Confederate Armed Forces: military arm of the Terran Confederacy

The Confederate Armed Forces, also known as the Confederate Military, was the military arm of the Terran Confederacy. Headquartered on Tarsonis and organized around powerful squadrons of conscripts and resocialized criminals, it fought the Kel-Morian Combine through the Guild Wars, crushed the Rebellion of Korhal with nuclear fire, and then met an enemy it could not intimidate. When the zerg reached the Confederacy's throne world, the most formidable terran military in the Koprulu sector broke apart in a matter of days, its survivors scattered between the new Terran Dominion, rebel bands, and dwindling resistance cells.

Character and reputation#

Among the institutions of the Terran Confederacy, the military held an unusual position. It was not as corrupt as the Confederate Council or the Senate, yet the colonies it was sworn to protect generally regarded it as unreliable when their defense was actually at stake. The armed forces proved willing to carry out morally questionable acts to satisfy their political masters, from news suppression to punitive arson, and they operated under their own code of military justice rather than civilian law.

The highest authority over the service was Confederate Command, which included the Confederate High Command and Confederacy Marine Command. The High Command dictated control throughout the organization and determined the threat level facing Confederate forces, though it sometimes intervened directly in events, as when it ordered Chau Sara placed under lockdown and classified the very existence of the zerg. Headquarters remained on Tarsonis, with branch commands maintained on other Confederate worlds.

The bulk of the military was stationed at Tarsonis itself, and its most potent defenses lay in orbit. Three primary orbital platforms served as staging areas for the Confederate fleet, with the central platform defended by troops of Omega and Delta Squadrons. Over the years those defenses were engaged in more than thirty major battles.

The Guild Wars#

By the time of the Guild Wars the armed forces were already engaged in regular fighting. The conflict with the Kel-Morian Combine produced some of the most bitter campaigns in the service's history. Confederate forces attempted to secure Char, fighting battles there that ranked among the worst of the war. On Sonyan, the 33rd Ground Assault Division waged a closely fought battle against the Combine in the South Kreen Mines, while Confederate troops on Artesia Prime were ambushed with spider mines and rippers. Toward the end of the war the 321st Colonial Rangers Battalion, whose ranks included the unit remembered as the Heaven's Devils, was tasked with high priority missions on Turaxis II. During the same conflict Confederate armored personnel carriers were fitted with reactive armor, a measure the Combine imitated with scavenged materials.

The peace that followed carried a political price. After the Guild Wars ended, Confederate forces were banned from prosecuting the Kel-Morian Combine for any potentially criminal action, leaving old grievances unsettled.

The Rebellion of Korhal#

The Confederacy's harshest test before the alien invasions came from one of its own core worlds. Confederate forces were pulled off Korhal after Senator Angus Mengsk captured every Confederate outpost on the planet. When Angus was assassinated, his son Arcturus Mengsk struck back at Confederate bases and installations. The response was apocalyptic: Korhal was bombarded with nuclear weapons, an act so devastating that the full scale use of such weapons on habitable worlds was banned afterward.

The attack fractured loyalties inside the service itself. In the Sara system, Lieutenant Colonel Horace Warfield called in his resignation the minute he heard of the bombardment. His vessel, the Iron Justice, cut off all contact with the surrounding military network and went silent, and Confederate forces branded Warfield a deserter and hunted him through the Sara system and beyond.

Against the Sons of Korhal, the movement Arcturus Mengsk built from his father's ashes, Confederate forces were reinforced by mercenaries supplied by Graven Hill and Remy Harris. That arrangement collapsed after the Confederates captured a group of mercenary backed rebels, traced their supplier, and raided the business headquarters behind them. Through the closing years of the century the armed forces also skirmished regularly with other colonial powers and pirate militias.

The same period showed how far the military would go in ordinary police work. In the years after the Guild Wars, Confederate forces hunted the outlaws Jim Raynor and Tychus Findlay to the fringe world Haji, where the pair hid at an abandoned archaeological dig near the town of Geladi. Because the site had too many exit points to cover, garrison commander General Sol Kervock ordered part of Geladi set alight to cut off their escape, endangering three million colonists. The fire was officially blamed on a faulty reactor, and Kervock failed to take his quarry anyway.

