This seems like the perfect time for an omake about the Victorian military right? Right?
@PoptartProdigy, thank you for answering my questions about the setting, and for creating this quest in the first place.
Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift
2064, Vol 92, No. 2, 26-45
The Fascist Cheetah: The Past, Present, and Future of the Victorian Armed Forces
Michael Laubenthal
University of Hamburg
Abstract
This article examines past engagements the Victorian Army has participated in on a strategic and tactical level, as well as the past, present, and likely future of the Victorian Army. It begins with a summary of the ideological genesis of the totalitarian state of Victoria, and the organization, equipment, and tactics of its armed forces. It shows that the defeat of the federal government and subsequent consolidation of power was accomplished mainly via a combination of maneuver warfare and the pitiful state of loyalist forces. It then proceeds to show that this success has masked numerous horrific flaws in not only Victorian equipment, but also doctrine, organization, and supply. It concludes with an analysis of likely reforms to be carried out by the new leadership, and evaluates both current and potential combat potential of the armed forces of Victoria.
The Ideological Basis:
Victorian military doctrine and equipment is heavily influenced by the state's political doctrine, and as such a short summary of the "retroculture" ideology which motivates the Russian puppet state is required.
Retroculture posits that in the 1960s western society fell prey to "Cultural Marxism" manifesting in everything from popular media to academia as part of a plot to destroy western civilization by an illusive cabal of Jewish Marxists. This conspiracy supposedly encompasses every technological, cultural, and political development that has occured since the 1960s, driven by an unspecified evil lurking behind technological progress itself. As such Retrocultrualists, most notably William Kraft, seek the reversion of technology to before the evils of modernity arrived in the 60s, massive de-urbanization, a forcible return to Victorian era social norms, elimination or enslavement of ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, and the obliteration of anything resembling a culture industry or academia. The only remnants of modernity to be spared from this purge are some medical and military technologies, everything else must burn. Retroculturalists also fetishize the German Empire and its military forces, emphasizing the need for militarism, social conservatism, a strong leader, and aggressive foreign policy, but simultaneously exalt the supposed power of local governments.
The ideology can best be summarized as an overall rejection of modernity, and this means that the not only does Victorian state lack the capability to manufacture or maintain modern military equipment, it also fundamentally rejects many of the accepted precepts of war in the information age.
Organization:
The Victorian state maintains a three-tiered military system similar to those seen in many other totalitarian regimes throughout history.
At the bottom of the hierarchy are local militias, organized, equipped, and trained at the town and county level. These are usually well motivated, but their patchwork equipment and spotty training make them near useless for offensive campaigns, and the regime acknowledge as much. Instead, they are meant as an emergency reserve of manpower and somewhat trained troops, a defensive network to slow down and hamper invading forces, and a form of political control over the populace.
Above them stands the Army of Victoria, the official military of Victoria, henceforth to be referred to as the regular army. Its conscripts are better motivated and trained than the militias, and they can be considered the mainstay of any Victorian military operation. Typically utilized as frontline troops, they are organized into 12 brigade sized "task forces" named after the twelve Christian disciples (sans Judas). These are in turn grouped into the Northern, Center, and Southern "maneuver groups" (roughly equivalent to a corps). However, a combination of the generally poor quality of education amongst the ranks and a pitifully understaffed and underfunded logistics arm serve to severely curtail any ability to carry out sustained offensives or operations over long distances. The Army also controls the Army Air Force and Army Costal Force, which serve as Victoria's air arm and navy in lieu of a dedicated service arm. Both are underfunded and assigned a tertiary role in operations, lacking any real prestige due to doctrinal reasons.
Above all stands the Christian Marine Corps, a paramilitary organization which serves as both a secret police force and elite mechanized force for the rulers of Victoria. It is thus divided into the Crusader and Inquisitor branches, the Crusaders operate three fully mechanized combat divisions, and the Inquisitors manage both foreign and internal intelligence services, backed by an armed internal security regiment. As members of the single most powerful organization in Victoria, members enjoy not only the best equipment Victoria operates, but also extensive privileges and subsidies unknown to the rest of the population. As such, they are the most fanatical and most loyal units available to Victoria, and serve as Victoria's mobile reserve.
The Equipment:
All Victorian equipment must come from one of three places, scavenged from the pre-Collapse arsenals, built in a local factory most likely lacking in resources and necessary technology, or purchased from their Tsarist overlords. It also must be capable of being maintained by the average conscript using local spare parts, meaning it cannot require more technical skill than one would assume of a random man from the 1930s. This severely limits the options available to the proponents of retro culture even before considering the eccentricities of the founding leadership in regards to military matters.
