Military of Great Britain

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The **British Armed Forces**, also known as **His/Her Majesty's Armed Forces**, were the military services of the human nation of the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Owing to Britain's status as a great power between the 18th and 20th centuries, the British military saw action in a number of the most significant wars in human history, including the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War and the Great War. At its height Britain possessed the most powerful navy and the most powerful space force in the human world.

After the highly destructive Great War ended the great power statuses of most European nations in 1916, the British military was considerably downsized and lost much of its historic prestige. By the middle of the 20th century, however, Britain's military was again regarded as one of the most well-equipped and well-trained forces in Europe due to its investment in highly-advanced technologies such as the gravity drive. In 1959, Britain also became the human world's third nuclear weapons state.

In 1968 the member states of the United Commonwealth, which included Britain, decided to unify their national military forces to form the United Commonwealth Defence Force. The British Armed Forces therefore ceased to exist as an independent military force during that year.

## British Army

The British Army was the principal land warfare force of Great Britain. For much of its history it was smaller than the armies of other European great powers, owing to Britain's primary focus on its naval power. However, the British Army was still considered to be well-equipped and well-trained.

Early in the Napoleonic Wars, the British Army suffered several defeats against the armies of Napoleonic France owing to France's superior tanks and armoured warfare tactics. The British Army had corrected its deficiencies in these areas by the end of the conflict, and - making use of an innovative combined arms strategy involving fast tanks and infantry - the British Army proved decisive in the Seventh Coalition's final defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

British ground forces were crucial in stopping the German Empire's advance into northern France in the opening stages of the Great War as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) which was deployed to Europe. The war soon settled into a stalemate, with both sides establishing trench lines and the territory changing little for the remainder of the conflict. Even before the devastating orbital strikes that ended the Great War, the British Army had suffered 800,000 deaths.

After the Great War, the British Army found itself unwilling and unable to effectively defend British interests in Ireland during the Easter Rising, leading to the independence of the entire island of Ireland from the United Kingdom. Until 1927, British ground forces also fought in an intense and bloody armed campaign against Indian pro-independence groups in the Indian War of Independence. Large numbers of military casualties would eventually lead the British government to recognise the independence of India. The last British Army troops ceremonially left India through the Gateway of India in Bombay in 1927.

The destructive orbital strikes, strategic bombing raids and rocket attacks during the Great War left Great Britain without a significant armaments manufacturing industry for several decades. Until the middle of the 20th century, the British Army primarily imported munitions from the United States to replace aging Great War-era equipment. These included M24 Chaffee light tanks, which replaced older British Army light tanks such as the Light Tank Mk VI, and some M1 Garand and M14 semi-automatic rifles.

By the 1960s, Britain had rebuilt parts of its military design and manufacturing industry. Britain developed the gravity drive along with the European Union in 1962, and had rapidly developed and manufactured several types of small gravity drive-propelled scout and attack vehicles by the late 1960s. In 1968, small gravity drive-powered craft were still gradually replacing various types of light tanks and reconnaissance ground vehicles in the British Army. Like other armies, the British Army still saw a use for heavy tanks due to their heavier armour and lower profile than small gravity drive craft. The British Army's primary heavy tank in the late 1960s was the Conqueror.

The British Army operated several types of howitzers and tactical ballistic missiles by the time of its dissolution in 1968. The Army had developed nuclear warheads and nuclear artillery shells that were compatible with its artillery and short-range missile systems.

### Royal Flying Corps

After Britain became the first human nation to discover powered flight during the mid-19th century, the Royal Flying Corps was established as an arm of the British Army to operate artillery spotting and photo reconnaissance aircraft in support of Army ground forces. During the Crimean War, the Royal Flying Corps' roles soon expanded to operating bombers to target enemy ground forces, as well as fighter aircraft to shoot down hostile aircraft and airships.

The Royal Flying Corps would play a much more important role in British military strategy during the Great War, which involved many thousands of combat aircraft fighting over the Western Front. After Allied and German forces became locked in a stalemate on the Western Front, the Royal Flying Corps and the French Aéronautique Militaire began launching heavy bomber raids against industrial and economic targets in Germany in an attempt to deplete German supply lines. The Royal Flying Corps operated the Short Stirling as its primary heavy bomber, a four-engine design that was considered technologically advanced for its time. Despite this, the German Luftstreitkräfte was considered to be superior to the Royal Flying Corps during the Great War.

In the decades following the end of the Great War, the Royal Flying Corps imported some American combat aircraft designs - such as the F-82 Twin Mustang - due to funding challenges and the destruction of Britain's munitions manufacturing industry.

