THE ATLANTIC FEDERATION, PART 3
THE ALLIED GROUND FORCES
Assembling the Armies
"It should be in bad taste to adopt old King Ulrika's creed of 'question me and die,' but FC War could use more of that mentality seeing how whatever she said was actually done properly."
- Col. Valdemar Rehnskiöld, Nord Republican Army, 1936 EC after the end of Northern Cross
The Atlantic Federation has always been plagued with difficulties in enforcing military coordination. While the FC War Ministry can and does step in to force decisions in the face of excessive deadlock, the clash between member state militaries based on national goals, personal pride of the generals, and other factors make attempting to seamlessly coordinate all armed forces of the Federation about as difficult as getting their parent nations to unanimously agree on anything in the General Assembly. It usually required a cataclysmic event such as the collapse of the Nord Republic's defenses in February 1935 EC and the subsequent, temporary partition of the state between the Empire and the outwardly neutral (but ultimately Federate-leaning) Kingdom of Varangia for anything close to perfect harmony to reign between all the Federation's general staffs.
Some militaries are more influential than others. In the Continental Wing for example, the Valois Grand Quartier Général more or less utterly dominates the general headquarters of other Wing members with the typical exception of the Nord Republic. With the Continental Wing being the frontline against the Empire, its members have seemingly entered an unofficial agreement that tenacious, elastic defense anchored on a series of fortified hardpoints would be the most effective means of maximizing the odds of their survival. As Valois is without question the single largest Federate member state in Europa, almost all of the other states in the continental mainland normally defer to its overall authority when it comes to military matters. That is not to say that they obey Fontainebleau without question – the Tarraconese create their own interpretations of this defensive focus to maximize their own respective strengths and counter their own inherent weaknesses, while Burgon refuses to budge willingly (perhaps both literally and figuratively) from its vast system of trenches and bunkers even when being content otherwise to align itself with Valois proposals. National military doctrines will be covered in more detail within their respective nations' profiles where applicable.
The general consensus within Federate military circles when it concerns ground combat is that the Continental Wing shall take a primarily defensive posture in Europa, slowing down and bleeding out continental invaders as much as possible. The Oceanic Wing's main task, then, would be to use its naval and industrial strengths to maximize the safety of the Federation's intercontinental supply convoys and deploy large quantities of well-trained and well-armed troops to (hopefully) turn the tide. This is what happened during EWI, with Edinburgh troops arriving in northwestern Valois, Frisia, and Burgon to stonewall the Imperial advance and help slowly grind the Empire out of Federate territory. The USV, while it only committed combat troops relatively late into that war, nevertheless deluged the Federation from the start in desperately needed war gear, food, and medical supplies. So was the case too during the early years of the Great War, even if the USV committed troops to the continent far earlier for this most recent global catastrophe.
The Quarantine Cordon faction, created shortly after the collapse of Imperial rule in early 1942 EC as the Levelist Viridian Army and the royalist Steel Guards threw most of eastern Europa into a brutal and still technically ongoing civil war, has adopted the Continental approach to warfare. Instead of being asked to support the Federation's overseas adventures with direct military assistance, the Quarantine Cordon is instead tasked with forming a speed bump against any potential Levelist offensives westward to spread their revolution after the Steel Guards have been eradicated as they are expected to be. As part of this new role, the Quarantine forces have been tasked currently to work alongside the rest of the Federation's forces in Europa to eliminate the Levelist insurgencies that are currently attempting to overthrow the Federation's newest member governments.
While these individual Quarantine states are currently still weak from the years of total war and the ongoing insurgency, at least the Free State of Prutenia and the Free State of the Ofenrohr are projected to make rapid economic recoveries courtesy of their still potent natural resources and industrial bases. The Viszevaric Commonwealth immediately to Prutenia's east is also projected to become a particularly powerful redoubt for the Federation on account of Viszevaric war veterans from the Federation and the Diarchy's Fekety Szereg (Black Army) mechanized infantry and armored units coming home to form the new foundation of Viszevary's military. Ironically, many of the men serving in these new democratic armies still use old Imperial and Diarchic gear to fight the new revolutionary masters of East Europa and their militant proponents. As Levelists in their civil war and their guerrilla campaigns paint their war gear green and mark them with their "Three Shovels" emblem as much as possible to avoid friendly fire, so do the Quarantine forces use blue paint and the Compass of Freedom to mark themselves as Federates.
Notes on Federate Infantry Organization
"Imperial manpower should not only be an acceptable target in this war, but a priority one."
