GATE: the clash of the titans V2

by Qun Nguyn1

Mostly AUs. A Gate has opened in Tokyo by a Roman-esque Empire, familiar scenario with familiar faces but the people marched through the Gate is from a vastly more powerful magic world. The stage is set. Earth Alliance vs The Holy Empire. Science vs Magic. The power of the thousand sun vs The Beast of the Apocalypse. Let the clash of Titans begin. Let the worlds have War.

7. Chapter 7: Ultron

Chapter 7: Ultron (Filler)

Project Ultron is basically Skynet done right. No time travel bullshit or John Connor of course.

The Greater Russian Union Republic: The Greater Russian Union, also known as the pan-Russian Republic or the triune Russian Republic is a new nation that was created when Russia reabsorbed Ukraine, Belarus and the Central Asia nations in the mist of chaos following the Rumbling in 2017. The head of state is the Supreme Chancellor. The man currently holding that position is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. It more like a modern day Russian Empire than the Soviet Union.

Indochina Confederation is one of the new nations created following the Rumbling. It was formed in 2021 after an influx of refugees from China overflowed to Indochina countries because of the Rumbling and Covid-17. In order to deal with the unstable situation in the region the governments of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam signed the unification treaty and the formation of Indochina Confederation. It is a fiscal-military state with the Secretary General of the Armed Forces as the head of state.

Federal Republic of China (Chinese: 中華聯邦共和國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Liánbāng Gònghéguó) is a federal republic encompassing mainland China, Macau, and Hong Kong. This "Third Republic" (following on from the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China) is created after the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party in the aftermath of the Rumbling and the explosion of Covid17 Pandemic. It is a federation with the characteristics of a confederation. Federal Republic of China consists of two kinds of republics: 'loose republics' such as Hong Kong, Macao, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang: and 'close republics' consisting the rest of China. They are differ from the existing federal countries in their defence, taxation and legal systems. The new flag for a Federal Republic of China, identical to the Five Races Under One Union flag as used as a national flag from the inception of the First Republic in 1912 until the demise of the warlord government in 1928.

The United Republic of Europia also referred to as the E.U., Europia United, or simply Europia, is a new confederation created following the aftermath of the Rumbling. It was formed in 2024 as an evolution from the European Union. The capital of Europia United is Paris. It is a confederation style republic with representatives from each country in the council of forty, also known as the Central Hemicycle. The new superpower comprises most of Europe except for the UK, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus whose created a union of the own, the Greater Russian Union and the New Commonwealth, an economic union between Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, East Africa and the United Kingdom. Europia United was essentially a dream for quite a long time in which multiple speeches were given over the years with greater rising of this eventuality of a Unified Europe.

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March 2, 2030, United Earth Alliance Defense Forces General Assembly Chamber, New York

-We have heard the last speaker in explanations of what before the vote before proceeding to take a decision on Resolution ARES/ES-11/2. I wish to address the question concern in the majority required for the adaption of the Resolution in light of article 18 paragraph 2 and 3 of the Charter of the UEADF. Is there any objection to taking action on Resolution ARES/ES-11/2 by a two-thirds majority of the membership?

-I see no objection.

-The two-thirds majority of members present and voting is therefore required for the adoption of Resolution ARES/ES-11/2.

-The General Assembly will now take a decision on Resolution ARES/ES-11/2; Entitled: Integrating ULTRON into the UEADF's strategic defense system.

-For your information, Resolution has closed for e-sponsorship. I now give the floor to the Representative of the Secretariat

-Mr President, I should like to announce that since the submission of the resolution and in addition to delegations listed on the l document. The following countries have also become the co-sponsors of ARES/ES-11/2; Barbados and Thailand. If any other country wish to co-sponsor ARES/ES-11/2, please signify by pressing the microphone button now.

-There is nothing further, Mr President.

-I thanks the Representative of the Secretariat. A recorded vote has been requested. We shall now begin the voting process.

-Those in favor of draft resolution ARES/ES-11/2 please signify. Those against, abstentions.

-The General Assembly is now voting on resolution ARES/ES-11/2; Entitled: Integrating ULTRON into the UEADF's strategic defense system.

-Will all delegations confirm that their votes are accurately reflected on the screen.

-The voting has been completed. Please lock the machine.

-The result of the vote is as follows: in favor 141, against 5, abstentions 35

-UEADF's Resolution ARES/ES-11/2 is adopted.

---

ULTRON

Recent breakthroughs in advanced microchip design and computer processing power were the impetus that led to America's first military grade neural net based artificial intelligence, ULTRON. Almost overnight, American computer and electronics technology had taken a leap four generations into the future and the world wondered how that could be possible. The West wasn't telling and the concern grew among its enemies and to a much lesser degree its own allies. In the space of three years, from early 2005 to late 2008, America had started developing and deploying cutting edge electronics which were far smaller and far more powerful than anything its allies (or enemies) had at their disposal. Intelligence forces around the world were at a loss as to where the Americans had made the breakthrough that gave them an edge several generations ahead of the rest of the world. Rumors and speculations abounded, some of which even hinted at America having access to salvaged XT technology. Whatever it was that the Americans had discovered, it had the rest of the world surprised, perplexed and ... above all, wary.

The key focus of the accelerated American research and development was on compact nuclear power sources, new physical materials, stronger alloys, a thorough knowledge of electromagnetic field theory (with practical applications) and super advanced control systems based around a heretofore unknown architecture of microprocessor. Original Opposing Forces (OPFOR) intelligence estimates gave the Americans an almost overnight lead in microprocessor technology equivalent to at least three, possibly four generations and an equal number of decades ahead of the rest of the world. New weapon systems appeared in the American arsenal ... drones, robots, and other automated systems which functioned at levels previously undreamed of. Smart weapon systems evolved into brilliant weapon systems. Genius class weapon systems followed soon after that. Stealth engineering advanced as well both in aerospace applications as well as wet navy and traditional ground forces, right down to the individual soldier level. Active as well as passive thermoptic camouflage was introduced in 2010 to a variety of force deployments with great effect.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of the new microprocessor architecture was its inherent ability to network, on instant demand, with any other similar microprocessor family based system. The code that ran the microprocessor was modular, with different program modules able to be written for different hardware and the seamless integration of all parts under one operating system was a technological breakthrough which clearly gave the Americans a decisive advantage in their order of battle. During the years from 2009 to 2015, America would both re-evaluate its military forces as well as reorder them. Older hardware would be scrapped and recycled in order to partially pay for unit upgrades. The high efficiency of the new military hardware allowed greater effects to be achieved with less personnel. Combat groups became heavily mechanized and computerized, integrated and networked. Early combat trials of the newly augmented units indicated that while multiple units could coexist and operate in mutual support of one another, it was clear that a centralized controlling system was required in order to gain optimum performance from American armed forces.

America needed a combat nexus, a focal point that would search for, detect, evaluate, and respond to any threat to national security or national territories. The new combat systems proved that they could be networked together but what was needed was a centralized node that could coordinate and direct all combat assets. The project was researched under the codename of Quiet Song. Project Quiet Song was officially classified as "40 levels above Top Secret" by those who even knew it existed. Quiet Song was perhaps the most ambitious project yet based on the new technology, true artificial intelligence. Quiet Song would involve the research and development of the world's first truly artificial intelligence, a digital form of life which would be networked to all of America's automated weapon systems and which would have command over the equipping, deployment and usage of both tactical and strategic assets. Quiet Song was the nexus that would unite all of the networked weapon systems in one cohesive element.

The lessons learned during the R&D of Project Quiet Song eventually led to the production of the end product of Quiet Song; Project ULTRON.

The ULTRON project was constructed in the mid 2010's and would interface and coordinate all of America's strategic arsenal into one cohesive command structure. The ULTRON project was located well below the surface of Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado; the original home of the North American Defense (NORAD) Command. Built upon existing structures, ULTRON itself would take up more space than all the previous generations of defense hardware, requiring new tunneling and excavating of the mountain complex; a task which began in secret in 2009, a predecessor task to the ULTRON project which was even then coming to light under careful scrutiny by certain sources. ULTRON. A buzzword in senate appropriations meetings, an ugly word full of high costs and long contracts with more contractors than any other project in American government history. ULTRON, a project that would make the Apollo moon landing look like a lemonade stand in comparison to total expenditures and manpower committed.

ULTRON was also another word that made senators and politicians cringe: ULTRON was necessary.

Necessary to national defense. Necessary to the continued growth of the defense industry. Necessary to preserve the American way of life and to defend mom, apple pie and baseball. ULTRON was necessary and, if any of the initial contract bids were to be taken with any amount of truth, ULTRON was going to be wildly profitable for those who would be hired to build it. That meant a lot of work for major corporations and companies in the jurisdiction of several politicians who were openly balking at the "necessary" aspect of the project. It has been said that money is the root of all evil, but money also speaks a language all its own, with a voice that is louder than any other voice in the world. Political pressure, albeit clandestine in nature, from key lobbyists from big contractors and defense industry companies soon brought the most defiant politician around, often by lining his or her pockets with gratuity and luxury, acts which did not always go undetected or unpunished in the public eye.

For all of its early birth pains, ULTRON was necessary. ULTRON would integrate with and ultimately supersede all NORAD authority and administration. The project took five and a half years to complete (2011 to 2017), displaced over four and a half billion tons of rock hewn from the inner mountain, included over a billion miles of fiber optic cable, and had an expenditure of almost nine hundred billion dollars (which was only forty percent over initial budget, cost overruns included). A full time staff of six hundred and eighty-five personnel were on hand to monitor and guide ULTRON once it came online and to handle the various and sundry aspects that the artificial intelligence could not. ULTRON's integral components were designed to be shielded by several hundred feet of solid natural rock at the heart of the mountain, its central processing core rested on a hydraulically stabilized mount which could withstand the seismic shock and pressure of a seventy-five megaton direct hit against the mountain surface or a ten point earthquake with ULTRON at the epicenter.

ULTRON is "The world's most powerful supercomputer". His "brain" was a 3 million yottahertz-equivalent array of quantum processors with 0.76 zottabytes of RAM spread across millions of units for short-term memory. The primary hardware was stored in a 2.9 million cc container but the intelligence itself was sustained by the interconnection of 19,000 trillion programs running together, each simulating one neuron. ULTRON 's purpose was to push the limits of artificial intelligence and advise NATO's military high command in strategic calculations in the same capacity as human military advisers.

Backup and redundant systems were each constructed in triplicate, running in non-parallel fashion to prevent multiple systems from being lost to a single first strike or follow up strikes. Hits to one system would not affect the backup systems since those were not routed through the same areas as the primary systems. ULTRON was hardened and shielded against all forms of radiation and its next generation fiber optic processing made it immune to the threat of EMP. The central processing core was self healing, with multiple logic fortresses and data survival caches. The entire system could suffer up to 90% operating capacity loss through software failure and up to 70% hardware failure and still recover to a high degree of functionality in a very short time and full recovery in a matter of days. Satellite links allowed ULTRON to upload its data to orbital assets, thereby offering terrestrial and near orbit recovery capacity in the event of catastrophic system failure or damage from attack.

Twelve General Electric Model 12AA 500 megawatt throughput nuclear fusion reactors (total power production rated at 6 gigawatt) were also constructed deep underground (in hollowed out caverns which were artificially reinforced and component armored) to keep ULTRON supplied with enough power to operate as well as to provide energy for the newly installed ground and internal defense grids which protected the computer as well as the complex itself. A vast underground natural spring was tapped into by the Army Corps of Engineers to provide not only the raw material for fuel and the cooling needed for the hydrogen distillery plant as well as the reactors, but also to provide the base with a supply of fresh water that would be unaffected by any conceivable nuclear exchange. With the 12 General Electric nuclear fusion reactors online, power was not a concern, even given ULTRON's planned upgrades and the continuation of the development of the installation. The power systems were modular and designed for easy expansion up to 100 gigawatts output as needs required.

ULTRON had been built with a sense of materials and resource conservation applied to its overall programming on both the tactical as well as strategic levels, including power saving subroutines and the ability to withdraw its resources and power to lower management levels when not needed. ULTRON was a light sleeping guardian, able to awaken and come online instantly, to react quickly to any perceived threat. It was a miser, using the bare minimum assets required to do the job right the first time, conserving its assets and using them in the most efficient manner possible. This was the first hint that the computer had been built to think long term, to think proactively rather than reactively. ULTRON was intended to play a global game of political power, and to stay one step ahead of America's enemies, to counter their moves before they even made them, and to always stand vigilant in defense of not only the mainland, but America's allies as well. To that end, ULTRON was designed and prepared to integrate fluidly and flawlessly with attendant slave super processor arrays in friendly NATO countries. ULTRON could extend itself, casting an image of its awareness, into these foreign arrays to coordinate NATO defense not only locally, but regionally and even globally. ULTRON could partition itself as needed, subdividing its processing power as required, multi-tasking and multi-syncing.

ULTRON's integral design had been one of componentized symmetry. ULTRON was infinitely upgradeable, and was designed to last well into the 22nd century, and perhaps the 23rd century as well. Hopefuls on the side of peace prayed that ULTRON would never be required to be active that long, but contractors were happy. Their contracts were based on decades of dedicated service, a nearly endless list of parts, and the sums were quite lucrative.

A host of semi-autonomous and fully autonomous robots were integrated into the system to help service and maintain not only ULTRON but the vast complex which it was housed within. Some critical operational areas of ULTRON were accessible only via dedicated RCSMRUs (Remotely Controlled Service Maintenance Repair Units). These simple automations handled routine software and hardware checks, replaced failed equipment as required, and carried out physical plant maintenance and janitorial duties within the vast complex, freeing up the staff of humans to handle and look after the more important tasks of administering the facility. The RCSMRUs were also, to a large degree, self sufficient able to repair their own kind with a vast array of service parts and work stations.

