By: Jonathan Abernathy September/October 2061
On June 17th, two weeks after the Crimson Pact of Mars invaded the city of Neom, CPM forces launched an operation to regain control of the Neom Harbor Spaceport on the Red Sea coast. The spaceport was one of the first objectives seized by the invaders in their assault to take control of the largely abandoned super city, but had recently been retaken by United Nations of Earth forces the day before. Control of the spaceport was vital for the CPM to keep the flow of orbital supplies incoming to sustain their occupation of Neom amidst the growing ferocity of the UNE’s counterattacks. But things did not go according to plan. The same day the CPM tried to retake the spaceport, UNE forces began their advance towards Neom’s downtown district, counterattacking with 4 squads of efreets in difficult fighting that leveled much of the surrounding cityscape and turned every block into a miniature fortress of twisted steel and debris. Efreets meant to retake the spaceport under the command of CPM Lt Gen Fen Park, were rerouted at the last minute to the defense of Neom’s’ inner city by the head of invasion, the increasingly desperate and out of touch, Gen Dimitry Koskof. They never came back. At the end of the day, the CPM lost 42 efreets destroyed for no single gains in territory made. The spaceport remained under UNE control with new units entering the combat zone around the clock. The initiative Koskof lost as the result of the simultaneous defeats that day marked the high water point of the CPM’s failed invasion of Neom. Even more devastating however, was the unrepairable fracture within the leadership of CPM command. In the following days, Crimson Pact leaders saw their early gains evaporate as infighting on the proper deployment of their remaining force structure against the UNE’s advances made any hope of solidifying their control of Neom unattainable. In less than a week, the CPM military saw General Dimitry Koskof and thousands of their forces dead with left with nothing but a toe hold in Neom’s northern district to show for it. After the failed attempt to retake the spaceport, it was clear to all military observers the attack on Neom was unsustainable, yet the Crimson Pact command kept flooding the city with more manpower and equipment despite a coherent strategy to defend the city. The CPM’s inability to adapt to the changing conditions of the battlespace was met with predictably disastrous results.
United Nations of Earth General Sam McClendon has described the Battle of Neom as a shining symbol of the incompetence and indecisiveness of CPM commanders, who were driving “their people to exhaustion and slaughter.” In fact, there were numerous similar examples of infighting during the first week of the invasion according to captured POWs. (Apparently, Park’s favorite nickname for Koskof was the “salty old peanut.”) Although initial UNE forces on station to defend the city in the opening days of the battle were consistently outgunned, they used their initiative to great advantage, while CPM leadership constantly threw their firepower into the streets of Neom in never ending attacks to secure as much of the super city as quickly as possible. From the start, the battle has provided a remarkable contrast in approaches to command. And these contrasts may go a long way toward explaining why the Crimson Pact military has so underperformed within their own, and many outside observer’s expectations.
In the weeks leading up to the June 3 invasion, analysts and the international press were naturally fixated on the overwhelming forces that the Crimson Pact of Mars had amassed since their expulsion from Earth and relocation to the colonies and factories of the red planet a decade ago. As many as 2,000 efreets had been manufactured, impressive numbers for a technology still in its infancy. Organized into 16 divisions, each efreet squad had 3 times the firepower of a traditional armored platoon from only 30 years ago. When the battle began, few imagined that the outnumbered UNE forces positioned near Neom could hold out for very long against the highly touted Crimson steamroller. But early fears had failed to account for the many elements that factor into a true measure of a military’s capabilities. Though the weapons used in the Solar War are some of the most powerful ever designed, those technologies mean very little when thrown into an urban combat zone where the harsh rules of war never change.
