Jack of Harts

I’ve spoken mostly about the American Federal armed forces so far. But the fact is that for all the funding that went into them, they were not the bulk of America’s armed might when The War began. They were powerful. Make no mistake about that. But most of the State governments maintained their own militaries to defend their borders. The old State Guards, National Reserves, or National Guard units from before the Second Great Depression stayed with the States they were part of when the Federal government collapsed. And they continued to serve those States in most cases into Jack’s time. They were the bedrock that the States built their militaries upon over months and years as the Islamic Jihad and the Cybernetic Wars ravaged what they couldn’t protect. The State militaries helped rebuild America and the Western Alliance in the years to follow. And then they took to space in the decades and centuries beyond that. They helped defend new State colonies, and spread their influence throughout the cosmos every bit as much as the Federal forces did.

I will note that the United States Army got a major chance to shine during The War. They brought the largest tanks, mechs, and aircraft to the various fields of battle, from reserves stockpiled for generations. They constituted the core of trained soldiers that defended Western Alliance worlds across colonized space, and they fought on more Chinese and Russian outposts and colonies than most people even knew existed. It was the Army that conducted the ground invasion and occupation of the Hyades Cluster after Alliance warships cleared the orbitals. Space Marines like the Cowboys may have gotten good press and media deals, but it was the average GI Joe who brought the heavy end of the hammer down on our enemies. Or maybe they were a Jose, a Jay, or a Jacy depending on the culture they came from. They volunteered to serve from every American State and colony, and they fought for two decades straight under alien suns to secure America’s continued survival.

An interesting point about the Marine Corps of Jack’s time, is that they were often the first to test designs that the Army wanted to build. They deployed and optimized them for Marine uses, and their tweaks often found their way back to the Army version. Marine hands tested both the Pattons and Katos before the Army deployed those tanks and mechs in large numbers. And the Marines absolutely fell in love with the Army’s Warthog. A massive gun strapped onto a mech that could transform into an aircraft capable of deploying and operating in space? It was a Marine’s wet dream, and they totally designed their own Cerberus to fill a similar role. The Marines did not care where an effective weapon came from. If they could use it, they wanted it. Even if laws said they couldn’t buy them from the source. The Marines were very good at circumventing laws like that, to the surprise of not a single person who knew the misguided individuals in question.