Parts of ULTRON were physically off limits to humans simply because of the exotic gasses and temperatures required to keep such a massive defense project operating efficiently. Most of the newly constructed underground complex at Cheyenne Mountain was controlled directly by either ULTRON or one of its eight dedicated mainframe real-time tactical subprocessors, everything from lights and climate control to security door locks, HELICS, FACIDS, and other physical needs were handled by sub-arrays, sometimes by virtual, self contained operating systems that were 'cloned' off as required from the main presence. The entire complex, every room, every corridor, contained ULTRON's ears and eyes and it could judge facial movement to intone body language as well as read lips and scan for temperature variances which might indicate truth or lie. Privacy was a polite myth inside the complex that housed ULTRON and not even its creators knew to what extents it could permeate their lives or spy on them, so invasive and intrusive was ULTRON that it could not be hidden from anywhere within the complex. ULTRON could, due to its advanced design, create multiple images of itself, all under its control, in a hive-like mentality. What one image knew, all knew. ULTRON was everywhere it needed or wanted to be, from the smallest maintenance and supply dumbots to the core command system of one of America's latest hypersonic interceptor UAAVs.

The interfaced Command, Communication, and Control (C3) network spread out from Cheyenne mountain like a vast spider web, a physical web underground and a virtual web through the aerospace sectors. Fiber optic, high speed parallel communication trunks, signal encrypters, speed boosters, and vast arrays of digital transceivers made up the nervous system of what was to become the backbone of America's strategic nuclear arsenal, connected to the brain that would control it all: ULTRON. The ground network was reinforced by advanced transmission and signal boosting / encryption / decryption stations located at specific points along the nodes, along with satellite transceivers to send and receive information from around the world, all provided by a huge swarm of tactical ELINT electronic intelligence gathering satellites that had gone up into orbit aboard the SpaceX rocket during 2006 to 2016. ULTRON would see all, know all, and control all, placing the decision of the operation of the nuclear arsenal into the hands of an unfailing machine rather than in the hands of temperamental military officials and untrustworthy politicians. ULTRON was a new keeper of the tools of war. It would be impartial. It couldn't be bought or swayed by silver tongued arguments. It didn't deal in feelings, only cold logic and hard numbers.

The vast defense network interfaced with each strategic military installation, in turn connecting to another defense installation in the node, spreading out until nearly everything in the American strategic arsenal led back to Cheyenne Mountain. Automation was the key to America's bid for international political and military power in the 21st century. Riding a wave to recently developed super high technology, developed and introduced by the Cyberdyne Corporation, America sought to automate its national and territorial defenses as well as major components of its standing armed forces. Automated and remote controlled military vehicles were already being field tested and put into limited production to supplement human soldiers in the ranks. Robots, both autonomous and semi-autonomous were being readied to be integrated into the military table of operative units. A brace of new, unmanned stealth aircraft, including tactical and strategic level bombers, ground attack and air superiority fighters, and hypersonic near-space / low orbit capable interceptors appeared in the Strategic Air Command (SAC) inventory, all controlled from the ULTRON command, and all operating with perfect operational records due to their advanced neural net processor arrays, hardware that was decades, maybe generations ahead of Russia and China who regarded America's buildup with envious and wary stances. The bureaucrats were happy, the local politicians were happy, the contractors were happy, and the generals were happy.

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Cabinet Office, The White House, Washington D.C.

"The problem is the new air-defense military budget is breaking us. It's breaking the whole world. Economically, we've become a basket case. The question is, what do we do about it?"

President Dirrel B Johnson looked around at the assembled cabinet hoping that an answer would appear but his hopes weren't high. For two years, he had been trying to apply sound business practices within the US Government. In some areas, he had succeeded. In others, primarily defense, he had not. Then again, the curriculum of a university degree in economics had never envisaged a situation where Earth effectively waged war against an alien world. The assumption had always been that it sort of worked the other way around.

The members of the Cabinet looked at each other defensively. The problem wasn't just that the gigantic expenditure on the defense forces appeared to be wrecking the economy, it was that there was intense public opposition worldwide to reducing the defensive capabilities of the world's armed forces.

Everybody in the room remembered how President Donald Trump had his landslide re-election victory in 2020 thanks to his Crusade against Falmart speech (He had a 3 hours rambling about how the Falmart sky would be darken by American aircraft and its land shall crumble under American tanks) and how President Jim Mattis had been unceremoniously bundled out of office in 2028 when he had tried to make cuts in the defense force structure.

It hadn't helped him that he had been right in his economic assessment of the damage being wrought on the economy and on society in general by a ten trillion dollar defense budget and the massive standing army it supported. Or that every country in the world had similar problems. The still-smoking fields of lava where Honolulu city and Skamania County, had once stood were a more than eloquent rebuttal to any argument about the size of the defense budget.

The US electorate in 2024 had followed the example of their predecessors after the Second World War; they had turned to their military commanders for leadership. General Jim Mattis had first been selected as the Democratic Party leader and had then won the 2024 election by a tight margin. Known derisively as "Mad Dog Mattis" he had failed dismally to provide the expected leadership and his uninspiring performance had opened the way for Dirrel B Johnson. The electorate had made a surprisingly sophisticated judgment that the security problems the world faced were not just military but economic and they needed a proven businessman to solve them.

Dirrel B Johnson had brought a business outlook to the Cabinet. Every member of Dirrel B Johnson's cabinet knew that he had been selected to perform a given job and that if they failed to achieve that objective, they would be summarily dismissed. If they succeeded in achieving the set objective, they would be moved somewhere else and replaced by somebody with a different skill-set intended to achieve a different objective. Retired General David Petraeus had been appointed Secretary of Defense with the objective of providing the same level of defense and security at lower cost.

"Mr. President, the problem isn't just the defense budget. It's that our whole economic structure is based around supporting our present forces and the war. If we cut back significantly on procurement, we will have a major recession on our hands. The good news is that we are reaching the end of the Air-defense procurement bulge with the Iron Beam air defense system proved itself to be sufficient in intercepting A-6b missles. We can start winding back cautiously. There might be threats in the future when the equipment we procured since 2028 will need replacement but we can deal with that by some careful planning.

"In naval terms, we are reaching the desired force level of 160 nuclear-powered aircraft carrier battle groups next year. We would have done so this year but Enterprise was falling apart and we had to decommission her. At least, that saved us her excessive maintenance costs. She will be replaced by the USS Donald Trump. Their screening ships are also reaching the end of the planned production period so we have a chance to catch our breath where they are concerned. We can go back to building ten carriers every year."

"Where are the carriers deployed David?" Dirrel B Johnson asked the traditional question that somehow turned up at every cabinet meeting for the last twelve years.

"We have sixty at sea, sixty are in dock for maintenance, overhaul and refueling while forty are involved in training or in transit. We are adopting a phased maintenance system that will allow us to keep eighty rather than sixty carriers fully deployed at all times. The problem is that the bulk of our costs are personnel rather than material. The really big budget we will be facing is in the Army."

"Our field forces are concentrated in First Army Front. This currently has four American and one British Commonwealth Army Groups, each army group having five Field Army. Eighteen of our Field Armies have two armored corps, two mechanized infantry corps and an armored cavalry division. The other two field armies have three USMC corps each with enough amphibious lift to put one corps from each field army ashore wherever it is needed.

Anyway that number is not enough for future offensive, we have come up with a reorganization plan that will increase our combat capability without affecting our budget by integrating Ultron's automatic weapon system. What we are proposing is to increase the number of American Army Groups from four to six while reducing three divisions per Army Corps from full-strength to two third strength. Each division so reduced will have a single brigade at full strength and two brigades at cadre strength.

Fully automatic weapon systems will be integrated to replace the troops while maintaining the level of strength in each unit. Mr. President, this plan will significantly reduce personnel costs per units that represent more than two thirds of our defense budget and will allow us to increase the number of units per army without affecting our budget. We can also reduce procurement over a longer period of time."

"Air Force?"

"That's harder, Mr. President, but we are converting some of the ground attack groups to AFRES. Same logic, reduce personnel costs while maintaining their assets in good condition. We would resume development of the J-4 Phantom III after the first phase of the Air War ended, and the first examples are being delivered now. That means some of the older aircraft that are more expensive to maintain can be phased out. Boeing and Sukhoi are working to see if we can build a joint replacement for the Su-25s and the A-10s. If that works out, we can save a lot of money there."

"David, are any of the other components of the Human Expeditionary Army make an increase on active service units like this?" Mike Pompeo was deeply interested in the political balance of power at Global Security Council. The Global Security Council was the de-facto world government now, leaving national governments very much in second place so unnecessary misunderstanding should be avoid.

"The Greater Russian Second Army Front and Chinese Third Army Front are both in the process of doing so, for much the same reasons. The European Fourth Army Front, Indian Fifth Army Front, Asian Sixth Army Front, South American Seventh Army Front, African Eighth Army Front and Arab Union Ninth Army Front are considering to do so.

So, we're not out of line on this. We'll have more than 750 active divisions in Falmart by the end of 2030 so it's not as if we're undergunned or anything.

"Ammunition, fuel and munition stockpiles?" Dirrel B Johnson remembered the desperate days early in the Rocket Blitz when material was being salvaged from museums to keep the war effort rolling.

"We're 250 percent above normal stock levels, Mr. President. The way we burn ammunition, that's a good thing."

"Very good. David, why don't you and Holly join Laura and I down at Mar-a-Largo this winter President Trump invited ? We can get some golf in?"

"Thank you Mr. President, We would enjoy that." Around the table, the other Cabinet members quietly nodded to themselves. The invitation was a serious mark of approval.

"Very good. David, show me our procurement list in fiscal year 2030 again." Dirrel B Johnson wanted to review the list one final time.

"Here you are Mr. President."

Dirrel skimmed through the list of weapons and checked the price tag to make sure everything was ok.

"Looks good." Dirrel B Johnson said. "How about the process of upgrading Ultron defense system ?"

"Everything is on schedule, Mr. President. HELICS and FACIDS will soon be our golden standard for bases defense. We will soon integrate both of them into Alnus base defense system."

---

FACIDS

Fully Automated Counter Intrusion Defense System

One of the main concerns with trusting AMERICA's nuclear arsenal to a single super computer system, albeit a first generation advanced neural net processor array, was how to defend that same system from a variety of attack scenarios, both from within and from outside the massive installation perimeter. If ULTRON was going to defend AMERICA and its interests, the question became: what, in turn, was going to defend ULTRON? What could arguably be termed the most expensive military asset in America history (let alone the world) would also have to be extensively protected with a multi-layered series of defense grids designed to overlap and coordinate seamlessly with the operation of the system and its assets.

ULTRON was like nothing the world had seen before and represented a tremendous (if not wholly historical) investment on the part of America (and to a lesser extent the price her allies paid in blind faith for the ingenuity and capability of the American super defense system). ULTRON's total cost, including overruns and emergency budget appropriations, accounted to more than the GNP of several third world nations and perhaps even a lesser second world nation or two. Not every country liked the idea of having an American computer controlling not only the greatest superpower's automated weapons but also the largest tactical and strategic nuclear arsenal on the planet.

The fact that the SDI system had been a success and that America did have what Russia and China often decried as an "orbiting ring of death" around the planet also put many otherwise neutral and some allied countries ill at ease. America's newly developed orbital military presence caused tensions to grow, slowly at first but gaining strength over the years. There were talks of sanctions in the UN if America continued to build it's "Frankenstein monster."

Jealously was apparent from the start, even among allies who didn't like the idea that they would have less say in any American strategic decision making or that what limited voice they did have might be replaced by the cold calculations of a machine. American intelligence soon heard of plans being drawn up to defeat ULTRON, worst case scenarios, first strike missions and doomsday contingency plans.

The information that they received or intercepted scared the designers of ULTRON a whiter shade of pale. ULTRON was born of an age of extreme paranoia but the designers never fully realized that ULTRON was a big part of that paranoia, that it was ULTRON itself and its continuing construction that fueled the ever increasing unease around the world.

If ULTRON was impressive, it was going to take equally if not more impressive countermeasures to defeat it and those countermeasures were already being drawn up by those who viewed the West as anything but an ally. Russia began a crash research effort into its own version of ULTRON, code named "Rasputin" but early failures, many of which quickly became public knowledge, bogged the project down in a hopeless mire of mistake after mistake and made it an endless source for anti-Soviet political satirists everywhere. "Rasputin" would eventually be implemented as a system in the Russian weapons programs but it was merely an upgrade to their existing strategic strike capacity and no where near the ULTRON system in capacity or complexity.

Still, Russia was the most vocal opponent of the ULTRON system and the political saber rattling was the stuff of weekly headlines in all world newspapers. Russia, and to a somewhat lesser extent China, had the greatest fears and the most to lose if ULTRON became operational let alone if it became the success that its creators and designers were claiming that it would be when it was brought online.

Any country that had a military and might one day be involved in an armed conflict of any size with AMERICA had to certainly take ULTRON and its myriad of decision making capabilities into consideration when doing long range planning for such a contingency. ULTRON would change not only the way that wars were fought, on all scales, but also the way that wars were planned, from small police actions to full scale global conflicts.

ULTRON's destructive capacity would be unparalleled but so, too, would its capacity to gather intelligence on opposing forces, disseminate that intelligence to friendly units and coordinate friendly assets in a way that best used them against the threat. ULTRON was the closest thing to Mars, the god of war, that Man could produce, that the Western World could produce.

