Union Defense Force
From FABT
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Active: |
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Organization: |
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Affiliation: |
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Branch: |
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Type: |
Armed Forces |
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Role: |
Defend and protect the Salarian Union |
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Size: |
48.12 million (active) |
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Part of: |
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Headquarters: |
Fort Tanmorne, northern border of Nudril, Sur'Kesh (600 BCE - 596 BCE) |
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Nickname(s): |
Salarian military |
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Motto: |
"Owning the initiative." |
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Colors: |
Maroon and fern green |
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Anniversaries): |
Charter Day |
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Engagements: |
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Commanders: |
Dalatrass Baerkon Onoke (last) |
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Notable: |
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- "Owning the initiative."
- — UDF motto.
The Union Defense Force (UDF), also known as the Salarian Armed Forces and Salarian Defense Forces, was the military component of the Salarian Union responsible for the defense and preservation of the Union. It consisted of four branches: the Union Army, Special Tasks Group, Union Navy and the Union Border Protection Force. Under the direct command of the Unified Military Command of Sur'Kesh, the Union Defense Force made use of a smaller military as opposed to a larger fighting force, and instead utilized it to fight smaller scale conflicts within the larger strategic environment to hassle and outwit their enemy, as well as deconstruct their ability to fight effectively and use force multiplication to make up for what it lacked in numbers: to this degree, every facet of the Union's four service branches worked alongside this operational philosophy, maximizing their threat potential to create a headache for the enemy whilst attempting to limit contact with hostile forces, preferring to fight maneuver and cyberwarfare as opposed to the wars of attrition and firepower fought by much larger powers like the Turian Hierarchy and the Batarian Hegemony. From the outside, the Union Defense Force seemed weak and too small to adequately defend its borders, and while this was largely true, the salarian military doctrine was to rely on its allies for border defense while also keeping the war as far from their own borders as possible and, failing that, making enemy invasion and occupation of salarian territory more detrimental than useful. This core philosophy was first developed after first contact with the asari in 520 BCE and largely stems from potential strategies to use in a hypothetical war with the asari that were noted in the Fulcrum Contingency that would be shelved, as the war never occurred: despite this, these hypothetical strategies helped the salarians realize their military couldn't hope to cope with the asari, and that with other aliens out there potentially, they had to adopt a philosophy that best suit their abilities: salarians were physically weaker than other aliens and thus lacked the brawn, but their intellect and technological prowess was second-to-none, so they instead built off of that and reorganized their military along these lines. As such, the Union Defense Force as it would come to be known would be born from this, and lead to the greater prevalence of intelligence being utilized as a tool of war (and possibly also a tool to prevent it), with the famous STG mantra being to "win wars before they begin, and should they begin, win them quickly." Intelligence as a tool of war became so prevalent that an entire branch would be dedicated to it, giving birth to the Special Tasks Group in the aftermath of the declassification and exposure of the League of One to the larger galaxy and salarian public.
The roots of the Union Defense Force were planted in 600 BCE with the birth of the Salarian Union itself. Initially, only two branches were formed: the Union Army the same day, then the Union Navy two months later on 16 April. 17 years later, a third branch was established called the Union Intelligence and Special Tasks Bureau, intended to encapsulate eight different intelligence agencies with various different duties and tasks, and was formed in answer to the terrorist attacks of the Lysthen Vengeful during the opening stages of the Invisible War. One of these eight agencies, the League of One, proved highly successful, and whilst working in tandem with the other agencies, was able to defeat the Lysthen Vengeful and completely bankrupt the Lysthen government by 578 BCE, and proved that utilizing black operatives in tandem with intelligence assets was an effective means of avoiding the costly and bloody wars that had so tarnished salarian history. As the UDF improved upon these intelligence agencies and reorganized them into a more cohesive branch of the military, they slowly began to morph them together, and with the declassification of the League of One in 520 BCE, the Union completed this reorganization by replacing it with a new branch, now just called the "Special Tasks Group", and only consisting of a single intelligence organization that would also double as a special operations force. With the League of One liquidated, the STG became the dominant arm of salarian military power for the rest of its existence, with the Union Army kept largely for homeland security and internal defense purposes. It wouldn't be until 453 BCE that the fourth and final branch, the Union Border Protection Force, would be introduced, with the purpose of acting as a military law enforcement agency that would guard salarian borders against unwanted trespassers and work in tandem with the other three arms to ensure salarian borders were secure. By the Krogan Rebellions, the Union military was a small but powerful force, as its ability to project power in the absence of numbers and sheer firepower was one that its peers respected and its enemies learned to fear. Its operational philosophy was designed perfectly to work in tandem with its allies to make up for its flaws, with the asari and turians making up what they lacked in manpower and firepower. Every branch existed, in the end, as an ancillary to the STG, with the Navy supporting their naval operations, while the Army supported them on the ground and the STG supported Border Protection's efforts to defend and maintain the strength of their borders. This earned the Union military the moniker of a "smart military" or "smart army", an epithet that accurately reflected the UDF's structure, purpose and overall philosophy towards conducting and ending the wars it fought.
The UDF wasn't perfect however, and there were many flaws in its operational structure that could prove lethal if they were neglected: the UDF acknowledged this and believed the STG would be sufficient to acknowledge these potential flaws and limit the enemy's ability to exploit them, namely in using their superior intelligence capabilities. However, whilst this suited them well in conflicts such as the Krogan Rebellions, the Reaper War proved an entirely different situation, with the Reapers being an enemy that the STG found impossible to predict, and whose many tactics simply didn't work or or not as effectively. This isn't to say the STG performed poorly throughout, as when the UDF was finally allowed to join the war proper, the STG and the Navy proved every bit as capable as it historically proved to be, participating in numerous operations where their presence greatly improved tactics used and their success rate. Despite this, they were most effective when fighting Cerberus, with the STG switching up UGC strategy to include more conventional salarian operational philosophy, preferring to avoid direct engagements with the superior Cerberus land forces and instead hitting key infrastructure, such as laboratories, factories, shipyards and other military installations to disrupt Cerberus' supremacy in a theater. It's here that the UDF shined, but as the war dragged on and the Reapers finally launched their inevitable invasion of salarian space, they were unable to keep the war from their own territory any longer and were finally forced to fight on their home turf. While Operation Iron Curtain was organized for this very event, and proved successful in its initial stages, it wasn't enough to stop the Reaper invasion, and if it wasn't for the final battle over Earth, Sur'Kesh would have fallen. Despite this, the UDF maintained its original philosophy beyond the Reaper War, although their capability to wage offensive operations was improved upon greatly to make up for their weakened allies: stealth ships became commonplace in the Union Navy, and the STG was quickly built back up, with the Union Army falling behind. When the Post-Apocalyptic War broke out in 2205 CE, the UDF once again proved its mettle, and did enormous damage to Dominion facilities and warfighting capability early on that could have decided the conflict before Prometheus finally launched its own counter-intelligence operations. Ultimately, in 2211 CE, the Union was greatly weakened and the Dominion took advantage of this by launching a full-scale invasion of salarian space. The UDF buckled under the pressure, exhausted by the war, but continued to fight on, even after the Union surrendered and the remaining UDF became the Free Salarian Forces. When the war ended and the Free Salarian Forces fully surrendered and the Union was dissolved, the UDF was formally dissolved with it. A new salarian military force would replace it known as the Salarian Mandatory Defense Forces, serving the new Dominion puppet state known as the Feudatory State of Sur'Kesh, although it was only allowed a small naval force and no more than 10,000 troops in its army, and it would ultimately answer to the Dominion military.