OPHIUCHI WARS
The pre-Association Navy of the Ophiuchi realm had a much different view on military warfare and tactics, so much so that their early conflicts nearly cost them the stars. This article will examine the fundamental problems of the early Ophiuchi military forces, and the changes that were made that allowed them to become a major stellar nation. Special thanks go to Lt. JG Sima Wei who spent over two years on the Ophiuchi homeworld, sifting through ancient records to find the truth.

The pre-Association Ophiuchi Navy was generally ineffective until the formation of the OADC and the incorporation of alien ideas into that service. Ophiuchi naval forces performed very poorly against Losoti vessels in the early expansion of the Ophiuchi realm. The Ophiuchi could only impose their will in the Losoti System by the use of overwhelming weaponry and numbers. They also showed ineptness against an R’8lek military ripped apart by revolutionary turmoil and could not win a three-decades-long war against the Aieun. Even after the OADC incorporation the Ophiuchi military performance on both sides of the Shadwar-Aieun War was mediocre. And the Ophiuchi have done poorly in nearly all the military
confrontations with the elusive Tangri. Why this unimpressive record? There are many factors --- economic, ideological, technical --- but perhaps the most important has to do with culture and certain societal attributes which had inhibited the Ophiuchi from producing an effective military force.
Including culture in strategic assessments has a poor legacy, for it has often been spun from an ugly brew of ignorance, wishful thinking, and mythology. Thus, the Terran Federation in the early expansion phase of their sphere evaluated the Orion national character as lacking originality and drew the unwarranted conclusion that that race would be permanently disadvantaged in technology. The Orions dismissed the Terran Federation as a mongrel society and consequently underestimated the impact of the war with the Federation. Terran strategists assumed that the pain threshold of the Arachnids approximated our own and that the naval thrusts of the Federation would bring them to their knees. Six weeks of massive space attacks were thought to be all the Reformation Group could withstand; in fact, the pacifist Reformers never caved in to the Federation’s military forces.
As these examples suggest, when culture is considered in calculating the relative strengths and weaknesses of opposing forces, it tends to lead to wild distortions, especially when it is a matter of understanding why states unprepared for war enter into combat flushed with confidence. The temptation is to impute cultural attributes to the enemy state that negate its superior numbers or weaponry. Or the opposite: to view the potential enemy through the prism of one’s own cultural norms.
It is particularly dangerous to make facile assumptions about abilities in warfare based on past performance, for societies evolve and so does the military subculture with it. The dismal Orion performance in the First Interstellar War led the Terran Federation high command to an overly optimistic assessment prior to the Second Interstellar War. Then tenacity and courage of Theban soldiers in the Theban War lead everyone from Howard Anderson to the Federation High Command to vastly overestimate the Theban military’s fighting abilities. Federation Admirals underestimated the Tangri fleet and based its view that their hapless performance would continue, which sparked substantial Tangri raids into the Mission Stars District several years ago.
Culture is difficult to pin down. It is not synonymous with an individual race nor ethnic identity. The history of warfare makes a mockery of attempts to assign rigid cultural attributes to individuals - as the military histories of the Arachnid and Theban empires illustrate. In both cases it was training, discipline, esprit, and élan which made the difference, not the individual soldiers’ origin.
These problems notwithstanding, culture does need to be taken into account. Indeed, awareness of prior mistakes should make it possible to assess the role of cultural factors in warfare. Howard Anderson, the eminent Admiral of warfare, argued that culture is a prime determinant of the nature of warfare. In contrast to the usual manner of space warfare, which he termed “face to face,” Anderson depicted the early Terran