The average Victorian combatant is a light infantryman due to both material and ideological constraints. He possesses no protective equipment besides a helmet, lacking even basic body armor, let alone powered armor. His standard rifle is the AR-25, a variation on the venerable AR-15 platform, chambered for 5.56mm NATO rounds, supported by the SW-30 based on the Colt Automatic Rifle, which uses the same cartridge. Anti-tank firepower is provided by the RPG-7V, which is issued in copious numbers (2-3 per squad) and molotov cocktails, with a noticeable lack of ATGMs. In an unusual decision, additional fire support is contributed by a light 60mm mortar assigned to every squad. Finally, transport is provided by an assortment of civilian trucks in regular units, replaced by BTR-50s and BMP-1s in Christian Marine units.
For fire support, at the company level units are provided with a machinegun platoon armed with DshK and M2 Browning 12.7mm heavy machine guns, and a mortar platoon with 81mm mortars of various make (sometimes mounted on a truck or BTR). At the battalion level heavy 120mm mortars are extremely common, including specially built self-propelled mortars, but Victoria's regular forces completely lack any artillery heavier than that, although some militias maintain a mix of pieces for defensive battles. This is in keeping with the emphasis on small logistical trains and the Victorian doctrine towards artillery, which states artillery should only be used as suppression for maneuver. In practice this leads Victorian offensives to rely on VBIEDs for heavy fire support, usually created by an individual unit as needed, with volunteer drivers selected before any combat deployment and given rudimentary specialized training in peacetime.
Armored units are equipped with a mixture of technicals and last century T-34 variants, with rumors but no confirmation of T-55s being used among among the Christian Marine Corps. Technicals are commonly equipped with either an autocannon, machinegun, or recoilless rifle, and protected by applique armor. The most notable of them being the
Falcon "armored car", a mostly standardized variant based on a pickup truck equipped with a turret assembly similar to the BMP-1's turret in place of the truck bed, mounting a 106mm recoilless rifle. Scrap metal applique armor is welded to the chassis in order to provide protection for the crew. The more common
Desperado is also a pickup truck conversion, but instead boasts a pintle mounted 20mm cannon or heavy machine gun, with similar applique armor to the
Falcon elsewhere. These are hardly effective against any decently equipped army, but to the irregulars the Victorians usually face, an armored technical is a substantial threat. The T-34/85m is in many ways a similar weapon system, cheap, reliable, and completely useless on the modern battlefield. Common modifications such as rubber armor and slat armor provide little protection against modern anti-tank weaponry, and upgrades to firepower such as the T-34-100 or T-34-122 only further reduce the protection and complicate logistics.
Aircraft are limited to a combination of locally made scout planes with questionable range and survivability and F-16CJs imported from California. These are bafflingly tasked not with ground attack, but air superiority, despite both the total lack of any enemy air forces in the area and the futility of attempting to fight a modern airforce with 90 year old fighters. As such the Victorian Army Air Force totally lacks even a decent stockpile of air to ground munitions, and due to its relative progressivism has suffered several purges, further gutting their capabilities. To make matters worse, the rest of Victoria's air defenses are reliant on a combination of SA-18 Igla MANPADS systems, anti-aircraft guns either fixed in place or mounted on trucks, and a few batteries of S-125 Neva SAMs. Yet this force is still the most capable on the continent aside from California.
The Victorian Coastal Force is in many ways even more neglected than their much abused Air Force, for at least the Air Force occasionally receives attention once in a while, whereas the Costal Force has never received even the slightest bit of attention. The Costal Force must thus rely entirely on crude gunboats and civilian craft armed with makeshift weaponry. UN forces in Boston reported attempted attacks on the Hassan II by motorboats using spar torpedoes of all things during the disastrous peacekeeping mission there. As such, the Costal Force is primarily used to simply move the Army instead of performing independent operations, mitigating the primitive nature and short range of their "warships".
The Doctrine Itself:
Victorian military theory is grounded in the debates about doctrine for the United States Army after the Vietnam War, with the majority of Victorian forces being organized around the doctrine and equipment propounded by the "reformists". As such, official doctrine emphasizes the type of maneuver warfare theory propounded by John Boyd and William Lind, and
The Maneuver Warfare Handbook by Lind is still mandatory reading for all officers. Officers are also assigned readings by Clausewitz, Xenophon's
Anabasis, and Mellenthin's
Panzer Battles, but they are not nearly as influential on doctrine as
The Maneuver Warfare Handbook.