First contact with the zerg#

When the zerg reached Confederate space, the invasion was initially met with very little resistance. In keeping with prevailing political needs, the military was dispatched not to fight the aliens but to suppress knowledge of them, above all on Chau Sara and Mar Sara. After the protoss fleet known as the Koprulu Expeditionary Force incinerated Chau Sara from orbit on December 8, 2499, the Confederates launched a clumsy counterattack against it, yet they never truly engaged the protoss in battle.

On Mar Sara the pattern of priorities repeated itself. General Edmund Duke arrested Marshal Jim Raynor and the local militia on the pretext that they had violated standing colonial law by destroying a vital Confederate command center at Backwater Station, a facility already infested by the zerg. The Confederates continued to avoid action against the Swarm even as it spread. Covert assets did more of the real fighting than the regulars: ghost operations were considered so essential during the Great War that the armed forces regularly claimed they were the only reason the Confederacy could stand against the protoss and the zerg at all.

The Antigan Revolt#

A large detachment of Alpha Squadron troops was stationed on Antiga Prime when the Confederacy learned the colony was ready to rise against it. The revolt ignited when Lieutenant Sarah Kerrigan of the Sons of Korhal killed the officer in the Antigan command center, and the uprising that followed proved beyond the ability of Confederate forces to suppress.

The campaign cost the Confederacy one of its most senior officers. The Norad II crash landed on Antiga Prime after being attacked by the zerg, and Duke, saved from the wreck by Raynor, was persuaded to join Mengsk. When the Sons of Korhal position on the planet was finally located, a large Confederate strike force established a base camp inside the rebels' own defensive perimeter. It was annihilated by zerg lured to the camp by a psi emitter that Kerrigan planted there.

The Fall of Tarsonis#

The end came at the Confederacy's heart. During the Battle of Tarsonis, the central orbital platform above the capital fell to Alpha Squadron, by then serving Mengsk. Despite bitter fighting, the Confederacy's best defenses were overrun by the zerg, and as resistance collapsed, units began deserting and defecting to the rebels.

With the Confederacy destroyed, its surviving soldiers went three ways. Many were forcibly conscripted into the armed forces of Arcturus Mengsk's new Terran Dominion, a process the emperor continued as he fortified his worlds. Others established the Confederate Resistance Forces to fight on, while some joined Raynor's Raiders after Jim Raynor and the reporter Michael Liberty saved them in the aftermath of the Battle of New Gettysburg. Pockets of the old military persisted for years afterward: a group of former Confederate firebats became the mercenary Devil Dogs, and a band of siege tank pilots carried on as the Siege Breakers.

Order of battle#

Confederate ground forces followed a common doctrine regardless of specialty. Bases were kept tight and efficient on the principle that the smaller the area, the less terrain there was to guard, producing crowded clusters of structures with just enough room for personnel and vehicles to pass between them, a layout often compared to an anthill. Known ground formations included the Colonial Militia with its many planetary branches, the Confederate Army, the Colonial Rangers, and the Confederate Marine Corps with its security marines, alongside records of a Confederate Armored Vehicle Corps.

The Confederacy also maintained an array of special forces, among them the 321st Colonial Rangers Battalion, the Annihilators, whose success rate was the highest in the entire service, the Cerberus Program and its recon squad, the Ghost Program that conscripted psionically gifted terrans such as Gabriel Tosh, and the War Pigs. Space power rested with the Colonial Fleet and its Sector Patrol together with the Confederate Navy, while intelligence work fell to the Center for State Security, the Confederate Intelligence Corps, and the Confederate Research and Development Division. Internal order was kept by the Internal Security Division and the Confederate Military Police, and the service also fielded the Hammer Strike Force.

The most famous formations of all were the squadrons, military wings filled with conscripts and former criminals drawn from across the Koprulu sector, many of them forced to undergo neural resocialization. Alpha Squadron handled advanced tactical strike operations and earned the lowest fatality rating in the armed forces through its lightning raids, Epsilon Squadron watched the borders with its armored corps, Nova Squadron conducted black operations and espionage, and Omega Squadron specialized in heavy assault, with Delta and Gamma Squadrons rounding out the known wings. The fates of several squadrons were never recorded after the Confederacy's downfall.