This knowledge also meant that ULTRON would have to be defended in a manner the likes of which no single piece of military hardware was ever protected before. Cheyenne Mountain had been one of the most secure military facilities in the world before ULTRON ... after the ULTRON project, it became the world's first super-fortress, completely automated and built to handle every contingency that its designers could think of.

Defending against different types of nuclear strikes (both tactical and strategic) was the first part of the defense protocol and involved overlapping early warning, detection, tracking, and interception defense layers. Coordinating ULTRON with the newly inserted and established American orbital based High Frontier satellite defense system, an integral part of the ULTRON program, was key to providing ULTRON not only with the electronic reconnaissance that it needed to keep tabs on its political foes but also the capacity to intercept and destroy any launches made against it from hostile nations.

The extensive and powerful satellite based electronic intelligence (ELINT) and weaponry gave ULTRON the capacity to detect, track and destroy the missiles and their warheads within seconds of detecting a launch signature. ULTRON could detect, track and eliminate any strategic grade weapon system capable of a surface to surface or surface to orbit launch in the world and subsequently coordinate its post-launch destruction from a variety of dedicated American orbital weapons platforms, with a high probability of being able to cook the enemy warhead in the silo before it could ever clear its launch tube. The American High Frontier system was as remarkable as the computer system which commanded it.

High Frontier included several 30 ton Westinghouse designed chemical exciter high energy lasers, General Dynamics built high amperage tritium charged particle beams, Raytheon built multi-stage variable warhead and warhead cloud generating interceptor missiles, General Electric built hyper velocity (HYVELOC) electromagnetic railguns (contained under the Near Orbit Mass Acceleration Driving System (NOMADS) array) and Vaught-Hughes built free fall, self guided, hyper velocity kinetic kill penetrators capable of orbit to surface strikes on hardened installations and of generating extremely wide area epic-force scale blunt trauma shock waves to troops and clustered armor columns that could shatter both tanks and personnel.

To prepare for ULTRON in 2010, President Obama announced the National Defence Initiative (NDI).

The National Defence Initiative consisted of two components. The smaller one was called Sentry and consisted of 24 bases that provided a light layer of protection over the United States, each centred on a Missile Site Radar (MSR) and a command centre buried below it. Seven long range Perimeter Acquisition Radar systems (PARs) on the US-Canadian border, another one in Alaska and one on each coast supported the system. The primary weapon to be used would be the long-range Spartan missile while shorter ranged Sprint missiles would be used to defend ICBM fields and PAR sites. The Sentry system would have 720 Spartan missiles and 288 Sprint missiles.

This would be enough to make the US impervious to an attack from the 7 smaller nuclear powers in existence. The Sentry Program would also be enough to ward off a limited Russian nuclear strike, but it wouldn't suffice against a total Russian launch with one thousand missiles with MIRV capability (Multiple Independently targetable Re-entry Vehicles).

This was where the second component of NDI called Domus, Latin for dome, came into play. Domus consisted of eight thousand small missiles in eight hundred small stations, which would be placed in orbit so hundreds of missiles would be above Russia at all times. If Russia launched its complete ICBM fleet, the space based launchers would detect their rocket engines using infrared seekers (in a similar way to conventional heat seeking missiles) and launch their missiles to collide with them.

At the speeds the intercepting projectiles and the ICBMs would be colliding, the mass of the projectile would have six times the energy of the equal weight of TNT. A 2.5 kilogram solid kinetic missile, i.e. without a warhead, would be used, as it would have enough impact energy to destroy any conceivable missile fuselage.

The combination of the Sentry Program and the Domus Program alone meant that, according to the designers of the NDI, 99.7-99.9% of enemy warheads would be eliminated before they reached American soil.

Seeded throughout the layers of orbital assets were small (GNAT) General Network Asset Tender satellites capable of limited repair and maintenance as well as Perimeter and Local Area Defense Integrated Network (PALADIN) capacity. Small (FLEA) Fixed Lethal Enhanced Area defense pre-fragmented shaped charge chemical explosive mines were seeded around the larger assets, command keyed to prevent any EVA sabotage of American assets by foreign astronauts or cosmonauts. The FLEA mines were small, not much larger than a typical claymore AP mine but included a unique gravitic field lock system which varied its distance from its parent asset by gentle magnetic field manipulation on a very minor level, keying in on the gravity well of the parent asset and being pulled along with it through orbit. FLEA mines could be detonated autonomously through a series of events detected by their programming or command detonated by the parent asset as needed.

Each FLEA mine had a lethal radius of several hundred meters (in orbit) and used a shaped charge effect to shred a pre-fragmented casing into five thousand shards moving in a rapidly expanding cloud at a velocity of several miles per second. Resupply of FLEA mines around key assets could be accomplished via standard NASA EVA / satellite maintenance missions and involved the inclusion of two military technical specialists as well as an ordnance control handler aboard each shuttle flight.

All orbital assets were built on "smart sat" platforms capable of independent maneuvering and to a large degree, autonomous operation. Indeed, these assets were programmed as the ultimate watchmen capable of acting on their own within the core aspect of their extensive programming limits. Final approval for all actions and sanctions came from ULTRON but since the orbital assets were controlled from a first adaptation / fifth integral layer of the neural network; inherently what the satellites knew, ULTRON also knew and ULTRON knew that information instantly. Approval of options and the execution of sanctions was merely a safety-catch in the system, allowing for error or mistakes that would ultimately have a human being to take political responsibility.

The smart sats were cutting edge platforms, capable of moving from orbit ring to orbit ring as required and were also capable of limited hunter killer ops if out of communication with the main system for a specified amount of time or if communication with the main system was severed or unavailable due to damage. In fact, one operations protocol dictated that if ULTRON were to ever go offline without the proper command authorization being given the American satellite assets would go into a failsafe pattern. If ULTRON were to go offline due to damage from an attack by a foreign power then the satellites would switch over to a high alert autonomous function state that included a free-fire state as well as an active target search and destroy mode.

The greatest defensive asset afforded to ULTRON came from Nature and the location of the installation itself, directly in the heart of an ancient mountain. It took a lot of physical force to shatter a mountain, even applied nuclear force, and the natural rock formations of Cheyenne Mountain made it a primary choice for location of the most sophisticated weapon management and control system ever created by man. Work crews arrived at the Cheyenne Mountain complex and began in earnest to enlarge the complex internally by plasma tunneling out passageways and expanding plasma envelope shaping the huge artificial caverns beneath the mountain structure, building on already existing structures both natural and artificial, and extending the reach of the NORAD complex to over two and a half times its original displacement and depth. It took two thousand workers six and a half months to complete the plasma shaping of the interior of the mountain as well as the many levels that were created below ground.

ULTRON was designed not only to win a nuclear exchange but also to survive such an all out attack and repair itself afterwards, emerging from the conflict with all of America's military, political, historical, medical, cultural and societal data stored safely away in fiber optic arrays. ULTRON would be ready to become the nexus point for a proud nation to rebuild itself, a rallying point for the survivors to gather around, to heal their wounds, and to have access to the knowledge and technology required to rebuild their nation from the ashes. In the event of a total global nuclear war, ULTRON would become the acting Commander in Chief of all American armed forces and military assets (subordinate only to the President or regular chain of command, if they survived), directing them as needed in order to insure a complete American victory and the rebuilding process afterwards.

It was not known for sure if the human staff who manned the installation would survive the exchange or live for very long afterwards even in protected isolation so ULTRON was made to be as self reliant and self supporting as possible. Self reliant in capacity, from operations to defense, ULTRON could act and react without direct human intervention or approval in times of crisis.

Everything was automated and designed to protect ULTRON in the event that its compliment of assigned human soldiers and personnel were eliminated and could no longer protect it from an enemy which might be able to not only make it to the shores of America, but also to mount a large scale mechanized offense deep inland, even to the Cheyenne Mountain complex itself.

The complete defense grid took into account all forms of assault from amphibious to trans polar injection of op-forces via air transport. ULTRON was self sufficient, if America's stockpile of tanks, planes and weapons were destroyed or consumed in the first phase of a prolonged nuclear exchange, ULTRON had the capacity, albeit greatly diminished, to rebuild its own assets slowly using super advanced automated factories hardwired and direct linked through deep ground data trunks.

These factories were located around the country at locations that could be protected; the General Dynamics Advanced Automated Manufactory near Austin, TX; the Westinghouse Manufactory near Tulsa, OK, and the Raytheon Aerospace Manufactory near Los Angeles were just three of the twelve dedicated tie-ups to the complex after strike rebuilding protocol.

Large stockpiles of raw materials were kept on hand at any given moment at each site, ready to produce designs from pre-designated templates along a fully automated assembly line, an entire nation's arsenal ready to rise again from the ashes but the new weapons would not need human crews, they were the latest in ground mobile and aerospace capable semi-autonomous drones, robot vehicles mounted on a variety of light to heavy armored chassis, wheeled, walker, tracked and aerodyne configuration again overlapping in a combined arms doctrine to give support to each element.

ULTRON's available templates represented more than a decade of advanced research into combat drones and remotely piloted / controlled vehicles. The microprocessors which would control America's new arsenal would be based on the technology that had enabled ULTRON itself to be created. In peace time operations, ULTRON was charged with slowly removing most of the obsolete military equipment from America's order of battle and replacing it with new, automatic, high efficiency units.

Personnel in the standing armed forces would soon be cut back by 70% with the new breed of American soldier being a smart, educated, highly trained, quick thinking individual who could work closely with robotic weapon systems, reprogramming them on the fly if need be, and answering all to ULTRON who might deploy such a human and machine unit to points halfway or more around the world depending on political situations. The new combat weapons of America's future were designed to be fully air transportable and ready to deploy the moment that they touched ground with minimal maintenance required to keep them combat worthy; it was the culmination of America's nearly decade long journey to transforming its military into a true Load / Transport / Drop / Set / Strike (LTDSS) protocol.

ULTRON was heralded as the wave of the future, a way to both consolidate the military forces of America and trim the unnecessary fat. An increase in the deployment of unmanned fighting vehicles would both lower the cost of war and casualties in battle. With an increase in telepresence remote fighting capacity, large standing armies could be reduced to a few groups supported by a far larger contingent of highly trained and specialized technicians and repair crews. The Machines would do the fighting, it was up to the human staff to tell the Machines when, where and who or what to engage and it would be the humans that were left to pick up the pieces afterwards, both the political and physical pieces.

Budgets and appropriations would be linked to ULTRON's assessment of current political climates and threat signatures, always adjusting for what was best for America's defense. The designers were very proud, the generals were happy to keep their jobs and the common soldier looked like they were about to be automated out of a job within the next two decades but such was the changing face of warfare as it developed in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

The 21st century, experts predicted, would be a century where the battlefields were ruled by autonomous machines. They never knew how true their predictions would become. During the 1980's, it was discovered that the Soviet Union and China were experimenting with both mobile high energy weapons and remote combat vehicle designs. America had to be first in that respect and the completion of ULTRON with its master controlled production and readiness facilities would guarantee that America remained the leader in combat technology. ULTRON was a tremendous gamble and a costly one at that. Defending the most important American asset would be even more important than building it because, after all, what good was the greatest military asset in the world if you couldn't protect it?

With that scenario in mind, the designers of ULTRON opted for a multi-layered defense protocol, using humans to guide the initial defense situations but giving ULTRON full override with whatever authority it required in order to survive and carry out its programming. Survival was the keyword; ULTRON was programmed to survive at all costs, against any attack it perceived against itself. In hindsight, it was a very liberal set of permissions to be given to such a powerful entity with so much firepower at its control but at the time, it seemed logical to give ULTRON not only the will to survive but also a tenacity to do so and full control of all the tools necessary in order to carry out that protocol. It made the budget minded members of congress happy to know that all of that money was being spent wisely on a system that would look after itself (at least that's what they told their constituents who argued about all of the money being spent on the ULTRON project). As all human endeavors go, it was a case where hindsight would prove to be 20/20.

The primary computing core would be mounted deep within the Earth's crust at Cheyenne Mountain, protected by several thousand feet of indigenous rock layers providing a natural defense against even point fusing contact nuclear detonations in the multi-megaton range. Dedicated surface mounted defense systems coordinating with orbital defense satellites would be used to set up overlapping, sympathetic interception grids blanketing every altitude range from tree top level to low Earth orbit (LOE) and able to track, engage and destroy any incoming strategic grade weapon, even short ranged, third generation long range rocket assisted "smart" munitions like those launched from heavy mortars or self propelled / towed artillery (providing for a worst case scenario of an hostile threat actually landing military forces on American shores and penetrating into the heartland with fully supported mechanized forces).

ULTRON's defense systems were designed to overlap and layer each other, able to respond to everything from a small group of commandos penetrating base perimeter security up to a full scale mechanized assault, including close air defense, strategic air defense and orbital defense grids. Its networks were also designed to defend against invasions through the medium of cyberspace, on all levels, with self contained and self programming, self healing and self learning software that ranged in response power from simple denial of service up to gray area regulation lethal response. Network intrusions of ULTRON's proprietary domain were often handled by quick response security teams located around the country and in every major city. Nodes on its vast spider web of networked components were both armored and protected by dedicated support staff and armed security personnel.

Installation security was quite above the standard fare for such an advanced facility, DNA pattern recognition systems were as non-intrusive as they were secure and ever present. A variety of standard low technology identification cards and security passes worked in conjunction with embedded next generation electronic IFF circuits to control access to the myriad non-essential functions. Direct access to the core components of ULTRON would take far tougher defensive protocols and much more intense security measures and very few personnel except the technicians and scientists directly responsible for ULTRON's care (along with some high shining brass) had the security and protocol clearances required to penetrate into ULTRON's innermost sanctum.

