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| Inter-Charnean Army | |
|---|---|
| Motto | "For Martuf, For the People, For Kaharna" |
| Founded | 19 August 1799 |
| Current form | 2001 |
| Service branches | Central Force Air Defense Force National Guard Ranger Corps Military Intelligence Civil Defense Units |
| Headquarters | Founders Square, Agnannet |
| Leadership | |
| Commander-in-Chief | Martuf ag Lamine |
| Overseer of Defense | Ilaman ag Amer |
| First General | Rezkou ag Goma |
| Personnel | |
| Military age | 18 |
| Conscription | Yes |
| Active personnel | 175,000 |
| Reserve personnel | 85,000 |
| Expenditure | |
| Budget | $1.9 billion (2020) |
| Percent of GDP | 4% (2020) |
| Industry | |
| Domestic suppliers | Kaokazuka Arms Plant Cherbua Arms Plant Turtle Street Machinists |
| Foreign suppliers | Mutul Sante Reze Elatia Enyama Messidor Union |
| Related articles | |
| History | Military history of Charnea Obul War 1871 Charnean coup d'etat 1904 Charnean coup d'etat 1959 Charnean coup d'etat 1965 Charnean coup d'etat Ninvite War Charnean Civil War 2000 Charnean coup d'etat |
| Ranks | Military ranks of Charnea |
The Inter Charnean Army or ICA is the combined military force of the Confederation of Charnea. Unusual among national militaries, the ICA is structured as a stand-alone Army type organization which would normally be subordinate to an overarching military command in a standard armed forces organization. The main body of the ICA is a land combat force, while integrated air wings, intelligence service, logistics and procurement services are included within its heirarchy as subordinate branches of the Army, along with other units such as the National Guard and Ranger Corps. According to the Covenant of the Charnean Confederation, the constituent tribes and nations must give over all of the war-ready fighters which serve their government body to the command of the confederation's Amenukal paramount lord, to whom they must swear an oath of loyalty. The Amenukal of Charnea then acts as the active commander in chief and in contrast to most modern nations is generally expected to take up an active role in the command and operation of the military forces more akin to a field marshal or general of the army than a head of state. The First General is the second in command behind the Amenukal and is typically the commander of the prestigeous 1st Corps of the ICA. Leadership of the ICA is also shared with the Overseer of Defense, an officer appointed by the Convocation of the member tribes to observe the processes of military command and report on military affairs to the assembly of constituent nations.
The ICA is a primarily volunteer force but also makes use of conscripted manpower reserves. Charnean males may be conscripted for service upon reaching the military age of 18, however they are exempted from conscription in the event that they are the sole or primary breadwinner in their household, report dependents or are the only son of a their parents. Volunteers to the regular forces of the ICA must be over 18 years of age and pass a physical and mental examination to enlist. The ICA has no maximum service age and its enlisted soldiers may continue to serve for as long as they continue to pass physical and mental examinations to fitness every year of their service. Since the 2000 Charnean coup d'etat, wherin the Inter Charnean Army was severely depleted due to losses and internal purges, the organization has been steadily increasing in size to its current numbers of approximately 200,000 volunteers and 60,000 conscripts primarily in reserve positions in addition to an estimated 120,000 irregular fighters loyal to the Lamine regime. Of this total force of 390,000, more than 250,000 are forces recruited from and by constituent tribes, nations and political groups and operate with a flexible degree of autonomy within the ICA's joint command structure, while the remainder are recruited directly by the Amenukal's regime and serve Agnannet exclusively.
History
The Confederated Charnean Armies was the precursor force to the ICA, which was organized informally in response to the requirements of the Covenant of Charnea requiring the unification of the military forces of member nations to provide or the common defense. Under the Confederated Armies, each tribe operated their entirely seperate and distinct force seperately, and the capabilities of member armies varied wildly depending on the wealth and manpower of the tribe in question. Within only a couple of years, the Charnean Founders addressed this with a radical military reformation only barely keeping with the letter of the Covenant, which reformed the Confederated Armies into the Inter-Charnean Army. This new organization was modeled off of foreign military ideas adapted for the realities of Charnea, and would see tribes pool their recourses and manpower together to form a more unified and homogenous military force wherin individual field units would be provided by the tribes but would serve under a more unified command structure and enjoy a standardized procurement and logistical organization overall increasing the quality and effectiveness of Charnean fighting forces.
