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)

FYI, the titles of the chiefs of staff are:

• Mückenberger: 宇宙艦隊司令長官, Star Fleet Commander-in-Chief
• Steinhof: 統帥本部総長, Supreme Command Division Chief (maybe Supreme Command Chief of General Staff)
• Beardy: 軍務尚書, Military Affairs... Secretary?

I am unsure of the last part of the word in Colonel Sanders' title, but i'm guessing it's secretary because it is almost identical to Lichtenlade's title (国務尚書) and he is referred to as the secretary of state.  ♥ kine @ 02:47, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

One thing to remember is it was a time of civil war, with both sides claiming legitimacy. The armed forces were split, and we see much of the entrenched officer class side with the nobles since they are either nobles themselves or owe favors or position to the nobles. Lower ranking troops may just be following orders of their superior officers, and if their superiors declare that parts of the Imperial Fleet have gone rogue and are rebelling, then they follow their orders to put down the rebels. So it may be more a fact of the Imperial Fleet siding with their commanding officers through obeying orders rather than any individual troop raising by noble fiefs or any genuine choice by the rank and file about which side they support. It isn't until the Westerland Massacre that we see the nobles lose authority over the lower ranking officers and troops.

The high nobles put on military uniforms, but uniforms would not be hard to acquire. They may very well have given themselves rank, much as how tin-pot dictators and warlords may style themselves with grandiose ranks and plaster their chests with medals. Iracundus 12:27, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Reference Images

Name

Should we rename the article "Imperial Fleet" as it is most commonly referred to rather than "armed forces"? —Goldenbaum Loyalist 23:54, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

This comes back ultimately to how to translate 帝国軍. 軍 (or its Chinese simplified character form of 军) is a term that more accurately translates as military or military forces, but which often defaults to or is understood to mean army (as in land forces), since the character was invented at a time when land forces were the dominant and sometimes only branch. The real world People's Liberation Army is actually thus bit of a mistranslation that has stuck, leading to such seemingly illogical constructions as People's Liberation Army Navy. Now when it goes to LOGH, the situation is one where the space forces are the dominant branch, so it could be argued that 帝国軍 implies Imperial Fleet. This whole situation is a bit related to the rank translations as well since the characters for the various ranks in Chinese and Japanese are actually the same across different branches, needing further characters to more precisely distinguish which branch. For example, 上将 (general) vs 海军上将 (admiral, lit. ocean force general)) or the JSDF 陸将 (Lieutenant general) vs 海将 (vice admiral). Anime often has the made up term "spacy" since that could be a translation of 宇宙軍 (lit. space military) as analogous to 海軍 (navy, lit. ocean military). "Fleet" as in a group of ships is 艦隊. All of this is a matter of historic/linguistic baggage, but it leads to ground force characters like [Ovlesser] having a rank of 上級大将 which is the exact same kanji characters for the rank given to space force commanders which we have translated as high admiral. Mückenberger's title of Star Fleet Commander-in-Chief (宇宙艦隊司令長官) suggests the term for Imperial Fleet (as in "spacy") should be 帝国宇宙艦隊. However 帝国軍 is more broad of a term, and more strictly translates to Imperial Military or Imperial Armed Forces. Iracundus 16:39, 7 October 2017 (UTC)