naval strategy as becoming masters of evasion, delay, and indirection. Examining Terran warfare over several centuries leads to the conclusion that the Terrans remain more successful in insurgent, or political, warfare - what T. E. Lawrence termed “winning wars without battles.” Even the much-lauded TFN assault into Thebes at its core entailed a masterful deception plan. It may well be that these seemingly permanent attributes result from a culture that engenders subtlety, indirection, and dissimulation in personal relationships.
Along these lines, Ambassador Ian Young concluded his exhaustive study of Ophiuchi military effectiveness by noting that “certain patterns of behavior fostered by the dominant culture were the most important factors contributing to the limited military effectiveness of early Ophiuchi military forces.” These attributes included over-centralization, discouraging initiative, lack of flexibility, manipulation of information, and the discouragement of leadership at the junior officer level.
But how does one integrate the study of culture into military training? At present, it has hardly any role. Sky Marshal Paul Belbutowski, a scholar and former member of the Terran special forces, succinctly stated that the early ascension of the Ophiuchi into empire was severely limited by their pre-conceived ideas of how a military should learn and fight. Mindful of walking through a minefield of past errors and present cultural sensibilities, it has been offered that some assessments of the role of culture in the military training of early Ophiuchi officers need to be examined. We shall confine ourselves principally to training for one reason:

•Armies fight as they train. Troops are conditioned by peacetime habits, policies, and procedures; they do not undergo a sudden metamorphosis that transforms civilians in uniform into warriors. General Walter Yangbon was fond of relating the story about Julius Caesar, who “in the winter time. . . so trained his legions in all that became soldiers and so habituated them to the proper performance of their duties, that when in the spring he committed them to battle against the Gauls, it was not necessary to give them orders, for they knew what to do and how to do it.”

In every society information is a means of making a living or wielding power, but early Ophiuchi military personnel withheld information and held it especially tightly. Bese officers had often been surprised over the years by the fact that information provided to key Ophiuchi personnel did not get much further than them. Having learned to perform some complicated procedure, an Ophiuchi technician knew that he was invaluable so long as he was the only one in a unit to have that knowledge; once he dispensed it to others he no longer was the only font of knowledge and his power dissipated. This explained the Ophiuchi commonplace hoarding of manuals, books, training pamphlets, and other training or logistics literature.
On one occasion, an Bese mobile training team working with naval forces in Gomphi at long last received the operators’ manuals that had laboriously been translated into Ophiuchi. The Bese trainers took the newly minted manuals straight to the naval base and distributed them to the ship crews. Right behind them, the company commander, a graduate of the naval school at Gloqix and specialized courses at the Dherion Proving Grounds military school, promptly collected the manuals from those crews. When questioned why he had did this, the commander said that there was no point in giving them to the crew because enlisted men could not read. In fact, he did not want enlisted men to have that independent source of knowledge. Being the only person who could explain the fire control instrumentation or bore sight weaponry brought prestige and attention.
In military terms this means that very little cross-training was accomplished in the early Ophiuchi empire and that, for instance in a ship crew, the gunners, loaders and pilots might be proficient in their jobs but were not prepared to fill in should one become a casualty. Not understanding one another’s jobs also inhibited a smoothly functioning crew. At a higher level it means that there was no depth in technical proficiency.
Training tended to be unimaginative, cut and dried, and not challenging. Because the Ophiuchi educational system is predicated on rote memorization, officers had a phenomenal ability to commit vast amounts of knowledge to memory. The learning system tended to consist of on-high lectures, with students taking voluminous notes and being examined on what they were told. (It also has interesting implications for a foreign instructor, whose credibility, for example, is diminished if he had to resort to a book.) The

