Professor Wayne King-Meiouf of the University of ProximaIts big.
In part 1 of my series i described the Tarbotian Empire and tried to convey just how vast it is compared to the likes of the DDS and DTA. It follows therefore from that that the fleet and military that protects the empire is also on a scale unimaginable.
To get detailed force levels of the Tarbotians is impossible, it may be that even the Tarbotians themselves do not know how exactly how many ships and troops they have, but with the help of colleagues in the Dino Republic and Raegris (as well as some intelligence sources which asked to remain anonymous) i have come up with the following rough totals for the Tarbotian fleet :
| Tarbotian Fleet (Estimated force level) | |
| Heavy Cruisers (Kenora series) | 350-400 |
| Light Cruisers (Vormix, Hyper Ship) | 600-650 |
| Heavy Destroyer (Samara III+) | 3500-3750 |
| Light Destroyer (Samara I-II, Vormix) | 2750-3000 |
| Command Ships | 5-10 |
| Other Combat Ships | 500-600 |
As can be seen these estimates are quite vague but can give a ball park figure as to the sheer size of the Tarbotian fleet. In terms of Kenoras alone they outnumber the DDS fleet. However before we all get too depressed we should note a few things about these totals.
These include a lot of obsolete ships, the Vormix for example are pretty old as are Samara Is. The Tarbotians seem to keep these older ships for internal security but also maintain large reserve pools at strategic points around their empire. It is thought there is one at Masar 11 in the Tarbot Empire near(ish) to DDS space (C1 on the current UNP spacemap). An intelligence report i have read from the Dinos states the existence of around 180 warships here held in semi-dormant state, most of them older ships. It is thought these ships are all usable though it would take a while to get them back operational (and crewed). How often the Tarbotians update their ships is unknown, front-line ships seem to be kept up to date but it could be difficult even for the Tarbotians to keep their vast stock of second-line and reserve assets up to date. Obviously these ships still have a military value.
Another thing to note is that the Tarbotian Empire is vast and borders dozens (if not hundreds) of opposing factions. Obviously if the Tarbotians fielded a huge chunk of their entire fleet they could crush anyone but that would leave their borders vulnerable.
That does not mean the Tarbotians cannot field big fleets, the fleet that attacked the DDS in the epic war of the late 2090s contained nearly 100 ships. In recent years we have seen that the Tarbotians often prefer to minimise ship losses and prefer to fight if they can find a weapon the enemy has no answer to. When the Tarbotians developed their EMP weapon they were able to devastate and conquer the ABBOs with little loss to themselves.
As well as the fleet the Tarbotians have a huge army though less of this is known as the DDS and allies have yet to fight a land war against the Tarbotians. Intelligence indicates the Tarbotians prefer to fight their battles in space and force an enemy to surrender via blockade after destroying its space presence. The Tarbotian Army is thought to number millions of troops (maybe tens of millions) though most of these will be used for internal security and peace keeping.
So that is the Tarbotian military, it is unimaginable vast and powerful but it needs to be to maintain such a vast empire.