- Gen. Julie Mangin, head of the Valois 172nd Infantry Division, 1938 EC
As is common knowledge in Europa and Vinland, militaries generally divide their infantry into roughly half a dozen core "classes," or specializations. The process of formalizing classes started sporadically in Europa and Vinland shortly before and during the First Europan War as new weapons and tactics were developed and deployed on the field, and the class system has continued evolving up to the current post-war period. The class system at this point in time is a global standard, although not all militaries share the exact same standards.
As the Empire began to deploy increasingly armored infantry armed liberally with short-range automatic weapons and heavier explosive projectors, the Federation's armies came to the common conclusion that it would be more effective for their infantry to focus primarily on eradicating enemy personnel with small arms fire superiority at medium and long ranges. Once the enemy's infantry were neutralized, any heavier enemy weapons such as artillery and tanks could be isolated and eliminated slightly more easily. Federate armies thus all fundamentally arm their troops with generous amounts of rifles (sometimes with grenade launchers), light machine guns, and spigot mortars to shatter enemy infantry before they close the distance.
Federate combat infantry are as of 1942 EC broadly organized as follows:
Scouts now receive one national standard semi-automatic rifle with a grenade launcher, but can also access select-fire battle rifles for more direct firepower. Unfortunately, technical difficulties prevent existing grenade launcher designs from being grafted onto battle rifles for the time being.
Shocktroopers normally use one national standard submachine gun with an optional flamethrower attachment. Some national armies also offer semi-automatic shotguns with optional slug rounds, while others prefer to issue other SMG models designed to fill whatever other niche required. Light machine guns are also provided in copious amounts.
Engineers now also only receive one standard semi-automatic rifle with which to defend themselves, but can also be issued pistol carbines. Federate Engineers sometimes get issued Edinburgh-style bagpipes in place of repair tools to raise friendly morale or dent the enemy's. They are still issued larger ragnaid units than usual to aid in stabilizing the wounded before specialized medics can fetch them.
Snipers remain mostly the same as at the start of the Great War, being able to take bolt-action sniper rifles, semi-automatic marksman rifles, and anti-tank rifles.
Lancers and Grenadiers are no longer used by the Federate forces. Instead, the new Bombardier class is employed as a hybrid specialization. More details will follow.
Medics have all but remained the same for the entire conflict. However, multiple documented instances of Imperial troops intentionally targeting Federate medics in the battlefield have convinced many medics to discretely carry sidearms to give their would-be executioners the (hopefully) last shock of their lives.
Each Federate member state may make certain adjustments to this foundation. For example, the Burgonian Army still issues falchion short swords to as many of its infantry as possible due to a combination of its knightly traditions that still persist to this day and its experiences in trench warfare. The Tarraconese are somewhat notorious for their sheer flexibility of arms, being able to change infantry classes seemingly on the fly and thereby making themselves much more difficult to engage with one rigid doctrine. Even Valois's Tukulur colonial troops from West Nubia make somewhat noticeable changes involving the amount of gear they take, on account of their primary doctrine of engaging in mobile warfare.
The Bashford Armor Set
As shrapnel and more potent explosive weapons claimed increasingly higher proportions of overall battlefield casualties during EWI, the various Federate armies followed the Imperial example and began development and deployment of steel body armor. While body armor began with steel helmets, of which there are various types in service within the Federate forces to this day ranging from the emblematic Vinnish two-part Hedges helmet and widely used Valois Dumas helmet, all the way to the Lusatian "cake pan," the rest of the body armor took somewhat longer to develop. As the Federate forces emphasized maneuver warfare in the hopes of being able to isolate and overrun Imperial spearheads before they forced a transition to the rudimentary trench warfare that dominated the short Eastern Succession War, their focus in infantry protective equipment lay in light armor that could still protect vulnerable body parts such as the shoulder and thighs from shrapnel and low-power rounds.
The Federates were only able to deploy a standardized set of body armor close to the end of EWI, and it arrived in Europa with the bulk of the Vinnish expeditionary force. With the efforts of an all-Federate R&D team led by the Vinnish engineer Don Bashford, a lightweight set of armor plates made of steel and a newly developed spongey rubber padding entered limited production and initially served in the Vinnish 1st Infantry Division and a few of Vinland's State Militias during their patrols of Vinland's borders with Azteca in 1914 EC. Reportedly, while the Bashford armor could not reliably stop full-power rifle rounds, it could stop shrapnel at all ranges and even pistol rounds at a sufficiently long distance. Troops also praised the system's comfort and ease of donning, although frequent complaints about the chest plates were never truly resolved.
