My Life As A Writer: Warfare In Galactic Christendom

Given what the settlement and development patterns are, warfare follows an equally predictable pattern of expression. This is because the objective is to capture existing holdings intact, rather than to just destroy them outright, so that constrains what means may be employed significantly. Manpower must be deployed and expended on both sides, which means that vast fleets need to be built and maintained, crews and marines recruited and trained, with all of the economics involved in establishing and hardening those logistical trains.

It also means that serious warfare of the sort known within Galactic Christendom, as in real life, as Total War is rare and serious. Such occasions are usually tied to the Church calling for a crusade, and there hasn't been any such event in living memory by the time of the dawn of the 4th Millenium. That's because Total War involves planet-killing weapons and techniques, from something as simple as fleets towing and launching asteroids at a target planet until its surface is ashes and dust to as awe-inspiring as moon-sized space stations being given Faster Than Light engines and equipped with planet-destroying weapon systems or weaponized solar systems wherein the star's output can be utilized as a cosmic super weapon.

The result is that warfare is mostly naval. Even if resistance on the ground or on the inside of a station is difficult, if time permits the defending population can be besieged and starved out, and if the invaders did their job then they have local supremacy such that the defenders have no realistic expectation of relief arriving in time. For planetary invasions, this process can take longer depending on how well-prepared defenders are; if the defenders can avoid orbital bombardment and maintain logistics, they can withstand an englobement and compel the invaders to attack their hard points while they resort to guerilla-style actions to wear invaders down in the manner of the historic Fabian Strategy.

The wars of recent years have been more constrained than this, being border skirmishes, pirate-hunting campaigns, and counter-insurgency campaigns with all of the shifts in methods and means one expects in such circumstances. Military procurements and practices have shifted accordingly, resulting in some degree of complacency and a rise in resorting to tournaments of wargames to satisfy the desires of militaries to maintain readiness.

The unfortunate consequence of a long period of relative peace has to been create an illusion of military expertise covering a complacency that would be shattered by the first actor to act contrary to, and in defiance of, this present paradigm with brutal and decisive military action. At the dawn of the 4th Millenium, that time had arrived, and from a quarter none expected. The raid on New Edinburgh was the Proof of Concept. The actions on and near Earth was the gut-check. The Siege of Second Salisbury was the watershed event, and of all the warfare that followed none hammered this home like the Siege of New Vienna.