Marine Corps personnel maintain and deploy from aircraft carriers and aviation cruisers on planets with large bodies of water, typically against inland Insurrection or Covenant targets. Maritime Aviation can also pertain to air-to-air combat and maritime security through the use of aircraft and exoatmospheric vehicles.
*Rapid Deployment: A capability unique to the Maritime Commission, the organization coordinates with UNSC Navy and Air Force vessels for ferrying purposes, deploying maritime vessels to a planet's surface from orbit. Contained in large deployment pods or by other means, the maritime vessels are reinforced to survive reentry and allow a force of vessels to ready for missions in a matter of hours.
*Amphibious Operations: Coastal support missions remain a fixture of the Maritime Commission, requiring the ability to deploy personnel and firepower inland from the sea in a rapid, secure manner. During the Insurrection, missile submarines and semi-autonomous arsenal ships proved the mainstay in this role when space military infrastructure proved too expensive to maintain for prolonged periods. The practice was further expanded against the Covenant military.
*Maritime Domain Control: The main purpose of maritime operations, domain control encompasses a wide variety of mission sets regarding the maritime theater. Not entirely police or military in purpose, domain control serves to maintain UNSC presence and dominance above, on, and below colonial oceans. The most prolific use of this capability can be seen in the use of maritime vessels as mobile military bases in place of fixed military installations on distant, hostile colony worlds.
*Maritime Combat: A somewhat rare mission requirement, maritime combat generally focuses on preventing contestation of coastal territories by low-intensity threats, particularly Insurrection submarines in the late twenty-fifth century. The role has expanded to include occasional combat with submerge-capable Covenant starships and missile attacks against Covenant installations and ships on and over the water.
*Community Outreach: The main peacetime role for the Maritime Commission, community outreach missions are focused on serving the public interest and playing an active role in local communities, usually with towing, ferrying, and sealift services. This also includes community policing, ticketing law violators, and scientific initiatives. The Maritime Commission is best known for community outreach, giving them the reputation as glorified police and pirates.
==Mission Assets==
===Dive Foils===
===Military Combat Support Animal===
===Maritime Nuclear Weapons===
*DIVER, SWELL, VARUNA Nuclear Torpedo
*QUAKE, STOREGGA Nuclear Depth Bomb
*SQUALL Nuclear Delivery System
===Project DUTCHMAN===
*DUTCHMAN, Option One: Operational low-yield Slipspace bomb, nuclear weapon-equivalent.
*DUTCHMAN, Option Two: Operational volatile-weather control device.
*DUTCHMAN, Option Three: Theoretical Slipspace micro-tunneling device.
Masquerading behind an innocuous name akin to a research department, the Umibōzu/Sea Tactics Development Organization acquire research-grade intended for corporate and university applications and transformed them into varied battlefield assets under Project DUTCHMAN. Named after mythical ghost ship crewed by an immortally trapped crew, the project retained the Umibōzu motif of maritime myths and aimed at applying in ways to augment the UNSC Maritime Commission's combat effectiveness.
DUTCHMAN specifically refers to the use of two proven Slipspace drive applications, and a single theoretical objective yet to come to fruition by time of the . Many of these developments are bankrolled and achieved through collaboration with the famed Japanese nuclear engineering firm, .
The first application is a low-yield nontraditional explosive similar to other Slipspace bomb designs. With a smaller drive, the DUTCHMAN explosive application lacks the threat of nuclear-allegory Slipspace bombs like that seen during in orbit of in but can be employed as an area denial weapon in a urban or maritime warfare capacity. Due to the bomb's theoretical simplicity, the weapon saw the most use as a plausible deniability weapon in instigating and expanding the scope of the Insurrection conflict. Reports of "Slipspace accidents" at colonial universities or "ad hoc Slipspace bombs" in the hands of might not be the work of colonial terrorist but rather Umibōzu operatives. Such details remain highly classified under the supervision of the . The official designation for the research-grade Slipspace bomb is called DUTCHMAN, Option One.
The second application is a weather-modification weapon, employing poorly-understood environmental effects of atmospheric Slipspace jumps as a warfighting asset. With a stabilization sarcophagus applied to the research-grade Slipspace drive, the weather-modification weapon sustains a micro-Slipspace singularity encouraging odd weather phenomenon to occur within the vicinity of the device. While scale and severity controls for the weapon are limited, successful tests and application of the weapon allow operations necessitating such a device to procced from a minor drunken thought to production-ready models. Most cases, the weapon will generate a spontaneous and localized storm with some control over the effectiveness. Due to the drive and sarcophagus being equivalent in size to a large semi-trailer, there are few ways the weapon can be used on Umibōzu missions other than as a favorable insertion cover. The Maritime Commission used such a weapon to demoralize Covenant forces on excavation floats during the Battle of Alluvion in . Research on non-combat, terraforming purposes are also underway on planets like to generate spontaneous rainfall. This weather-modification weapon is referred to as DUTCHMAN, Option Two.
The third application is a Slipspace micro-jump or "tunneling" device. Due to the time-consuming process of deploying and recovering sea-going craft from planets by UNSC starships including the use of Reinforced Fluid Entry Apparatuses, the Maritime Commission has long dreamed of deploying their sea craft without the necessity of piggybacking through space. Rather they hope for the possibility of creating Slipspace-capable seaborne craft to remove their UNSC Navy dependency permanently. Such hopes remain a pipe dream, however, advancements in Slipspace technology and theory derived from intrusions into Covenant and Forerunner Slipspace suites means such a future may not be so far off as once thought as ONI experiments with their own and a number of small UNSC exoatmospheric combat craft achieve Slipspace compatibility for their often small sizes. If such a future becomes probable, the application will become DUTCHMAN, Option Three.
===Reinforced Fluid Entry Apparatus===
===Seaborne INKV===
==History==
===Umibozu Hit Job===
===Battle of Alluvion===
===SEASPIRE Disappearance===
===Battle of Puerto Rico===
===Marshall Islands Incident===
==See Also==
===Notable Links===
*Deployable Operations Group
*Umibozu
*UNSC Maritime Operations
===Literary Appearances===
==References==