Reform Era
After the 1965 Charnean coup d'etat, prominent politician Baseel Madoun rose to power as Executor for Charnea and de facto dictator. He began to centralize the ICA and not only modernized much of the army's equipment but also worked to undermine and supplant the tribal nature of the organization's recruitment and deployment structure. Madoun favored conscription over tribal volunteer forces, echoing the common belief that tribal forces were primarily loyal to their tribes and could not be relied upon to serve the wider confederation. He established the Charnean Military Intelligence Directorate as well as its civilian counterpart the Central Strategic Service as centrally overseen organs of the ICA totally separate from its tribal components which still made up the backbone of the fighting forces. Spurred on by the success of these reforms, Madoun dissolved and merged many of the tribal scouts and black operations units into the Ranger corps and went on to establish the Charnean National Guard to be manned entirely by conscripted troops raised directly by the Agnannet authorities.
Ninvite War
Many aspects of the ICA were modified and became altered during the Ninvite War against Fahran, which lasted over a decade and represented by far the largest and most destructive conflict in the modern history of Charnea. As attrition wore down the ICA regulars, many militias and paramilitaries began to serve as the primary Charnea soldiers in many sectors. Amoung the remaining regular forces, tribal identities began to reassert themselves in the face of prolonged war and severe losses and many units of the ICA reverted to their original state as tribal armies which were only nominally under the command of the central leadership in Agnannet. The Ranger corps also proved extremely effective and indispensable in desert warfare and would be increased in size and prominence within the military. One of Charnea's first non-tribal partisan forces emerged in the form of the Charnean Liberation Army, a force of radicalized tribe members and local residents in the Fahrani-occupied portion of eastern Charnea which were trained and led by members of the Ranger corps as a guerilla arm of the ICA.
Revolutionary Era
In the aftermath of the Ninvite War, Charnea underwent a period of severe turmoil and revolution at all levels of society. This included the ICA, which was being propped up by PMCs backed by wealthy mining barons and well connected businessmen of Charnea, was severely depleted in manpower and materials and now faced the task of stabilizing the rapidly degenerating political situation in post-war Charnea. The first major upheaval would occur at the outbreak of the Charnean civil war wherein tribal forces belonging to many Tamashek peoples in the desert rose up against the central forces of the ICA, effectively splitting the organization along tribal lines and engendering a conflict between tribal affiliate forces and more standard conscript forces. The result of the civil war was the purging and destruction of many of the stronger tribal elements within the ICA by Madoun's forces, as well as a further repletion of manpower and resources available to the ICA regulars. The second major upheaval to the military was the 2000 Charnean coup d'etat which began as a mutiny within the Ranger corps and rapidly escalated into a second split within the ICA. By this time, the regular forces loyal to the regime had become so depleted that forces from the Ranger corps and many of the army's irregular affiliates were able to take the capital and overthrow the government, scattering the Madounist ICA into the outlying regions where they were later destroyed. The result of the Revoluitionary era and the rise of Martuf ag Lamine to the throne of Charnea was an ICA completely gutted of trained manpower and left to scavenge for its own equipment which was scattered across the country by the final flight of Madounist elements. From this point through the early 2000s, the ICA would grow to rely heavily on irregular forces and the Ranger corps to defend the borders and maintaign the integrity of the Charnean confederation.
Modernisation
The modern Inter-Charnean Army has undergone a gradual process of improvement and modernization in some of its equipment and has largely recovered from the catastrophic collapse of its manpower reserves in the prior decades. This has primarily taken the form of new recruitment drives and integration of irregular forces and tribal militias into the regular ICA forces, along with equipment procurement programs involving a legitimate arms trade with Mutul, Sante Reze as well as Elatia as well as a black and grey market arms trade that saw equipment entering Charnea from nations such as the neighboring Messidor Union and distant Enyama. Charnean equipment built before the collapse of the organization had been built domestically or ordered first hand by military contract, whereas in the decades following the 2000 Charnean coup d'etat the ICA was forced to rebuild using a minimal budget and reduced production capability to support it, necessitating the procurement of generally inexpensive and often obsolete weapon systems from foreign sources, bolstered by improvised arms such as the extremely iconic technicals (locally referred to by the term "National Chariot") which symbolize the ICA in many international circles. Despite the overall decline in modern high end equipment since the Ninvite War, the ICA under Martuf ag Lamine's regime has upgraded some of its equipment particularly in the decade of the 2010s, introducing man portable reconnaissance drones as well as a well rounded and up to date missile and rocket inventory bolstering the existing cache of older munitions retained from the Madoun era.