The Bashford armor set has seen relatively few changes in the lead up to the Great War, and has since been adopted by all Federate member states for their infantry. Under most circumstances, the Bashford comes in light beige (or dark grey in winter) with a few stripes breaking up the base color. Each class gets its own set of armor to best suit its needs, which naturally comes with the downside of the enemy being able to more easily identify Federate troops from a distance and prioritize targets.
The Bombardier
One curious observation made during the 1935 EC winter disaster was that the old grenadier class of infantry frequently outperformed lancers when it came to demolitions and anti-tank work. The grenadier was in general much more lightly armored than the lancer and more vulnerable to direct assaults, but presented a far larger threat radius to Imperial infantry and armor on account of their revolutionary collapsible light mortars produced by Vinland's Forus National Arms Factory. While the lancer still offered advantages in close-quarter environments such as city ruins and direct-fire support, the grenadier far surpassed it in providing fire support against superior Imperial forces in other, more typical combat environments such as open fields, hills, and so forth. As these combat scenarios repeated themselves in the rest of the continent as Northern Cross disintegrated and Federate forces were sent reeling west in the face of the Empire's Kafer armored fists, the three major armies of the Federation collectively decided to overhaul their approach to infantry anti-tank combat and fire support.
Coincidentally, the Edinburgh military's R&D teams had spent the second half of 1935 EC exploring alternate delivery devices for the ragnite compression-enabled light mortar shells. Prior efforts to turn the M2EQ lance into a mortar lance as used in Gallia and the Empire failed due to the excessive weight of the converted weapon, and efforts to convert the Sanders-series light mortars into direct-fire weapons also met with failure as the bipod and mortar stand were not at all equipped to deal with excessive horizontal recoil. However, the teams had come up by the end of 1935 EC with a "spigot mortar" design that utilized springs and internal firing rods to create a hybrid lance/mortar that was not only light enough for one man to handle, but also was capable of engaging in both direct and indirect fire. Soon, a dedicated anti-tank warhead for this device was also created.
This weapon was Edinburgh's SMITH – Spigot Mortar, Infantry, Anti-Tank & High Explosive – and was immediately put through its paces with one of Edinburgh's veteran Gallowglass infantry divisions in February 1936 EC during the short post-Northern Cross ceasefire. After another round of revisions to account for complaints regarding excessive recoil and manual spring resetting, the SMITH entered full service with Edinburgh grenadiers by July of that same year. As the SMITH meant that lancers were more or less totally redundant and cost inefficient given the Federation's preference for medium-to-long range infantry firefights as opposed to the Imperial style of crushing forward assaults, the Edinburgh Army took the radical step of abolishing this specialization and that of the grenadier, and replacing them both with a single "Bombardier" class. That being said, many bombardiers were trained during the war to man more traditional mortars for heavier fire support for infantry.
By mid-1937 EC, Vinland followed suit with its own bombardiers and its Arbuckle series of spigot mortars; however, the Arbuckle was not as potent in anti-tank warfare as was the SMITH. The Arbuckle instead compensated through sheer explosive force, its unusually potent HE mortar shells allegedly becoming the stuff of nightmares for Imperial and even Diarchic troops. Valois committed to the same transition as the Albanord nations and took the unusual step of declaring the SMITH its own standard spigot mortar later the same year. Even still, it is not yet known whether the spigot mortar still has a future or if it is inherently a technological dead end – the future of the Bombardier class itself is tied to its weapon.
The 7 mm Channel and the Battle Rifle
Recent concerns over the rapid economic growth of the still-young Syndicate and the pace at which its battle-hardened Viridian Army seems to be growing have raised the stakes for the Federation in the east, and FC War Ministry memorandums have explicitly recommended a transition to one single table of munitions calibers for the entire Federation moving forward. This policy is known as the Standardized Armaments plan, or STAR – and FC War Ministry spokespeople have hinted it will not stop at ammunition uniformity. With several more nations and militaries to reconstitute and integrate into overall Federate supervisory systems, the need for one standard series of ammunition has never been more pressing. That being said, it is not entirely certain when STAR will be enforced, as the Federation still possesses considerable quantities of perfectly serviceable weapons and ammunition.
