Standard disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect, nor any other content that you recognise. Some characters and systems are original creations. I am receiving no money for my work.

Zodiac System – Zodiac Group

2112.09.28

Admiral Macen Arterius stood in the banner bridge of his dreadnought, the Hierarchy War Ship Enforcer, watching his fleet transit the relay in parade formation. His mood had deteriorated even further since the debriefing of Captain Sidonis.

As the fleet had been gathering the smugglers had tried to disable it with a cyberweapon, broadcast from a small blockade runner. Thankfully his cyberwarfare officer had caught the completely unknown programming language and flagged it as a threat, preventing any damage, but when his ships moved in to search the vessel broadcasting it, the vessel had self-destructed in a nuclear fireball.

At this point he was forced to wonder if the smugglers were actively trying to see how many different Citadel laws they could break before he brought them to justice. The smugglers last, desperate, attempt to defeat Third Patrol Fleet was now being studied in isolation on one of his frigates, but the nuclear mine on the blockade runner, undoubtedly an attempt to destroy the any ships moving in to capture the smugglers, had enraged the fleet's crew.

It was because of these affronts to naval warfare that he had decided to transit the relay in parade formation. 72 cruisers and 24 frigates would remain behind to perform essential patrols and make it look like Third Patrol Fleet was still in its assigned cluster, simply performing training exercises out of sight.

The remainder of his fleet, consisting of his 2nd line dreadnought bannership, 408 cruisers and 78 frigates, were going to hunt these criminals down. Hopefully, the failure of their cyberweapon and the appearance of nearly 500 turian ships of war would show the smugglers that there was no escape and save him having to chase them all over the cluster. It was a forlorn hope, but it was nice to daydream about.

In reality, the relay transition of virtually an entire turian patrol fleet in parade formation would do little more than demoralise the smugglers, but it would be a huge morale boost to his own forces. Seeing their comrades transition in professional, neat, lines, the discipline and competence of the turian fleet on full display, would go a long way to rebuilding his crew's confidence in themselves. as well as sending their smuggler opponents the message that there was nowhere that they could run.

HWS Enforcer transited the relay at the head of the last third of the fleet as dictated by both turian battle doctrine and parade formation. Admiral Arterius braced himself for the deceleration as they exited the relay, but he was sent sprawling across the deck as Enforcer rocked more violently than any relay transition could cause.

"Admiral, we're under fire!"

The report from Damage Control electrified the banner bridge as Enforcer rocked again. The Admiral scrambled back to his feet as a circuit breaker overloaded near the door, showering the deck with sparks as the attached console went dark and the smell of burned electrics filled the room. The crewman manning the console raced to a backup one as Sensors finally reported.

"The whole fleet is under fire! Source is 180 degrees lateral by 45 degrees ventral. Our ships are accelerating and trying to come about to face them." Sensors called out finally clarifying the situation, even if their voice was tinged with horror at the fact that their opponents had an unobstructed shot at their sterns.

"It's taking too long to accelerate from a standing start and to make the turn, multiple ships reporting kinetic barrier failures, 17 ships confirmed destroyed or disabled." Comms reported bluntly. Getting a shot at a warship's stern was every commander's dream and the enemy forces firing on them were taking full advantage. The turian ships sluggishly tried to turn to face them, but their low starting speed was seriously hampering their manoeuvrability, and the enemy guns kept firing.

Enforcer rocked again and the sound of the engines at full burn cut out for a second, before coming back weaker. Several crewmembers glanced at Damage Control, wondering how bad the damage was.

"Severe damage to engine 4. Our cruiser escort is covering us from the smuggler ships' fire, but our speed and manoeuvrability are severely degraded Admiral." Damage Control reported, quickly rerouting repair teams to where they were needed most.

"Enemy numbers confirmed: 16 frigates, 48 cruisers and…8 dreadnoughts?" Tactical called up in shock.

"Confirm that!" The Admiral snapped, spinning to look at the tactical display himself.

"Clarification - warbook classifies those ships as dreadnoughts due to the size discrepancy with their cruisers, they're only 600m long. Shall I re-designate?" Tactical reported even as another cruiser exploded under enemy fire.

"Negative, keep dreadnought designation and prioritise them for return fire." Admiral Arterius replied, staring at the tactical plot in front of his podium in a moment of disbelief.