Structure
Central Force
The main body of the ICA called the Central Force makes up around 130,000 personnel as well as nearly a third of the yearly military budget of Charnea. Its staff break down to 80,000 active duty regulars, 35,000 reservists and approximately 28,000 irregular units which have through one avenue or another become attached to Army units and commands and are now considered auxiliary forces of the Central Force. The army is comprised of five corps in total numbered 1-5 as well as three separate armored divisions and five special operations brigade level units. Although the modern ICA is less divided than it once was having been rebuilt from few survivors under one regime, internal segmentation remains and this is evident in the division and distribution and manpower and materials across the Confederate Army which is by no means equal. The closest supporters of Martuf ag Lamine within the army regulars form the largest and best equipped corps of the Confederate Army, the 1st Corps also known as the Kebela Army which is commanded by the general commander of the Confederate Army and First General of the ICA, a title currently held by the the veteran commander and ex Ranger Rezkou ag Goma. Many of the tribal allies of the central and eastern parts of the Charnean desert regions which are closely affiliated with Martuf ag Lamine's regime but are distinct from his direct supporters are identified as the main personnel staffing and commanding the 2nd Corps. The remaining three corps represent tribes and nations of the western and southern parts of the Confederation which were largely recruited all at once from the same areas as the ICA underwent its reconstruction. Unlike the first two corps, the last three don't represent specific loyal factions within the regime and so their personnel and officers have been shuffled and transferred between corps to break down sectarian and ethnic identities from becoming prevalent or dominant within units at this high tier of organization. The separated units which exist outside of the main corps level formations are the armored divisions which are equipped for combined arms maneuver warfare in the open deserts of Charnea, and the special operations brigades of the regular army which often feature sniper battalions and the infamous Crucible battalions of convict recruits serving for social and legal redemption and clemency. These Central Force special operations brigades are sometimes referred to as "Rangers in training" or "the Little Ranger Corps" due to the fact that many Rangers are recruited from their number and that both formations operate in a similar fashion as elite light infantry specialized for desert combat.
Air Defense Force
The Air Defense Force of the ICA not only comprises the land based anti air units of the army but also serves as the organizational base for the Army air force as the two very open operate in tandem with one another. The ICA used to posses a distinct Air Force branch under Madoun but due to heavy losses and desertion this force eventually atrophied and was merged with the ground based Air Defense command structure, which had suffered comparatively few losses. The now rebuilt merger of the two branches totals 72,000 active personnel and 15,000 personnel in reserve which is divided into two roughly equal halves dedicated to ground based and air based operations. Air Defense Force formations number 7 SAM regiments and 12 general air defense divisions sporting several hundred battery teams. These formations operate the ICA's arsenal of over 1,000 SAM systems of varying age and size as well as the Charnean stockpile of multiple thousands of anti-aircraft guns, some of which have been repurposed and cannibalized by Central Force units as improvised mounted auto-canons over the years. The aerial division of the Air Defense Force operates between 250 and 350 combat and transport aircraft, a statistic which includes both fixed and rotary wing aircraft, and roughly 75 trainer aircraft. These aircraft, along with the support staff and airbase personnel are divided into two Air Divisions, the first and largest being stationed in bases in the east of the Confederation and the second and smaller of the two being based in the south and west of the country. The aerial and terrestrial sub-branches of the Air Defense Force coordinate closely to monitor and combat aerial threats, a daunting task as it is expected to face off against the generally more modern and better equipped air forces of Charnea's neighbors which ICA strategists conclude will routinely place the ICA ADF on the back foot, forcing the ground forces to operate without direct air support, which is another reason for the ICA's aircraft not to be directly attached to ground units they may not be able to follow into combat. Nevertheless, the ICA Central Force and Air Defense Force conduct joint operation drills on a frequent basis to foster a high degree of cross-service understanding and coordination which will benefit operations.
National Guard
Originally created by the Charnean dictator Baseel Madoun as a means to supplant the influence of tribal entities in the military, the National Guard has deviated heavily from its foundational purpose and function within the ICA over the course of its history. In the modern ICA the National Guard serves two primary function, these being providing the Central Force with additional reserve manpower and acting as a sort of de facto militarized police at the Confederation level, similar to the Gendarmerie of some foreign countries. Although commonly defined as mostly conscripted reservists, the National Guard are distinguished from the usual Army reservist forces because of their lesser emphasis on modern combined arms warfare as they are more focused on small unit tactics in urban environments and operating among the civilian population which includes awareness and minimization of collateral damages and special training to conduct military-type operations within a populated peacetime civilian center. The bulk of the Guard is organized into one army corps-type formation which is spread across the urban regions of Charnea for police activities and training, doubling as an emergency defense force to hold these urban centers against conventional enemy attack for a time. There also exist three separate brigades of the National Guard, which are better trained and armed Guardsmen who have further specialized into urban warfare beyond police and stopping force operations and can be deployed to more consistently engage in combat in urban environments even on the offensive. This status as urban fighters and the National Guard conscripts often poor origins gives these brigades the nickname "Slum Commandos".