Military power is not only about a nation’s armaments and the skill with which they are used, but must also take into account the resources of the enemy. It is telling that despite all the bluster from both sides of the conflict about their military capabilities, both sides quietly, and heavily, relied on private mercenary forces during the Battle of Neom. For the contributions of allies and friends, whether in the form of practical assistance or direct interventions, must also be factored into any equation about military power. And although military strength is often measured in firepower, in today’s conflict, fought over millions of miles between the vastness of space, logistics is more important that at any point than it’s ever been. In any war, the ability of the supply lines to sustain the war effort, and the resilience of the logistical systems needed to ensure the supplies reach the front lines, is of increasing importance. Gen Park knew this, which is why she advocated for a total force commitment to retake Neom Harbor Spaceport before the UNE could establish defensive positions around it. However, when Gen Koskof saw an opportunity to meet an operationally meaningless drive by his enemy for downtown Neom, he made an error by putting bodycount above sustainability. Had the spaceport be retaken, it is likely CPM forces would have had the ability to drop even more firepower into the Battle of Neom and increased the duration, and cost, of the fighting for many more months.
Koskof’s failed invasion of Neom has underscored the crucial role of command in determining ultimate military success. The destructive and raw firepower of new weapons such as efreets can only do so much to cover for flawed strategy. For as Western leaders discovered in the wars of Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, superior military hardware and firepower is far better at taking territory than sustaining territory. At Neom, Gen Koskof struggled to secure his gains by constantly pushing to secure every inch of the supercity’s 600 square miles. Committing his force to the offensive maximized their effectiveness in the short term but jeopardized his ability to defend those gains once the UNE recovered from the shock of surprise and began to eat away at his established line. Warnings from subordinates, like Park, were ignored as the invasion’s early success inflated Koskof’s belief of his own superiority and of his plan’s. For in launching the invasion, Koskof made the familiar but catastrophic mistake of underestimating the enemy, assuming it to be weak in will, while having excessive confidence in what his own overstretched forces could achieve. The enemy forces before him did not scatter into the wind as planned when met by overwhelming odds, but regrouped to fight an attrition style defense with the backdrop of the once mighty and gleaming supercity as their Alamo.
THE FATE OF COMMAND
Military command is often described as its own form of leadership, and as outlined in countless studies on command, the qualities sought in military leaders are often those that would be advantageous in almost any setting, but to a higher degree. Deep professional knowledge, the ability to use resources efficiently, excellent communication skills, charisma, a sense of purpose and a willingness to care for subordinates.
However, not all subordinates will automatically follow commands. And it is here that intercepted communications within the Crimson Army belay the seeds of Koskof’s demise at Neom. His second in command, General Fen Park, nicknamed the Red Swan by CPM media, held many of the initial orders during the invasion in private contempt. Leaked emails highlighted her fears that Koskof was far too reckless in his appetite for rapid gains of territory, at the expense of his own troops’ ability to sustain their gains. His dismissal of higher than expected casualties seems to have created ample friction within the dueling officer camps in CPM chain of command led by Park. However, Park’s failure to retake Neom Harbor Spaceport put much of the attack’s future failures on her and drowned out much of ability to influence decisions in the days after. But many military analysts have credited her for the staunch defense of Neom in the waning days as the invasion began to unravel under increasing UNE pressure. It is no surprise with hindsight that once Koskof was eliminated by UNE special forces, Park abandoned any hope of saving Neom and took command to lead a full fighting retreat that saved what was left of the exhausted forces she inherited from annihilation. That CPM command and its decisions are still so heavily influenced by personality is telling.
In contrast, the modern command structure followed by the UNE has sought to encourage officers to take the initiative and apply superior information technology as the glue that holds increasingly complex, and often divergent, battlefield operations together. This is the approach UNE forces adopted out of necessity in the Battle of Neom as the limited garrisons on hand at the invasion’s onset had to wage an organized denial campaign to buy enough time for additional United Nations forces to reach the theater. Without real time updates and a coordinated strategy among those scattered units, Neom likely would have fallen in the first 72 hours of the campaign.
The problems with command in the Crimson Pact of Mars are equally a consequence of its blended military and political command structure. In autocratic systems such as seen on Mars today, officers must often think twice before challenging their superiors. The CPM’s invasion of Neom was met with much criticism by members of the CPM’s elite as too risky an endeavor for the young and fledgling alliance still trying to establish a foundation in a new home. The fact that Dimirty Koskof, a high ranking officer with close connections in the elite himself, couldn’t even conduct his personal offensive without the anti-Neom faction within the CPM appointing the Red Swan as his second in command as a counterbalance is rather telling of the divisions within the power structure. Divisions sure to grow in the aftermath of the defeat at Neom.