Sensors spoke up in relief as the tactical plot finally showed some good news for the turian fleet. "The first frigate and cruiser squadrons have completed their turns and are now returning fire with their main guns. Smuggler forces are maintaining formation and rate of fire."

"These are no smugglers." Admiral Arterius re-established control over the wave of reports. Pride filling his chest as his crew fell back on their training and dealt with the completely unexpected situation with utter professionalism. "Re-designate enemy warships as military opponents and inform all ships to expect them to act as such."

That caused the banner bridge to go silent, the only sounds were the roar of the remaining engines at full power. Comms finally broke the shocked silence and spoke up "Admiral, if they're not smugglers should we not open communications?"

"It is too late for that, crewman. We are in the middle of a battle; any changes will have to wait until we're no longer under fire. Launch all fighters and begin an attack run with all forces that have completed their turns. All remaining forces are to form up upon completing their own turns and prepare to follow the first wave in. Signal Banner Captain Kuril she's to fire with all available broadside guns as we turn, and to open fire with the main gun as soon as Enforcer has a firing solution."

"Yes Admiral, transmitting orders."

The deck reverberated under the Admiral's feet, thankfully not from incoming fire this time, bur rather as Enforcer's 32 fighters left her hangar deck to join the ones detaching from the docking points on each cruiser's hull. As they were docked externally, and so not protected by the armour of their motherships, unlaunched fighters were exceptionally vulnerable when a cruiser lost its barriers, meaning there had already been hundreds of losses. The nearly thousand surviving fighters joined up with the frigates and cruisers now firing on the enemy and swooped ahead in the standard attack run, using their micro-torpedoes to overheat the enemy's guardian arrays and leave them vulnerable to torpedoes from the fleet.

Admiral Arterius barely noticed. He was focused on the fleet he was facing, including the 8 'dreadnoughts' at its centre. This wasn't a smuggling group. It wasn't a mercenary group either, which left only one option for so many large ships of unknown design. He had encountered a new race and his actions had hidden them from the Citadel's diplomatic corps.

To make matters worse, under his orders, the Third Patrol Fleet had fired on and destroyed their scouting force, invaded their space, and had now, just to make sure there was no way left to salvage the situation, engaged one of their main fleets in open warfare. The shame in his gut burned hotter as he suddenly remembered the 'cyberweapon' with the completely unknown programming language that had been broadcast at his fleet. Far from a malicious attack, it now seemed likely that it had actually been some sort of first contact package, used as a last attempt to try and resolve Third Patrol Fleet's attacks peacefully.

He had responded by taking the whole fleet through the relay.

Looking back now, it seemed so obvious that the broadcast was a first contact package, the completely new programming language was a huge indicator. But as they taught in the academy, your mind will see what it wants to see. He and his crew thought they were dealing with smugglers, so their minds - and his own - had arrived at 'enemy cyberweapon' long before anyone had even considered 'first contact package'.

The hull rang as another shot from the enemy's main guns slammed into the rear armour, reminding him why turian battle doctrine demanded the deployment of self-propelled nova bombs through the relay first when conducting a trans relay assault. They were sent through first to destroy any enemy ambush forces, then the fleet transited the relay at high speed to throw off any surviving ambush forces firing solutions and give them the speed to turn quickly to face any survivors.

Snapping back to the present rather than the academy, he studied the tactical plot in greater detail. Regardless of anything else, he had a battle to win and turian lives to save right now. He could decide on a course of action out of this mess once the enemy forces had been forced to surrender or retreat. Hopefully, destroying them would not be necessary.

"Our fighters are approaching enemy fleet and preparing to attack, entering enemy guardian range in 20 seconds." Tactical reported. "Fleet units are continuing to fire on enemy vessels, multiple enemy vessels are taking damage."

With the first turian ships finally in a position to return fire, the barriers of the enemy ships began to light up as they came under fire themselves. Far weaker than those on turian ships they quickly failed, explosions rippling across the enemy fleet as shots finally managed to impact their armour. Nearly a thousand turian fighters flew at high speed towards the explosions, intending to deliver the killer blow. The enemy fleet shifted, the small frigates in the rear of their formation moving for the first time, charging forwards to meet the fighter attack.

"Enemy commander is deploying their frigate reserve to counter our fighter attack." Tactical reported grimly.