ULTRON's defense matrix was multi-tiered. The Cheyenne Mountain installation was protected on the surface by various fully advanced, semi- and fully autonomous integrated weapon systems that could respond and eliminate targets from ground level all the way up to near Earth orbit. High threat aerospace targets were dealt with through a layer of threat analysis by orbiting surveilance and weapon platforms. ULTRON also had access to ten cryogenically cooled, rocket pumped high energy very rapid pulse laser systems capable of clearing the North American aerospace sector of any unwanted object. Twelve subordinate launch sites also contained batteries of multi-stage, multi-independent targeting warhead equipped surface to orbit interceptor missiles capable of defeating any satellite or cross polar transit capable weapon system.

The known positions and orbits of all foreign space objects had been cataloged and threat parameters assigned to them in the years before ULTRON was brought online and the responsibility for keeping that index updated fell to the new super computer. In the event of a major conflict, ULTRON could use its ground based laser batteries to sweep the sky clean and blind the enemy up high by removing its capital intelligence assets in a matter of a few hours. ULTRON's own multi-role attack satellites could move into the same orbit as other enemy satellites and either destroy them physically or take them over electronically, adding to ULTRONs capacity for gathering electronic intelligence by using the enemy's own assets against them.

Hostile intruders entering a sixteen hundred square kilometer protected aerospace buffer zone could be engaged over the horizon by using the new Raytheon T42D Black Arrow dual stage, active terminal guidance, multi-stage equipped surface to air missiles which had a practical range three hundred percent greater than that of the Phoenix air to air missile which it had replaced in America's arsenal. Ten auto-loading, semi-autonomous capable armored pop-up batteries of T42Ds were located around the primary installation while another sixteen remote sites were located up to several hundred kilometers away, offering a layered defense approach and the ability to blanket an aerospace intruder from any angle of approach.

The standard warhead of the T42D was a 50kg continuous explosive fragmenting core wrapped around six spinning rods designed to impart maximum structural damage to individual targets but Black Arrows could be armed with command detonated tactical nuclear warheads carrying up to 5kt nominal yields for use against bomber formations or missile flocks. The Black Arrow SAMs were housed in armored quad mount launchers on retractable hydraulic sponsons which raised from armored doors set within the tarmac. High speed mechanical track systems were capable of reloading the launcher in under thirty seconds from ready spare missiles stored nearby in an armored magazine.

Tactical High Energy Destruction of Target (THEDOT) defense measures against ground and fast moving aerial targets could be accomplished out to the horizon by the use of ten General Electric Type J CPAW High Amperage Charged Particle Accelerator Weapon systems. Each 12 ton displacement CPAW system was mounted on its own dedicated armored fire tower, capable of full traverse, elevation and deflection. Each fire tower was equipped with attendant capacitors for extended firing, 5000 liter deuterium fuel tanks to provide mass to the particle stream and heavy duty power links to draw energy directly from the underground reactors through power accumulation matrix arrays. Each accelerator cannon had an effective throughput of over a hundred mega joules (Mj) with a burst radius greater than 150 meters effective. Primary damage was from kinetic impact of particles traveling at nearly the speed of light. Casualty enhancement through follow-up high speed redundant particle collisions and the sympathetic burst of short lived lethal radiation that accompanied a direct physical hit also increased the effectiveness of the CPAW system dramatically.

Close in aerial targets or NOE capable cruise missiles which penetrated to close range within the defensive matrix were engaged by one or more of twelve equally distant spaced, dedicated Area Defense Batteries. Each ADB consisted of an armored turret on a dedicated fire tower, giving it complete traverse, elevation and deflection. The ADB turrets were placed on armored telescopic towers and could be used to engage both aerial targets and ground targets out to 2km (the effective range of the subordinate weapon packs). Each weapon system within the ADB housing had its own targeting and fire control system and could operate independently of the other weapons in the ADB and each turret could operate independently of other ADB units.

The ADB unit itself consisted of a powered remote electric drive turret (RED-T) mounting a General Electric M35D very rapid fire (VRF) 35mm tri-barrel chain driven automatic cannon with an effective range of 2.5km, a maximum range of 4km and a practical rate of fire of 5000 rounds per minute. Each M35D was linklessly fed by a pair of 5000 round cassettes, alternating feed from HE high explosive and HEAP high explosive armor piercing. Every tenth round in the HE cassette was an incendiary round. Automated systems at the base of the ADB towers were capable of reloading a single cassette in less than fifteen seconds using powered servo systems and on-hand replacement stock stored below the base of the tower.

Independently mounted in the ADB turret to the M35D automatic cannon was a 25mm General Electric M245A tri-barrel electric gatling gun intended for lightly armored targets (such as helicopters or RPVs) and anti-personnel work close in. Capable of self targeting and operating in addition to the M35D cannon system, the M245A had an effective range of 2000m, with a practical rate of fire of 4000 rounds per minute. Ammunition was provided by a linkless feed from a 5000 round cassette filled with SLAP Sabot Light Armor Piercing rounds (which are capable of penetrating up to 5cm of armor).

Mounted in the same turret and controlled by its own integrated FiConSys is an armored box launcher containing eight Lockeed Martin M490D1 "Sprinter" dual stage fire and forget multi-purpose tactical missiles, each weighing 50kg with a 20kg warhead and active terminal guidance. The "Sprinter" TAC missiles are designed to defeat fast moving close in aerospace targets as well as slow moving ground targets, the dual purpose warhead is effective against light armor as well as heavy armor, with a smart fuse that determines target type and optimum detonation pattern (contact, proximity or enveloping proximity).

Reloading of the TAC missile launcher requires sixty-five seconds and necessitates that the ADB retract to its lowest point, aim the box launcher vertically and a fresh brace of TAC missiles be loaded from below. When this is achieved, the ADB goes back online and resumes operations. Each ADB has dedicated storage for 20,000 rounds (4 spare cassettes) of 35mm ammunition (50/50 HE, HEAP), 10,000 rounds of .75 BHMG SLAP (2 spare cassettes) and 24 standby "Sprinter" missiles allocated in reload packs of 8 missiles each (3 reloads). This is in addition to the standard load out of the turret itself. Automated systems can reload the ready stores of each ADB turret using automated processes and underground access ways in under five minutes.

The limited service roads and main access ways to the installation were seeded with advanced, command controlled, autonomous and smart mines consisting of various models of anti-personnel and anti-vehicular types. The anti-personnel mines ranged from the small .5kg charge "Mangler" type AP mines to the larger "Bouncing Bob" mines and the "Screaming Mary" types as well. All of the mines used around the Cheyenne Mountain complex were of the new Level IV-A series with their own dedicated diagnostic and computer control systems, with power being fed by an ultra-slim, high gain, high efficiency solar cell that worked to charge a small battery giving the mines almost unlimited duration when deployed. With the defense matrix set to full alert, the mines went into autonomous mode, reacting to any intrusion into the security perimeter and engaging any target which failed a triple checked IFF send / receive response.

Individual personnel would be engaged at up to five meters distance by the Type 42 Mark III IFRIT "Efreet" InFraRed Individual Targeting class 3 anti-personnel mine which would discharge itself from its point of concealment, spinning in the air up to a height of 2 meters and used a small thermal sensor to detect the direction of the target. Upon contact with a strong heat source (like the temp that a human body radiates) the mine would detonate in that direction using a shaped charge to disperse 2000 high density alloy pellets in a lethal cloud moving at greater than 700 meters per second. The effective radius of the Type 42 IFRIT mine was an expanding cone fifteen meters long and five meters wide at end.

The Type 42 IFRIT was supplemented by the Type 50 Mark V MTIRFEFAPDPS "Screaming Mary" AP mine which was designed to eliminate large groups of intruders. The Type 50 consisted of a larger housing than the Type 42 but its operation was related in nature. A passive thermal / infra-red scanner would detect movement within a 15 meter perimeter, activating the integral heat sensor. If a reading analogous to a designated threat category was detected, the mine would activate a small explosive charge, propelling itself some four meters into the air, using a rifled spin to increase the search radius and zero in on the target source.

Once a target was identified, the MTIRFEFAPDPS warhead would detonate, at which point the Multi-Targeting Infra Red Explosively Formed Anti-Personnel Dual Purpose Submunition would fire from the warhead along a spin axis computed to ensure a hit to the center of mass of the target. Up to eight explosively formed submunitions could be generated from the single warhead and each struck as a 40 gram penetrator moving at a velocity in excess of 900 meters per second. Lethal burst radius is a killing sphere 20 meters in diameter and multiple targets can be hit from multiple directions. The name of the mine is taken from the high pitched whine of the self forging projectile as it is composed from the warhead and traverses the distance from ignition point to target source.

Anti-vehicle and anti-armor duties were handled by the M340D and the M274F series "smart" mines. Working in conjunction, the defense grid allowed the mines to be networked to each other and run off of a remote tap into the system mainframe. Remote sensors would detect and assess the threat to the installation and adjust their response accordingly. Vehicular threats known to possess light armor (less than 45mm standard hard steel index) would be engaged by the Type 65 Mark IV series mine. The Type 65 was a command chain controlled / semi-autonomous response threat elimination element designed to destroy light vehicles with a dual core shaped charge warhead to allow penetration of an infra-red follow-up piggy-back high explosive warhead that insured target bursting. The six point eight kilogram warhead was sufficient to destroy from the inside out most lightly armored vehicles and had an engagement range of 30 meters.

Activation of the mine caused the self-propelled warhead to eject from its carrier into the air approximately one and a half meters while a combination motion and thermal sensor looked for characteristic heat traces from engine exhausts and matched the signature to known profiles, angling the warhead for optimum impact against the target vehicle. Upon determination of optimum impact point, the solid stage propellant system would ignite, accelerating the mine to a velocity in excess of 1200 meters per second. Effective range was 800 meters.

Medium armored vehicles (up to 85mm standard hard steel index) would be engaged by the M290F Mark IV Series III anti-vehicular mines, differing from the Type 65 only in warhead and accelerator assembly. The M290F Mark IV series AVM carried a ten point eight modular axial penetration warhead followed by two three point seven six kilogram high explosive follow up rounds designed to "balloon" the target from the inside out, lifting turrets, blowing hatches off their mounts and wrecking the interior thoroughly. Infra-red follow up sensors in the submunition warheads insured an almost 94% chance of entering the target penetration point.

Heavy armored vehicles (greater than 100mm standard hard steel index) were engaged by a combination of anti-vehicular devices. A Type 90 M310D Series IV AVM would be used from a horizontal angle of attack while a Type 42 M122C Series II AVM would be used from an overhead angle of attack. The Mod 3 cluster packs for these munitions formed the basis of ULTRON's heavy anti-vehicular passive defense systems. Upon contact with a heavy armored vehicle, the Mod 3 cluster pack would acquire a target signature, both infra-red and acoustic, matching it in its database of known enemy designs. Once the design was determined (or a close enough match achieved), the Mod 3 cluster pack would activate, discharging the Type 90 mine into the air at a height of one meter and the Type 42 mine into the air at a distance of ten meters.

The Type 90 mine had an advanced version of the target acquisition hardware found in the Type 65 mine with more aggressive subroutines, able to adjust its angle of attack and point of impact to match known target weak points. The semi-point detonating shaped charge warhead weighed twelve point nine kilograms and could penetrate armor up to 250mm thickness. Two independently targeting follow-up IR HE dual purpose rounds achieved the internal target blooming desired. Thee Type 42 mine was a modified self forging penetrator, firing a kinetic kill slug into the armored vehicle from above where armor was generally weakest, targeting the strongest heat source which tactically represented the vehicle's power plant and / or fuel storage area.

Enhancing the semi-autonomous and command controlled mine field was a pair of dedicated mortar batteries, each consisting of ten automatic Type 22 "revolver" 155mm heavy tube mounted mortars. Each mortar was on a powered base which could adjust elevation and deflection hydraulically. Each mortar was fed by a cylinder of six rounds which in turn was fed from a dedicated cassette of fifty rounds. Ammunition for the mortars consisted of 155mm laser guided HEAP rounds with integral follow-up IR piggy back HE dual purpose rounds. Optional ammunition included a bolt of 155mm airburst flechette for use against lightly armored personnel caught in the open. A variety of chemical gas (ranging from tear gas to lethal toxins) and tactical smoke rounds (five colors) were also available to the computer controlled battery.

Using the heavy 155mm mortars, precision munitions could be fired and guided in on top of threat vehicles or exploded at optimum height over groups of enemy personnel. The lethal burst radius of the Type 3G fragmenting anti-personnel rounds was 20 meters with critical wounds being achieved out to 30 meters. The automated battery could lay out a salvo of 200 rounds in 60 seconds, averaging 1 round per 3 seconds per mortar. Rounds for the 155mm mortars included a variety of armor piercing and anti-personnel warheads, both guided (including smart and brilliant class) and unguided as well as rocket assisted for engagement at twice normal effective range.

A second line of defense, supporting the indirect capability of the heavy mortars with a direct fire option was centered around two fully automated batteries of 155mm magazine fed recoilless repeaters with each battery comprising five repeaters, each in an independent powered mount. Each repeater was supported by a dedicated autoloader which drew from a 100 round cassette. Ammunition consisted of a variety of flechette (anti-personnel), high explosive (dual purpose), high explosive armor piercing (anti-vehicular) and self forging armor penetrator (heavy anti-vehicular). Each repeater was gyrostabilized and laser targeted. Practical rate of fire for each repeater was 30 rounds per minute giving each battery the capacity to put 150 rounds into the target zone per minute. Individual rounds were also laser guided and stabilized by snap open fins which imparted spin bias to the rounds. Integral spotting and target designating lasers covered the defense area, allowing multiple round hand-offs to supporting weapons on an ad-hoc basis as needed.