SUCCUMBING TO SUCCESS
Koskof’s own readiness to trust his judgment in Neom reflected the fact that his past deployments of force had worked out well for him. The state of the Crimson Pact’s military was dire following the abandonment of their Russian and Chinese homelands after the alliance’s lunar defeat at the Battle of Tycho Crater at the hands of the United States in 2051. In the years afterwards the CPM focused every available resource to defend Mars against invasion from the also newly formed United Nations of Earth as a result of the power vacuum left behind. However, leaders within the old guard of the CPM that included Koskof and initially, General Gregory Yun, favored aggressive orbital raids against the UNE as the best way to defend their new home. Doing so would keep overstretched UNE forces occupied defending a global front while keeping the war away from Mars. Koskof’s lightning strikes in Buenos Aires, Cario, and Nagpur with Yun’s attack in Kuwait City in 2055 proved the tactic was devilishly effective. UNE forces were slow to defend the vulnerable cities within the BRIMEA (Brazil Indian Middle Eastern Alliance) nations, ironically of which Neom itself was a part of. The damage Koskof’s raids caused increased the growing rift between the leadership in Washington and New Delhi and this did not go unnoticed in the CPM. Following a costly defeat in 2056 when Yun led a failed raid outside Muscat in Oman, he publicly came out against orbital raids as “costly diversions” and shifted his energies into planning the greater strategic defense of Mars. But Koskof and the aggressive camp of commanders around him kept up their attacks. The number of orbital raids in 2058 doubled the previous year’s total of 22 with two-thirds focused on less defended BRIMEA targets. In hindsight, the failure of the UNE to defend BRIMEA populations from these targeted raids is seen as a major strategic failure and one of the many reasons to explain the sudden exodus of the BRIMEA with their disappearance from the inner, or perhaps the entire Solar System in 2059 after making a breakthrough in faster than light technology. Whatever their true reasons, Koskof claimed much of the credit for the BRIMEA Diaspora and used the event to expand his influence within the CPM. In the months following the exodus, CPM orbital raids were happening with alarming regularity with an ever greater focus on abandoned centers of BRIMEA power and the advanced technologies left behind. It was in this climate, with his personal star shining brightest, and with his reputation as a shrewd commander largely established that Koskof made his biggest gamble yet. His invasion of Neom would be no mere raid, but an attempt for the CPM to force a permanent foothold back on Earth. Voices of dissent against the dangers of such an overly zealous attack, the loudest by his old ally, Gen Yun, were mostly ignored or censored by CPM media in the leadup to the attack.
In launching his plan, Koskof had the advantages of a CPM military largely equipped with the newest generation of efreets with many that rivaled the newest models in the UNE. His space forces were experienced with years of conducting orbital raids. Add in the sudden strain of the humanitarian crisis from the billions of people left behind by the BRIMEA Exodus and UNE forces were stretched to the breaking point. Anti-UNE sentiment by the local populations left behind from the exodus had never been higher and Koskof believed if Neom could be taken quickly, the remains of the population in the super city may even welcome his forces, not as liberators, but saviors. Yet he still proceeded recklessly. His strategy, which called for a lightning strike to secure the sprawling city encountered stiff resistance from the few UNE troops already deployed to defend the city and the small mercenary company the UNE had hired to help garrison Neom, the Lunar Wolves. Though the majority was Neom was taken in the first 3 days of the invasion, high losses and delays in gaining control of Neom’s southern district coupled with the growing division in his own command spelled doom for the ultimate ambitions of General Koskof.
As an orbital raid, the attack on Neom would no doubt have been a massive political and military coup for the CPM. But here, Koskof could not follow the formula that had worked so well for him in the past. By overstretching his forces, ignoring the sound advice of his peers, and valuing enemy losses over his own supplies, the Crimson Pact General lived just long enough to see his most daring victory yet crumble alongside the chared ashes of the city he wished to secure.
JONATHAN ABERNATHY is Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London and the author of the forthcoming book, Command: Profiles of Leadership During The Solar War.