High Command

High Command

The Royal Hapan High Command, or the military High Command of the Royal Hapan Armed Forces, is the command body in charge of directing and overseeing the execution of all military policy, and operational decisions of the Armed Forces and its various service branches. High Command members are a part of the formal military chain of command, which answers directly to the Commander-in-Chief that is the Sovereign.

It is the Minister of Defence, by tradition a decorated and experienced career officer of the armed forces appointed by the Sovereign, who as head of the civilian institution - that is, the Ministry of Defence which oversees and coordinates military affairs - represents the Royal Hapan Armed Forces in the Royal Council, as well as chairs the High Command as the commanding officer of all the Hapan military.

Other members of the High Command are the heads of the service branches, any appointed Deputy Ministers of Defence who may also serve under a dual role in a senior command or high administrative postings within the military hierarchy, and any other possible selection of designated Royal Advisors or other important military officials deemed fit to be included in deliberations. Such positions as Commanding Officers of the main battlefleets, including their Executive Officers if senior enough, their Army and Marine counterparts, any appointed Military Advisors, in addition to the Commandant of the Star Home Academy and various other Joint Forces Commanding Officers, are typically considered for seating on the High Council, at the discretion of the Chief of Staff.

Command Platforms

High Command has allocated meeting space and command posts available to itself and through its service arms across the Cluster, with the central command complex situated deep underground beneath the Palace of Defence on Hapes Prime.

Within this underground complex lay also the state-of-the-art command chambers used by the Minister of Defence and any other members of the High Command present for directly overseeing operations all across the Consortium space as well as beyond it. The command complex is specifically designed to be able to host the Commander-in-Chief as well as other leadership figures if deemed necessary during times of strife, and to be impervious to efforts to neutralize its ability to coordinate Cluster-wide defence - be it through signal disruption, planetary bombardment, and any conventional military assault short of long-term occupation of the planet.

Still, during times of deep peace it is not common for the whole military High Command to gather there for routine meetings, or for all of them to be in attendance physically unless necessary or convenient to do so. As most if not all representatives to the High Command have commands of their own to attend to, they tend to favour participation in High Command meetings via secure holo-meetings from their assigned postings, be they on major garrison planets, fleet command headquarters situated within major spatial system defence constellations, or on the command decks of the massive warships that head entire battlegroups.

History

Over the centuries various command models have been in use for the military forces of the Hapes Consortium, each with their own benefits and disadvantages. The old feudal system which empowered the various noble houses to have their own significant standing forces at the expense of the state, is by now barely a memory; Today, the Royal Hapan Armed Forces prides itself with an efficient and effective unified central command.

From the time the unitary model was established under King Andrew, till the end of the first half of King Jessy' reign, the High Command was not headed by the Minister of Defence. In fact, the society was still to such degree militarized from the aftermath of the Civil War that the Ministries of Defence and Industry had yet to be established, and in the Consortium's internal hierarchy the Royal Council and the then Military Council were considered equal and entirely separated. Hence there was no military representation on the Royal Council either, while the Grand Council existed instead as a place for the two main branches of the Consortium, civil and military, to meet to discuss wide ranging selection of topics.

At the time, the service branches of the Royal Hapan Armed Forces were the Royal Hapan Navy, the Royal Hapan Army or the Marines Corps (depending on the era), and the Royal Hapan Support Corps. The Support Corps effectively was the precursor to the Ministry of Industry, as it handled a considerable portion of the state's logistics and engineering duties as a whole, alongside research and development programs, with Crown Corporations and nationalized private companies answering to any additional specific industrial needs.

Such was the prominence of the military's cultural and organizational impact during that period, that it was very typical for senior government officials to be ranking military officers from the Military Council who had been appointed as ministers and other significant roles within the civil realm. On various occasions there would even be discussions of disbanding the Ministry of Intelligence and folding its duties back under the Armed Forces either as its own service branch, or as a military intelligence unit answering to the Chief of Staff of the armed forces.