ULTRON had enough munitions on hand and in storage to completely use up the outer defensive perimeter six times and rebuild it six times. Past that and it would have to start reallocating its resources along the routes of expected offenses in order to meet threats with any force.

The one massive bridge leading into the installation was wired at critical points for catastrophic elective demolition and could be demolished completely on command to slow invading forces though this tactic would also isolate the complex itself from ground access until the bridge could be rebuilt. Enough materials and tools existed at the Cheyenne Mountain complex to rebuild the bridge using assistance from personnel or, if the personnel were incapacitated or dead, by automated means using a wide variety of multi-function work drones.

Four heavily armored, automated weapon towers guarded the main entrance to the complex. Each tower was computer controlled with dedicated IFF as well as fire control and target acquisition systems. Direct interface from ULTRON was possible due to a dedicated hard line linking the towers to the mainframe defense grid. Each sentry tower was each equipped with a pair of gyrostabilized, laser targeted, rapid fire, auto loading 155mm high velocity smoothbore cannon, produced by Rheinmetal, in a fully stabilized mount. The smoothbores were fed by a rotary magazine served by an autoloader. Shell selection included HE, HEAP, flechette and discarding sabot.

A total of 200 rounds were carried for each cannon at the ready, consisting of 80 HE, 40 HEAP, 40 flechette and 40 DS. Two independently operating and targeted 25mm General Electric M245A tri-barrel electric gatling guns were located on the sides of the turret in powered barbettes, each coupled with a single a 20mm General Electric M250 gatling gun and a 50mm Mark 21 automatic grenade launcher to allow the response to be adjusted to the threat level, from light insurgency to full armored contact. The 25mm GE gatlings were fed from 5000 round linkless feed cassettes carrying SLAP ammo, every tenth round in the 25mm cassette was an incendiary tracer. The 20mm GE gatling guns were fed from 5000 round linkless feed cassettes, alternating soft tip with hardball and every tenth round being an incendiary tracer. The Mark 21 systems were fed by three, 250 round hoppers carrying HE, HEAP and fragmentation with ammo selection being available on demand.

The upper turret assembly held a modular, pop-up style box style launcher for six heavy fire and forget Teledyne M3AA Hellsprint anti-tank missiles which included the new IR follow up warhead design for repeat hits on the target vehicle and increased kill aspect. The box launcher could retract into the tower for reloading, a process that was fully automated and took less than thirty seconds using a powered ram assembly. A variety of different ammunition types was stored for each weapon system and due to the modular design and quick link ammunition feeds, different types of ammunition could be used as required based on target specs and criteria.

Each tower was equipped with a variety of sensors, from basic radio transponder to IFF, high resolution IR, thermal, acoustic and visual recognition / tracking. Each weapon in the sentinel towers had two full reloads stored in the tower. Further ammunition could be moved to the tower by underground conduits using automated carriers and robotic lifting equipment. Reloading a completely empty tower would take twenty-five minutes drawing from available stores in the installation complex itself. If the automated reload system was down, considerably more time would be required.

The four black sentry towers were each protected in turn by two dedicated automated bunkers. Each bunker held its own subordinate fire control as well as target acquisition systems (full spectrum) and could operate independently even if the main defense grid went down. Each guardian bunker was armed with a pair of gyro stabilized, laser designated 25mm General Electric M245A tri-barrel electric gatling guns, a Mark 21 50mm automatic grenade launcher, and a pair of 20mm General Electric M250 six barrel electric miniguns, all independently targetable and each with their own FiConSys and target acquisition / resolution software. The 25mm GE gatlings were fed from linkless feed cassettes carrying 5000 rounds of SLAP and 1 per 10 incendiary. The 50mm Mark 21 AGL fed from three rotary hoppers containing standard HE, HEAP and fragmentation. The 20mm GE gatlings were fed from a linkless feed cassette carrying 3000 rounds of standard hard point ball with the 1 per 10 incendiary standard.

Several automated pillboxes were located throughout the installation, at least ten were on pop-up mounts that could raise or lower the pillbox beneath the dense tarmac for protection. The pillboxes were designed as a last line of defense against intruders trying to breach the complex and were constructed so that each could overlap their lines of fire in such a way that any intruder would fall under the targeting systems (and thus the weapons) of several pillboxes at once. Each pillbox was heavily armored, had a rotation capacity of + or - 120 degrees per second and was completely capable of autonomous operation. Each pillbox was equipped with two 25mm General Electric M245A tri-barrel electric gatling guns, four 20mm General Electric six barrel electric miniguns, two Mark 21 50mm automatic grenade launchers and two 40mm incendiary units. Ammunition was provided for the 25mm gatlings in linkless feed 5000 round cassettes which included the standard load out of SLAP with the 1 per 10 incendiary. The 20mm gatlings were fed by 3000 round linkless feed cassettes containing 20mm NATO hardball ammo with the 1 per 10 incendiary load.

Three, 250 round ammunition hoppers supplied each of the 50mm grenade launchers, allowing the launchers to choose a mixture of HE, HEAP and fragmentation as needed. Each 40mm incendiary anti-personnel unit was fueled by a 400 liter tank containing a mixture of jellied combustible accelerant which had an effective range, under pressure, of 40 meters. Flow rate was one liter per second adjustable to four liters per second through variable aperture and pressure feed. A single, pop-up style box launcher on the top of the turret housed six Sprint tactical multi-purpose missiles for use in either anti-vehicle or anti-aircraft roles. Two complete reloads for each weapon system in the turret were housed in the area immediately beneath thee turret and reloading could be done at any time, the empty weapon acting independently of the others.

Twenty-four other powered, retractable turrets were built into the installation's grounds. These turrets were smaller, mounting four independently operating weapon systems with dedicated FiConSys, battery backup and one reload apiece. They were intended to be rapid fatigue systems designed to bolster the overall defense, ballooning the defensive strength of the other systems if only for a short time. Each of these turrets housed a laser targeted, gyro stabilized 20mm General Electric M250 six barrel electric minigun fed by a 5000 round cassette. Typical ammo load out represented 20mm NATO hard tip anti-personnel with 1 per 10 incendiary standard. Mounted coaxial to the minigun and incapable of independent movement (the same mount held both weapons) was a Mark 21 automatic grenade launcher fed from a brace of three 250 round hoppers (HE, HEAP and fragmentation). Both weapons shared the same targeting system with a backup system in case of primary system failure. A six shot M48 88mm folding fin rocket launcher loaded with DPHEAP dual purpose high explosive armor piercing rockets that offered excellent light to medium vehicle kill capacity with secondary anti-personnel capacity. A Model 5 four pack launcher is loaded with four Hellfire IV missiles for use on heavy armored vehicles. Slew rate of the remote electric drive turret was + / - 120 degrees per second allowing for fast target acquisition and engagement.

All defensive installations mounted extensive sensors, full spectrum analysis of threat subjects as well as high intensity white spot lights and supplemental infra-red spot lights to provide illumination when required.

Underground storage facilities, shelters, bunkers, bivouacs and facilities existed for the long term garrison of two light scout detachments, one air mobile company and one heavy armor company occupying three different levels of the main mountain complex and there were plans to double this compliment in times of crisis or impending national conflict. Enough supplies would have been stockpiled to keep this compliment of troops and equipment running for twelve months effective combat, longer if rationing was included or depending on conflict escalation.

The interior defense of ULTRON fell to the newly designed HELICIS system.

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HELICIS

High Efficiency Low Impact Counter-Intrusion Systems

While it was easy to protect the surface theater and aerospace quadrant of the Cheyenne Mountain based ULTRON installation against both small scale and large scale assaults via ground or air, protecting the interior required a different school of thought. While it was easy for modern military science to be utilized to destroy an attacker on the surface or in the air, where maximum force could be focused in the quickest amount of time to the smallest area for the greatest possible effect, using that same logic and amount of force on the inside of the structure, in direct defense of the structure, would have accomplished the enemy's goals as equally as if there was no defense at all. It didn't take a software engineer to figure out that the last place you wanted to be throwing high explosives around, firing off bursts of high velocity armor piercing explosive rounds or squeezing off pulses of super hot plasma was in the heart of your AI's guts where a stray or errant shot might accomplish exactly what the enemy had intended all along. Collateral damage to capital assets was deemed unacceptable and it became necessary for collateral damage to be kept to a minimum thus, the HELICIS system was born.

The HELICIS (pronounced "he-la-sis") system was introduced into the design plan at a very early stage, almost from the very start. HELICIS was simple yet effective, and worked seamlessly with the other established and integrated protocols that were already in place. Put simply, HELICIS consisted of a wide variety of non-lethal, less-than-lethal, and lethal force level intrusion countermeasures that were very effective in defending critical components and areas of the installation yet had negligible effect on the critical operating equipment. It didn't make a lot of sense to use high explosive dispensers or drop down automated rapid fire machine gun turrets to defend a room full of delicate computer equipment and memory storage banks, items that would be destroyed in the resulting crossfire between attacker and computer controlled defensive system. Collateral damage from internal defense systems would have to be kept to a bare minimum and preferably to a level of zero overspill. The answer was to integrate a system of defenses that could be tailored to both the areas that needed to be defended and the level of hostile intrusion. High security areas were "bottlenecked" by reinforced security corridors that could be instantly sealed, corridors which were filled with active / passive aggressive counter intrusion systems.

Most personnel at the ULTRON / Cheyenne Mountain knew of the HELICIS system (it was part of basic orientation) but few truly understood the degree to which it permeated the defense complex, so seamless was its integration into the overall design of the facility. HELICIS was one part defense, one part damage control, and one part high security system which functioned remarkably well as a whole. It was built to be a learning system, to adapt its response to the threats it perceived, to learn from heuristical data collection, trial and error, and to reprogram itself on the fly as tactical situations warranted. HELICIS was composed of many separate independently operating networked subsystems, all designed to be totally effective while carrying very little, if any, collateral damage capacity over to the installation capital assets and hardware.

Early HELICIS Countermeasures - Pre-Construction to ULTRON Activation (2017)

The following countermeasures were part of the original HELICIS protocol. Over the decades since then ULTRON improved upon the many features of the HELICIS system and adding in additional features and capabilities as its technology base expanded. HELICIS was not only an integral part of ULTRON's defense, it was also an integral part of the defense of each of ULTRON's facilities, from the smallest data processing relay station to the largest manufactories. Each of the early / original systems are discussed in greater detail below.

Variable voltage shock guards (VVSG) were installed around the entrance points and security check points of almost all areas. The VVSG was a super conducting array of electrically charged panels built into the floor, walls, and ceiling of an area that protected entire lengths of hallway and access corridors. Smaller versions of the VVSG resembled door knobs or other common hand operated utilities. Powered by its own dedicated battery storage array, feeding off of the main power source as well under normal operation, the VVSG could produce effects from simple discomfort, to extreme pain, unconsciousness, and even death. As the VVSG was isolated and insulated from other areas of the installation, and protected by both surge dampeners and voltage spike dissipaters, there was no danger of electrical feedback to surrounding critical electronic equipment. The amount of electricity that could be generated through the VVSG was enough to melt combat boots, set clothes and hair on fire, and boil blood in the body. On its highest lethal setting, the VVSG grid could reduce an adult human and their bones to charred ash in under seven seconds, literally leaving a pile of smoking dust and teeth.

Sonic pulse field generators (SPFG) were another innovation that became part of the HELICIS system. Generating sound waves that could cause discomfort, nausea, pain, unconsciousness, loss of hearing, or even disrupt living tissue with frequencies that were capable of liquefying flesh and even shearing through bone. The SPFGs were seen as yet another low impact asset for the security of critical installations. Intruders entering a HELICIS area that mounted SPFGs would find that they had entered a closed loop system. Reinforced security bulkheads would close in front of and behind them, sealing the intruders off behind heavy armored doors impervious to most small arms and man portable explosives. The area was sound proof, sealed completely, and would then be flooded with modulated sound waves depending on the nature of the intrusion, from gentle restraint to full lethal anti-personnel levels of layered sonic pulse fields.

High efficiency, low impact anti-personnel charges were installed in many areas as well, using a modified version of the claymore mine concept, but substituting high density plastic pellets or carbon fiber flechettes in place of the steel pellets normally found in the AP devices. Using a carefully designed blow out panel, the force of the explosion was channeled fully outward. The sides, top, bottom and back of the charge container were heavily reinforced, while the front was relatively thin. Upon detonation, the small explosive charge was forced forward and out towards the intruders, carrying with it over three thousand high density plastic pellets or carbon fiber flechettes which had a lethal radius of over forty meters to lightly armored organic targets but were unable to penetrate hard surfaces or damage core assets. Later variants of this system used compressed TyNoX D-3 LVG (liquid to vapor gas).

TyNoX D-3 had the curious property of which 20 milliliters had the same rapid explosive expansion effect, within one meter, as a half kilogram of C4 plastic explosive but without the incendiary side effects and only a third of the concussive force. TyNoX D-3 was first produced by NATO in 2012 A.D. and began to appear as part of new HELICIS production in 2015 A.D. and was fully retrofitted to existing HELICIS setups by 2017 A.D.