Ranger Corps
One of the more politically and militarily consequential branches of the ICA is the Ranger Corps, due in no small part to the current Amenukal Martuf ag Lamine, an ex Ranger of the Ninvite War, and many of his closest supporters which were his direct comrades in arms in his Ranger unit. Besides being amoung the most fanatically loyal supporters of the Amenukal, the Ranger Corps are also the force of the ICA that is the most finely specialized for operations deep in the desert which takes up most of Charnea's territory and much of the border regions in neighboring countries. Rangers are mobile light infantry units which make use of fast moving light vehicles, riding animals, and may even on occasion travel distances on foot in the open desert which is sometimes considered impassable to military formations. However the Rangers are most often seen deployed by helicopter especially in the remote areas of the Charnean desert where small towns or temporary settlements may not even be connected by roads. Generally, the Rangers are better equipped than the standard infantry and far better trained, as they are often recruited from the elite special operations brigades of the Central Force as well as from experienced tribal fighters that demonstrate not only combat skills but knowledge of the landscape and desert survival in order to gain entry to this prestigious unit. Much like their sniper battalion counterparts in the regular forces, the ICA Rangers are famed as skilled sharpshooters. The corps designation of this branch carries both meanings of the term, as they are both a highly specialized unit of the military and a single independent army Corps with a separate command structure to the regular ground forces.
Civil Defense Units
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The Civil Defense Units, or CDU, are an umbrella organization of paramilitary and non-state forces affiliated with the ICA and the Laminid government. It is formally under the control of the ICA general staff and is directly commanded by specially designated officers of the regular army. They were originally formed in 1987 in the early years of the Ninvite War as an emergency measure to begin the mass mobilization of the Charnean population against the military of Fahran, which had at that point started to seriously challenge the strength of the ICA under Madoun and was making some gains. The formation of the CDU was a desperate measure by a regime that vastly preferred conscripted forces but had no further choice than to rally tribal forces from the countryside and the open desert to fight to the Confederation to which they belonged. Such an organization method was similar to the original form of the ICA two hundred years prior but was never intended to be permanent, although it became so as the ICA regular forces suffered massive and continuous casualties and collapsed entirely soon after the Ninvite War had concluded. Tribal militias and non-state fighting groups have remained in favor with the military even after the regular forces of the ICA have been largely rebuilt and are favored in the new ICA's insurgent doctrine and asymmetric battle tactics. All the forces of the CDU are broken down into semi-independent brigade level formations, allowing even relatively small tribes to contribute their fighters to the ICA by arming themselves and forming a CDU brigade while lager tribal groups sometimes contribute enough manpower to staff multiple CDU brigades on top of tribesmen volunteers serving in the regular ICA. Similar to the National Guard, the CDU forces are primarily designed to hold their own ground and not participate in offensive pushes as they are typically lightly armed with outdated or improvised weapons even by the ICA's standards and are not drilled in modern combined arms warfare, although they differ from National Guard units in that they specialize in fighting in rural environments, be they the local grasslands, hills, or deserts their tribe calls home. Unlike the National Guard however the CDU fighters do heave long term utility in fighting an invading enemy force, as they may harass enemy forces not only on the edges of a combat zone but also, in the event of Charnea coming under partial military occupation by a foreign power, they may easily convert into partisan guerilla forces resisting the enemy. This is especially advantageous in the hinterlands of the vast and sparsely population Charnean expanse, where borders are often long, porous and would be difficult for the ICA to directly hold and defend against incursion, making insurgent action by local forces useful in weakening and bogging down an enemy force before the ICA counter-attacks. These strategies are directly derived from the Charnean experience in the Ninvite War in which the Charnean Liberation Army, a group of Tamashek partisans trained and commanded by the ICA Ranger Corps, fight with guerilla tactics against the Fahrani occupation of Eastern Charnea and proved instrumental in the eventual expulsion of the occupation force during Operation Cobalt Sky. The legacy of the now defunct CLA has demonstrated that local guerillas with little recourses or equipment, if properly trained and motivated, may inflict greater damage on an enemy force than conventional tactics carrier out by regular troops.