General Garendin, former commander of the HCS 140th Infantry Brigade and current adviser to the HCS Future Strategy CommitteeAs you may have read the HCS is considering some of the biggest organisational changes in its history. It is felt the time is right to make these changes while the geo-political situation, for us Clones at least, seems quite quiet.
I'm not going to touch on the bigger changes but instead talk about the Army changes announced earlier. Local defence would be hived off from the HCS and devolved to planetary governments to organise and fund. While each planet in the empire would retain HCS land forces the bulk of troops who would provide the day to day guard duties and patrols would be raised from locally organised "territorial" units.
(A note here, "territorial" is the name given in some public domain documents but i think these local troops would be a mixture of full-time and traditional territorial part-time soldiers.)
So for example a planet in the empire might have a brigade of HCS troops to provide the core of defence but most work would be done by 5 or 6 territorial brigades. These troops would be the sole responsibility of the planetary government though would work with the HCS when needed. The idea for this is to allow the HCS to be cut by about half and to become a much better equipped and better trained core.
Secondary troops and equipment would be hived off to provide the start point for these territorial units though over time they would be locally raised more and more and would be cascaded newer equipment from the HCS as the HCS itself renewed its armoury.
That is the plan then, i am in two minds about it. I can see the logic and the advantages but i am a "big HCS" man and would prefer things to remain as they are. Thats not because my old command, the 140th infantry brigade, would be one of the units likely to be cut by the way, its a category A unit.
A couple of times in HCS history it has been the sheer size of the HCS and the vast resources it can draw upon which has saved the empire from disaster. I refer of course to the Clone Wars and especially the early battles on Cloneworld and especially the Randalf 74 campaign. That was a massive defeat for the HCS which cost us over a million men. A lesser army would not have been able to survive such a defeat but the HCS was able to and regenerate. And a couple of years later when the DDS was currently indisposed the HCS was able to return to Randalf 74 and claim the planet after all.
Would a smaller HCS be able to do this again? I know the Clone Wars are now in the past but a major land war could easily happen again. In theory these territorial units can rejoin the HCS to provide the bulk but as time moves on i suspect the terrorial units would diverge from their ex-HCS roots to take a more policing role and would lose some of the combat skills needed to stand in for the HCS. This kind of training and capability would have to be mandated but i can easily see planets deciding to save some money in these areas...
Maybe i am just an old officer stuck in the past. Perhaps the age of major land battles is over. Certainly a smaller HCS would be a much more rapid and technologically advanced beast but no matter how well you plan for a war of a certain type they can so often morph into something else.
