Rí-Fórsaí Armtha
| His Majesty's Armed Forces | |
|---|---|
| Rí-Fórsaí Armtha | |
 Emblem of Rí-Fórsaí Armtha | |
| Founded | 1542 |
| Service branches | Rí-Airm Rí-Dúghorm |
| Headquarters | Neuaddduwiau, tir Lhaeraidd |
| Leadership | |
| Commander-in-Chief | Bedwyr XVI, Teyrn |
| Aire Cosanta | Leonard ui'Neill |
| Ceann Foirne | Gareth O'Regan |
| Personnel | |
| Military age | 18 |
| Conscription | None |
| Reaching military age annually | (512,000) |
| Active personnel | 400,000 |
| Reserve personnel | 150,000 |
| Expenditure | |
| Budget | $162.3 billion |
| Percent of GDP | 3.12% |
| Industry | |
| Domestic suppliers | Brenner Ballistics Daimyo Grendel Shouyi Hawker Aeronautics Mag Torc Met Fabrikan Resh Fabrikan |
Rí-Fórsaí Armtha (lit. "His Majesty's Armed Forces") (Acronym: R-FA) are the military services charged with defending tir Lhaeraidd and its interests. The R-FA consists of Rí-Airm (lit. "His Majesty's Army") and Rí-Dúghorm (lit. "His Majesty's Navy"), both of which maintain their own Air Detachments; Fórsa Aer Airm and Fórsa Aer Dúghorm respectively. R-FA have never commented on their nuclear capabilities if they have any, and there are no known nuclear weapons facilities in tir Lhaeraidd, however it is widely accepted that the R-FA does maintain the ability to produce nuclear weapons but does not maintain a standing nuclear force. In addition to their defensive role the R-FA are primarily responsible for overseeing the distribution and implementation of humanitarian aid programmes, as well as peacekeeping operations, and armed support operations for allied nations.
The modern R-FA is one of the best equipped, trained, and organised military forces in Asura and has been involved in successful operations in Cuirpthe and the Araabyne during the Folksland Crisis and Fourth Brush War respectively. R-FA forces were deployed along a line referred to as LD1 in Cuirpthe where they maintained a defensive line preventing further advances by Folksland forces into Cuirpthean territory; meanwhile elements from Fórsa Aer Airm and Fórsa Aer Dúghorm provided both close air support and med-evac services to Cuirpthean forces on the ground. R-FA forces entered the Araabyne at the request of the PRA in early 2018 and brought about an end to the war, they would subsequently remain on deployment in the country as a peacekeeping force where they remain today.
Its Commander-In-Chief is the Lhaeraidh monarch, currently Teyrn Bedwyr XVI, with the exception of the Swiftriver Regiment which recognises the Heir Apparent, currently Gwynyth merch Brienne, as their Commander-In-Chief. The Dáil approves the R-FA's budget every five years based upon recommendations from the Aire Cosanta (lit. "Secretary of Defence") who is currently Leonard ui'Neill, who was appointed by the Taoiseach, Líadáin Síomha upon her election in 2017. All members of the R-FA swear allegiance to the Commander-In-Chief and all new commissioned officers are required to take a further oath to the Commander-In-Chief and the Taoiseach.
The R-FA are involved through various treaty obligations with the armed forces and defence of the Araabyne, Crylante, Cuirpthe, the Mardin Isles, Navack, and Vrnallia.
History
The Lhaeraidh Armed Forces have played a major role in Asuran and global military history. Tir Lhaeraidd was one of the first Asuran military powers to adopt a modern professional army, and later gunpowder weapons. From the 16th until the 19th century they were involved in armed occupations in modern day Crylante and Vrnallia. The Lhaeraidh Army Model, formulated in the 16th century helped to revolutionise the way in which land wars were fought, and how armies were trained and maintained. The Navy meanwhile would prove key from the 17th Century onward for maintaining the trade lanes and outposts upon which the Lhaeraidh global trade network relied.
