Talk:Imperial Armed Forces

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Speculation

A quick run-down of what little facts and speculation I have re: the Imperial Fleet.

History: Formed out of the Federation's Armada. It appears that it wasn't simply a re-naming of the same thing, but a massive undertaking: the design and production of new warships, etc., etc. Early Imperial ships are radically different than Federation ships (which resemble more FPA ships), after all.

Organization: I'm a bit hazy on how the Fleet is organized. There are the three chiefs of staff, who were apparently "responsible" for Iserlohn's loss... I believe (and this is only speculation) that the Fleet is organized something like so:

Kaiser -> Chiefs of Staff -> Fleet Admrial -> Admirals/Rear Admirals -> Staff Officers/etc.

Basically, the Kaiser is the sole authority, but delegates actual command over the fleet to the three ministers. (Presumably the heads of... the Ministry of War, at least. Possibly also Ministry of Defense (if it exists), Ministry of the Interior (we know from SL they were heavily involved w/ the fleet) and/or Ministry of Intelligence. I'm not sure.

Of the Fleet Admirals, of which Reinhard was one at the time of the Castrop revolt, I imagine there are very few, total. (Perhaps only Reinhard and Merkatz at that time?). I imagine that, if my previous supposition was correct, Reinhard would have been in command of all of the "Frontier" fleets (the rim: Castrop starzone; various other revolts mentioned in passing) and Merkatz in command of the "front line" fleets in and around Iserlohn. Possibly sharing command or a third fleet admiral in charge of the "domestic" fleets. I don't know.

Regarding composition... in a FEUDAL military, each noble would muster his or her own fleet, but that's clearly not the case as the Empire has a professional military. Since there is conscription, I think it's most likely that each fief is required to produce a certain number of soldiers per a certain number of years, and that nobles have no inherent military authority. (All of the High Nobles in the Lippstadt Revolt appear to have been military officers as well, with the exception of Braunschweig. I don't remember about Littenheim.)

Basically, it's all very confusing to me at the moment, and ought to be hashed out.

Ok some thoughts of my own:-

History:- IMO the Galactic Federation ships do resemble Galactic Empire ships. The standout feature are the circular metal semi-flat domes that appear on the sides of most GE ships - they're present on GF ships as well. The FPA ship designs have always lacked these, and instead resemble those of the Black Fleet, by contrast.

Fleet Admirals: Muckenburger, Steinhof and Ehrenberg were all fleet admirals - these are the only ones we know of at the time. They're the three heads of the fleet (before Reinhard was promoted and given his own admiralty), though Muckenburger is Space Fleet Commander and Steinhof and Ehrenberg are running bureaucratic jobs the names of which I don't recall off the top of my head. When the Lippstadt war started, Reinhard took over all three of their jobs himself. Mittermeyer takes over Muckenburger's job in the new Empire. Oberstein and Reuenthal I'm pretty sure take over the other two. Merkatz never made it to Fleet Admiral. He was promoted to High Admiral after Astate, and stayed that way until his defection.

High Nobles: Littenheim wore the uniform of a High Admiral in the rebellion (Braunschweig wore that of a Fleet Admiral) - I think there's much implied in the show (and Gaiden) that high nobles rise through the ranks quickly and are given ranks they don't deserve. Unfortunately there is no evidence as to the responsibilities of fiefs etc in providing for the military.Vympel 00:35, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Hm... I see. Ideally, I'd like to fashion a sort of pyramid-chart, showing each office in the hierarchy and how everything fits together. For both the Empire and the Alliance, though I say focus on the Empire for now because (to me, at least) it seems the more difficult of the two.

From what we know of the Empire, I think the only legitimate assumption we can make is that it's not a fully-feudal system--it has a modern economy, military and bureaucracy. Only the social structure (and perhaps economic geography) appears to be feudalistic. Canary 00:40, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Reference Images

Federation Colony or Exploration Vessel circa 296 UC 300px

Federation Exploratory Vessels circa 1 UC

Imperial Warships circa 310 UC