Royal Hapan Army

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The Royal Hapan Army (RHA) is the oldest service of the Royal Hapan Armed Forces and an enormous versatile ground force devoted to the security and defence of the Hapes Consortium’s territories. It was founded as an official branch of the Hapes Consortium in hapan year 13, during the Foundation Era when the Consortium consisted only of Lorell and Hapes Prime.

Unlike the Royal Hapan Navy, the ground forces of the Consortium maintained a fairly constant structure throughout the Age of Queen-Mothers, and was always considered an important part of the Hapes Consortium due to the job opportunities it provided equally for all hapans regardless of gender or station. In 702 when Queen-Mother Tini'duran III introduced the idea of the feudal nobility system, the army was partially split with some divisions working under a central commoner command called the Consortium Army, while noble houses maintained large planetary garrisons called the Noble Army.

During the Phoenix Age and later Golden Age, the Royal Hapan Army has been reformed on several occasions to become a more effective and versatile fighting force in line with the Consortium's needs in modern times.

In the years after the reunification, Royal Hapan Army has at times operated under the name of the Royal Hapan Marines, when the focus of the Consortium’s ground forces has shifted to counter-offensives, boarding action and to operating as part of naval detachments. The shift produced a more flexible, mobile and effective ground fighting force for the armed forces, but it came at the expense of the focus and resources allocated to local defensive planning and maintenance of the planetary defences. This led to the eventual reinstatement of the Army as its own branch during the reign of Zayth I, with the functions of the Marines and Army separated to their own service arms, as the fortification of the worlds of the Cluster has returned to the forefront of the military agenda once more. Today, the Royal Hapan Army once more stands proudly as its own service arm, preserving the millennia old traditions of the branch.

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Mission

The Army is 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 Military High Command’s disposal.

While the Army Command oversees much of the branch wide planning and preparations, including troop and reservist training activities, regional defence planning and allocating resources across the Army, local commanders are empowered to respond to threats within their jurisdiction and to deploy ground troops at their discretion.

Local ground garrisons, weapon installations, as well as planetary shield systems are operated in close coordination with the orbital defence platforms and fighter garrisons of their home star system, with all of it linked to the command network of the Directorate of Cluster Defence, of the Joint Forces Command.

While maintaining a presence across the Cluster, the major infantry divisions of the Royal Hapan Army are located on and around Hapes’ central planets, industrial hubs and military bases, in addition to being attached as defensive troops on many of the largest warships of the Royal Hapan Navy. They are the backbone of Hapes’ armed forces, stalwart defenders of the people of the Consortium.