Origins
Prior to the formation of the R-FA the military of tir Lhaeraidd was highly inconsistent and largely unorganised. By and large military units were led by members of the gentry or nobility and were equipped and trained according to the wishes of their commander; any noble who raised a military force was entitled to a reduction in their tithe payments which made small military forces of varying ability common. Alongside this system of feudal regiments were the Royal Regiments and the Fianna. The Royal Regiments were highly disciplined units led by meritocratically appointed officers who served directly at the Teyrn's pleasure, however these soldiers were generally used form civil disputes and enabled the Teyrn to physically impose his rule upon his vassals; the Royal Regiments rarely saw combat against foreign troops and were never deployed abroad, except in small contingents to serve as bodyguards for members of the Royal Family. The Fianna on the other hand were made up of an informal warrior class and considered themselves to be tir Lhaeraidd's traditional armies. Any freeman with a weapon could form or join a Fianna, however each Fianna was required to submit to the local Royal Garrison periodically for inspection and taxation purposes.
Of the three types of soldier in tir Lhaeraidd the Fianna were the most numerous, and during times of war the nobility would often hire the local Fianna to fight as soldiers in order to bolster their forces and their prestige on the battlefield. This meant that it was relatively easy for the Teyrnas to rapidly raise large forces of infantry at minimal cost to the state, however it also had several significant drawbacks. Most Fianna had loyalty only to their local area for which they served as a sort of local law enforcement and defence against banditry, this meant that when employed in battle by the nobility they seldom had the discipline or morale required to hold a line; additionally the quality of the troops raised and maintained by the nobility varied wildly depending upon how seriously each individual noble took their military obligations. This became a substantial problem as the Teyrn increasingly found that he could rely only upon his own Royal Regiments in battle.
The Battles of Canogh Glen
In 1533 the problem developed when two local Fianna entered into a dispute with a local Laird over grazing rights; both Fianna claimed a right to the land which was nominally held by the Baroin ui'Cannock of Canoghbar. The dispute escalated to the point of open battle between the two Fianna and the Laird's own troops at the First Battle of Canogh Glen. Four subsequent battles would take place at the glen over the next five years, each time the Fianna returned with more men causing the Laird to call upon allies, further escalating the conflict until a simple dispute over the use of a field grew into a localised civil war. Teyrn Llewellyn II initially sent a party led by Assizes Justice Pollard Whending to resolve the matter in 1536 but when Whending and his party failed to gain the cooperation of ui'Cannock they were forced to flee the area. Left enraged by this blatant affront to the power of the Teyrn Llewellyn II rode to the local Royal Garrison at Caer Muil where he assembled a force of sixty men-at-arms; contemporary records describe his force thus:
A force of twenty men armed with broadsword and targe supported by a skein of ten pikemen and ten men armed with arntina. At their head rode His Supreme Majesty, leading some twenty men of horse equipped as faercurach.
Arntina is believed to be an archaic term used to describe arquebusiers or musketmen, while faercurach is a likewise archaic terms relating to early cuirassiers; however since there were no uniformly applied terms for such troops this can only be assumed based upon the etymological base of the words, and the records of the conduct of the Sixth Battle of Canogh Glen.
The Sixth Battle of Canogh Glen saw the sixty disciplined and uniformed soldiers of Llewellyn's Royal Regiments face three separate armies numbering in total somewhere between five and eight hundred men. Though the three armies were fighting each other as much as they were the Teyrn's forces the resulting victory by the Teyrn's forces showed that a relatively small force of disciplined and uniformly trained soldiers could decimate the more traditional forces of the nobility and the Fianna. Some historians, notably O'Bannon and Holmes, claim that the Teyrn's victory owed more to his use of cavalry which the other forces lacked, however at the time the impression that the Teyrn was under was that the battle had been won purely on the back of the discipline of his troops.
Reforms of Lleywellyn II and III
After his experiences at Canogh Glen Llewellyn sought to reorganise and restructure how war was conducted. He had found that the Fianna were too unruly and haphazard a force to be relied upon except in dire emergencies, and they were certainly ill suited to warfare beyond the Teyrnas' borders where their only motivation to fight was plunder. In addition according to the Teyrn's private diaries, which were published in 1986, he believed that the forces raised by the nobility were little more than a tax deduction, a way to save money rather than spend it. Unsatisfied with the conclusions he had drawn Llewellyn began a process of bureaucratic reform which would facilitate the assembly of materials needed to build a new army around the Royal Regiments. In the years leading up to his death in 1542 Llewellyn II created one of the most efficient military and logistical systems of its time, in spite of accusations that it was bloated and corrupt, however at the point of his death no actual army had been formed for these systems to provide for.