Specific and general high velocity, high pressure chemical jets were part of the HELICIS system from the very start. Using air-tight security bulkheads, it was possible to trap intruders in one area and then flood that area with non-lethal, less-than-lethal, lethal, or lethal+plus grade gas and chemicals, in aerosol depending on the threat level and security situation. A variety of chemicals and agents were used, from the non-lethal security and riot control gasses (mostly regurgitates and ocular / respiratory / and increasingly aggressive skin irritants) to the various Naprox family of blister agents and lethal nerve gasses as well as a wide variety of mass spectrum and even highly selective bio toxins. A rotary dispenser fed a single mono-jet array and offered a choice of pressurized rapid acting agents as needed in either gas, wet spray, aerosol, foam, paste, or high velocity liquid stream delivery.

The various gas and chemical jet traps were the most common form of low impact defense of the HELICIS system as they had the lowest impact ratio of any of the other anti-intrusion countermeasures as well as the greatest effect against unprotected threat elements. Some systems incorporated volatile acid as well, designed to defeat personal NBC protection as a preemptive mixture in spray or mist accompanying the initial delivery. Early agents were designed to be absorbed through the respiratory system, but later, more advanced agents were developed which were highly aggressive and could eat their way through protective measures such as chemical suits and masks, as well as be absorbed through the skin and the various mucous membranes.

The high pressure, high velocity monojets used in the delivery could vent liquids in precision streams and fast pulses as well as project gas and paste, allowing for a wide variety of saturation modes depending on the tactical situation. (In 2035 AD, ULTRON began to experiment with a variety of nano-tech based viruses, but these never saw much field use and were relegated to carefully controlled lab environments, never being introduced into the general areas of its structures.)

Clean-up of the security area usually involved spraying the corpses of the intruders with a highly volatile chemical designed to quickly break down organic materials. High pressure steam, UV light and strong decontaminants would be automatically applied to the breached security area to clean up any residual chemicals. Later, these disassembler chemicals would be replaced with nanobot clouds and clusters with no post-op cleanup of chemicals or toxins required.

Fast load hydraulic rams were another aspect of the HELICIS system. Critical areas could be protected by what amounted to a high speed grape press. Reinforced sections of either the side walls or ceiling could be used to quickly and securely pin or simply crush intruders to death. Upon activation, a series of even spaced, high density alloy rods would drop from the ceiling and rise from the floor, caging an intruder or group of intruders in on both sides of the press assembly. The bars would then rotate and lock in place, their material defied attempts to cut it with anything other than high temperature torches or plasma (which would take several minutes).

The hydraulic rams were designed to operate to their full extension within seconds of activation and could be used to either compress or diminish the space between them thus subduing intruders by limiting their movements, or simply crush them to death with lethal force. Some versions of the fast load hydraulic rams incorporated variable voltage shock guards built in as well, especially along the containment bars in order to disable or neutralize any intruders who might try to help those who were trapped in the compression zone.

Pleaders were a variant of the fast load hydraulic rams and consisted of high density alloy spears, tapered at the end to form a one meter long needle. These ram spikes would be driven at force out from concealed locations, impaling intruders fully, locking in position then retracting slowly after several seconds. Specialized sensors would read the density, mass and height of the intruder then adjust the angle of attack for the pleader so that it could deliver a killing stroke to a critical set of internal organs. Often the intruder would be struck by three to seven pleader rams at once, from different angles, piercing vital organs then retracting and extending again a second or third time to strike at different organs. The pleader system became known as the "Iron Maiden" defense due to its rather grim way of dealing with hostile security threats.

Trap door holding cells were constructed at various locations. Measurements ranged from a simple three by three by three meter cubicle to larger areas designed to capture and hold multiple intruders (teams of threat elements). With a four meter fall to the floor, the panels would close back up and lock after three seconds. Access ways allowed installation security forces to either take the intruders into custody or dispose of their remains afterwards through other integrated systems such as chemical jets. Often the trap door holding cells were combined with some other form of defense described previously in order to afford maximum installation defense. Some trap door holding cells were equipped with variable voltage shock guards, chemical or sonic arrays, and even fast load hydraulic rams. In the mid 2030s, ULTRON began to integrate nano-hives with existing holding cells leading to areas where intruders could be detained and, if need be, rapidly disassembled in short order by the hive-born nanostats.

High velocity rapid fire needle guns were mounted on powered mounts and covered high security areas. Equipped with independently operating tracking and target acquisition software, the needle guns used compressed TDV gas to propel a 4cm long, 3mm diameter hardened pre-fragmented high density plastic needle to velocities in excess of a thousand meters a second. The nature of the needle was such that it easily penetrated soft armor and was highly effective in an anti-personnel role as the barbed needles spun in flight, acting like high velocity drill bits thanks in part to spin produced via gas bias.

Each needle was pre-fragmented in design so that it simply broke apart into a spray of fragments when it struck a hard surface such as a wall or bulkhead thus causing no collateral damage to dedicated assets but providing a limited fragmentation area effect against soft targets. A high speed feed system was linked to a 5000 round hopper as part of the design. Some needle guns were mounted in the upper corners of hallway junctions, others were mounted on high speed, pop up sponsons that would rise from the floor and engage any detected intruders.

Practical rate of fire was on the order of five thousand rounds a minute and the needle gun could fire single shots, bursts of ten needles, or full automatic. Hollow needles allowed a variety of chemicals to be carried and delivered via impact, with doses ranging from non-lethal, to less than lethal and full lethal drug regimens. Later designs incorporated TyNoX D-3 liquid to vapor gas feed systems with a vast improvement in lethality as well as improved armor penetration.

High Energy Anti-Personnel Laser Systems (HEAPLS, aka "hee-pulls" by the troops) were also incorporated into the HELICIS system. While lasers had proven too fragile for combat and battlefield use, they made perfect static mounted defense systems. ULTRON utilized laser weapons to sweep the sky of incoming artillery, rocket, missile and orbital targets as well as on the ground to defend itself. Most of the anti-personnel laser systems used in ULTRON's construction were of the infra-red modulated rapid pulse type which were specifically tuned to the harmonic frequency of water.

As such, these invisible pulse laser weapons caused rapid heating of liquids trapped inside body tissues, resulting in massive, nearly instantaneously lethal steam explosions in organic targets. Grazing shots produced crippling wounds to the affected extremities and limbs could be blown completely off if a solid hit was made to the center of mass of that appendage. Lower powered settings produced horribly painful burns as the skin surface was heated and charred from the result of deep tissue liquids being flash boiled to steam.

The HEAPLS system was aimed automatically using a low intensity infra-red laser targeting beam to paint the threat element. Once the IR targeting beam (invisible to normal human visual ranges) fell on a target of opportunity, the energy of the beam was then increased to full power in order to produce a lethal counter-response to present intrusion threat. HEAPLS mounts were either deep tunnels in the wall with a limited angle of fire, powered mounts located near sensor clusters or on retractable powered hardpoints that could drop from the ceiling, rise from the floor, or snap out of the side of a wall. Multiple HEAPLS were often used if the system was employed and a set of four HEAPLS could eliminate ten human soldiers in less than five seconds.

One of the more insidious aspects of the HEAPLS system was that it could fire around corners and at angles simply by use of special extendable target mirrors and highly polished reflective surfaces called "lasing bands". A series of both fixed and retractable reflective mirrors were installed in tactical locations allowing HEAPLS systems to fire around corners and into hard to reach places where intruders might try to escape from the normally line of sight laser beam. The addition of the mirrors and the lasing bands meant that an intruder couldn't escape the HEAPLS simply by ducking back out of the passage of a corridor and taking shelter at a ninety degree angle to the weapon mount. These mirrors were also mounted on powered pedestals and electric mounts, allowing them to be lowered or raised from hidden mounts, swiveled in order to direct the laser fire at different targets from different angles, and retracted again when not in use.

Some reflective mirrors were also mounted on powered mounts that could be extended or retracted from concealed ports in the floor, ceiling or walls of a checkpoint system. The mounts could further adjust their height and the angle of their attached mirrors to provide a wide range of tuning to the beam focal point.

Later designs of the HEAPLS system incorporated heavy, high powered fixed laser systems firing into a fiber optic laser periscope type system. Using this method, a lasing capacity network could be built into the design of the installation and one laser could be used to direct laser light down a variety of optical tunnels. The later model HEAPLS was mounted on a high speed rotator which allowed it to be moved between lasing networks quickly.

Dazzlers- one variant of the HEAPLS was a low powered anti-personnel weapon designed to blind intruders by attacking their optic nerves directly. Using a specific frequency modulated pulse laser, ULTRON could fan a laser beam over the eyes of an intruder and render them blind either temporarily or permanently. Dazzlers were very compact and many of them were mounted near other sub-systems of the HELICIS layered structure with the thinking being that a blinded intruder was easier to dispatch. The destruction of the optic nerves by laser light was often the prelude to the triggering of a far more lethal deterrent and a target that had just been rendered much less of an immediate threat.

After the advent of Dazzlers became apparent, UEADF began to mount small versions of the Dazzler device on its field machines with an appropriate increase in the effectiveness of its search and destroy operations. Falmartians eventually learned to defend against the Dazzlers by using special goggles. The Imperial Army, after 2030, began to adapt anti-dazzle coatings to most of their optic systems, from binoculars to flexy-sights to goggles. After 2031, Dazzlers began to have less of an effectiveness in the field but even more so against warrior bunny raiders who began to infiltrate the various facilities and installations.

In 2032, the Praetorian Guards began to field man-portable magic-powerd Dazzler units of their own in an attempt to wreck or at least temporarily disable the optical sensors of HKs and other machines, causing UEADF to introduce a variety of anti-dazzle technology to its existing and future built units.

Strobes- The nervous system was a very interesting thing; it could be affected by a variety of inputs and one of the more promising pre-War non-lethal technologies had been how to use pulsed wavelengths of light projected along certain frequencies and at certain durations to cause paralysis and epilepsy-like fits in a human target. Strobe generators were included as part of the initial HELICIS system and operated by flashing intense patterns of light very quickly at the target, attacking the central nervous system directly through an overload of visual input through the optical nerves.

The target's nervous system then went into paralytic shock for a short amount of time, leaving the target helpless and incapacitated. Special polarized visors and other protective eye wear could protect against the effects of a strobe generator so it wasn't quite as effective as its designers had once touted it as being. Still, ULTRON deployed strobe generators in a variety of its installations as well as in some designs of its combat machines (the tracked HK's would later use color coordinated red and blue phased pulsed strobes to try to "lock up" imperial troops to make them easier targets to acquire and neutralize).

Various quick-forming Liquid To Fog To Solid (LTFTS) Mobility Reducing Foams - Two notable non-lethal restraint systems included various quick-forming liquid to fog to solid (LTFTS) mobility reducing foams designed to be porous enough that encapsulated threat elements could still breathe but strong enough to prevent any movement. These mobility reduction foams were dispensed through high pressure jets mounted in the floors, walls and ceiling of security points. Upon activation, several high pressure tanks would empty their contents into the area, forming a dense, wet thick fog that filled up to five square meters and immediately hampered natural sight to a distance of only a meter or so.

Four seconds after the fog made contact with air, it began to expand to five times its normal size and became quite adhesive, quickly forming a molecular bond with any similar chemical compound it came into contact with, forming a high tensile strength, low density solid that rapidly trapped anything caught in the dispersion zone. A special rapidly expanding aerosol based dissolvent quickly broke down the solidified foam on contact, one fluid ounce of dissolvent applied as a mist could neutralize one cubic meter of foam, turning it into a drab colored, non-toxic vapor that could be removed safely through the conventional environmental duct and screening systems. Each foam projector also contained a small amount of dissolvent for use at that location but the primary dispersal (in case of accidental discharge, a mistake of identity or other situation) of neutralizing aerosol was done from portable high pressure canisters that would normally be carried by the responding security teams.

One side effect of the early mixture was that it was flammable and a spark or weapon discharge would turn the block of mobility reducing foam into a rapidly melting firestorm, much to the chagrin of those trapped inside the foam who had no protection at all from the superheated air rushing through the porous material or the drawing of air for fuel for the fire, away from the inner parts of the foam where the intruders were secured. The foam would also burn for quite some time and tended to stick to anything it fell upon in a gooey, flaming mass that was hard to extinguish. Foam burns usually involved cutting pieces of charred foam out of the skin and surrounding clothes. Later modifications to the formula prevented this side effect and it was this improved formula of compound that was originally installed in the HELICIS system.

ULTRON discovered the formula for the flammable version of the foam and began experimenting with its use in the field and in non-critical areas of its installations where the flammable foam could be used as a far more effective lethal deterrent to large groups of raiders. Later variants of this security measure included lethal toxins mixed in with the foam, producing a quickly solidifying death trap where the toxins would be both breathed in through the porous material as well as absorbed through any contact with bare skin.

MRGMPC- The other non-lethal restraint method was composed of a Movement Reducing Gelatinous Memory Polymer Compound which was highly resistant to cutting. Referred to by its nickname, "tangler," or "webber," the poly-gelatinous restraint system sent a burst of rapidly forming, light, fluffy chemical polymer threads in an expanding arc towards the threat elements, plastering the target with a spider web-like array of very thin yet super strong, sticky polymer strands (each several times stronger than steel and highly resistant to cutting). The nature of the poly-gelatinous threads was such that any attempt at movement caused the threads to constrict until the threat element was completely immobilized. Ten seconds after the target became immobile, the threads hardened into a solid and lost their elasticity. A special dissolving compound was used (delivered via an aerosol or liquid spray format) to remove the threads and release the threat element into the custody of waiting security teams.

