STRATEGY FOR OFFENCE
The planning for the campaign on Anhur was made by the Alliance High Command in cooperation with the Department for Defence, with both the Navy and the Army being heavy contributors to the overall strategy. Despite this, the plan was very much the Army's project, reflecting the state of the war generally. Army leaders were keen to show what they could do, particularly as the great majority of the glory thus far had been won by the Navy. Even Elysium, a near perfect victory both planetside and in orbit, was viewed among the field marshals as a naval achievement. The reason for this attitude was simple. At the Vetus System, the Navy had dealt a decisive blow to the batarian counterparts and rescued the Army. There was no corresponding ground victory for the Army to point to. There were worries that the Army would eventually be placed under the command of the Navy entirely, as had originally been proposed at the foundation of the Alliance. This had been rejected as destructive of centuries-long military traditions, but the threat occasionally arose from time to time from pacifists and fiscal hawks in the Alliance Parliament. As such, Anhur was viewed as the perfect opportunity to deliver a noteworthy victory to the Army.
The plan very much reflected this political reality. The fingerprints of both the Minister for Defence, who was himself an infantry veteran, and those of Field Marshal DeRuyter were all over it. The other major considerations were twofold. Firstly, the terrain of Anhur is similar to Earth, having five major continents, often divided by oceans and connected by island chains. This meant that the assault would have to be done in stages, as each continent had formidable defences in their own right and the open ocean was not a suitable landing zone. More importantly however, the population levels reached into the hundreds of millions. While the Alliance High Command anticipated that a decent majority of the population was hostile to the invaders, the imposition of slavery and the colony's proximity to the Terminus Systems meant that the remainder was heavily militarised. Millions of troops would be required to take the colony, and they would have to remain while an extensive sweep was done to insure that enemy combatants did not begin campaigns of terrorism from within the population.
The campaign would be divided into three operations.
Operation Scipio
The first move for the Alliance would require both an overwhelming naval attack and planetstrike operation, both to be undertaken simultaneously.
Anhur's orbital defences were weak, as they were designed exclusively around combat against craft no larger than the small cruisers that were often independently constructed in the Terminus Systems. The Alliance Navy possessed vessels with defences and weapons far in excessive of anything in orbit over the colony. However, a large naval task force would still be required to strike a decisive blow in a single day, as the Eagle Nebula possessed no small number of other garden worlds on which to hide. The shipyards at Korlus, where many of the spacecraft used by the Terminus pirates were constructed or salvaged, would have to be destroyed to prevent their use by the enemy. Na'hesit airbases, space stations and defence satellites would also have to be brought to ruin, along with the corvette and frigate squadrons. These were not second-rate equipment by the standards of the day. This was particularly true of the starships, which possessed the exact same torpedo technology employed by the Alliance, the same that had devastated the Batarian First Fleet at Elysium. This part of the operation was codenamed Aegates.
While the Navy conducted their actions, the Army would commence the actual planetstrike operation, codenamed Carthage. The orbital assault divisions of the six legions chosen for the campaign would attack together, landing en masse by assault pod and planetary assault titans. Once the landing zones were secure, heavy lift shuttles would then land the armoured divisions, while troop ships deployed the infantry and sappers. The whole initial task force would advance quickly out of their initial beachheads and aggressively attack any enemy positions they could find with the support of fighter-bombers and missile artillery. The rear areas would be built up and the rest of the task force landed, a task expected to take several weeks due to the huge numbers of troops and equipment required for the campaign. The overall objective of Carthage, and indeed Scipio itself, was to secure a single continent within the time scale of a month, and prepare it as the springboard off of which the entire planet would fall to the Alliance.
There was some debate as to which continent should be attacked first. Some of the military leadership argued for a direct assault on the continent containing the planetary capital, ignoring the main front of the fighting between colonial forces and the rebellion to cut the head directly off the snake. This was not viable for a number of reasons. The capitol provinces were the most heavily fortified on the planet, particularly with regard to anti-aircraft and anti-spacecraft defences. This meant that a heavy orbital bombardment would be required to soften up the landing zones sufficiently to land armoured forces. The potential civilian casualties and the perception that such a move would be abandoning the rebellion ruled out the plan on political grounds. The unsuitability of such a location as the staging ground for the invasion of the other continents also eliminated the possibility from a military perspective.