It was Llewellyn II's son, Llewellyn III/I who would issue the Royal Decree officially abolishing the old feudal system of military service and the reliance upon the Fianna. Under the 1542 decree the military forces on both land and sea were handed over to the bureaucratic machines developed by Llewellyn II and the tax deduction for nobles who raised military units was abolished. In place of the old deduction came a new system whereby noblemen could raise and lead regiments of soldiers who were equipped, trained, and paid by the state; thus a noble recruited the soldiers and then led them but was not responsible for their pay, equipment, or training. Any noble who agreed to serve as a regimental commander would maintain their noble titles exempt from taxation for the duration of their service. This made the military a highly appealing prospect for many poorer nobles and members of the gentry, however abuses were anticipated and checks were put in place including the Scéalta, special military police who ensured that those exempted noblemen were not abusing their position or being lax in their duties.
Eventually the reforms of Llewellyn III/I evolved into a meritocratic system of officer recruitment and training. In 1570 the first state funded and organised officer training school was established in Eildon and soon those nobles who had become officers just for the tithe exemption were being outperformed by those who had attended the school; by 1587 spasmodic issues were experienced as the 'old guard' officers and generals were confronted by a generation of officers who were younger, better education, more enthusiastic, and more competent than they were. Duels were common, as were lawsuits, and feuds a state of affairs which led to courts martial for several of the newer generation of officers for alleged insubordination and disrespect of the higher ranks. It wouldn't be until 1612 that the situation calmed down when the Teyrn, by then Alwaen IV/I, made a Decree requiring that all officers in the R-FA be graduates of the school in Eildon or other state run institutions like it.
Formation & Early History
The R-FA started out as an expansion of the existing Royal Regiments and the organisation of ships under a single command structure. Having witnessed first hand how effective the more organised Royal regiments had been at Canogh Glen Llewellyn II had impressed a philosophy of extreme discipline and uniformity upon the organisational structure he built; his son continued this into the physical organisation of troops separating them into formations of uniformly trained and equipped soldiers (over time this would evolve into the Ceathrú or quarter formation).
Initially the R-FA was principally a bureaucratic exercise; the Royal Regiments were relatively small and insufficient in terms of manpower to fill every role needed to train and equip a large army, as such everything had to be built more or less from the ground up. Officers needed to be found and soldiers needed to be raised and trained. For the first time there was a sense of uniformity ingrained in the military forces of tir Lhaeraidd which extended to arms, armour, and clothing. With bureaucracy governing the organisation at this early stage many noblemen started to turn away from military service, frustrated at been outranked by civil servants, but the most significant issue the R-FA faced in its early years, at least according to the R-FA's own records, was the recruitment of reliable soldiers. Introducing the idea of military service as a paid career proved problematic in a society where most of the common folk were still tenant farmers; this hadn't been an issue for the Fianna who were at most part time soldiers, nor for the nobility who used their troops as labourers and servants when not at war, but for the R-FA which was attempting to build a full time professional force it was difficult indeed.
In 1557 the R-FA was deployed abroad for the first time, with a minor force under Llewellyn III/I sailing to Crylante in order to enforce the Teyrn's claim to the throne following the death of the Crylantean Emperor Magnus VII. Though the annexation itself was largely bloodless it would result in war with Navack in 1559 in the First Navo-Lhaeraidh War; this war was the first real test for the new R-FA. Using the Ceathrú formations, supported by light cavalry and artillery Lhaeraidh troops were able to defeat the Navish forces on land in a series of decisive battles in which they consistently outperformed the local Crylantean and Navish soldiery. However where the infantry proved highly effective Lhaeraidh cavalry was still lacking and suffered significant defeats throughout the course of the war, ultimately a total of 54% of the cavalrymen deployed by the R-FA in the war were killed, captured, or injured.
The naval campaign during the war was a less impressive display overall; the Lhaeraidh infantry's preeminence on land did not translate to water and poor leadership, poor logistical support, and poorly designed ships all contributed to a string of early defeats for the R-D in the east under Admiral Syr O'Braden. The R-D substantially outnumbered the Navish navy in the east, however a lack of coherent strategy and an over reliance upon numerical superiority meant that O'Braden frittered away his advantage and suffered terrible losses in terms of men and ships. It was immediately apparent that the R-D needed new ships and a scrabble to build better ones began in shipyards all along the Lhaeraidh coast; many of the ships in service within the R-D were older than the organisation itself and were barely seaworthy much less battle ready. A vast majority of the reparations paid by Navack at the conclusion of the war went toward the building of newer and more effective ships.