During the early 1960s, closer British cooperation with the European Union and shared Western European concerns about Soviet expansionism allowed Britain to purchase several highly advanced EPCA (European Plasma Combat Aircraft) hypersonic fighter/attack aircraft from Germany in order to upgrade its air force. In 1962, after Britain and the European Union developed the gravity drive, Britain and two of its fellow Commonwealth of Nations member states - Canada and India - embarked on a program to design a multirole combat aircraft powered by the new propulsion system. Several examples of the resulting aircraft, which was known as the Avro/HAL Typhoon, were in service with the Royal Flying Corps by the time of its dissolution in 1968. Despite the acquisition of more modern aircraft during the 1960s, a significant portion of the Royal Flying Corps' fleet of frontline combat aircraft was still propeller-driven by 1968.

## Royal Navy

The Royal Navy was the naval force of Great Britain. Because of its status as an island nation and its global empire, Britain invested heavily in its navy. From the middle decades of the 17th century, and through the 18th century, the Royal Navy vied with the Dutch Navy and later with the French Navy for maritime supremacy. By the mid-18th century the Royal Navy was generally accepted to be the most powerful navy in the world, both due to its vast size and its investment in relatively new technologies such as steam-powered armoured battleships.

The Royal Navy played a decisive role in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1805, a combined French and Spanish fleet of airships and steam battleships was decisively defeated at the Battle of Trafalgar by a Royal Navy battleship fleet, preventing Napoleon from attempting an invasion of Britain. During this engagement, the Royal Navy was able to counter French superiority in aviation technology with superior developments in anti-aircraft weaponry.

Following the outbreak of hostilities in the Great War in 1914, Britain used its large and powerful navy to begin a naval blockade of the German Empire. This strategy proved effective, cutting off vital military and civilian supplies. In response, Germany and its Central Powers allies began using their fleets of ocean-going attack submarines to sink thousands of British and Allied merchant ships carrying war material and supplies across the Atlantic from the Americas to Allied nations. German submarines did not intentionally attack ships bearing the flag of the United States or other neutral nations, with the Germans not wanting to risk bringing the U.S. into the war on the Allied side. In response, the Royal Navy organised trans-Atlantic merchant ships in convoys escorted by aircraft carriers, surface warships equipped with anti-submarine weapons, and airships. Throughout the war, large Royal Navy submarines were used to launch rocket attacks against high-value Central Powers targets.

The Royal Navy's development stagnated due to the massive contraction of the British economy following the end of the Great War. Because of budgetary problems and the fall of its empire, Britain withdrew from military involvement outside Europe, and the fleet of the Royal Navy was significantly downsized. It was surpassed in size by the United States and Japanese navies shortly after the end of the war. The British government did not have sufficient funds to acquire any major new vessels for the Royal Navy for more than two decades after the end of the Great War. The Royal Navy's reduced fleet during this time consisted of warships and submarines built during the Great War which were overhauled and provided with upgrades to their weapons and electronic systems to keep them operational. As the Soviet Union emerged as a potential military threat to Western Europe during the 1940s, the Royal Navy began to refit many of its existing ships for anti-submarine warfare, with the objective of keeping the powerful Soviet Northern Fleet contained in the Norwegian Sea north of Iceland.

India's entry into the British-led Commonwealth of Nations in 1951 resulted in an expansion of the Royal Navy to enable it to operate surface and submarine action groups east of the Suez Canal, so that it would be able to assist the Indian, Australian and New Zealand navies in the event of a major conflict against Japan in the Pacific. In 1962, after Britain and the European Union developed the gravity drive, the Royal Navy received several new gravity drive-propelled transport airships. These airships were primarily intended to transport rapid strike groups of Royal Marines to different parts of the globe within a matter of hours, and then act as mobile command centres and fire support batteries once the ground troops had been deployed.

By 1968 the Royal Navy had constructed two deterrent submarines which were propelled by gravity drives and equipped with nuclear reactors that powered their on-board electrical systems. These submarines were equipped with gravity drive-propelled long-range cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads. A few of the Royal Navy's aging Great War-era battleships and heavy cruisers still remained in service. However, they had been refitted with heavy gravity drive-propelled anti-ship cruise missiles and nuclear depth charges, making them potent weapons platforms against even modern warships.