It was soon decided that the best landing zones were on the northern continent, called Uralis by humans. It was furthest from the heartlands of the enemy, but it provided the easiest access to all the other continents and at the time of the decision, was the most distant from the rebellion's conventional fighting. It was also mostly made up of tundra or cold-temperate terrain, ideal conditions for the majority of the Alliance's equipment and familiar to its soldiers. However, the Na'hesit's offensives soon pushed the abolitionist CoF forces back across the planet until the only conventional warfare under way was in Uralis. Intelligence reports from the Eclipse mercenaries were extremely critical of the rebels capabilities and strategy. By the time these problems came to light, it was too late to change the plan, and so it was expected that the initial attack would meet concentrated resistance.
Operation Pompey
The next phase of the invasion would see the majority of the naval elements withdraw to shore up the blockade of the core colonies of the Hegemony, while the Army went on the offensive again. The adjacent continents to Uralis, New Cilicia and Al-Kheb, would be invaded and occupied. The invasions would proceed along the island chains connecting the target areas to the beachhead, before striking the mainlands directly. Three legions were to strike each target, providing overwhelming superiority of numbers and sheer mass of firepower to the attackers.
The attacks themselves were to follow the example of the initial attack. Orbital and aerial assault units were to be sent in first, on board titans and aircraft, to secure beachheads. These would be followed up with greater and greater numbers transported by shuttle and troopships. Resistance in these areas was expected to be light at first, as the many of the units that could be used to defend the coastlines and possible landing zones were stationed in Uralis to fight the rebels, and the Alliance assault was expected to eliminate them. Despite this prediction of a good start to the operation, it was expected to take as long as seven months to complete by the most pessimistic appraisal. Every continent had a sizeable number of troops and equipment, in order to keep ideas of slave uprisings at bay. These were not poorly-armed conscripts, having excellent training and equipment at their disposal. The terrain also did not help. New Cilicia was heavily forested in places despite being one of the two agricultural hubs of the colony, and Al-Kheb possessed large deserts and a band of jungle running along the equator of the planet.
Aside from the plans for the initial attacks on each of the continents, the orders for proceeding beyond that point were left entirely to the discretion of the Supreme Allied Commander. The reason for this flexibility was simple. Intelligence on what the Na'hesit would do and how they would fight such an overwhelming foe was entirely absent. The slavers fought a very tidy anti-insurgent campaign in their rear areas, and a turian-textbook perfect campaign against the CoF's own conventional forces. Alliance planners very much doubted their enemies would stick to such strategic thinking, as it would undoubtedly result in their swift defeat.
Operation Augustus
Once Al-Kheb and New Cilicia were captured, the final assault against the capital's continent, Waset, would commence in earnest. Waset was flanked by the small continent of Dahshur, which would also be seized. The scenery of the place would deceive the civilian eye into believing the continent undefended. This was deliberate, not only for strategic purposes but also as a public relations tool. A colony that openly looked like a fortress would not reap rewards for that perspective rooting itself in the minds of investors, who often translated preparations as indicators of risk. This meant that many of the Na'hesit's defences in Waset were constructed in total secrecy, disguised as civilian buildings or placed underground in hardened bunkers. The exact extent of these defences was unknown to the Alliance, as even the human leaders had refused to hand over plans to their government when relations were good. Planners were deeply pessimistic about the prospects of assaulting such a position without naval support, but they were overruled by both the Minister for Defence and the Field Marshal to command the effort. Ideas about starving or bombarding the continent into submission were rejected. The capital would be taken by assault.
The manpower required to attack Waset was the sole reason for the commitment of six whole legions' worth of troops, an invasion force unprecedented in the history of humanity until that point and ranking among the largest the galaxy has ever seen. Thirty six million soldiers of all classes and occupations in total, representing more than 10% of all Alliance Army personnel, were to be committed to the campaign. Only about half of these were combat troops, and only half of them were assault units suited to sustained offensive action. Such numbers were required not only because of the formidable fixed defences that intelligence analysts predicted the existence of, but also due to the huge numbers of enemy combatants expected to be found. The best of the colonial government's troops were expected to be held in reserve at the capital as well.
The time allotted for the final push was also extensive. Despite Waset being the second-smallest continent, taking control of it was expected to take four months, leaving the successful conclusion of the campaign right up to the wire. The deadline for the military access treaty with the salarians would arrive just two weeks after the projected end of active combat operations on Anhur. Fighting after that would require the Alliance to resupply their forces via the Terminus Systems, either by convoys or by private means. However, due to the brilliance and aggression of its commander, as well as the luck and insight of a lieutenant, Augustus and the whole Anhur campaign would finish far more quickly than even the most optimistic projections had predicted.