In 1605 the R-FA was again deployed abroad, this time to enforce annexation of Vrnallia. At the time Vrnallia was not a centrally governed nation and so the opposition the R-A faced on land was entirely different to the organised forces that they had faced in Crylante and Navack. The Vrnallian insurgents had managed to harass and raid Lhaeraidh settlements on the isles with great success, however the balance of power shifted almost immediately upon the arrival of the R-A. The insurgents lacked an answer to the R-A's artillery, or their heavy reliance upon early firearms, but nonetheless fought tenaciously. Despite the record of victories in Vrnallia the R-A was forced to request an additional 10,000 men in 1608 from the mainland as a combined result of attrition and the increase in guerrilla attacks. Finally in 1635 after thirty years of fighting the Strategic Office in mainland tir Lhaeraidd issued a change of approach; the R-A assumed defensive position and built fortifications, while also deploying detachments to fortify Lhaeraidh settlements and plantations. This strategy essentially boxed in the insurgent forces and by 1640 the majority had been defeated not in battle, but by hunger, exposure, and desperation. The Strategic Office's change of tactics was the first example of combined R-FA cooperation, and the implementation of a theatre wide strategic doctrine.
Main article: Second Navo-Lhaeraidh War The Second Navo-Lhaeraidh War was a conflict fought primarily between the forces of Navack and tir Lhaeraidd between 1609 and 1613. The war is considered to be a significant escalation in the military capabilities of Navack at the time, and is widely considered to be the spark for the unification of northern Lhedwin. The forces involved in the Second War were significantly greater in number and more closely matched than they had been in the First War, though much like the First War the fighting was largely confined to the campaigning season.
Precipitated by the Lhaeraidh annexation of Vrnallia which had commenced in 1598 the war began in 1609 when Navish armies crossed the border into Crylante. The Navish expected the same swift advance and rapid occupation of the bulk of Crylante which had been achieved in the First War, however this swift advance did not materialise with Navish forces becoming bogged down just a few miles south of the border due to a massive building up of Crylante's military and of the border defences. A string of fortresses and fortified outposts now ran along the entire border and the Navish military found it difficult to push any further south than this line for fear of a logistical disaster.
The initial stages of the war saw heavy casualties inflicted upon the Navish Army, in spite of the significant increase in numbers and advancement in technology and strategy they employed. The Navish suddenly found that they were fighting a brutal, modern war, not against Lhaeraidh troops, but against their professed brothers, the Crylanteans. Unable to break through the line of Crylantean defences on the mainland the Navish strategy shifted and in January of 1610, in the middle of winter, they landed troops in western Crylante aiming to capture the island rather than the portion on the Lhedwinnic mainland. The Crylantean defences in the west were far less organised and fortified and within nine months the Navish forces had succeeded in capturing almost all of the landmass and from October 1610 the Navish were able to land sizeable forces on the mainland, bypassing the line of defences in the north.
The success on land was not mirrored by success at sea however. The Lhaeraidh navy was as large as it had ever been and despite the preponderance of older ships it was still as efficiently run (and much better led) as it had been in the First War. Navish naval units tried time and again to break through to Vrnallia but were each time intercepted and repulsed. The Navish exacted a punishing toll against the older ships of the Lhaeraidh fleet, however when the elite Black Squadron entered the fray the Navish had no answer. The Black Squadron consisted of tir Lhaeraidd's own state of the art ships, heavily armed with cannon, with thick double hulls which made them all but impervious to the smaller calibre guns which the Navish favoured in their sleek new vessels; with their own sleek design these new ships were only marginally slower than their Navish foes. However the Black Squadron could only ever be in one place at a time and the Lhaeraidh Admiralty prioritised the defence of Vrnallia over that of Crylante.
