Imperial Tekkelien Navy

The Imperial Tekkelien Navy is the Naval Warfare arm of the Holy Tekkelien Empire, responsible for securing the oceans and space around Imperial interests, and projecting force in support of surface actions. It is considered the most powerful navy of humanity, both in terms of size and combat experience. Tekkelien military doctrine emphasizes the navy as the primary casualty-inflicting arm of warfighting. All of its engagements have begun with the navy first establishing space and air superiority. In the Human-Dominion War, it played a crucial role in shielding planets from invasion and buying enough time for the Winged Hussars to kill the Dominion leader. However, their victory came at the cost of nearly 70% ship losses, including the total loss of the 2nd Expeditionary Fleet and over 90% of the Home Fleet destroyed.

## Imperial Tekkelien Navy

Halliard Squadron as depicted in the feature film

### Role

Oceanic and Space Warfare, Power Projection, Logistics, Anti-Piracy

### Size

~0.75 billion servicemen13,108 Starships (pre-war)18,000 Watercraft>20,000 aircraft

### Notable Engagements

Red Star CounterinsurgencySino-Tekkelien WarHuman-Dominion War

## Structure

The Imperial Navy is subordinate to the Eklesian High Command. The Admiral of the Navy is the head administrator under the Minster of Defense and Premier General. Due to its wide range of responsibilities are areas of operation, there are various semi-independent departments across Human Space.

* **Navy Political Bureau** is responsible for representing the Navy's needs and interests in the government. It also oversees public relations, and monitors the internal workings of the Navy to maintain operational security and prevent espionage or breaches of intelligence.
* **Naval Research Division** is dedicated to developing new technologies for the navy's fleets and weapon systems. It is also tasked for larger-scale strategic projects such as psychological warfare due to having the highest budget and the Navy playing the largest role in warfighting.
* **Naval Space Fleet Division** oversees the deployment of spacecraft, secures and defends Imperial worlds from orbit, and projects power from space onto enemy worlds. It also maintains the Empire's military space infrastructure from space stations to shipyards.
* **Naval Water Fleet Division** oversees the deployment of surface ships and submarines. Although they play a lesser role in the Empire's broader strategy, they are still crucial for keeping shipping lanes open, and supporting coastal operations where starships would be vulnerable or inaccurate.
* **Imperial Coast Guard** is the maritime security and law enforcement agency of the Empire. They also accompany the war fleets into battle and provide aid in the form of search and rescue, space debris cleanup, and towing disabled ships to safety.

All divisions follow the roughly same organization of equipment. A fleet includes about 500 ships, divided into 10 squadrons with 5 battlegroups each. Battlegroups have different focuses, with the average squadron having 1 amphibious assault Group, 1 surface superiority Group, 2 anti-ship groups, and 1 space patrol group.

## Doctrine

In keeping with the Tekkelien Empire's overall strategy of encircling and rapidly inflicting losses on the enemy front lines, the Navy's strategy is focused on reaching the surface of the disputed planet and bringing the fleet's heavy weapons to bear as fast as possible. The presence of starships over surface combat zones enables the Empire to bombard the enemy from virtually any direction, leaving elements of the enemy's ground forces stranded and demoralized. Collateral damage is generally high following naval bombardment, but friendly losses are kept at a minimum.

The Navy's doctrine directly influences the Ground Forces' due to their rather indiscriminate use of naval gunfire and bombing. The Empire's ground elements are required to be extremely lightweight, mobile and flexible to avoid incoming support weapons, and several major friendly fire incidents drove the Army's decision to motorize every line infantry unit so they can evacuate in time.