Currently, STAR lists only one caliber for use in future infantry small arms, and it is the 7 mm intermediate round. The 7 mm "Channel" in particular deserves some focus as a cartridge poised to revolutionize infantry combat alongside the Imperial/Levelist 7.62 mm intermediate. It is arguably the first new rifle cartridge Edinburgh has developed since the birth of the .303 more than four decades ago. After-action reports of multiple major skirmishes and pitched battles all suggested that the various full-power rifle cartridges in army service were unnecessarily powerful at typical engagement ranges of 300 meters or less, causing unnecessary recoil and discomfort to the rifleman. At the same time, Valois's Carmiger (Carabine Mitrailleuse de Saint-Gervais, the St. Gervais Machine Carbine) began to hit peak demand among the Valois shocktroopers who saw its potential in battle paired with a smaller cartridge than that of standard Valois combat rifles. The development of a new, slightly weaker round that could still penetrate body armor at these regular Federate infantry engagement ranges was deemed a major priority by 1937 EC, and a joint Edinburgh-Frisian team ultimately not only produced the new cartridge but also began manufacturing and distributing automatic battle rifles with this cartridge by 1939 EC.
While the various series of Federate battle rifles will be covered in later sections, they all greatly enhanced the Federate scout's firepower on the field. While Federate squad doctrines in general still call for aimed, semi-auto fire by default, more than one story has arisen from late in the Great War of how Federate scouts saved their own lives and those of their brothers in arms by suddenly flipping their fire selectors and unloading burst fire to kill or suppress assaulting Imperials. In light of Imperial and Levelist shocktroopers using their new Badanov auto carbines to achieve similar levels of firepower but at closer ranges, the battle rifle with the 7 mm Channel will potentially see a very long service life.
Federate Tanks
"We're going to take the next town. And then the next. However many it takes for the Imps to quit."
- Gen. George Collier, Vinnish 2nd Armored Division
In brief, the Federation for the most part prefers to keep its tanks in their own specialized divisions and smaller units - unlike the Empire and their sheer number of tanks that allows the Reichsarmee to also attach tanks to infantry divisions as assault guns, or even Gallia with its high tank-to-infantry ratio given its small population. However, even within its specialized armored units, the Federation specializes its armored vehicles a bit more.
While each Federate army uses its own designations, they all more or less divide their medium tanks into "infantry" tanks and "cavalry" tanks. Infantry tanks are designed primarily to engage in anti-personnel and anti-fortification combat, as these targets are the kinds the army is expected to neutralize the most often. As such, infantry tanks sacrifice anti-tank firepower in exchange for more high-explosive potential. The tank most iconic in such a role is the USV's M3 "Minute" tank, so named to mirror the rapid readiness of Vinland's old colonial militias (and ideally its current State Militias) and to indicate just how quickly they could be made, repaired, or salvaged and sent into the battlefield. After the Battle of the Siegval Line in September 1935 EC and the encounter with the Kafer series of Imperial tanks, Minute tanks began their upgrade into the M3A1 "Rifleman" with improved welded hulls, suspension systems, and weapons.
On the other hand, cavalry tanks are tasked primarily to destroy enemy tanks and be mobile while still being decently armored. Cavalry tanks are generally given more operational freedom within their armored units precisely to move fast and hit Imperial troops where they would be the weakest. Federate cavalry medium tank units are considerably more varied in vehicle designs; the Vinns for example use modified Minute and Rifleman hulls with angular 76 mm gun turrets ("Roughriders"), while the Edinburghers prefer their completely indigenous "Greyaxe" tanks, a carbon copy of their retroactively renamed "Greysword" infantry tanks but armed with an extremely potent 76 mm high-velocity gun. While these vehicles do not have as potent HE rounds for their guns, they make up for this with markedly improved anti-tank power, as well as with the mobile artillery and infantry units attached to their units.
Light tanks and heavy tanks also serve in Federate ground forces. Light tanks are frequently used as armored reconnaissance vehicles, but also deploy in colonial theaters where heavier tanks are too unwieldy to deploy. Federate light tanks, while they may not be as heavily armed as their Imperial counterparts, are notable for their unusually high top speeds. Heavy tanks on the other hand are relatively rare, but still deploy in areas where a breakthrough is needed immediately or an enemy attempt to do the same is predicted. Naturally, Federate heavy tanks have higher-caliber main guns – typically 90 mm – and improved ammunition such as Edinburgh's HEMP (high explosive, morphing plastic) rounds. Valois in particular emphasizes heavy tanks and siege tanks as part of its doctrine of elastic defense; while their "Gendarme" and "De Vaux" tanks may not be as potent as the EEIA's (and now the Syndicate's) own series of "Leopard" heavies and "Batomys" siege tanks, Valois can field them in larger numbers to lock down defensive lines.
Federate armored divisions make frequent use of self-propelled guns, more often than not derived from Minute and Rifleman hulls. However, the nigh ubiquity of the Minute and Rifleman tanks ensures that an almost uncountable number of derivatives served during the war, ranging from aforementioned SPGs and engineering vehicles to Arcadia's and Riodoro's ad hoc armored personnel carriers.