The Victorian Army adheres to the three categories of war laid out by John Boyd, an attritional war, which is predicated on the destruction of the enemy army, moral conflict, which aims to create fear, anxiety, and alienation in the enemy population, and maneuver conflict, which aims to induce a psychological collapse in the enemy by means of speedy maneuver. The Victorians believe strongly that maneuver warfare is a combination of moral and maneuver conflict which characterizes the most effective strategies and tactics throughout history. For them, everything from the Battle of Cannae to the Fall of France is an expression of a conflict between those armies with a "maneuver" mindset, and those with an "attritionist" mindset. The pinnacle of this conflict was World War 2, with the maneuverists being the German Reich's leaders, and the attritionists comprising the Allied Powers. All of them are said to share the following characteristics: Consistent victory by smaller forces, numbers are less important as the aim is to disrupt enemy's mind. Tactical victory is caused by psychological disruption, which is in turn caused by speed (tempo) of movement, surprise, and deception. Finally, destruction is incidental to victory, the psychological collapse of an opposing army is enough to guarantee victory.
As stated previously,
The Maneuver Warfare Handbook is perhaps the most important influence on Victorian military thought, and within Lind puts forth the following core principles of maneuver warfare doctrine: the decentralization of command, acceptance of confusion and disorder as the natural state of affairs, and the avoidance of all patterns, recipes, and formulas. Although the Victorian armed forces officially practice all three of these, their application is rather lacking to say the least. Command and control is officially decentralized but in practice the set-piece maneuvers deployed during the Fall of the United States were often entirely planned by John Rumfold, with little leeway given to individual unit commanders. Similarly, these complex plans almost always relied on several different units executing their role flawlessly, or they would completely fall apart, exemplified by the disastrous operations conducted against the Pacific Republic. The third principle is nigh impossible to actually fulfill, and maneuver warfare theory as defined by Lind itself easily fails the test by resting on an inductive proof of what is required for success, a formula if you will.
Indeed, there is a standard pattern to Victorian offensives carried out above the company level which is followed almost to the letter. Before the offensive begins, weak points in the defensive position will be plotted out for exploitation, and units shifted around to attempt to obtain local superiority. The actual offensive is commenced by the deployment of dozens of VBIEDs to generate chaos and disruption in enemy lines, and thereby pin them in place for the first assault wave. Lacking substantial numbers of heavy weapons to bring to bear, the majority of the attack will be carried out by light infantry, aiming to use speed and maneuver to find gaps in the line and exploit them to cause a collapse. It is here that the Victorian emphasis on maneuver and the fanaticism of many of their soldiers comes into play, hopefully enabling the infantry to overpower their less motivated opponents and effect a breakthrough. Once penetration is achieved, mobile forces, usually Christian Marine units, are rushed into the breach. These rush forward in an attempt to penetrate as deeply as possible, hoping to create a psychological breakdown in their enemy by dint of rapid encirclements and unexpected attacks, followed by regular army units to secure the flanks. Ideally at this point the entire frontline has collapsed, and chaos reigns supreme across the battlespace. If not, plans for a second offensive are to be developed and launched within a week's time. This aggressive impulse is mirrored on the defensive, where the counter-attack is considered the lynchpin of any successful defense. Trench static lines are to be avoided at all costs, and this thinking may result in Victorian commanders continually throwing bodies at seemingly vulnerable points in a line in an attempt to force a breakthrough even when it is clear that such attacks cannot possibly succeed.
The Death of the 42nd: An ideal Victorian Operation:
The 42nd Mechanized Division's ill-fated thrust Northwards was practically doomed from the start. It's creation was authorized and signed off on over the objections of the US Army, which maintained that until the Southern separatists could be defeated, there simply weren't the troops to mount offensive operations against the Northeastern Confederation. Given that the retroculturalists hardly possessed any important military facilities or industries, and could barely muster an army in comparison to the Southerners, there was hardly even a need to do so. But the President needed a propaganda coup for the American voter, lest the government collapse entirely, and so despite being told that such a campaign was an impossibility at present, desperation led to desperate measures. Instead of relying on militias and token military forces to defend New York or taking the time to train an actual unit, the President opened recruitment for a new division meant to liberate the people of New England to anyone ages 18-40 in US controlled territory with some firearms experience, with enlistment bonuses for organized groups. These were then given surplus military equipment and a week of training, before the newly created "Divisions" was sent to destroy the fascist threat under the command of Major General John Douglass.