STRATEGY FOR DEFENCE
Anhur's principal system of defence was a huge series of fortifications across the major inhabited continents, concentrating with proximity to the major population centres and the robotic-mining installations. These included structures both above and below ground. They housed a full complement of fortified machinegun nests, anti-aircraft weapons, and with the outbreak of war between the Systems Alliance and the Hegemony, heavy artillery emplacements were added. Some of the bunkers extended for miles, connected by service tunnels and capable of holding out for years if need-be. Most were far less extensive, protecting junctions, maglev stations, and other strategic points. These were extremely cheap to create using existing civilian mining equipment, and Anhur had been carpeted with such defences by the time of the assault.
However, relying on fixed defences had obvious drawbacks and the Corporate Congress was well aware of them. The bunkers were primarily aimed at deterring and defeating pirates and raiders, whom could be relied upon to strike at the weakest targets with the largest potential payoff. This made predicting when and where such invaders would strike very easy, and the layout of the defences reflected this even as late as 2176. They had proved extremely useful in the role they had been designed for, but the military advisors of the colonial government had warned that they would be entirely inadequate should a professional military attempt an invasion. At the time, this referred more to Illium than humanity.
Highly mobile light troops were already at the core of the Na'hesit's paramilitaries, again with the pirates in mind as their opponents. These forces were greatly expanded during the building crisis that became the Anhur Rebellion. The grand strategic vision for any potential invasion was to use their mobility to strike blows at the invaders while using the fixed defences as safepoints to rally tired troops and resupply. This was called "Spear and Shield" by the Corporate Congress' strategists, and regular exercises engrained the philosophy into the ordinary soldier to the very lowest rank. These forces were later reinforced in numbers as the crisis deepened, and armed with as many heavier weapons as could be obtained. In addition to the weapons given over on lend-lease by the Hegemony, more modern weapons were also purchased from the turians and asari.
The Rebellions started with irregular attacks on installations and terrorist attacks of varying kinds. While the latter was random and of no great strategic consequence to the defence, the former put large amounts of arms in the hands of the Coalition of the Free, and on the continent of Uralis, the entirety of the bunker complexes had been captured intact. This greatly complicated the strategy for the defence of the planet. With the imposition of slavery, the threat of invasion was higher than ever before, as human anger at the measures reached fever pitch. At the same time, the planet was never more vulnerable. Its economy was disrupted by the unrest and later the open warfare. Any inability to maintain order might see the colonial charter of establishment revoked by the Citadel Council. Most crucially however, with large tracts of territory in rebel hands, any Alliance assault would have an uncontested landing zone, from which the entire planet could be brought to heel.
With all these factors in mind, the Corporate Congress planners laid out a three stage plan to achieve victory.
First of all, the Rebellion would have to be defeated in detail. Several regions would have to be retaken from the CoF as soon as possible, to prevent their use by the Alliance. These would be attacked in order of proximity to the capital, with the batarian rebel control of Dahshur to be liquidated first, followed up by Al-Kheb, New Cilicia and finally, Uralis itself. In the months between the outbreak of the Second Verge War and the invasion, the Corporate Congress had huge success in carrying out this part of the plan. Open resistance in Dahshur collapsed almost as soon as corporate forces arrived to destroy it, although that theatre of combat was where the CoF had the least men and matériel at their disposal. The next few months saw the front lines pushed across the planet, until only Uralis stood as the last bastion of the abolitionist cause, despite the best efforts of Eclipse mercenaries and the Anhur Republican Army. That territory was attacked with considerable force before the Alliance could arrive, and the offensive there would prove a key factor in the outcome of the campaign to come.
Once the entire planet was in their hands, the Na'hesit would attempt to open negotiations with the Alliance while strengthening their capabilities in space. Modelled on the Alliance Navy itself, more frigates and torpedo corvettes would be bought up from Korlus and other Terminus shipyards. More bunkers would also be constructed planetside. The Corporate Congress was not under the illusion that they could convince the Alliance to halt their invasion, but hoped that they could buy enough time to make any attack too costly to proceed with.
Lastly, when the inevitable invasion came, the objective would be to cause as many casualties as possible. Landing areas were to be surrounded and attacked immediately, troop transports and assault cruisers were to be prioritised for hit and run manoeuvres in space, and any attempt to cause the enslaved populace to rise up would be met with absolute force. All the while, continual offers of ceasefire and peaceful resolution of the differences between the two warring parties would be given, in an attempt to outflank the militarists in the Alliance Parliament and redirect the war's focus towards the Hegemony itself. These plans would not come to pass, and never got past the drawing board, as the invasion itself arrived before the rebellion's military forces could be defeated. The consequences for the defenders would be devastating.