In orbit, the Navy relies on destroyers as the backbone of the fleet. Seen as the ideal balance between firepower and speed, they are lightweight enough to operate in atmosphere, but heavily armored enough to stand up to enemy capital ships when in groups. Heavier gunships like cruisers and dreadnoughts are rarer, but usually positioned at the front of the formation to absorb damage. Carriers have a lesser role since fighter craft don't have the weapons yield necessary to destroy most larger ships. They instead focus on exploiting weak points and disabling critical systems on enemy capital ships to make them more vulnerable to the ships of the line, while also preventing enemy fighters from doing the same. Naval heavy bombers have had limited success using high-yield weapons to kill capital ships, but are still more vulnerable to enemy fire than armored warships.

Fleet battles invariably begin with an opening salvo of high-yield torpedoes and missiles at standoff range, followed by the ships closing to coilgun range and exchanging cannon volleys. Since the Navy's priority is to reach the target planet as quickly as possible, they often speed head-on through enemy fleets with heavily-armored capital ships at the forefront. Imperial ships are thus optimized for "knife fighting" with many rapid-firing lower caliber guns as secondary armaments, only effective at very close range. Imperial ships' main guns traverse quickly and are often spread out over more turrets on each side of the ship to engage multiple targets at once. This means the cannons are limited by size and weight, and are generally less powerful than other nations' counterparts.

## Equipment

### Materials

Ships are mostly constructed from Eklesian Steel, an extremely strong yet cheap material ubiquitous in construction across the Empire. It has a very high yield strength of about 4.6 GPa, capable of resisting the high-velocity impacts of coilgun shells, but prone to spalling, or launching tiny fragments on the opposite side of the impact, due to its high hardness. Most ships therefore have an interior lining of a tough fabric to catch these pieces called the "spall layer." The most common spall layer material is a ballistic-grade silk reverse engineered from spiders called Ductile Protein Fiber.

Ships capable of atmospheric entry usually have at least the bottom half coated in borosilicate glass to insulate against the high temperatures. Several ships are also coated in tantalum hafnium carbide: a ceramic hard enough to shatter incoming projectiles before they reach the steel plate armor. Vital areas have supplemental armor that is usually a "sandwich" of two steel plates with silica aerogel in between. The plates behave like spaced armor, breaking up the initial projectile impact and using a dense medium like aerogel or cheaper rubber in between to further slow the pieces down.

Ships run on hydrogen gas that is mined from gas giants and ionized into plasma using electricity from the ship's reactors. The high-energy plasma is ejected out the nozzle of the ship's plasma turbines, providing efficient propulsion.

### Weapons

The primary weapon of every ship is the coilgun. They work using magnetic coils along the barrel to keep an iron-based projectile suspended. The shell fires with no friction resistance from contact with the barrel. Although projectiles can travel practically forever in space, the guns are only accurate out to about 50 miles due to natural limitations. Beyond that range, the shells aren't really tactically useful anyway since enemy ships have too much time to move out of the way. Most Imperial coilgun shells are fitted with a self-destructing charge that activates after 50 miles to avoid collateral damage. Naval coilguns come in many calibers from 3-inch anti-swarm guns to 11-inch dreadnought cannons.

Most capital ships are fitted with a single large "mass driver" going down the length of the deck. They carry a small supply of very large projectiles that are fired at extreme velocities, allowing relatively small ships to hit far above their weight. They are rarely used however, since the entire ship must be trained on the target, and it requires all power be diverted to it alone to fire.

Long-range flak guns are the main anti-aircraft and point-defense weapons. The shells are programmed to burst into shrapnel at a certain range, damaging fighter craft, missiles and torpedoes. Most Imperial ships have two different kinds: longer-range, high caliber guns that fire slowly, and smaller, short-range autocannons that fire thousands of rounds per minute.

Missiles and torpedoes still have minor use, but since their invention have proven themselves too complicated to rely as a main armament. There are many countermeasures to them from jamming to decoys, but they are able to deliver a very high destructive yield with unparalleled precision. The difference between a missile and torpedo is that missiles are powered by conventional rockets or jets burning chemical fuel whereas torpedoes are powered by magnetoplasma turbines which are slower but more efficient. Most torpedoes have nuclear or antimatter warheads, the former of which is banned by treaty in-atmosphere.