Unsurprisingly, the Division's logistics were nonexistent, forcing Douglass to order the division to live off the land, pillaging farms and towns in their path and devastating support for the government in New York's rural areas. To make matters worse, his untrained units frequently committed abuses against the population against his direct instructions, in efforts to root out "traitors to the country" that many city dwellers thought populated the countryside. Frequent breakdowns slowed the lightning advance to a crawl, creating traffic snarls and disruption in the absence of support units, and moral began to suffer among the ranks, many of whom had impulsively signed up with the assumption of an easy victory and free cash. However even though almost the entire division's officers were selected almost at random, it appears unlikely that Victorian claims of the government using gang leaders have any factual basis. Since no list of division personnel is known to exist, it cannot be confirmed one way or another, but it seems more plausible to most historians in the free world that the soldiers of the 42nd were merely untrained incompetents, not hardened criminals.
Having been tipped off by sympathizers within the government and a few angry New Yorkers, Rumford mobilized almost the entire military force at his disposal, composed of three regiments of "armor", three motorized regiments, and ten regiments of light infantry, giving the retroculturalists a slight edge in numbers. Furthermore, even though they possessed a substantial technological disadvantage, the reactionaries had both a rudimentary logistics network, and a modicum of actual training. Rumford decided to entrap the 42nd Division near Lake Champlain in a double envelopment, and deployed two of his light infantry regiments to pin the advancing government forces in place while the rest of his army carried out the encirclement.
Douglass, lacking sufficient recon units, having lost 53% of his combat vehicles to breakdowns, and commanding a division increasingly strung out upon the road, walked straight into the trap, his forward elements mauled by an ambush by the 10th Maine Infantry, forcing him to stop and attempt to consolidate his forces. At this point Rumford launched his attack, shattering the thin forces arrayed against him and successfully enveloping most of the 42nd before the day was over. Douglass attempted a breakout with his best units, but a combination of poor morale and Douglass' death at the hands of a well camouflaged RPG team caused it to sputter out after nearly annihilating one of Rumford's motor rifle regiments. The remnants of the division, lacking coherent leadership, surrendered without a fight, only to be killed en masse. Victorian manpower losses were minimal in comparison to the political damage the disaster caused for the US government, and a total collapse of support for loyalist forces followed, culminating in total disintegration of the government.
The Victorians had better intelligence, were more motivated, and managed to create panic among their adversaries through their brutality and fanaticism, culminating in total collapse of enemy morale. This campaign is widely taught in Victorian schools as the defining campaign in their nation's history, and holds a hallowed place in official propaganda. In many ways, it is the best proof for Victorian claims about their combat prowess, and yet it was not the Victorians who won the battle. Instead of coming about as a result of some particularly amazing part of Victorian doctrine or organization, the disaster at Lake Champlain was mostly the result of the sorry state of the 42nd Mechanized Division, which lost most of its combat power before even coming into contact with Rumfords forces. Indeed, even when encircled, they almost managed to break out through sheer desperation against the only marginally better trained separatist forces. In the same way that Nazi successes in Operation Barbarossa ultimately papered over gaping flaws in the Wehrmacht's effort such as the lack of logistical planning, poor intelligence, and an overreliance on the Panzer Divisions to bear the brunt of the fighting, so to did Victorian successes in the post-Collapse North American Wars. Indeed, a counterexample to Victorian supremacy is easily available, Rumford's campaign against the Pacific Republic.
The Pacific Campaign: The Counter-Example:
The Pacific Republic's foundation posed a substantial threat to the Russian goal of preventing the creation of any independent unified powers that might one day restore the United States. Yet the Russian Army lacked the capacity to substantially threaten the Republic, and so the Tsar turned his gaze to Rumford and his band of collaborators. Rumford was to assemble and train an army of local mercenaries and sympathizers with Russian assistance under the guise of an army of political refugees. Once he was done, some incident would be manufactured by the Okhrana, a local rebellion against the "tyrannical government" would be declared, and he would invade the Pacific Republic. At the same time, the Russians would sanction the Republic and set up a blockade under some manufactured pretext related to the inciting incident. Rumford expected a quick campaign against the decadent liberals of the Pacific coast, their military might eroded by Cultural Marxism.