Admiral Arterius nodded in respect to his opponent as he acknowledged the report and studied the display. It seemed the enemy had no fighters of their own, but his opposite number must have deduced that the turian forces might have them and had held their own best anti-fighter platforms in reserve as a counter. It was a good move on the enemy Admiral's part, but it would only be a drop in the bucket against his own 900+ surviving fighters that were now charging straight towards the enemy fleet, waiting to unleash a wave of micro torpedoes that would tear apart their frigates, and overload the guardian arrays of their cruisers and dreadnoughts. Leaving them defenceless against the larger ship launched torpedoes from his vanguard.

"By the spirits! Casualties, multiple casualties! Fighters are taking heavy guardian fire." Tactical practically screamed in horror as friendly transponders winked off the tactical display at an astounding rate.

"I thought you said their targeting and guardian arrays were inferior to ours? How can they be doing this?" Sensors broke protocol and shouted the accusation at Tactical as the massacre continued. "Fighter force is down to below 700 fighters and dropping fast."

The enemy frigates were sending pulses of laser death into the swarming turian fighters, knocking dozens out of the stars. The fighters frantically manoeuvred, abandoning their attack run and throwing themselves into spirals and other evasive tactics, simply trying to survive. But wherever they turned it seemed there was an enemy guardian beam waiting for them.

"They are inferior! It's their targeting algorithms that aren't. They're predicting our fighters' every move, everything they try is countered before they've even started the manoeuvre! It's as if the enemy know every possible tactic fighters can perform, which is insane as they don't even have any! How do they know how fighters attack?"

The Admiral shuddered: perhaps they did. Just because they didn't have any fighters here, it didn't mean that they didn't have them. Given that his fighters continued to wink off the display at an appalling rate, they certainly knew how to use shipborne AA fire to deal with fighter attacks whether they had them or not.

"Fleetwide, launch torpedoes. If our fighters can't be more than targets, then let's make their sacrifice worthwhile." He gave the order dispassionately and watched as the tactical display registered multiple torpedo launches from all ships in range.

New stars appeared in the sky as the torpedoes engines lit up as they raced at the enemy fleet. The enemy frigates changed formation, spreading out and attempting to form a wide line to intercept the torpedoes before they could hit their capital ships, ignored for the first time the turian fighters re-engaged. Burning with hatred at the deaths of so many of their fellow pilots they dove at the enemy frigates, firing their micro-torpedoes as the enemy frigates fired up their engines and attempted to reposition, putting a chance at vengeance on the enemy forces over the chance to escape as the main fleets anti-ship torpedoes raced in.

"Multiple torpedo impacts, their guardian arrays couldn't take the torpedoes as well as the fighters. Several enemy ships destroyed, including three dreadnoughts and their entire frigate screen. Several more ships, including two dreadnoughts, are showing signs of major hull damage." Tactical sounded gleeful as the enemy fleet finally took serious damage.

"Their centre is exposed to direct fire, all ships are to focus fire on that location. Priority on the two damaged dreadnoughts, then focus on the last three. One of them has to be the enemy bannership." With the enemy centre exposed Admiral Arterius had spotted an opportunity to cut off the head of the snake while ripping the heart out of the enemy fleet's firepower at the same time. The turian fleet shifted its fire to follow its Admirals orders and take advantage of the sudden opportunity.

"Fighters are breaking off and returning to the fleet, what's left of them." Comms reported sadly.

The enemy fleet changed formation again as the turian fighters fled back to the safety of their fleet. With no surviving frigates and thus vulnerable to another torpedo/fighter combined attack, the enemy Admiral had made decision, resulting in the formation change. What that decision was, none of the turians were certain. But their confidence grew as more enemy ships, including one of the damaged dreadnoughts, exploded or fell out of formation. Every minute more turian guns joined the attack and the enemy forces barriers were already down across virtually their entire feet, shot after shot impacted their armour as their return fire, already badly degraded with the loss of four dreadnoughts, dwindled further.

"Enemy fleet is changing formation, the wings are pulling back but the centre is static, their formation shape is reversing."

"The last damaged dreadnought just went up, the fleet is focusing its fire on the three remaining dreadnoughts, they won't last long at this rate. Over half the fleet now has firing solutions."

"Enemy ships have ceased fire with their main guns and are reorienting, they're retreating Admiral. Continuing to receive fire from enemy broadside guns." Sensors reported, relieved that the battle, so much bloodier than they had expected, was finally coming to an end.

