Mytas Colonial Occupation Forces
The Mytas Colonial Occupation Forces are a military unit present on Mytas.
Description / Specifications[edit]
This unit is predominately involved in patrolling and securing the water management infrastructure, which is essential to life on this world. Officers and SNCOs from the militaries of Lyssana command and direct locally raised Mytas conscripts. The formation uses locally manufactured armored fighting vehicles. The Goliath I class AFVs and the Goliath II class AFVs. These lumbering wheeled vehicles were intended to intimidate the locals into peaceful cooperation. It really hasn't turned out that way. The Lyssana troops are completely dependent on local translators, who are very selective about how they relay information.
Local Forces[edit]
The local Mytas natives are from a proud traditional culture and resent the heavy handed and often inept management of local counter insurgency operation and suppression of guerrilla operations. The tiny nations of Lyssana bicker among themselves about the best way to end the endless wars and secure lasting peace. Officers from rival nations on Lyssana have been assigned to units together. Rivalries from home to not help ensure effective operations with local troops who want all outsiders to leave their world. The local nickname for these temporary officer billets is to cover your mouth, presumably against the fetid dust and sand that gets into everything, and say "My Cough", a play on the unit name MyCOF, and the visitors degenerative lung ailments from wind borne particulates. Filter masks are notoriously hot and sweaty, and so uniform discipline has been known to suffer.
The local troops are proud and world class leaders in the area of passive aggression. They follow orders exactly, which often produces interesting results when the orders are not well thought out or correctly phrased. Many are secretly fluent in Lyssanan languages, but feint ignorance. When things go wrong, they simply point at the translator and claim, they did what they were told and didn't understand. Several cynics suspect the translators are high level operatives and officers in the underground rebel movement. Outnumbered four to one, they are bidding their time, waiting for the mounting costs of the war of occupation to slowly bankrupt the small population of Lyssana. The rate of suicide and post traumatic stress among veterans who have served on Mytas is becoming a health care and family crisis on Lyssana. Some are calling for shortening the year long deployments. The joint military command coalition from Lyssana, wants veterans to serve longer, because the constant cycles of training up new officers to get familiar with the workings of peacekeeping operations among an alien culture is too time consuming and expensive. Fluent officers who establish trust and rapport with their enlisted troops leave just as they are getting good at their jobs. Many veterans see the war as unwinnable from a military standpoint.
Equipment[edit]
The Goliath Is and the Goliath IIs are seen as symbols for the lack of essential cultural understanding, essentially the wrong tools for the wrong job. They are however excellent examples of local manufacturing abilities. The local Mytas industrial military complex is proud of these massive, impractical vehicles, and they look forward to the day when they can build vehicles for themselves better suited to the tasks at hand.
Organization[edit]
There are typically 10% Lyssanian officers and SNCOs in the occupation battalion and the rest are local Mytas natives forced into a four year service. Many serve four years from ages 18 to 22 and then join the rebellion, fully trained in the methods and weapons of their enemies. With a authorized strength of 500 combat effectives, much of the unit's resources have shifted to civil affairs offices, adjutants, military police, supply, combat engineering, maintenance, housing, base security, medical, culinary, psychological operations and of course military intelligence. The MI guys main job to tell the generals back home in glowing terms how great the peace keeping operations are going, and how with just one more surge (there have been 27 to date), all enemy activity will cease.
History / Background[edit]
Some suspect that some large off world corporate business interests have no interest in seeing the rebellion ended and they prefer the state of perpetual low intensity conflict. At any giving time the force has 10-12 working fighting vehicles up and running and half that number in massive, sheltered repair bays between rebuilt and overhauled from their last cycle of patrol and counter insurgency. The ratio of mark one and mark two vehicles have shifted over the years based on the whims of whichever general is currently in charge and their personal grasp of military tactics and strategy. Lyssan Army Lt Colonel Mariam Pavlov is the current battalion commander on the ground, on Mytas. She is very young and idealistic. She sees a great hope for a greater understanding between the peoples of these two worlds, as she sits 12m off the ground looking down from her commander's turret hatch.
References & Contributors (Sources)[edit]
- Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis), Captain, and Lead Naval Architect Ronald B. Kline, Jr. of the Imperial Navy
- Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master Scout Emeritus Adie Alegoric Stewart of the IISS