Once the war itself began however (the details of which are not within the scope of this article), although Rumford found initial success, his offensive quickly broke down due to his lack of supplies combined with stiffening resistance, and the Pacific Air Force slaughtered his air force with ease. As the front stabilized, Victorian forces continued to launch attack after attack on the Pacificans, taking horrific casualties, until the mercs refused to push on and Rumford was forced to dig in, only to be pushed back by the Republican forces in Operation Brilliant Lance. His army on the back foot he was forced to throw everything he had into stabilizing the situation, finally admitting the reality of the situation and shifting to a purely defensive strategy while waiting for fresh reserves to replenish his ranks. Fighting from this point on was mostly inconclusive, with the mercenaries slowly pushing back the Pacific Army by dint of superior numbers, but they suffered heavy casualties while doing so, and although victory seemed achievable, it was also projected to still be years away. But despite his failure to produce a decisive victory or even a substantial breakthrough, Rumford had already done enough. For even as the Pacific Army fought courageously to blunt Rumford's assaults, the Pacific Republic was falling apart. With its ports blockaded by Russia, and with a hostile army between it and the Gulf oil fields, the Republic was just flat out running out of fuel. They had not been able to stockpile nearly enough beforehand, and combat operations were taking most of what they did have, creating a massive shortage on the civilian market. To make matters worse, their export based economy was now in shambles thanks the Russian blockade, and the enraged Northern Confederation troops had practically depopulated many of the areas they occupied. All of this combined precipitated a total economic collapse for the Pacific Republic, and the only available lender was Russia. In order to prevent their people from starving, the government was forced to capitulate to Russian terms, becoming the New California Republic, a Russian puppet state.
Here Rumford failed to achieve his main objective, the military conquest of California, and the plan only succeeded by the dint of Russian naval supremacy, the fragile nature of the Pacific Republic's economy, and the massive numbers of desperate Americans willing to fight for Russian pay. At no point did Republican forces break, and at no point did the Northern Confederation's mercenaries win a victory that could be labeled decisive. Total casualties are unknown due to NCR and NC secrecy surrounding the conflict, but it is estimated that over three times as many Northern Confederation troops died as did Republicans. The episode was embarrassing enough that official Victorian propaganda simply pretends it didn't happen, replaced by a fictional war against "Azania".
The campaign amply demonstrates Victorian deficiencies in equipment, logistics, and doctrine, creating a situation in which despite their scorn for the concept, they were forced to engage in a purely attritional struggle. This was due to an inability to create a battle of maneuver once the Pacific Army managed to gather enough forces to hammer the overextended fascist spearheads and thereby negate Rumford's momentum, after which he was unable to recover it. Pacific Command and Control was simply too fast and reactive to be overrun like previous foes, and any breach in the line could be plugged too rapidly for a proper breakthrough to materialize.
The Future:
Rumford and Kraft are gone now, and with them has died the fetishization of the T-34, as such the Victorian government are now rapidly looking to modernize, holding talks for the acquisition of such weapon systems as the T-55, T-72, and BTR-80 to outfit their mechanized divisions and eliminate the usage of technicals. Purchases of air to ground missiles and AGM-88 HARM systems have been authorized from California, likely improving the power of their air force. Yet these modernizations do not fix the fundamental issues with Victorian ideology that prevent the creation of a modern army, ranging from educational deficiencies to an inability to manufacture spare parts or electronics. However, even within the bounds of retroculture, there is room for the Victorian Armed Forces to improve. Their naval power could be vastly increased by the purchase of blue water ships or subs from Russia, or even just the purchase of anti-ship missiles and patrol boats. The Californians can manufacture all manners of air to ground munitions and electronic warfare aircraft, which would be a tremendous boon to the viability of their airforce, and tube artillery is easy to find or manufacture. It remains to be seen if such opportunities will be pursued, as they would require actual changes to Victorian doctrine to take full advantage of, and such changes seem…… unlikely at the present.
Conclusion:
The Armed Forces of Victoria are poorly equipped, poorly lead, and still the best fighting force on the continent with the possible exception of the California Army. Their deficiencies hardly matter when pitted against local militias armed with a hodgepodge of weaponry, and for the foreseeable future that is all that they must face. As such, one must also note their exemplary morale, dedication to maneuver, effectiveness at small unit tactics involving light infantry, and understanding of the psychological dimension of war. At the end of the day, it would be a mistake to underestimate the menace of the Northeast, given that their greatest asset is their terror tactics, it would also be dangerous to overestimate their prowess.