### Royal Marines

The Royal Marines was an amphibious light infantry force founded in 1664 as one of the fighting arms of the Royal Navy. Up until the Great War, the role of the Royal Marines was to operate from landing craft deployed from Royal Navy amphibious warships offshore or airships operating inland to secure beachheads or airheads for additional ground forces. During the second half of the 20th century, the Royal Marines also began to operate in conjunction with the Navy's Royal Space Corps. In its final iteration, the Royal Marines evolved to become the primary British rapid deployment force that could be sent to any part of the world within a matter of hours - using Royal Navy ships or airships - or to respond to a crisis on one of Britain's interplanetary colonies on Venus or Mars - on board Royal Space Corps space warships.

Because it was a rapid deployment force, the Royal Marines primarily used lighter equipment that was easier to transport by sea, air or space. During the middle of the 20th century, the Marines' primary tanks were the American-built M24 Chaffee and its successor, the M41 Walker Bulldog. From 1962 the Royal Marines began to acquire state of the art lightweight attack, reconnaissance and assault craft powered by gravity drives, similar to the gravity drive-powered vehicles that were being acquired by the British Army at the time.

### Royal Space Corps

The Royal Space Corps was formed in 1902 as a fighting arm of the Royal Navy to operate *Dreadnought*, humanity's first orbital weapons platform. By the end of the Great War in 1916 the Royal Space Corps operated a fleet of 28 *Dreadnought* and *Invincible* class orbital weapons platforms, which was by far the largest in the world at the time. The Royal Space Corps also inherited a number of interplanetary patrol spaceships from the Royal Navy, which were liquid-fueled and designed to police shipping routes between Earth and Britain's colonies on Mars and Venus.

Most of Britain's orbital weapons platforms were either destroyed during the Great War or decommissioned to ensure compliance with the 1918 Treaty of Geneva. A decade after the Great War, the Royal Space Corps operated a small fleet of four surviving *Invincible* class orbital weapons platforms. Maintaining these aging platforms proved to be a challenge for the post-war Royal Space Corps due to funding and manpower difficulties, and the platforms suffered from a low degree of readiness until the 1940s. In addition, the Royal Space Corps ceased virtually all interplanetary patrols, ceding this role to the United States.

The military threat posed by the Soviet Union in the 1940s prompted the British government to finally upgrade the Royal Space Corps' aging equipment. Seven new *Lion*-class interplanetary patrol ships were constructed between the 1940s and 1959 to allow the Royal Space Corps to resume patrol missions between Earth, Venus and Mars, although these ships were quickly rendered obsolete by the American-developed gravity drive and the German-developed plasma rocket. After it became the third human nation to develop the atomic bomb in 1959, Britain also constructed four new state of the art *Vanguard*-class orbital weapons platforms which were armed with atomic weapons and which used nuclear energy to power their on-board electrical systems. By 1968 the *Vanguard*-class platform had replaced the old *Invincible*-class as Britain's primary strategic deterrent weapon, and the four *Vanguard*-class platforms in service were being upgraded with the capability to fire much more destructive thermonuclear weapons.

From 1962, the Royal Space Corps began constructing a fleet of state-of-the-art *Valiant*-class space warships to replace the *Lion*-class. These warships were among the most capable human military spaceships in service when they were introduced in the early 1960s, although by the late 1960s the design was already showing its age compared to newer American and Soviet ship designs.

In keeping with its role as the operator of Britain's primary strategic deterrent weapons, the Royal Space Corps was also responsible for operating Britain's arsenal of intermediate and intercontinental-range nuclear cruise missiles after the country developed the atomic bomb in 1959. By 1968, the Royal Space Corps' strategic missile arsenal consisted of atomic and thermonuclear-armed land-based autonomous cruise missiles propelled by gravity drives.

#### Royal Space Corps inventory in 1968

At the time of its dissolution in 1968, when it was integrated into the United Commonwealth Defence Force, the Royal Space Corps possessed the following ships and space stations:

##### Space warships

* 3 *Valiant*-class space warships (built 1962 to 1968, 4 more planned) - plasma rocket-powered cruisers with secondary gravity drive propulsion, 1 armed with thermonuclear weapons and 2 armed with atomic weapons. Nuclear reactors used for electrical generation and life support systems. All three ships to eventually be refitted with thermonuclear weapon armament.
* 4 *Lion*-class space warships (built 1940s to 1959) - patrol frigates powered by conventional liquid-fueled rockets, armed with conventional kinetic penetration weapons. Due to be replaced by *Valiant* class.

##### Orbital weapons platforms

* 4 *Vanguard*-class orbital weapons platforms (built late 1950s to 1967) - 1 armed with thermonuclear weapons and 3 armed with atomic weapons. Nuclear reactors used for electrical generation and life support systems. All to be refitted with thermonuclear weapon armament.