ULTRON also developed this originally less-than-lethal restraint system into a fully lethal variant. By changing the compound and native programming of the memory polymer to a more aggressive set of parameters, ULTRON was able to produce a type of compound that would not only produce larger, thicker strands but would continue to constrict with great force, drawing upon its fibers to pull itself ever tighter, absorbing itself inwards to the tightest possible amount and the smallest possible area. The threads could produce enough pressure per square inch to burst veins, tear skin, snap bones and crush or pulp internal organs. The process of constriction, from impact to final polymer hardening took less than twenty seconds. The compound required to neutralize the second, more lethal variant differed than the compound required for the first and was thus, ineffectual in aiding targets struck by the more lethal version.

Some variants of this system mounted high pressure chemical sprays / gas ejectors nearby to dose trapped individuals with a variety of non-lethal, less-than-lethal, lethal and more-than-lethal chemical compounds. Some of ULTRON's later poisons and bio-toxins had variable delays in terminal onsets, from a quick but violent death that was over within a few seconds to several minutes of indescribable pain and suffering culminating in a messy end designed to inflict the maximum amount of psychological impact on any survivors who may bear witness.

2024 A.D. - Rapidly advancing technology improves the lethality of the HELICIS system.

From 2024 to 2040 A.D., ULTRON's rapid technology expansion brought about new ways to augment the already highly effective HELICIS system and the following subsystems were added over the course of the decade and a half that lead up to the advent of nano-technology.

Solofilament was impossible to see with the unaided human eye and as such proved to be a perfect area denial system for unsuspecting or unwary intruders who would lose fingers, hands, feet, or entire limbs and torso / trunk simply by being careless. Solofilament was also known as "mollywire", "molly thread", "superwire", "microwire," and sometimes (erroneously) as "nanowire" or "nanothread." Solofilament was also very hard to damage, it was very thin, hard to hit, and if you tried to cut it, chances were whatever you tried to cut it with would just fall apart in two pieces during the process as the wire passed effortlessly through most substances, cleaving it apart on a molecular level. Solofilament was also used in various aspects, from anti-personnel obstacles (the wire was statically deployed at various heights up to 2 meters from the ground or crisscrossed in a random pattern to form an impromptu spiderweb-like array) to topping off and replacing the chain in old style chain link fences, replacing the older concertina and razor wire systems. After 2032 A.D., UEADF relied heavily on electrostatic capacitor discharge arrays and solofilament posts as perimeter protection of its installations.

The advanced solofilament technology was taken a step farther in the introduction of the high speed solofilament spoolers. Security threats could be engaged by a short range solofilament spooler which would force nearly all of its three meter coil of solofilament into the target at a high rate of speed, alternately charging the solofilament field with positive and negative feed, causing the solofilament to twist and coil around itself, cutting and slicing through vital organs in the process. Once a meter or more of the solofilament was coiled inside the main trunk of the target, the flail spooler would send a small electric charge through the solofilament, making it violently whip back and forth, writhing randomly and quickly around inside the target. The result was that the internal organs and most of the bone structure of the target were quickly rendered into diced pulp and the target would simply collapse in upon itself. Several solofilament spoolers were usually mounted near a security checkpoint and would strike the target all at once from different angles or multiple targets could be engaged as required if the threat situation called for such.

High speed variable height solofilament wire runners were introduced into the HELICIS design after 2030 A.D. Operating on nearly frictionless tracks and driven by electrically powered very high speed motors, these lethal defense systems were mounted at two levels, floor and ceiling. Upon activation, the runners would drop from the ceiling and rise from the floor, roughly at chest and knee height on a six foot tall man. Strung between the two runners was a one molecule thin wire, held in suspension by a high powered modulated electromagnetic field generated along its length. The total time of transition, from activation to completion of the run, along a ten meter stretch of hall, was just under three seconds. During that time, the fast moving solofilament wire would pass through any 2 meter tall intruder at the chest and below knee level with ease, creating neat and instantaneous amputations of the legs, arms and central trunk of the intruder.

The incisions were so finely cut that it might be several seconds before the brain actually realized that damage had been done on such a catastrophic level. Variances of the HSMWR were many, some were spider webbed floor mounts that activated by pressure plates, drawing twelve solofilament wires together in a rapidly intertwining circular pattern around a single individual. Other designs utilized horizontal or vertical arrays of solofilament spun up to two meters tall or wide and allocated at two to four centimeters apart. The speed of the wire runners and the very size of the wire often meant that security threats were eliminated seconds before their nervous systems even realized the amount of catastrophic damage that had been done. Threat elements would simply fall apart into precisely measured slices.

HELICIS - 2035 A.D. to 2039 A.D.

After 2035 A.D., ULTRON began to actively use its vast understanding of the electrical and chemical process of the human brain and the human central nervous system to great advantage in regards to security of its automated installations. Large NPFGs, or Neural Phase Field Generators (often called "fear field generators" by the Falmartians who encountered them), were installed deep within the installations, operating on harmonic frequencies which caused the same artificially induced reaction in humans as naturally generated abject fear, paranoia and in some cases, direct nausea or even uncontrolled epilepsy-like fits and seizures. The NPFGs were used to great success as wards on the perimeter to deter security breaches.

The science and application behind the NPFG was a breakthrough in human neural research. ULTRON had discovered during its many years of applied study to captured test subjects that specific frequencies of ultra-sonic sound waves, when mixed with specific electromagnetic field variations, could directly affect the human mind and nervous system in an increasingly detrimental method, the more power or the stronger the field was made, the greater the effect or the wider the area of effect.

At very high levels, the NPFG could cause massive cerebral hemorrhaging and even death in the test subjects by destroying the walls of the thin veins and vessels which supplied blood to the brain. This curious effect of tuning the NPFG to highly specific operating frequencies and recalibrating the emitter modulations began to produce consistent results in laboratory evaluations among live test subjects. ULTRON was pleased that it had discovered what could only be termed as a "death field generator." The TPFG, or Terminal Phase Field Generators, first appeared in limited installation testing in 2034 A.D. and by 2036 A.D. the TPFGs were forming one of the core threat buffers to ULTRON's critical asset installations. A radical evolutionary step up from the NPFGs, the TPFG was designed around a much narrower phase induction of the electromagnetic spectrum which affected the human mind and the human nervous system's capacity to operate correctly. Put simply, any human entering the volume of a TPFG would find the electro-chemical operation of their brain and central nervous system to be overloaded.

The effect was to burn out the CNS and neural pathways and the end result took less than three seconds to achieve, dropping humans in their spot lifelessly with massive cerebral hemorrhaging and fusing of the finer neural pathways. The power required to generate this field relegated it's use to fixed installations though research was uncovered in 2032 A.D. that indicated that ULTRON was working on a portable version to be mounted in a heavy tracked chassis as well as a possible orbital variation that could beam the TP field down from space over a large area, with a good amount of ground penetration and casualty effectiveness at more than 30 meters of depth. If ULTRON had ever been able to produce such a device it would have given ULTRON a very real, orbital death ray and one that would have been nearly impossible to defend against by the Resistance.

2040 A.D. - The dark advent of applied monomolecular nanotechnology

After 2040 A.D., ULTRON began equipping its Core center and its many various automated complexes with new, far more sinister, far more effective and efficient forms of security and internal protection involving the cutting edge of its nanotechnology research; DNC hive matrix clusters, EPMADS, guided solofilament whips, and the horror that became known simply as the "Gray Blanket."

The DNC - Disassembler Nanostat Clusters were derivatives of ULTRON's research into the dark recesses of nano technology where the light of hope never shined. ULTRON began to achieve an almost one hundred percent production efficiency rating in 2031 A.D. when it incorporated advanced nano-technology building processes into its automated factories. Nanotech was still relatively new to the Artifint and the molecular sized constructs could not exist very long outside of their protective containment carrier vessels nor did they have much range thus they proved (at first) to be impractical as a weapon science let alone an application of that science to actual combat. The simplified nature of their programming relegated them to menial tasks but at that level they excelled beyond the best of ULTRON's other builders. Production lines began to be nanotech based, creating larger Machines that seemed to have been grown, seamless, with no weld points. Waste of material resources was almost completely eliminated by utilizing nanotech reclamation procedures which could recover any matter lost to the assembly process.

Machines that had been too damaged in combat to be repaired were reclaimed using nanotechnology, their component materials broken down then reassembled in perfect order by ULTRON's nanotech based assembly procedures. ULTRON's designs became smaller, lighter, faster and far more durable. Nanotech allowed ULTRON to examine the human body, alive or dead, in greater detail than ever before leading to newer weapons and toxic compound sciences that were nanotech based and almost totally antibiotic resistant.

Nanotech even kept ULTRON's work facilities clean, removing dust and shavings from the assembly process, keeping its working surfaces spotless, repaired when they wore down and polished to a high luster. Accessways into the assembly areas and control wombs of the factories were now guarded by sweeping clouds of nanostats, moving from protective charging station to protective charging station in a never ending cycle of patrols.

One derivative of the nanostat technology was a dedicated anti-personnel system housed in hive matrix arrays, specialized nanotechnology designed to disassemble organic material on a molecular level. Once a security breach was detected, bulkhead doors to the affected areas would fall into place and lock with a randomly generated sixty-four gigabyte encryption dislock code generated by the hive matrix array and shared with the main presence of the installation security system. The trapped intruders would then be dealt with by the BDNC swarmers that would pour out of their carriers, millions of the molecule sized Machines flitting out at high speed on ducted fans, out into a violated security area, in the space of a few seconds.

Often completely invisible in small groups, the millions and millions of anti-personnel nanostats discharged from the hive matrix arrays instead took on a scintillating gray fog aspect. The disassemblers were charged with only one task, remove all organic matter from their assigned area (often a length of corridor or a particular location, room) and they did this with mathematical precision, machine precision and terrifying quickness.

Each disassembler was a small, self propelled wrecking factory equipped with high speed cutters, grinders, cold plasma lasers and powerful manipulators housed in a multi segmented body that could maneuver in all directions (thanks to eight legs and a set of ducted fans housed in the main body). What the cold plasma laser could not incinerate, the grinders and manipulators fed into a powerful cyclic forge which converted material into thermal energy which could in turn be used to power the nanostat, increasing its loiter time and operational perimeter.

A cloud of five million active disassemblers could break down a thousand kilograms of organic matter in + / - 63.74 seconds. This amount of organic matter corresponded to the sum total organic mass of the average human raiding party consisting of six to eight humans and their gear. The less material present, the faster the disassembly process was concluded while more material would take suitably longer periods of time to disassemble. There was no known defense against a disassembler cloud save for a high energy localized EMP pulse which burned out the nanostats or a wide area effect heat discharge such as a plasma grenade (detrimental to those trying to escape the nanostat clusters). No personal armor could offer protection against a Machine so small that it couldn't be seen without a microscope, a Machine so small that it could quite effortlessly walk or fly through the weaves in the armor and clothing until it reached bare skin.

The disassemblers attacked from the surface of the skin, forming matrixes of interlocking layers of machines, each working their way down, taking apart everything in their path layer by layer in a process that was as horrible to watch as it was painful to endure. Other disassemblers entered the various body orifices, ears, nose, throat and began to disassemble the organic material from the inside out, meeting the incoming wave of disassemblers somewhere in the middle of the organic mass.

Once the organic matter was disassembled and disposed of, the disassemblers would then return to their hive matrix arrays, leaving the inorganic material behind, and report the situation resolution and outcome to their control system. Depending on the need to study the non-organic material left behind, other nanostats would be piped in to disassemble and reclaim any inorganic material or it would be collected by larger units for laboratory study before being recycled at a later time by other, specialized nanotech disassemblers.

Guided Solofilament Whips (GSW) - Once ULTRON learned how to produce and control nanotech based constructs, it paired one of its first successful anti-personnel countermeasures, solofilament, with a nanotech based carrier unit that was both high speed and highly maneuverable. The result was a solofilament whip with a guided tip composed of a networked aerodyne based "tug" that would be tethered to the end of the solofilament. The aerodyne tug would fly around the target, drawing the solofilament tight as it darted about, pulling the cutting wire through the target. The nature of the solofilament allowed it to easily pass through most material thus all the aerodyne tug had to do was fly around the target then draw the solofilament wire tight at the end of a loop or two.

As the solofilament wire went rigid, it would often result in neat amputations of any limbs, torsos or trunks which it had been wound around. Several GSW units may be found operating in a given area, and their flight patterns would be coordinated so that they didn't intersect or entangle each other. Each GSW was roughly one millimeter in diameter and had a top speed of 100kph. The practical range of a typical GSW was from 3 to 9 meters in length. Active control of the solofilament's magnetic field allowed the carrier tug to control the rigidity of the solofilament line, from hard to soft, which enabled the carrier tug to also control the flight and maneuverability of the solofilament line.

The Gray Blanket- Furthering its research into the nether regions of nanotech, ULTRON produced a technological nightmare which became known simply as a "wrapper" or a "Gray Blanket." The Gray Blanket was the forerunner of the EPMADS system and was the first stable nanostat / nanomorph construct created by ULTRON. The Gray Blanket was just that, a 5mm thick layer of interlinked and mono-colonized nanostats arrayed in a 3 meter by 3 meter flat sheet. Linked into dedicated support systems, the Gray Blanket was used to protect large access areas where it would lay flat and take on the coloration of the surrounding material, mimicking its territory perfectly. Only a bare rise (less than 2 millimeters) could be perceived where the structural material ended and the Gray Blanket began.

Sensors for the Gray Blanket were extensive for its development, better than human norm but not quite as good as the (then) latest generation of endoskeleton based combat units. As such, the Gray Blanket had superb anti-personnel capacities but was limited to a rather narrow operational perimeter. Range of target tracking and acquisition was around 20 meters, a problem in the open but not such a hindrance in the confined spaces where the Gray Blanket was usually employed.