"We have a firing solution and Captain Kruil has chosen a surviving dreadnought, firing at maximum reload rate."

"Enemy are powering up engines."

"Enemy dreadnought destroyed! They're no match for Enforcer's main gun Admiral."

The explosion that engulphed one of the three remaining enemy dreadnoughts barely had time to dim before the enemy fleet finally leaped forward, accelerating to FTL and safety as wave after wave of turian rounds flew through the space where they had been only moments before.

"Enemy ships have jumped to FTL, they're gone sir."

There was a moment's tense pause as the Sensors tried to determine if it had been an in system tactical jump. "No sign of them exiting anywhere in this system, it looks like they have retreated to another location in this cluster sir."

The Admiral nodded, looking at the debris field from his own destroyed ships and those of the new race. "Secure from battle stations. Recover the fighters and start patrols around the fleet, order our recovery ships to search for escape pods from the unknown ships as well. They are to recover them and provide medical care if they are able, but they must show caution. The occupants will be hostile. Signal our legion's troop ships to come through the relay send our shipborne troops to evaluate the disabled enemy vessels and select the most intact ones for study."

As the crew scrambled to carry out his orders Admiral Arterius resisted the urge to claw the command podium in rage at the situation and looked directly at his comms officer. "Call the banner officers and General Sparatus to Enforcer. We need to decide where we go from here."

Theta System – Centauri Veil

2112.09.28

The banner officers of the Third Patrol Fleet were gathered in the briefing room aboard HWS Enforcer. The room as silent as they reviewed the data from the battle and the recovery operations that had been ongoing for the last few hours.

"Casualties?" Admiral Arterius asked softly, staring at the holomap of the system.

"The enemy commander seemed to focus their fire on our cruisers. With the fire coming from behind and below while our ships were almost stationary, we lost a lot of good turians. 38 cruisers were destroyed outright, or are total wrecks despite managing to hold together. A further 22 have varying degrees of damage overall, but all of them have major engine damage that's going to make moving under their own power difficult."

"Enforcer herself has taken moderate engine damage and is limited to three quarters of normal flank speed with badly compromised manoeuvrability. Fleetwide, we lost over three quarters of our fighters. Only 327 made it back." Adrien Nyx gave the report that he had been dreading.

Macen Arterius closed his eyes and thanked the spirits that it was not worse. Turian ships had heavier armour on their ventral surfaces than on their dorsal ones, they were designed to support the army during planetary invasions and as such had to be armoured against heavy fire from the surface. If the enemy commander had attacked from behind and above, rather than from behind and below…. He shook himself and returned to the present.

"Make a note: the enemy ships are most likely more vulnerable to attacks from below than to ones from above. They had no real information on our ships, so the manner they chose to attack is likely to have been the one that would have caused most damage to their own ships. They must have hoped that ours were similarly constructed. Enemy casualties?"

"All 16 frigates, 20 of 48 cruisers and 6 of 8 dreadnoughts were confirmed destroyed before they retreated. All surviving ships, including their dreadnoughts, were showing various signs of damage and so are believed to be at best only partially combat capable despite successfully retreating."

"That's half the enemy fleet destroyed outright, with the remaining ships damaged in some way." Solona Kandros's voice didn't hold any enthusiasm. Third Patrol Fleet had been caught napping and had suffered the cost. An enemy with a serious technological, numerical, and firepower disadvantage had inflicted far more damage than should have been possible for them. Destroying or damaging 12% of the fleet despite being outnumbered approximately 7:1.

"We've recovered the wrecked enemy ships." Nyreen Kuril spoke up. "Their dreadnoughts and frigates were pounded to scrap, but we have managed to find 2 cruisers in very good condition - relatively speaking - and 3 more that are intact enough for us to conduct live fire exercises on. We should be able to get valuable data on how they stand up to our weapons in more varied circumstances once the life fire tests can begin."

"I've called together all the science officers from across the fleet and put them to work investigating the most intact cruiser, the second one has been given to our shipborne troops to practice boarding actions on. We also recovered 384 escape pods from the enemy vessels. I have assigned the prisoners to the scientists to see what they can tell us about their biology and social structures. I've also called the frigate that was analysing their first contact package through the relay to help."

The room lapsed into silence, none of the officer's present wanted to address the last item, the one that they had to discuss but were wishing that would just go away.