Eventually, as Hapes Consortium begun its rise from the ashes of the Civil War, the needs of the rapid industrialization and booming population explosion under the central unitary government and its maturing civil institutions, as well as shifting political influences, lead to considerable change in the Consortium's structure under King James' later rule. The Military Council would eventually be renamed into the High Command, while the Grand Council was disbanded alongside the creation of the Ministries of Defence and eventually Industry, with the new title of the Minister of Defence made into a dual position as both a voting member of the Royal Council as well as the chairman of the High Command.

On the industrial side, the Royal Hapan Support Corps itself ceased to exist as a branch onto itself under the High Command, after considerable parts of it were deployed within the ailing Olanji/Charubah corporation and eventually became fully amalgamated with it. Practically the entirety of the company's internal structure was replaced overnight with RHSC officers as the state sought closer control over what was then seen as an as inefficient and unreliable manufacturing conglomerate still suffering from post-war under-investment and lack of focus - transforming it swiftly into an industrial powerhouse that, for a moment, even became the largest producer of naval warships in the galaxy. The creation of the Ministry of Industry and its heading of the Royal League of Commerce that would include Olanji and other civilian sector industrial organizations, signalled the completion of the relative demilitarization of the society at large.

With only two main service branches remaining within the Royal Hapan Armed Forces, and many of the civil support functions placed under the government's oversight, the High Command was left with a substantially more streamlined mandate, one focused on purely military matters.

Reformations under King Zayth would see the Royal Hapan Armed forces structured anew under four different branches each with their distinct roles; The Royal Hapan Navy, Royal Hapan Marines, Royal Hapan Army, and the Joint Forces Command.

Introducing Historical Service Branches

The Royal Hapan Navy [RHN] is the second oldest if most senior of the four branches, home to the Consortium's naval armada. As the vanguard of the Cluster's defence, the Navy patrols the Cluster nebulae and its bustling space lanes, monitoring and intercepting foreign reconnaissance missions and smuggler activity alike. Well trained and armed against both pirate incursions and outright invasions alike, it responds to threats with considerable prejudice.

The Royal Hapan Army [RHA] is the oldest service branch in existence, responsible for operating the military's planetary garrisons and defence installations, manning everything from the massive Golan II-defence platform constellations across the Hapes Cluster to maintaining standing planetary armies and training reservists. Coordinating with the detachments of the other service arms, the Royal Hapan Army is able to mobilize at short notice to meet any approaching invasion head on, with its array of entrenched troop positions, area-of-denial weapon installations, orbital defence platforms and massive orbital artillery embankments among the most important defensive elements at the High Command's disposal.

The Royal Hapan Marines [RHMC] are the mobile mechanized infantry and armoured planetary assault forces of the Hapan military. They train in the hostile environments of exotic and beautiful planets, as well as in the vacuum of space, to stand ready to carry out boarding actions on hostile capital class warships, or to rapidly deploy and retaliate against foreign invasion forces landing on Hapan soil. At their disposal are the most advanced and heavily armed armoured brigades and mechanized infantry and droid platoons that the Consortium can muster.

The Royal Hapan Joint Forces Command [JFC] is the newest addition to the military structure to receive the designation of a stand-alone branch. In practise, it combines such elements as would've once functioned within the service arms' headquarters units and as branch specific offices and departments, bringing them together as combined directorates of the Joint Forces Command, manned in collaboration with all service arms. It includes the Star Home Academy, the Directorate of Cluster Defence, as well as the Directorates of Military Reserves, Military Intelligence, and Special Forces Command.

Finally, while it has disappeared behind the veneer of civilian institutions and is no longer part of the military structure and hierarchy, the Royal Hapan Support Corps [RHSC] bears mentioning as having been one of the original three service arms represented on the military council, alongside the Royal Hapan Army and the Royal Hapan Navy. While its present manifestation is harder to pin down, its work remains impactful for the entire Armed Forces.

Machines of War

As the reunified Hapes Consortium emerged from the long night of the civil war, the new Hapan state sought to rebuild its fractured institutions according to a vision of the new era. The Royal Hapan Armed Forces were reformed from the remnants of the various standing fighting forces and their equipment, but with the chain of command once more answering to a single ruler on the Hapan Throne. The teachings of the brutal civil war and the victories of the Phoenix movement were still fresh in memories as the new military structure and its doctrines took shape. Many notable expatriates would also return during this time to the Hapes Cluster, bringing back with them their considerable leadership experience of both the Imperial and Alliance militaries.