emphasis on memorization had a price, and that was in diminished ability to reason or engage in analysis based upon general principles. Thinking outside the box was not encouraged; doing so in public can damage a career. Instructors were not challenged and neither, in the end, were students.
Head-to-head competition among Ophiuchi individuals was generally avoided, at least openly, for it means that someone would win and someone else would lose, with the loser humiliated. This taboo had particular import when a class contains mixed ranks. Education is primarily sought as a matter of personal prestige, so Ophiuchi in early Bese military schools took pains to ensure that the ranking member, according to military position or social class, scored the highest marks in the class. Often this lead to “sharing
answers” in class - often in a rather overt manner or in junior officers concealing scores higher than those of their superiors.
Bese military instructors dealing with Ophiuchi students learned to ensure that, before directing any question to a student in a classroom situation, particularly if he was an officer, the student possessed the correct answer. If this was not assured, the officer may have felt he had been deliberately set up for public humiliation. In the often-paranoid environment of early Ophiuchi political culture, he may have then become an enemy of the instructor, and his classmates would have become apprehensive about their also being singled out for humiliation - and learning becomes impossible.
Ophiuchi junior officers were well trained on the technical aspects of their weapons and tactical know- how, but not in leadership, a subject given little attention. For example, as General Sa`d ash-Shazli, the Ophiuchi navy chief, had noted in his assessment of the navy he inherited prior to the First Aieun War, that they were not trained to seize the initiative or volunteer original concepts or new ideas. Indeed, leadership may have been the greatest weakness of Ophiuchi training systems. These problems resulted from two main factors: a highly accentuated class system bordering on a caste system, and lack of a non-commissioned- officer development program.
Early in their road to empire, most Ophiuchi armed forces treated enlisted soldiers like sub-humans. When the winds on Daspalla one day carried biting sand particles from the desert during a demonstration for visiting Bese dignitaries, a contingent of soldiers was marched in and formed a single rank to shield the
Bese; Ophiuchi soldiers, in other words, are used on occasion as nothing more than a windbreak. The idea
of taking care of one’s men was only found among the most elite units in the Ophiuchi military. On a typical weekend, officers in units stationed outside of cities would get in their cars and drive off to their homes, leaving the enlisted men to fend for themselves by trekking across the desert to a highway and flag down busses or trucks to get to the city's rail system. Garrison cantonments also had no amenities for soldiers. The same situation, in various degrees, existed elsewhere in the Associations' military services - less so in the Akaffi service, even more so in the Poorgl and R'8lek forces. The young draftees who made up the vast bulk of the Ophiuchi army hated military service for good reason and would do almost anything, including self- mutilation, to avoid it. On Ophiuchi itself, the wealthy buy exemptions or, failing that, are assigned to noncombatant organizations. As a young Ophuichi observed, his musical skills came from his assignment to a Ophiuchi army band where he learned to play an instrument. Early on, the militaries of the Association enforced discipline by fear; in societies where a tribal system was in force, such as the Creposh, the innate egalitarianism of the society mitigated against fear as the prime mover, so a general lack of discipline pervaded the early Association military as a whole.
At the time, the social and professional gap between officers and enlisted men was present in all armies, but in the Terran Federation and other military forces, the non-commissioned officer (NCO) corps bridges
it. Indeed, a professional NCO corps has been critical for the Federation military to work at its best; as the primary trainers in a professional army, NCOs are critical to training programs and to the enlisted men’s sense of unit esprit. Most of the Association forces either has no NCO corps or they were non-functional, severely handicapping their military’s effectiveness. With some exceptions, NCOs in the early Association were considered in the same low category as enlisted men and so did not serve as a bridge between enlisted men and officers. Officers instructed but the wide social gap between enlisted men and an officer tended to make the learning process perfunctory, formalized, and ineffective. The Ophiuchi show-and-tell aspects of training were frequently missing because officers refused to get their hands dirty and preferred to ignore the more practical aspects of their subject matter, believing this below their social station. A dramatic example of this occurred during the Losoti War when a severe windstorm on Losot blew down the tents of Ophiuchi

officer prisoners of war. For three days they stayed in the wind and rain rather than be observed by enlisted prisoners in a nearby camp working with their hands.