The doors to the briefing room opened and General Vetra Sparatus, commanding officer of the 600,000 strong turian army legion assigned to the Third Patrol Fleet, strode confidently into the tense silence of the room. "Well, you buggered this up didn't you Arterius!"

The looks she received from the naval officers would have melted the hull had they been able to, but General Sparatus was unaffected.

The turian military, indeed the whole of turian society, was shaped by the lack of garden worlds that had a dextro based environment. The turian army and navy were the largest in the galaxy primarily so that they could protect the precious few garden worlds that provided the bulk of the foodstuffs for the entire turian species. As the protection of these planets were so important, the army had risen to become the turian senior service and its generals dominated Palaven Command.

The vulnerability of their food supply had also led to the development of the turian strategy of bringing as much firepower as possible to bear on an enemy as quickly as possible. Trying to overwhelm them and remove their ability to fight before they could take advantage of this weakness, or the other glaring turian weakness's. The lack of economic reserves and the lack of strategic intelligence.

General Sparatus could have relied on the support of her fellow generals in Palaven Command in any event. Now? Well, Third Patrol Fleet's officers would be spectacularly lucky if the admirals in Palaven Command didn't join the generals in calling for their heads.

"Are you seriously telling me that none of you have addressed the thresher maw in the colony?" The General managed to dominate the meeting despite standing on the floor of the briefing room, lower than all of the naval officers who were both on elevated platforms and in their own territory. It was an indicator of how badly they knew that they had screwed up.

"So." The General began pacing. "Under your command Admiral, Third Patrol Fleet has engaged and destroyed unknown vessels, believing them to be smugglers. You then ignored an attempt at peaceful communication, believing it to be a cyberweapon employed by the previously mentioned smugglers, before…. Liberally…. interpreting your orders to allow you to send virtually the entire fleet through the relay. Whereupon you ended up engaging a whole fleet of unknown vessels in combat, let them get the best of you, and have embroiled the Hierarchy and possibly the entire Citadel in a war with a completely unknown alien species. All because at each stage you wanted to fix the mistakes that lead to the previous event before anyone found out about it."

"Yes." Macen ground out, longing for the point in this fiasco when the worst that his fleet had done was allowed presumed smugglers to operate in its patrol area. How minor a failure such as that seemed at this point. His officers stared at the ground, shamefaced.

"Well then. It's no use complaining how the varren escaped when it's three fields away, what we need to do now is decide how we're going to fix this massive cluster fuck." Vetra Sparatus changed the hologram so it highlighted 6 positions throughout the system. The irony of announcing she was going to do the exact same thing she had just berated Macen Arterius for doing was apparently lost on her.

"This new race has lost a scouting group, had their attempts at peaceful communications refused, and had an alien fleet come through its relay and force one of their own fleets into retreat. They're going to be furious, and even if they accepted negotiation at this point, they would demand things that we cannot give without humiliating the entire Hierarchy. Now, this doesn't look like their homeworld, there're nowhere near enough aliens, nor enough industry for that to be the case. But the fact that they designated eight dreadnoughts to defend it says to me that this is one of only one or two garden wolrds in their possession, and that their homeworld must be close by. Perhaps even in this cluster."

The other occupants now stared at the map intently as a plan to extricate all of them from this mess with as much of their tattered dignity as they could save at this point began to materialise.

"Our solution is simple; we will invade and capture all of their worlds in this system. Loosing such a major colony so close to their homeworld should shock them into coming to the negotiating table. From there we will be able to negotiate from a position of strength and produce a peace that allows us to save as much face as possible without poisoning them against the Citadel. Then, when we have salvaged as much as we can from this debacle, we will inform the Citadel and face judgement for our actions." The pointed look that she shot at the Admiral left no one in any doubt as to who General Sparatus thought would be absorbing the majority of that judgement.

"What do you need from us General?" The exhaustion in Macen's voice shone through, letting everyone know that his acquiescence was more than that of a naval officer recognising that their primary duty was to support the army. It was a recognition that Vetra Sparatus and her plan was the only chance that this situation had of ending in anything even remotely resembling victory.

"These four station colonies, two space stations, one asteroid and one zero atmosphere planet. I'll leave it to you and your ship's troops to capture them, you can handle that, right?"

Superior Captain Kandros nodded when the Admiral didn't respond.