The Hapan state would greatly spend on equipping and modernizing the forces of the Consortium over the coming decades as the nation itself reached new heights of prosperity and industrialization, spending lavishly on research and development, with many of the designs and technologies of the military in use today developed during this period. In the years after the Black Sun Crisis, the addition of great many Miy`Til-class Starfighters, Hetrinar Assault Bombers, Nova-class Battlecruisers, as well as the Battle Dragons into active service took place as the military build-up continued, enhancing the strength of the Royal Hapan Navy to heights previously unimaginable, elevating the Armed Forces from a more modest national defence force into a true regional power not to be trifled with lightly.

The years that followed would see the Royal Hapan Armed Forces regularly go through smaller revisions as it sought to keep up with the times. The Hapan military doctrines would become notably adjusted, however, with foreign designs beginning to make their way into the hands of the service branches; Imperial walkers, Star Destroyers of all variants, Trade Federation droids and battleships, Mandalorian small arms, and numerous other additions to the arsenal of indigenous designs proved invaluable for the Royal Hapan Armed Forces' ability to be able to deploy enough firepower to hold its positions in the face of any adversary.

Doctrines

Known previously for combining strategic patience with decisive counterattacks to respond to any incursions into the Hapes Cluster, the addition of formidable foreign armaments to frontline units changed the way RHAF prepared for war. Hapan military planners had traditionally relied on the response times afforded by the short distances between systems coupled with the relatively high hyperspeeds Nova-class Battlecruisers could achieve, to deploy groups of Novas with fighter wings to delay and harass any hostile formations too strong to be taken head on. This was used to buy time for the fleets to muster to deploy in concert in sufficient numbers against any adversaries with a numerical or technological advantage over the hapan defenders.

The addition of heavy capital class warships into the fleets deployed to important systems, and the increasingly fortified local defences meant that often case even smaller Battle Dragon and Nova-class Battlecruiser based groups could now be jumped in immediately and be anchored onto the field by the firepower afforded by Star Destroyers and sizable local garrisons. This was calculated to greatly reduce the likelihood of needing to assume yielding position in the face of overpowering enemy presence, trading space for time while waiting for the full weight of the Hapan military to manoeuvre into position, a crucial delay that could've forced the field commanders to choose between committing their forces too early, or risk watching as local defences get overrun and reinforcement paths cut off.

In similar tone, despite the more than satisfactory effectiveness of hapan small arms, the quality of the standing army and marine detachments continued to grow with the upgrades to personal gear and supporting elements, in particular to heavier armoured units, larger delivery systems to complement the venerable Atlas-class Troop Transport Shuttle, and to personal shielding, introduced over the years. More recently, there has been a notable increase in conscription figures for non-native races, as the Royal Hapan Army and the Royal Hapan Marines have begun to make greater use of the more diverse population living in the Cluster today, in their efforts to recruit the sentients with the best possible traits for frontline combat.

The introduction of new variants of the Miy`Til-class Starfighters and Hetrinar Assault Bombers are expected to offer better support for the movements of capital ship formations, as well as prove useful in providing better screening for forward deploying planetfall and ship boarding forces. The well-rounded nature of the Battle Dragon regardless ensures that its role as the main battleship of the Royal Hapan Navy will remain uncontested for the foreseeable future. And as local system and planetary defences continue to be reinforced with growing numbers of fighter garrisons and weapons installations in space and on the ground, aided by improvements to response times gained through advances to the streamlined joint forces command lines, first warning and communication systems, any opponent seeking to invade the Cluster is ensured to find itself facing against a well-prepared defender.

Yet, there is a wide consensus among strategists that any conflict that would force its arrival upon the Consortium would be unlikely to be ended conclusively simply by repelling the enemy in the Cluster. Hence, the Royal Hapan Armed Forces must maintain its readiness to project force and sustain operations far away from the borders of the Cluster, be it in the form of small strike groups, or even entire assault fleets.