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	"A Connecticut Yankee in the Archon's Court"
Contact author			Appendices				Last Updated: 2005-10-14

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APPENDICES

• Appendix A: Frank Carson's World
• Appendix B: The Alliance military

Appendix A: Frank Carson's World

Frank's world diverges from OTL significantly in the 1980s: President Carter doesn't cancel the B-1B bomber, but puts it on back on the usual sequential "build one, test it, build more" acquisition track, which delays deployment several years to put off angering the Soviet Union. Given more time to address problems in the airframe and radar jammer, the B-1B becomes a marginal success instead of a test failure still being fixed almost 20 years later. But Carter is still blamed for the Iranian hostage rescue fiasco, Reagan becomes President, and a new defense buildup begins. The "Star Wars" projects are pushed forward prematurely, taking advantage of electronics and materials technology developed to fix the B-1, leading to some spectacular test failures that are "this close" to success. The ABM treaty is eventually repudiated, the USA claiming that unlimited missile defense is the only humane alternative to Mutually Assured Destruction, knowing that the Soviets can either match the US defenses or build more and better missiles, but shouldn't be able to afford to do both. But the Strategic Defense Initiative is continued to a costly initial missile defense capability in orbit over the USA only. The Soviet Union doesn't feel compelled to match US defense spending in these high-technology areas, given the high cost and marginal utility, but concentrates on traditional military forces and maintaining nuclear deterrence over Europe, insisting on no "Star Wars" coverage outside North America. Reagan's defense buildup is continued by Bush, because the Evil Empire is still out there, but there is no opportunity to show how well the systems work in actual combat. The communist economies still lag significantly behind the West, but less emphasis on modern computers and communications behind the Iron Curtain makes repressing the news easier. When Gorbachev comes to power, his idealism is tempered by a stronger legacy of "successful" repression, and he takes a deceptive path instead of true "glasnost" and "perestroika." The initial surge of reforms is followed by crackdowns on dissent, similar to the Tianamen Square massacre and Mao's "Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom." Solidarnosc (Solidarity) is eventually driven underground by Russian military forces after Polish martial law is perceived as insufficient. Ethnic unrest arises in the southern Muslim portions of the Soviet Union as Russian forces try to disengage from Afghanistan without losing credibility. Iraq ties itself closer to the Soviet Union while cooperating on stamping out Kurdish unrest in the north, and rebuilds its forces after the long war with Iran in the 1980s, putting off action against Kuwait until it can take on Saudi Arabia as well. Yugoslavia nearly implodes after Tito dies, but the ethnic groups hold together a shaky power-sharing arrangement in the face of the Warsaw Pact on one side and the West on the other, and stay Communist. Instead of a wholesale breakdown of the Soviet communist system in 1990 or so, it is held together through the use of Russian military force, the pre-eminent army facing the growing missile-killer umbrella over the United States. But there has been no showdown in Europe, no "New World Order," no vindication of American technology against Iraq, no tearing down of the Berlin Wall or continuing crisis in the Balkans. The successor to Bush is a Democrat, but nobody can afford to be soft on defense yet, so only trivial budgetary changes are made. Except for an untested Star Wars system, this is a world stagnant in the politics of about OTL 1989; calling them the Eastern and Western Bloc is just an acknowledgment of how votes usually go in the debating society called the United Nations. The Internet exists in the Western Bloc, and access to it begins to divide the world into technological haves and have-nots. The cracks are starting to appear in the Iron Curtain, but when it comes down, it is hard to tell how bad things will be.
(return to the Foreword)

Appendix B: The Alliance Military

As author of this fanfic, I made decisions about how some things happened in the world of the Domination of the Draka and Alliance for Democracy, without consulting S.M. Stirling. If there's heartburn with them, you know who to complain to - me! Should S.M. Stirling disagree with me, I'll be happy to change things to conform to The Author's vision, so don't get too attached to what I say below.

In 1998, and for quite some time before, the Alliance Space Force is the favored military service in funding and technology development. Although the newest and smallest (in manning) of the Alliance armed forces, it has the most expensive equipment by far. The Space Force is responsible for everything beyond the highest aircraft altitude from Earth. This includes LEO battlestations, other satellites and stations in Earth and Lunar orbit and the Asteroid Belt, and all Alliance mobile military space vessels. With the Domination's "no peace beyond Luna" policy, the Space Force is also on a continual high alert, and it is expected to be the first branch of the Alliance military involved in the Final War. The future of the Alliance military is in space. The other military services remain mostly to avoid presenting no conventional opposition to the Domination.
The Navy is dedicated to surface and submarine patrols that keep Draka submarines out of the Alliance Peace Zones and attempts to track them elsewhere, doing some covert work for the OSS, and providing a nuclear deterrent aboard submarines that is beginning to lose its invisibility to orbital sensors. The final generation of nuclear and fuel-cell submarines are high-speed (over 50 knots), able to launch homing torpedoes fore and aft, and medium-range sea-skimmer nuclear missiles can be launched while submerged up to 10 fathoms. The surface fleets are concentrated near the British Isles, Japan and Southeast Asia, providing a mobile missile defense and anti-aircraft capability plus coastal patrol (search and rescue, anti-infiltration); these forces are increasingly technically obsolete as orbital systems outrange them significantly. In certain respects the future of the Alliance Navy has already moved into space.
The Air Force provides an interception and counterair capability for low- to high-altitude enemy aircraft, and some air-based anti-satellite capability. It also provides all close air support or long-distance transport through aircraft, helicopters, tiltrotors and aircars.
The Army is primarily dedicated to opposing enemy landings or infiltration in force, and keeping order if civil order is disrupted by enemy attack. Beach and harbor fortifications are extensive although obsolete. The slight "real" reductions in funding over the years have promoted regional quick-reaction forces and secret holdout burrows, with Home Guard forces mobilized out of local armories if time allows. The Army also has responsibility for all ground-based air and space defenses (missiles, lasers, particle beams, etc.), both mobile and fixed. The battlefield troop transport function using heavy aircars (airvans) and VTOL tiltrotors belongs to the Army too. The Alliance Army is obviously on the defensive, giving the initiative to the larger force of Janissary Legions and the specialist Citizen Forces. Critics point out that the Alliance therefore has no hope of defeating the Domination in a limited or conventional war, and has to pray for a widespread internal revolt to give it the opening needed to liberate anything from the Draka.
The specter of a nuclear holocaust has loomed over the world for so long, given that Japan, the Pyrenees and the Ruhr were nuked at the close of the Eurasian War, that most people in the Alliance expect the world to be completely devastated and uninhabitable after a Final War. Space-based anti-missile capabilities are therefore seen as both the salvation of the Alliance and a dangerous destabilizing force in the nuclear balance of terror, should one side or the other believe they have a significant advantage or will soon be at a disadvantage.

There is further discussion of the Alliance military, particularly LEO battlestations in the context of the Final War, on the "Pete's problems with 'The Stone Dogs'" page.
(return to Chapter 1)

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