"I'll also need you to cover 100,000 of my men as they land on this large moon that houses their dome colony. I'll expect the rest of the fleet to cover my invasion of the main garden world and patrol the system. I don't need any surprises while I am beating these primitives into submission. Is that within your capabilities, Admiral?"

Admiral Macen Arterius couldn't shake the feeling of dread as he stared as the beautiful blue and green planet highlighted in the holomap. At every stage of this catastrophe, every action he had taken to try and rectify the situation had only made things worse. Now he feared that General Sparatus was making the same mistake, but he had received his orders and like any good turian he would follow them. Whether he thought that they were right or not. "Yes General, we'll have total control of the system and orbital supremacy over all worlds by the time your first troopship hits the atmosphere."

The confidence radiated off General Sparatus as she looked at the same blue-green orb that the Admiral had. "Good. Now, we have an invasion to win. let's go and humble these primitives and force them to the negotiating table. Given the tech level of their warships, it should be a simple affair."

Commands streamed from the bannership as the fleet separated itself into squadrons and the Leigon troopships prepared for landing. In a last, desperate, attempt to save the Hierarchy from total humiliation, Third Patrol Fleet was going to roll the dice. One, final, time.

Codex Entry: Humans – The Use of Council Race Military Doctrines in Human History

(Citadel Codex, First Human SPECTRE Collector's Edition, 2183)

(Special credit to researcher Soberan 123 – Source: Ralfast Wordpress)

The wars between the human nation states on Earth have affected not only their naval military doctrine, but also their land and strategic doctrine as well. Humans have in fact, at different points throughout their history, used the military doctrines of all the Council races in a variety of their wars.

The salarian military doctrine is one of a reliance on spies, sabotage, advanced technology. Manipulating other states into fighting their enemies, while deploying their own relatively weak army and navy to maximum effect in pre-emptive strikes. This was a hallmark of the English nation state under Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England 1588-1603 CE.

This doctrine successfully helped defend the small island nation state against the largest and most powerful nation state on Earth at the time, the Spanish Empire. It also successfully planted the seeds of the growth that would allow England's successor state, Great Britain, to seize that title in 1815. Britain would hold it undisputedly until 1918, and then jointly with the USA until 1944 CE.

The asari military doctrine is one of hit and run attacks, constantly denying the enemy the chance to make use of captured territory, while forcing up the political cost of the war with the prestige loss and casualties from each raid. Occupying forces have no choice but to spread themselves thinly, guarding everything as heavily as they can. Then, the asari destroy those guard units, draining the strength of the enemy forces with each loss, until they are compelled to make one of three unpalatable choices. Withdraw completely, bleed to death by a thousand cuts, or try to continue to occupy asari territory as they are reduced, squad by squad, to a size where they can be destroyed by the asari in a traditional battle.

This doctrine has been used by many small Earth nation states to defeat larger ones. Specific examples include first and second Anglo-Afghan wars (Emirate of Afghanistan vs British Empire 1839-1842 and 1878-1880 CE) the Soviet-Afghan war (Emirate of Afghanistan vs Soviet Union 1979-1989) the first Indochina war (Viet Minh vs French Empire 1946-1954) and the Vietnam war (Viet Cong vs United States 1955-1975 CE).

In each case, a nation state that was one of the weakest on Earth forced a superpower nation state to withdraw its armies and fail in its strategic objectives. Both maintaining their independence and causing the attacking superpower a massive loss of prestige, equipment, money, and manpower.

The turian military doctrine of shock, overwhelming firepower, and fast manoeuvre is known to the humans historically 'blitzkrieg' or its modern term of 'mobile warfare'. The most famous use of this tactic was by the nation state of Nazi Germany in the Second World War (1937-1945 CE: Eastern Theatres / 1939-1945 CE: Western Theatres).

Though this nation state was (thankfully) ultimately unsuccessful, the turian doctrine allowed it to defeat in only 4 weeks the regional power of Poland. Following that victory, in the offensive next spring it took only 6 weeks for it to defeat the combined armies of the two superpower nation states, Britain and France. These 'Allied' forces had both superior types and numbers of artillery, armour, and aircraft, equivalent troop numbers, and the benefit of fixed fortifications. German casualties were 163,676 dead and wounded, Allied casualties were 2,260,000 dead, wounded and taken prisoner.

