Union Army
Active:	12 February 600 BCE - 10 November 2215 CE
Organization:	Union Defense Force
Affiliation:	Salarian Union
Type:	Army
Role:	Land warfare Maneuver warfare Expeditionary warfare
Size:	16.4 million (regular) 2 million (reserves) 23,000 aircraft
Part of:	Union Army Command
Headquarters:	Fort Tanmorne, northern border of Nudril, Sur'Kesh (600 BCE - 596 BCE) Cornucopia TILL, 56.7 kilometers northwest of Aezze, Sur'Kesh (596 BCE - 2215 CE)
Nickname(s):	Salarian army Army of Sur'Kesh
Motto:	"Where it matters."
Colors:	Maroon and fern green
Engagements:	First Rachni War Second Rachni War Third Rachni War Krogan Rebellions Council-Terminus War Reaper War Post-Apocalyptic War
Commanders:	Arm Traka Raedirn Edrilo

"Where it matters."

— Army motto.

The Union Army, also known as the Army of Sur'Kesh and the Salarian Army to aliens, was the land service branch of the Union Defense Force, and one of the four uniformed services of the Salarian Union. The Army was the first of the UDF's branches to be formed with the birth of the Salarian Union itself in 600 BCE, and was composed of members from each of the salarian member states' militaries that signed the Charter for the Union of all Salarians, and would later be added to as more salarian nations joined the Union. The Army was initially limited to Sur'Kesh and what few forces it could send to protect the colonization fleets during the early salarian interstellar expansion, but would quickly grow and expand into its role as its sister branch, the Union Navy, was built up and was able to project its presence more effectively: by 535 BCE, the Union Army was at its largest extent, maintaining a large presence across Union-controlled space. In the aftermath of making first contact with the asari in 520 BCE, the salarians began to realize that they were potentially going to be fighting alien races in the future, and that many of those said aliens, much like the asari, were much more likely to have physical strength exceeding those of a salarian, making them inferior in hand-to-hand and frontline combat: with lessons extracted from the shelved Fulcrum Contingency, sweeping changes began to be made to the salarian military as a whole in an attempt to address this dilemma, with an effort to outfit salarian troops with bleeding edge technology and to make use of salarian affinity for science and technology to experiment with alternatve methods of warfare, with a shift in focus away from attritional war and towards asymmetric warfare. Unfortunately, it would take until the Rachni Wars for this lesson to be learnt, with the Union forced to fight frontline warfare with the rachni across many of their worlds, with the Union Army right in the thick of it. Army casualties were significant, with millions of troops lost in the Army alone, casualties that were far too egregious for the Union to continue suffering as the wars progressed, and it was only thanks to the Fourth Rachni War and the involvement of a nascent Tuchankan Empire that saved the Union Army from complete collapse. The Rachni Wars only further reinforced the lesson that salarians were inferior in frontline combat to the other species, and with the krogan proving to be a potential threat in the near future, the Salarian Union reshaped the Army to fit the new role of a military force meant for defending salarian territory as a priority, and never deploying in force in offensive combat, but more so as mobile strike forces with a focus on maneuver warfare. The Union Army that fought in the Krogan Rebellions was therefore far more effective, and went on to win several victories against krogan forces utilizing these new tactics, although these weren't enough to turn the tide against the krogan on their own until the turians arrived in 749 CE to relieve the pressure and open a new front. Ever since the Rebellions, the Army continued to maintain this role, and as such was very rarely deployed in force outside of major wars.

The Union Army, for the most part, takes a back seat to the Special Tasks Group in regards to funding and usage in the UDF, mostly because salarian operational philosophy favors the deployment of STG assets more so than the Army, with the STG having a symbiotic relationship with the Navy that allows it to deploy more effectively to where it needs to be and more quickly, and due to the STG having the dual roles of a special operations group and that of a traditional foreign intelligence and surveillance apparatus, this made it more favorable to use during peacetime and even during wartime. This was exemplified all the more during the Reaper War, where the STG saw more combat deployments in the early stages of the war than the Army, which was largely stood down until numerous necres, turbans and reprats began to pull away from the Union to join the UGC, taking the parts of the Army under their command with them. Even when the Union finally joined the war in full, only 200,000 troops were dedicated to UGC military operations across the galaxy, with the rest held back to defend salarian space and prepare for Operation Iron Curtain. This later proved to be a good move, as the majority of the Army was already deployed and ready to answer the Reaper invasion as it occurred, but they still suffered substantial casualties in the process, and as a result, only 75,000 Army troops were present at the final battle on Earth. After the war, the Union doubled down on its prioritization of the STG, which only continued to swell in size, while the Army began to lag behind. The Army grew in size due to nationalistic fervor that came with the outbreak of the Post-Apocalyptic War, and this was enough to allow the Union Army to resume its previous role, albeit with inferior training and equipment compared to the STG. When the Union surrendered in 2211 CE, the remnants of the Army joined the rest of the UDF to form the Free Salarian Forces. With the Union's formal surrender and dissolution in 2215 CE, the Union Army was officially dismantled, replaced by the Salarian Mandatory Army.