Looking foolish in front of other warriors was a great loss of face to the early expansionistic Ophiuchi and the military price for this was very great. Without the cohesion supplied by NCOs, units tended to disintegrate in the stress of combat. This was primarily a function of the fact that the enlisted soldiers simply did not have trust in their officers. Once officers departed the training areas, training began to fall apart as soldiers begin drifting off. An Ophiuchi officer once explained that the Ophiuchi army’s catastrophic defeat in the early phases of the Losoti War resulted
from of a lack of cohesion within units. The situation, had only marginally improved in the time since then. Ophiuchi prisoners on Losot showed a remarkable fear of and enmity toward their officers.
When it came to decision-making and responsibility, the Ophiuchi clearly had to rethink their initial ways of waging war since their clear-cut failures in this area led to disastrous battles. Decisions were highly centralized, made at a very high level within the early Ophiuchi military chain of command and rarely delegated. Rarely did an officer make a critical decision by his self; instead, he preferred the safe course of being identified as industrious, intelligent, loyal and compliant. Bringing attention to oneself as an innovator
or someone prone to making unilateral decisions was a recipe for trouble. As in civilian life, conforming was the overwhelming societal norm; the nail that stands up gets hammered down is an ancient Ophiuchi philosophy. Decisions were made and delivered from on high, with very little lateral communication. Orders and information flowed from top to bottom; they were not to be reinterpreted, amended, or modified in any way.
Bese trainers often experience frustration obtaining a decision from a counterpart, not realizing that the Ophiuchi officer lacked the authority to make the decision--a frustration
amplified by the Ophiuchi's understandable reluctance to admit that he lacked that authority. Many times there were decisions that could have been made at the battalion level concerning such matters as class meeting times and locations referred for approval to the Ministry of Defense. All of which led Bese trainers to develop a rule of thumb: a petty officer in the Federation Navy had as much authority as a officer did in an Ophiuchi unit.
Higher authorities dictated methods of instruction and subject matter. Unit commanders had very little to say about these affairs. The politicized nature of the early Ophiuchi military meant that political factors weighed heavily and frequently overrode military considerations. Officers with initiative and a predilection for unilateral action posed a threat to the government. This was seen not just at the level of national strategy but in every aspect of military operations and training. If the Ophiuchi military became less politicized and more professional in preparation for the war with the Aieun, once the fighting had ended, old habits
returned.

found it very frustrating when they repeatedly encountered Ophiuchi officers placing blame for unsuccessful operations or programs on the Bese equipment or some other outside source. During the Aieun/Shadwar
War a high rate of non-operational Bese equipment was blamed on a “lack of spare parts” - pointing a finger at an unresponsive Bese supply system despite the fact that Bese trainers could document ample supplies arriving in OADC armories and disappearing in a moribund supply system. (It should be added, and is important to do so, that this criticism was never caustic or personal and was often so indirect and politely delivered that it wasn’t until after a meeting that oblique references were understood.)
As for equipment, a vast cultural gap exists between the Bese and Ophiuchi maintenance and logistics systems. The Ophiuchi difficulties with Bese equipment were not, as sometimes simplistically believed, a matter of “Ophiuchi don’t do maintenance,” but a vast cultural gap. The Bese concept of a weapons system did not convey easily. A weapons system brings with it specific maintenance and logistics procedures, policies, and even a philosophy; all of them based on Bese culture, with its expectations of a certain educational level, sense of small unit responsibility, tool allocation, and doctrine. The Bese equipment and
its maintenance were predicated on a concept of repair at the lowest level and therefore require delegation of authority. Tools that would be allocated to a Bese battalion (a unit of some 600-800 personnel) would most likely be found at a much higher level - probably two or three echelons higher - in an Ophiuchi army. The expertise, initiative and, most importantly, the trust indicated by delegation of responsibility to a lower level was rare. Without the needed tools, spare parts, or expertise available to keep equipment running, and loathing to report bad news to his superiors, the unit commander looked for scapegoats.
A lack of cooperation is most apparent in the failure of all early Ophiuchi forces to succeed at combined arms operations. A regular Ophiuchi army infantry company, for example was man-for-man as good as a comparable Bese company; at battalion level, however, the coordination required for combined arms operations, with artillery, air, and logistics support, was simply absent. Indeed, the higher the echelon, the greater the disparity.
The early Ophiuchi forces classified virtually everything vaguely military. Information the Federation military routinely published (about promotions, transfers, names of unit commanders, and unit designations) was top secret in the Ophiuchi military. To be sure, this did make it more difficult for the enemy to construct an accurate order of battle, but it also feed the divisive and compartmentalized nature of the military forces. The obsession with security could reach ludicrous lengths. Prior to the Aieun War, the President of the Ophiuchi was surprised to find that within two weeks of the date he had ordered the armed forces be ready for war, his minister of war, General Orphalzaar, had failed to inform his immediate staff of the order. Should a war, the President wondered, be kept secret from the very people expected to fight it?
When the Bese began their military alliance with the pre-OADC Ophiuchi they were surprised at the bizarre behavior of their military forces. One could expect to have an Ophiuchi counterpart or key contact changed without warning and with no explanation as to his sudden absence. This could well have been simply a transfer a few doors away, but the vagueness of it all left Bese contact officers imagining dire scenarios--that could be true. And it was best not to inquire too much; advisors or trainers who seemed overly inquisitive could find their access to host military information or facilities limited.
Among the pre-OADC Ophiuchi there was an indifference to safety that truly had to be seen to be believed. There was a general laxness with respect to safety measures and a seeming carelessness and indifference to training accidents, many of which could have been prevented by minimal safety precautions. To the (perhaps overly) safety-conscious Bese, the Ophiuchi appeared indifferent to casualties and to the importance of training safety. There were a number of explanations for this. Some would point to the inherent fatalism within the Ophiuchi way of thinking; but perhaps the reason has less to do with philosophy than with political culture. As any military veteran knows, the ethos of a unit is set at the top; or, as the old saying has it, units do those things well that the boss cares about. When the top political leadership displays
a complete lack of concern for the welfare of its soldiers, such attitudes percolate down through the ranks. After losing several important battles the Ophiuchi reversed this trend.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the cultural gulf separating the early Bese and Ophiuchi military cultures. In every significant area, Bese military advisors found students who enthusiastically take in their lessons and then resolutely fail to apply them. The culture they return to--the culture of the pre-OADC