The Germans would meet with similar success in their use of turian military doctrine against the Soviet Union in their spring 1941 CE attack. However, the vast endurance capacity of the Soviet Union, and the constant supplies of military hardware from Britain and the USA, allowed them to survive and push back. Eventually destroying Nazi Germany with the armies of the other 'Allied' nations. It was this failure of mobile warfare on the defence that forced Alliance planners to re-evaluate human military doctrine upon setting up the Systems Alliance army.

Codex Entry: Humans – Human Military Doctrine (Defence), The Endurance Strategy

(Citadel Codex, First Human SPECTRE Collector's Edition, 2183)

In a decision that was very controversial amongst their own people, the Alliance military planners decided to engage in a strategy of defence in depth of all vital defensive locations, rather than a large mobile army which what was much of the human population considered to be 'plain common sense' and the proper way to defend human territory. The Alliance planners decided on this 'endurance strategy' due to the outcome of the last three major wars fought by humanity.

In the Napoleonic Wars the nominal aggressor nation state was the French Empire. Despite multiple military victories, conquests, and peace treaties, the French Empire was defeated due to its main opponents, Britain and Russia, refusing to accept defeat. Britain's naval blockade and repeated invasions of French occupied territory was combined with Russian willingness to sacrifice territory and lives in huge quantities to overstretch the French supply lines and drown their armies in blood. Together, they outlasted the French Empire's ability to continue the war. Despite its lightning start, the Napoleonic Wars became wars of attrition, and those who could endure economic, territorial, military, and civilian losses for the longest won.

The First World War, despite its lightning start, saw the attackers eventually resort to slow, grinding attacks. Such methods have been totally rejected by Alliance planners for the invasions of other worlds. However, like the Napoleonic Wars before it, World War One again became a war of attrition. Russia could not endure the economic or military losses for as long as Germany, allowing Imperial Germany to win the war in the east due to the economic collapse of the Russian Empire causing widespread revolution and the mutiny of its army.

The Central Powers as a whole however, could not endure longer than the entire Triple Entente alliance, especially with the addition of Italy and the USA to the alliance as the war progressed. Despite the immense physical damage of the war being borne by their enemies as, it was fought almost entirely on the Triple Entente's territory, despite the defeat of 1/3rd of the original alliance and the collapse of an entire Entente front with the defeat of Russia, the Triple Entente were able to sustain the economic, military and civilian losses longer, even after losing vast swathes of territory to the Central Powers. This endurance prolonged the war beyond the ability of the German population and economy to fight it, Germany followed Russia into revolution and the Central Powers collapsed.

In the Second World War, the blitzkrieg of the Germans and the lightning surprise attacks of the Japanese had the Allies reeling and staring down almost certain defeat. However, the ability of the Allied nations, especially China, Britain, and Russia, to endure immense economic, resource, manpower and territorial losses and continue to fight, even when all hope of victory seemed lost, ensured total defeat for the Axis powers.

The mighty blitzkrieg armies were unable to deal with the replacement of every division or ship they destroyed with two more. Overwhelmed, they lost air superiority and with it their ability to assemble and manoeuvre without coming under vicious air attack. Unable to move without constantly taking casualties, eventually they collapsed and lost the war. It was this key vulnerability of the blitzkrieg style of warfare that sealed its fate on the defensive in the human planners' minds. If the enemy army has landed on a human planet, then the alien forces have at least orbital superiority, if not orbital supremacy, and the defending human armies would be subject to constant air and orbital attack. A vulnerability that has proved fatal to every nation state that has attempted to use blitzkrieg defensively since it was first invented.

These wars formed the basis of the human military doctrine, if the navy is defeated then they will use the defence in depth to defend their worlds and bleed the attacking force dry. Then, when their enemy is exhausted, they will go on the offensive with mobile warfare (the modern human term for blitzkrieg). Smashing enemy worlds with speed, firepower and manoeuvre as the turians do. If the enemy manages to withstand their ground attacks, then the humans deploy the oldest and most used weapon in their arsenal. The burning of all enemy food sources and the total blockade of enemy positions both military and civilian. It is known to humans simply as 'siege warfare' and it is the ultimate test of endurance.

Timeline Changes So Far

First colony on mars: 27 years earlier than canon

Discovery of Prothean ruins: 64 years earlier than canon

Founding of the Systems Alliance (council of nations version): 63 years earlier than canon

The First Contact War: 45 years earlier than canon