Federate Artillery
"God smiles on the general who prepares the best artillery positions."
- Attributed to Michel Davoust, First Consul of Valois
Despite many of the Federation's member states' long-standing traditions of artillery excellence, the alliance as a whole started the Great War at a decisive disadvantage in available artillery firepower in the Europan continent. Most of the Federation's early-war artillery belonged to Valois as part of its long-term preparations for elastic defense, but the temporary loss of Frisia and especially the trenches of Burgon within the first two months of the war significantly hampered the Federation's artillery firepower until the mass deployment of Arsenal Lease gear.
Federate artillery by necessity took massive strides in production levels and firepower, mostly reaching Imperial artillery pieces in range, lethality, or both over the course of the Great War. Of particular note were the anti-tank pieces used by Federate forces during the war. The Federate armies used towed AT guns notable for lacking explosive power due to their smaller bore diameters (e.g. the 57 mm gun used extensively by Vinland and Edinburgh) or the massively increased pressures on the shells that required thicker casings. However, these pieces remained on par with the slightly shorter-barreled Imperial towed AT guns in penetrating tank armor. What truly made these Federate pieces unique compared to Imperial counterparts was the distribution of canister shot – shells containing cut steel pieces that can penetrate Imperial infantry body armor and turn Federate AT guns into giant shotguns in order to wipe out entire squads or even platoons with one well-aimed shot. As with infantry shotguns, the sheer suffering caused by having giant pieces of sharp, pointy steel pieces embedded in the victims' bodies led to immediate outrage within the Imperial armed forces and repeated calls for a decisive ban of shotguns and canister shot in warfare, which were promptly and officially rejected by the Federate Council in a somewhat unusual display of promptness.
The Federation secured an early-war advantage in light mortars through the efforts of Vinland's Forus National Arms Factory and the Gallian expatriate Miller family's research into ragnite compression; this advantage was maintained through the introduction of the Bombardier class and their dual-purpose spigot mortars that granted them substantial flexibility in providing tactical-level fire support. In the realm of medium and heavy mortars, the Federation maintained an uneasy par with the Empire. Both the Federation and the Empire maintained large stocks of traditional, simple tube mortars that did not necessarily have advantages over the other throughout the war.
Vinland, Edinburgh, and the Nord Republic to a limited extent also experimented with recoilless rifles, essentially lances but firing solid shells instead of rockets. Recoilless rifles were valued for their relatively light weight compared to traditional artillery, and for their devastating effects against Imperial armor and fortifications when paired with the new Edinburgh HEMP munitions. However, recoilless rifles had major drawbacks in the forms of backblast that restricted the environments in which they could be employed and generally shorter effective ranges than traditional towed tube artillery. As such, recoilless rifles were almost always in the hands of specialist units within the Federate militaries such as combat engineers or special forces. The Valois Tirailleurs of Tukulur in particular mounted recoilless rifles on as many of their vehicles as they could manage, as the downsides of backblast and shorter range were somewhat nullified mounted on fast, light vehicles as they favor in battle.
Where the Federation struggled the most in the realm of artillery was heavier field artillery, including field guns, howitzers, and multiple rocket launchers. The Empire's Muscovian emphasis on artillery shaping the battlefield gifted the Reichsarmee with a substantial lead in artillery quality and quantity, which meant that early-war Imperial artillery typically enjoyed longer ranges and greater density of fire. Burgon's extensive defensive fortifications were finally shattered in late January 1935 EC precisely because of this overwhelming artillery fire paired with Imperial armored assaults; even as late as March 1935 EC as seen in the Battle of Fort Krest, Imperial tube artillery generally outranged Federate tube artillery and forced the Federation to deploy mobile infantry to neutralize particularly troublesome Imperial artillery positions.
However, the mid- and late-war periods finally granted the Federation a degree of equality with the Empire in tube artillery, as longer barrels and new "supercharge" rounds (the latter used in particular within the Royal Edinburgh Artillery) entered service to drastically increase the range of Federate field pieces. The sheer numbers of Vinnish tank hulls available gave these artillery pieces considerably enhanced mobility and survivability that helped narrow the gap even further as the war dragged on. Despite these enhancements, however, the Federation never truly reached rocket artillery parity with either the Empire or the Diarchy. Limited numbers of multiple rocket launcher systems were mounted on tanks and a variety of lighter cars, and saw some success in their missions, but the Federation continued its emphasis on more traditional tube artillery until the end of the Great War.
