Dominion Armada: naval arm of the Terran Dominion

The Dominion Armada, known also as the Dominion Fleet or the Dominion Navy, was the space naval arm of the Terran Dominion military. A portion of its initial strength derived from former Terran Confederacy units, and the remnants of the Confederacy's Colonial Fleet were absorbed into the new Armada after the old government fell. From its first disastrous expedition to Char under General Edmund Duke to its final voyage into the Void beside Sarah Kerrigan, the Armada carried the Dominion's power between the stars, suffered repeated ruin, and was rebuilt each time around a new generation of battlecruisers.

Founding and the first fall of Char#

Upon the Armada's inception, its Behemoth-class battlecruisers were retrofitted with Yamato cannons, though some of the older vessels were left without the upgrade because of cost and limited supply. The fleet inherited ships and crews from the fallen Confederacy, including elements of Alpha Squadron, and the remnants of the Confederate Colonial Fleet were folded into its ranks.

Shortly after the establishment of the Dominion, elements of the fleet traveled to Char, drawn by the psionic emanations of Sarah Kerrigan. The expedition was led by General Edmund Duke. In orbit the fleet engaged both zerg and protoss forces and was defeated. Many ships were overrun by the zerg or destroyed by the Protoss Expeditionary Fleet that arrived shortly afterward. With the ground forces suffering disaster as well, the fleet fell back from Char, and later another Dominion fleet was defeated by the protoss.

The Brood War#

When the United Earth Directorate invaded the Koprulu sector, Duke led the Armada against the UED fleet at the Dylarian Shipyards, where the invaders had seized numerous Dominion battlecruisers in a raid. The counterattack failed and Duke withdrew his forces to Korhal. The Armada was defeated again at the siege of Augustgrad, and the remnants of the fleet were rescued by Raynor's Raiders.

Emperor Arcturus Mengsk scraped together a new fleet in the closing stage of the Brood War, but it too was defeated by Kerrigan's forces at Char Aleph, and the survivors retreated to Korhal.

The interbellum and the Second Great War#

In the years after the Brood War, credits that might have been spent expanding the fleet were instead poured into Mengsk's hunt for Jim Raynor. Even so, by the outbreak of the Second Great War the Dominion had constructed several large fleets equipped with advanced technology. In 2503 a squadron of the Armada aided Crown Prince Valerian Mengsk in his effort to find and secure archaeological materials.

In 2504 the fleet was put on alert when Satellite 1 reported unusual activity in the Char system. When the zerg invasion began soon afterward, Emperor Mengsk pulled the Armada back to protect the core worlds and left the fringe to burn. The Dominion proved unwilling to help the massive flow of refugees, and the fleet was ordered to turn away refugee ships arriving in the Core Worlds. First Fleet took part in Operation Burnout, while Second Fleet regrouped at the Dylarian Shipyards after the zerg attack on Tyrador VIII, and the two fleets combined to shield the Dominion's heartland.

Valerian Mengsk then took half the fleet to Char, where it engaged the zerg. Unknown to the prince's battlegroup, the other half of the Dominion Fleet waited nearby under Arcturus Mengsk, ready to pounce on whoever won. Valerian's ships suffered heavy losses, but with the aid of Raynor's Raiders and a xel'naga artifact the invasion succeeded and Kerrigan was made human again. The emperor then revealed his fleet and demanded custody of Kerrigan, traveling to Char aboard his new flagship, the White Star, at the head of the Dominion's remaining battlecruisers. Valerian refused. His now renegade battlegroup and Raynor's Raiders fled aboard the Hyperion and the Bucephalus, pursued across the sector by the Armada, sheltering for a time at Dead Man's Rock under the protection of Mira Han. The renegades suffered near total losses but escaped with Kerrigan to the Umojan Protectorate.

The pursuit continued as Kerrigan rebuilt the Swarm. The fleet attacked the Hyperion above Phaethon and kept firing even after Captain Matt Horner told them that Valerian was aboard, for Mengsk was willing to sacrifice anything to kill Kerrigan. When the Swarm finally assembled above Korhal, the fleet answered Mengsk's call to return and defend the throne world, but it was held off by leviathans under Broodmother Kilysa, and Augustgrad fell.

