Federal Army

The Terran **Federal Army**, officially **Federal Ground Command**, is one of the three commands of the Terran Armed Forces. The Army's headquarters are located in Moscow, on Earth.

The Army is charged with the defence and assault of planets, space stations and others. It represents the bulk of the Terran Armed Forces, with over 50 million active personnel. Whilst much larger than the Navy, it is often relegated to a secondary role.

The Army is led by GROUNDCOMM, a gathering of executive officers.

## Doctrine

The Army relies on mass firepower and shock and awe tactics. Forces overwhelm their enemies with high troop concentration and extreme firepower, avoiding lengthy confrontations. Whilst the Federation is capable of waging wars of attrition, its interests often dictate a rapid capture of planets. This is achieved by deploying troops at every main population and military center of a planet, and further spreading chaos among the defenders whilst the Terran forces can coordinate assaults on tens if not hundreds of fronts.

This is unlike most other nations' military doctrine, based on the securing of a "beachhead" followed by continuing the offensive from that area until the planet is captured. This is generally much slower than the Terran doctrine, but requires less planning and fewer ships in orbit (orbital bombardement platforms and atmosphere deployable fighters). Prior to the Terran entry into the Great War, most star nations ignored civilian worlds altogether. The Terran Army is also infamous for its very extensive use of artillery and bombardments, including both civilian and military areas.

The Army gives a great deal of autonomy to individual units and officers, in line with the general Terran doctrine of individual initiative.

## Organization

The Terran Army operates its own ships, mostly troop transports and support vessels.

Unlike the Navy, the Army has no independent corps such as the Ultramarine Corps. Specialised units exist, such as commandos and engineers, but these simply make up regular units.

The Army's philosophy of organization is one of numerous small specialised units. The Terran Army has no trouble organizing and grouping individual units. Units and officers are given a very high level of autonomy, often being allowed to request artillery, air and orbital strikes at specific locations.

The Army's most common unit types are: infantry, armoured, artillery and specialist units.

Infantry units are made up of regular infantry, and constitute the bulk of the Army. However, Terran infantry is extremely well equipped, and is almost never deployed independently. Infantry is most often deployed to captured population centers, as tanks are generally less effective in urban combat.

Armoured units are made up of armored vehicles. These are largely made up of ground regular tanks from the Charlemagne line of tanks. There can also be hover-tanks, light hovercraft and walkers. These are very often deployed with infantry, in any situation outside of urban combat. Except for extremely dense forests, walkers and hovercraft are adapted to nearly every type of terrain. The SAW-M12b Walker has become a symbol of the Terran Army both in the Federation and abroad.

Artillery units are either made up of self propelled artillery pieces or of more static deployable artillery. These are a key to the Army's doctrine, especially in the situations where the Navy can't secure complete air and orbital dominance. Artillery is either missile or kinetic based, and unlike most other types of weaponry have no plasma or energy systems.

Specialist units are units made up of special forces, engineers, cavalry or others. Specialist units are generally smaller than other units, and are much rarer. The most common type of specialist units are cavalry units. These are made up of helicopters of different sorts. Whilst relatively rarely deployed, the Terran twin-rotor helicopter MARASI Syrin-B has become an iconic display of Terran military might. They are present at almost every military parade.

Units other than infantry don't have rigid codes as for the number of soldiers or vehicles in a unit. The infantry units are organised as follows (note that for all units larger than a platoon the numbers are nominal and often don't correspond exactly to real troop counts):