The steady loss of territory in Crylante finally prompted the Teyrn to mobilise Rí-Airm and deploy them to Crylante; initially it had been believed that the Crylantean forces would be able to hold and defeat the Navish with the help of the fortified line in the north and so the Teyrn had seen no need to commit Lhaeraidh troops to fight. However the landings of 1610 and defeats of early 1611 prompted a change in policy. The Teyrn already had a force of thirty thousand men in Vrnallia fighting against local rebellion and resistance to his rule; deploying further soldiers overseas would be costly and it was only reluctantly that a force of sixty thousand soldiers, including five thousand marines, was deployed. Reluctance though did not equate to a lack of motivation or resolve; as far as Alwaen IV/I was concerned once the troops were deployed the expenditure was unavoidable, so he may as well seek a swift conclusion and mitigate the costs. Landing in the last remaining western port of Neititsnot under the command of the Teyrn the sixty thousand Lhaeraidh troops began a systematic campaign against the Navish forces. In a little over six months the islands of western Crylante had been retaken. Earlier defeats to the Lhaeraidh fleet in the east had cut off any hope of supply or reinforcement to the Navish forces in Crylante, except via the western landmass, with this too now under Lhaeraidh control the Navish forces which had invaded mainland Crylante were now surrounded.
As 1612 began the Navish renewed their offensive with a conscript force of ten thousand marching south in an effort to bludgeon their way through the as yet unbroken line of defences south of the border however the effort proved fruitless. What a force of thirty five thousand well trained and drilled professional soldiers could not achieve in 1609, ten thousand poorly motivated conscripts found impossible. On the third attempt to march south the conscript force was surrounded by Crylantean forces near the site of the Sailla Massacre in the First War; in the resulting battle of the seven thousand conscripts who began the fight for the Navish only eight hundred returned to Navack alive. Once again the Lhaeraidh advantage in manpower and supply was proving to be Navack's downfall; Navack alone could not match the sheer numbers on the Lhaeraidh side. Even at sea with a brand new fleet, with kill ratios of three to one, the Navish could not turn the tide, the Lhaeraidh Teyrn simply had more men, more ships, and more firepower at his disposal and seemingly a ruthless willingness to take advantage of it.
Finally in March 1613 the Navish commander of the main force now trapped and surrounded in Crylante surrendered to the Teyrn, resulting in the capture of the ten thousand or so remaining Navish troops. With ten thousand Navish soldiers and their officers now in captivities the King of Navack sued for peace and agreed to meet Teyrn Alwaen IV/I at Nebligen to agree to peace terms. Though this time the Lhaeraidh had not managed to push back into Navack itself it was clear that with the capture of their main army such an eventuality was inevitable.
Industrialisation
The highly attritional nature of battle during the 16th and 17th centuries were an accepted factor among the bureaucrats who ran the R-FA. Military commanders were being trained in formation tactics which relied upon mass fire from muskets. The introduction of snaphance and then flintlock firing firing mechanism on muskets allowed for the more reliable performance of firearms on the battlefield which ultimately resulted in the phasing out of the Ceathrú formations in favour of line and column formations. The introduction of (relatively) reliable flintlock firing mechanisms and early mass-production of firearms effectively ended the use of pike and halberd formations in the field and the last dedicated units so armed were converted to musket formations in 1723.
The Industrial Revolution brought about huge changes to the R-FA too. The construction of large machine shops and the introduction of steam power enabled the Royal Armouries to start the full mass-production of arms and munition, and though early examples of muskets with mass-produced interchangeable parts were developed as early as 1743 it was not until the end of the 18th century that the entire R-FA started to switch over to such weapons. Mass-production and interchangeable parts made supply vastly easier and allowed for the effective preproduction of reliable ammunition and it was upon technology and logistics, rather than sheer numbers, that the R-FA came to rely. A system of artillery classification and standardisation was also introduced to the navy, with guns being rated by the weight of shot they fired and by their length of barrel. The R-FA command and supply staff quickly came to the realisation that this would make estimation of combat effectiveness much easier since ships could now be more uniformly equipped with weapons; essentially it was now possible for a fleet commander to know what kind of firepower each vessel under his command had based purely upon the class of vessel.
The 19th century introduction of rifling led to the swift adoption of rifled muskets and, by the 1860s, breach loading single shot rifles. The R-FA were quick to recognise the value of, and adopt, new technologies however not all proved to be successful; early volley guns such as the 'Pipe Gun' or Callaghan Gun were both technological dead ends which gave poor results when considered against cost. On the other hand the adoption of single part ammunition (cartridges) proved to be a vastly successful move and the R-FA ordered that all soldiers be equipped with firearms which used single part ammunition well before most other Asuran nations. Industrialisation and standardisation made the R-FA far more reliable than military forces which had yet to modernise their production and supply structures and facilitated the easier training and equipping of soldiers in the field.