The End War#

After the zerg assault on Augustgrad and Valerian's ascension as emperor, most of the fleet that survived the attack was reorganized with the help of Raynor and Horner. When Moebius Corps assaulted Korhal and incapacitated the Sky Shield defense platform, at least half a dozen battlecruisers led by the Hyperion fought above the capital until the Spear of Adun, the Daelaam arkship of Hierarch Artanis, arrived and reinforced them. Once Moebius Corps was repelled from Korhal, the Dominion Fleet found itself engaged with the corrupted Golden Armada, which pushed it back deep into Dominion space until the protoss fleet was recalled to defend Amon's host form on Aiur.

During the End War the Dominion Fleet, under Admiral Matt Horner, combined with Mira's Marauders to help push back Amon's forces. Two years after the unified protoss reclaimed Aiur, a fleet detachment led by Raynor and Horner met the Spear of Adun and Kerrigan's leviathan outside Ulnar after receiving Kerrigan's transmission. Aboard the arkship, Kerrigan told them of a benevolent voice calling to her from the Void, and the allies agreed to end the threat of Amon once and for all. The fleet entered the Void, aided in the final defeat of Emil Narud, defended Kerrigan as she ascended into a xel'naga, and supported her final assault against the fallen xel'naga, in which Amon was slain. Afterward the fleet was rebuilt under Valerian and Horner as the Dominion entered a new age of peace.

Later conflicts#

The Dominion Fleet was called upon during the Defenders of Man Insurgency, in its early days against the feral zerg attacks on Dominion planets. The fleet was usually too slow to respond and was beaten to the scene by the Defenders of Man, a separatist group that insisted Valerian did too little as emperor. Later in the conflict, when Vardona was besieged by the Tal'darim Death Fleet, Horner sent Gorgon-class battlecruisers to strafe the attack lanes, wiping out the Tal'darim as they approached, though the separatist leader General Carolina Davis seized the fleet ship Medusa and escaped.

Davis then moved on the Cerros Shipyards, hoping to destroy the Gorgons stocked there and cripple the Dominion Fleet so that Valerian could not rule effectively. She activated the experimental war machine Xanthos and began destroying the drydocked Gorgons, but Nova Terra and Horner uncovered the plan and mounted a defense. Nova destroyed the Xanthos's weapons while Horner took the Hyperion against the lines of the Defenders of Man loyal to Davis. The combined front broke through, the Xanthos was destroyed, and Davis was killed.

In 2511, eight battlecruisers of the fleet, headed by the Hyperion, deployed to Gystt during the One-Day War. When hostilities broke out on the ground between Dominion and Daelaam forces and the renegade chitha broods, the fleet held orbit alongside a detachment of the protoss Great Fleet with Yamato cannons ready to fire, but the survey team and ground forces defused the crisis before fleet combat became necessary.

Organization and flagships#

The Armada was directed by Dominion Fleet Command and included the Dominion Navy Medical Corps alongside its numbered formations, First Fleet and Second Fleet. It operated in parallel with the ground forces of the Dominion Marine Corps, which functioned somewhat independently of the space based fleet, its officers controlling their own ships.

By the Battle of Char the Dominion Fleet counted around 50 battlecruisers. Valerian Mengsk took 25 of them to Char, where 11 were lost in the fighting, and the later confrontation with Arcturus Mengsk left all of the remaining ships except Valerian's flagship, the Bucephalus, destroyed or crippled.

Four vessels served in turn as flagship of the fleet and thus of the Terran Dominion: the Behemoth-class Norad III of the Norad series, the Gorgon-class Bucephalus, the Gorgon-class White Star, and the Behemoth-class Hyperion. Its notable officers included Fleet Admiral Hector Santiago, Admiral Gaskaville, Admiral Matt Horner, General Edmund Duke, General Horace Warfield, and Colonel Alexander Davidoff of Second Fleet, while Emperor Valerian Mengsk remained closely affiliated with the fleet throughout his reign.