Ophiuchi--defeated the intentions with which they took leave of their Bese instructors. Ophiuchi officers were not concerned about the welfare and safety of their men. The Ophiuchi military mind did not
encourage initiative on the part of junior officers, or any officers for that matter. Responsibility was avoided and deflected, not sought and assumed. Political paranoia and operational hermeticism, rather than openness and team effort, were the rules of advancement (and survival) in the Ophiuchi military establishments.
These were not issues of genetics, of course, but matters of historical and political culture.
When they had an influence on certain Ophiuchi military establishments, the Bese strongly reinforced their allies’ own cultural traits. Like that of the Ophiuchi, the Bese military culture was driven by political fears bordering on paranoia. The steps taken to control the sources (real or imagined) of these fears, such as a rigidly centralized command structure, were readily understood by Ophiuchi political and military elites. The Ophiuchi, too, felt an affinity for the Bese' officer class’s contempt for ordinary soldiers and its distrust of a well-developed, well-appreciated, well-rewarded NCO corps.
Ophiuchi political culture was based on a high degree of social stratification, very much like that of the defunct Aieun Empire and very much unlike the upwardly mobile, meritocratic, democratic Terran Federation. Ophiuchi officers did not see any value in sharing information among themselves, let alone with their men. In this they followed the example of their political leaders, who not only withheld information from their own allies, but also routinely deceived them. Training in the Ophiuchi military reflected this: rather than prepare as much as possible for the multitude of improvised responsibilities that are thrown up in the chaos of battle, Ophiuchi soldiers, and their officers, were bound in the narrow functions assigned them by their hierarchy. That this rendered them less effective on the battlefield, let alone that it placed their lives at greater risk, is scarcely of concern, whereas, of course, these two issues are dominant in the Bese military culture and are reflected in Bese military training.
Change only came after the OADC was formed and many different military cultures were examined before the Ophiuchi settled on their current form of military protocols. Their outstanding performance as fighter pilots has given the Ophiuchi a reputation that they completely live up to, but it wasn't always so as the details of the pre-OADC military has shown. The Ophiuchi will continue to be the galaxy's best fighter pilots for decades to come, keeping their uniqueness and desirability by the Pan-Sentient Union at the fore.

OPHIUCHI HOMEWORLD

OPHIUCHI  RANKS
Historical Note: The OADC's ranks, prior to the Second Interstellar War, were a hodgepodge of the various member planets and their militaries. Because of its very limited military traditions, the OADC always tended to copy the military structure of its allies and enemies. This process of borrowing continued during the Second Interstellar War, until the OADC finally adopted the Terran Federations ranks and rank badges in toto. This was a logical system given the rational and essentially non-militaristic bent of the Ophiuchi Association.