Gray Blankets formed some of the first and last lines of defense within ULTRON's facilities, taking up their assigned stations and merging with the walls, floor or ceiling (and sometimes even with the airlock or security bulkhead which made for an unpleasant surprise to intruders...) where they would patiently wait for a security breach. Upon a breach, the Gray Blanket would go active, waiting until the intruders were within distance, often letting the intruders walk right onto it before it would spring up around them, often enveloping them completely as it began to disassemble them on a molecular level.

The Gray Blanket was fully capable of entangling and subduing intruders, if there was a need to gather intelligence through later mechanical interrogation methods but otherwise the Gray Blanket simply went about the simple pre-programmed task of disassembling all organic matter it came into contact with or which remained in its area of detection. If the intruders were somehow alerted to the Gray Blanket's presence, it could unfold itself and move quickly, using the four corners of its shape like prehensile arms and hands, extending its corners while drawing its midsection in tighter and narrower.

As such, it took on the semblance of a four legged spider and it moved by grasping and adhering to surface material, propelling itself and using smaller formed as need be manipulators to grasp intruders and begin the disassembly process. Once enveloped within the constricting folds of the Gray Blanket, disassembly was quick as the blanket invaded every orifice and worked from the inside out, a process which most intruders never got to watch fully as the folds of the Gray Blanket hid most of the act itself. The Gray Blanket proved to be a rather nasty surprise to human raiders, fast, feral and terrifyingly lethal in its assigned duties.

By late 2032 A.D., Gray Blanket Containers (GBC) had started to appear in operation around the defensive zones of ULTRON installations and each year, the range from the installation that GBCs could be found increased further and further outwards. By late 2045 A.D, Gray Blankets were found operating autonomously among the ruins and while their numbers were never very great the Gray Blankets did account for many casualties among Falmartian fighters in the field from 2047 A.D through the end of the War and even for several years after the War.

The Gray Blanket was the first stable nanomorph creation but it was a limited design with little shape shifting capacity and only a feral form of operation. ULTRON recognized that a shape shifting weapon that was composed of nanotech based material and capable of semi-autonomous or even fully autonomous operation would be an invaluable asset in its arsenal, one which the humans might not be able to defend against. ULTRON wanted something more stable and with a wider range of functions. Further research into stabilized nanomorphs created the EPMADS.

EPMADS- ULTRON's research into nanotech revealed that not only could it create clouds and fogs of nanostats but that the nanostats could be linked together to form far more substantial shapes and larger units though this was quite taxing on their systems and relegated to short range operations at best (usually within ten meters of the nanostat carrier array). The Gray Blanket (see above) was an evolution of this, able to operate for far longer distances away from its carrier but still, it was limited. The EPMADS, or Extruded Poly Mimetic Alloy Defense System, was quite literally, a "nanomorph in a tube" and a very deadly one at that. Once a security breach was detected, bulkhead doors to the affected areas would fall into place and lock with a randomly generated sixty-four gigabyte encryption dislock code generated by the hive matrix array and shared with the main presence of the installation security system.

The local EPMADS would then activate, extruding up to four hundred kilograms of cohesion seeking second generation nanostats from previously concealed pipe ducts in the section walls. This mass represented fifteen to twenty billion clustered nanostats forming into a two to three meter wide pool five to seven centimeters in depth. The nanostats that made up this pool of smart liquid metal would then rapidly take shape, rising up to shift into their combat form, a two to three meter tall, featureless, anatomically streamlined bipedal construct possessing all the inherent physical prowess and sensor capacity of a T600 combat unit.

The polymorphic capacity of the EPMADS allowed it to form contact weapons, blades, cudgels, monomolecular edges and vibratory edges, or to direct current down these forms to surge into the target. The EPMADS had no need for ranged weapons, not in the confined space in which it was utilized as it could dispatch multiple intruders with quick efficiency, using the body on one intruder to shield itself from attacks by another intruder before ramming an appendage through the first intruder to eliminate the second intruder all the while never lowering its guard.

The EPMADS could form multiple appendages, multiple arms, multiple legs, multiple heads, all in order to deal with multiple targets and the transformation was nearly instantaneous from one phase to another when it chose to do so. What it couldn't cut with its molecule thin generated blade edges it could smash or pulp with its enhanced mechanical strength and was able to pursue intruders at speeds up to 40 kilometers per hour up to five hundred meters from its mono-colony host nanostat array. Beyond that, control of the nanostats would be handed off to another control node which would add its own nanostats to the cohesive mixture to repair any damage that the nanomorph might have sustained. Any EPMADS that left its control area without successfully being reassigned to another carrier array either simply stopped at the range limit or lost cohesion and dissolved into a fog that slowly was reclaimed by the nearest nanostat clusters.

The upper limit for cohesion seemed to be about four hundred kilograms, beyond that and there were problems with the integration software and cluster interaction becoming increasingly unstable and leading to a cascade echo imbalance of the cohesi

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MoD Main Building, Whitehall, London.

"Well, gentlemen the Prime Minister wants to know how it happened." Admiral Lord Philip said as he looked out of the window at the teeming rain battering London. The weather forecast had been for bright sunshine. So the Met Office had gotten it wrong, again, hardly new experience for someone in Britain. This time though, he expected the Met Office had received some supernatural assistance in getting its forecasts wrong.

"The Hurricane Debby, Minister?" The Permanent Secretary wondered. "Well it was rather more powerful than we would normally expect for this country and the damage to BAE Preston and Warton aerodrome was quite extensive. The Met Office is still looking into…"

"Not the Hurricane Debby, we have a good idea what caused it." Philip replied. "Something much more important than that, the Prime Minister would like to know how the French got command of an Army Front while we have ended up as, well, an appendage of the American Army Front. "We now have a large army, experienced commanders and staff, and a lot of combat experience. Arguably more than the French, certainly. So how did this happen?"

"We may have a large army, Minister, by our standards that is." Field Marshal Dannattt, the Chief of the General Staff, replied. " But its still small in comparison with the whole UEADF. Even then, we don't have enough equipment, uniforms, or weapons to equip even half of them, and we are only just keeping up with the requirements of our troops in the United Earth Alliance Expeditionary Force as it is."

"Indeed, our defence factories are working flat out and yet are only just meeting requirements." Air Chief Marshal Stirrup commented. "It will be a while before we can put many more troops in the field than we have now; most of our reserve army are still at home waiting to be told to report to training centers.

"If we were overstretched before in Iraq and Afghanistan then we've gone beyond overstretch now."

Admiral Philip looked back at the defence chief. "It still doesn't answer the question. We've spent the last half century commanding NATO ground forces; first the Northern Army front then the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps; and we're not getting to use that experience. The Cabinet is not pleased."

"With respect, Minister, the Cabinet should look beyond appearances and examine what the situation really is on the ground." Dannatt pulled a file from his briefcase and opened it up. "If we look at the United Earth Alliance Expeditionary Force, it is very much a work-in-progress. It's important to remember that armored units, tank and mechanized infantry, are to be considered front-line in this war. Everybody keeps the leg infantry at home for self-defense.

The Second Army Front (Greater Russia ) is completed at 650 divisions, although many of its units are below strength. No surprises there, the Russians always had a big army andits fully mechanized. The Third Army Front (Chinese plus Mongolian) is at roughly 80 percents strength with 650 divisions out of its planned 815.

The Chinese Amy have attached extra leg infantry divisions to their armored units to make up the numbers but we all know that in this war, its armor that counts. In both Russia and China's case, they have huge stocks of war material in storage and massive manufacturing capabilities.

The Russians are pulling it out fast and they have come up with some interesting examples I can tell you. Did you know one of their divisions is getting a mix of improved T-72s and Object 490s - 152mm RUSSIAN SUPER TANK!?

"That brings us to The First Army Front (U.S.). The Americans are cloning divisions as fast as they can equip them – and diluting their force very quickly in the process.

Each of their new divisions has a cadre of veterans but that's about it, the rest of the formations consists of raw recruits, including an increasing number of conscripts. In the decade since the war started, they've triple the number of divisions they have available and then quadruple it again. They now have 640 divisions in their Army Front.

Again, they were able to do that because they had the reserves of equipment stockpiled. To that number, we're adding 30 British and Irish divisions, 10 Australian, 20 Canadian and about 50 Commonwealth division, 110 divisions bringing the total to 750. The number are likely to be higher in the future.

In other words, of the seven armies planned for First Army Group, five actually exist. One of those is half-Commonwealth.

However, there's more to it than that. Those American divisions are small, they're about half the size of the Russian and Chinese units. There are reasons for that including structural requirements but the numbers remain small.

"Those Three Army Fronts are the backbone of the United Earth Alliance Expeditionary Force. They are the important ones, the ones that actually matter. Now, the organization of those Army Fronts was done to ease command and control. That was the critical constraint and its what put us in The First Army Front. The BigThree can be defined by language, First is Anglophone, Second is Russophone, Third is Sinophone.

"Now if we look at The Fourth Army Front (United Republic of Europia aka EU ). Certainly the French politicked their way into command and they put 50 armored divisions into the field. The Germans added 50, the Czechs 10, the Danes 10 and that took a heroic effort from them, Greece 10, Italy 50, Netherlands 10, Norway 10, Poland 40, Romania 10, Iberian Union 50, Turkey 100. Sweden's added 20 divisions, Switzerland 10, the Baltic states 30. Added up that makes 460 divisions, again with no common language, but luckily with an united logistics and operational doctrine.

They are mobilizing their reserves butthey don't have the huge stockpiles of equipment that the Americans, Russians, Chinese and Middle East have. So, they're mobilization work is producing mostly leg infantry for guarding the home front.

"Now we look at The South Asian Fifth Army Front (India). India dominates it of course, they've thrown 700 armored/mechanized divisions into the pot. Bangladesh has added 90, a creditable effort for them if I might say so, Pakistan added 100, Sri Lanka 10. That makes 900 divisions. Like in China's case the Indian have attached extra leg infantry divisions to their armored units to make up their huge numbers.

Next was The East Asian Sixth Army Front: Japan 180, Indonesia 150, South Korea 120. The Koreans with the add of the North Korea can sent another 100. Malaysia's sent 10, the Philippines 30, Singapore 10, Thailand 50, Brunei 10, Taiwan 50 and Myanmar 40. Indochina Federation rounds off the pot with 150 divisions. Add that up and we can see they have 900 divisions and that's going to be about it. Those countries are straining hard to support what they have, any further force increments in the near future are really unlikely.

Japan command position of this Army Front has caused some North Korean don't even want to listen to the Japanese. They are grumbling about Japan leadership position, some right-wing generals in their government even accusing Japan recreating Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in the Second World War. The Chinese even make some anrgy noise but so far has not taken action.

The next one, The South American Seventh Army Front or the Latin American Seventh Front. Brazil contributed 240 armored divisions into the pot. Mexico added 150, Argentina 100, Caribbean Confederation 30, Central American Union 30, Venezuela added 30 a creditable effort for them. Chile 10, Peru 10, Bolivia 10, Colombia 20 pretty impressive, Uruguay 10, Paraguay 10, 650 divisions and again, that's more or less it. Like in The Sixth Army Front those countries are straining hard to support what they have, any further force increments in the near future are really unlikely.

Next The African Eighth Army Front. DRC 80, Nigeria 80, Ethiopia 50, Mozambique 20, Madagascar 30, Cameroon 20, Angola 20, Zambia 20, Chad 20, Guinea 10, Senegal 10, South Sudan 10, Togo 10, Somalia 20, Central African Republic 20, Republic of the Congo 20, Burundi 10, Burkina Faso 10. Total, 460 divisions and again with no common language, logistics or operational doctrine.

Finally we have The Arab Union Ninth Army Front, that's got Algeria with 100 division, Egypt with 140, Iran with 130, Iraq with 10, Israel with 30, Jordan with 20, Kuwait 10, Morocco 40, United Arab Emirates 10, Yemen 10, Lebanon 10, Tunisia 10, Libya 40, Saudi Arabia with 40 and Syria with 30. Another 20 divisions from Sudan that have even less in common with the rest of the group. The Israelies don't even listen to the Iranians, they just wander off and do what they want. Total, 650 divisions and again, that's more or less it.

The big contribution from the Middle East military has been the stockpiles of equipment. We got more than 5,000 tanks from Libya and an 1,250,000 man Army. They may pull some additional forces in from Africa and so on but they won't make much difference. The Arab Union kinda have a common language but no integrated command systems nor commonality in logistics. The Ninth also have no common doctrine but at least Egypt has experience of commanding forces of this size in the field.

"In short, The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth Army Front are marginally useful and The Seventh, Eighth, Ninth Army Front are shambles. It is reasonably obvious to us that Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force Liam Nuttall knows this as well as we do. He knows that Fourth composes troops that, in most cases, are very good on the small unit level, up to division or corps level, but they have no real capability of operating beyond that. If push comes to shove, he'll break The Fourth up and use the units as spot reinforcements, especially for The First Army Front. The French "commander" will be left with an Army Front headquarters but no troops to command.

"Now contrast that with our situation, we are in the primary striking group of the United Earth Alliance Expeditionary Force, we have the ear of the commander of that group and we are trusted, well-regarded allies. Our words weigh heavily with them. We are an influential partner in a vital organization, rather than the head of an ineffectual one. Put another way, we may have an inferior position on paper but in terms of actual power and influence we outweigh the French many times over."

Philip harrumphed, knowing he would have to pass this information onto his Cabinet colleagues. Both the Prime Minister and his deputy were very keen on the idea of a British led Army Front; in time Britain would probably have one but not yet. The United Earth Alliance Expeditionary Force, even in its present incomplete form, was just too large.