Jack of Harts

The United States Space Force had the mission of defending America’s homeland and colonies from spacebased attacks when Jack was young. They operated powerful orbital and ground forts designed to support the smaller craft that are their primary offensive and defensive arm. They flew many fighters and bombers over the years, but the F-7 Hellcat was their baby from day one. It had aerodynamic maneuverability and space flight capabilities, and the paired lasers and missile pods quickly became a symbol of American ingenuity over all the worlds. The Hellcat was so overwhelmingly successful that every other branch of the military began using them in time. Which was when many began to see the Space Force as a secondary arm, only there to help the Navy defend our worlds. The Space Force couldn’t let that stand, so they created the Avenger and Marauder programs to build the first hypercapable American fighters and bombers. The B-14 Marauder deployed a decade before The War started, and showed once more that the Space Force didn’t need no stinking Navy to reach out and crush America’s enemies.

The United States Federal government ran four primary military services in Jack’s time. The United States Space Force operated orbital forts, and aerospace fighters with a mission of maintaining space superiority over America and her colonies. They also performed customs enforcement in planetary orbitals. The Navy sailed deep into black, projecting American power throughout the cosmos, and performed their own customs enforcement outside planetary environments. The Army defended the District of Columbia and the far flung colonies with everything from individual soldiers to ground support air and spacecraft. They also sometimes engaged in offensive warfare. The United States Marines were called on to perform everything from ground combat to space superiority missions, and therefore used both Army and Space Force weapons and craft, as well as their own custom systems. They most often deployed from Space Force fortifications, Navy warships, or Army bases, and rarely operated in a truly independent nature.

The United States of America sent military units all over the world to fight the Islamic States and the Rogue AIs that had cropped up during the Second Great Depression. They even managed to get the fleet carriers and escorts anchored at San Diego back out to sea to face off against the Chinese forces looking to invade Australia. That took everybody working together to do, and the resulting navy task force was a truly American force. Ground troops were another matter. Most military bases in America fell to control of the State they lived in when the Federal government collapsed, and the States were not overly enthusiastic about giving them back to the Feds. So the various reserve and guard troops and fighter squadrons that traveled around the world to fight the good fight flew Texas, California, or Dixie flags above their American flags. That was a practice that stuck all the way to Jack’s time. It was utterly normal. A reminder that the States were in charge, even if that control had slipped a fair degree by his time.