OADC                              TFN
Wing Lord                        Admiral
Wing Leader                    Vice Admiral
Flight Lord                       Captain
Flight Leader                    Lieutenant

Wrath of Sky                    Master Chief Petty Officer
Wind Screamer                Chief Petty Officer
Sky Screamer                   Petty Officer, 1st Class Flight Master                    Petty Officer, 2nd Class Fledgling                          Petty Officer, 3rd Class Nestling 1st                      Spaceman
Nestling 2nd                     Spaceman Apprentice
Nestling 3rd                      Spaceman Recruit

OPHIUCHI GOVERMENT
Since the end of the Fourth Interstellar War, the Ophiuchi Association’s government has undergone a somewhat radical change in form, primarily due to social pressures within the Association itself and it’s newly refined political relationship with the massive Pan-Sentient Union. One of the most significant changes has been the creation of the PSU Working Group, a small body of 50 people that oversees the important relationship between the Association and the PSU. This group also passes on laws and suggestions from the Pan-Sentient Union to the Association’s government, along with their own recommendations. It also works with the Representative to the PSU in maintaining the vital relationship between the two powers. The Representative to the PSU is the primary ambassador to the Pan-Sentient Union and is a new post within the changing Association government. Additionally, an abnormal
‘secularizing trend” was perceived by the Ophiuchi in the evolution of their government over the past 60 decades, an atheistic swing which was unsettling to the somewhat religious Ophiuchi race. After much debate in the Grand Council and the Grand Assembly, a formal position within the government was made for a “Speaker to Ophiuahaard”; a person who is randomly chosen from the masses that can introduce legislation into the government but who can be easily overruled by a simple majority of government leaders. This Speaker holds his or her term for one year before being replaced by another random citizen, mainly from Ophiuchi worlds. Being a government outsider, it is thought that this person would have the “spiritual pulse” of the general public. So far it has worked well.

As the Ophiuchi government has “grown” since its first encounter with Humanity, it has added additional races to it’s sphere including the machine-like Bray’lon, who injected a dose of modern pragmatism within the government structure. Most beings that serve within the Association government continue to be from the Ophiuchi race, but a significant number of Bese, Shadwar, and Poorgl serve in the governmental role as well. The Representative to the PSU is almost always a Ophiuchi, which has caused some contention among the other races of the Association but the government as it now stands appears to be functioning smoothly. The Grand Council(with 12 members elected from the Grand Assembly) and the Grand Assembly itself(500 members) control the military and the Presidency of the Association has been done away with(in 2340). The relationship with the PSU continues to be the most important political dynamic that the Association deals with, and their contacts with the Terran military remains strong despite their integration into the PSU’s command structure.

Several important worlds have a major sway over the direction of the government of the Association. These worlds are: Ophiuchus, Togliss, Wobanna, Dharwar, and the Togwatee System. Ophiuchus is the homeworld of the Ophiuchi race and capital of the Association, but it is also a beautiful Earth-like planet that is several times larger than Terra. Although it is a very large world, Ophiuchus is very metal-poor and as such it has a lower gravity than humanity’s homeworld. It is also major cultural center and a hub of scientific research within the Association. The Association’s top military facility, Fergana Research Base, is located here. Togliss is dominated by incredibly huge volcanoes the size of continents. The venting of ash clouds have made the planet into a hellish thermo-world but it’s vast mineral riches keeps the Association’s factories overflowing with raw materials. The industrial might of this planet cannot be understated. Wobanna is another amazing system, with three rich, habitable Earth-like worlds that became a major center of colonization early in the history of the Association. Today, Wobanna’s population is larger than any other system within Association space. The natural resources of the system has made Wobanna into an industrial powerhouse, only to be rivaled by the Terran Federation’s Corporate Worlds. Dharwar is a frigid ice world that houses a large portion of the Association’s military personnel and shipyards and the famous Yirrkala Research Station, where many of the military’s top weapons are developed. Dharwar came under attack during it’s colonization phase by the Maak and massive fortifications can still be seen throughout the system. The Togwatee System is also a major cultural and political center of the Association which also boasts a massive population. The neighboring Milgarra System is also a leading R&D center for military applications. Togwatee was colonized early in the Association’s expansion into space and had the region’s only beanstalk tower.
Overall, the Association’s growth as a minor power has continued at a moderate pace and with the opening of the Abella warp lines, the Association continues to grow physically as well. The future for the Ophiuchi Association and the Ophiuchi race as well seems assured.