This organization is part of "The War of the Masters" fanfiction setting.
Role[]
The Moab Confederacy Defense Forces is the National, as opposed to Planetary, military force of the Moab Confederacy. As the National force, they are liable to be stationed at any site within the Moab Confederacy, and are funded by contributions from all member worlds and polities.
Under the Constitution of the Confederacy, the Moab Confederacy Defense Force may not be used for Domestic law and order missions, including riot suppression or other, potentially politically charged, domestic operations. This is drawn from the bitter experiences of Romulan, Klingon, and other cultures that influence the Moab Confederacy's population, where national forces (Starfleet, Romulan Navy, etc.) have in the past become tools of domestic enforcement, usually to the detriment of civilians in the area, and due to the danger (real or not) that an MCDF Commandant might decide to overthrow the elected government (something that has happened in the Klingon Empire, as well as Romulan State, and nearly happened in the Federation at the hands of James Leyton.)
Each member world contributes a Squadron, and funding for support, as well as funding for 'unassigned' squadrons formed without regard for homeworld or system.
The primary role of the MCDF is foreign soil operations. That is, they exist to carry out expeditionary missions on behalf of the Confederacy as a whole, either as part of the Tribute to the Klingon Empire as a Protectorate, or later, after losing that status, as the primary instrument of military foreign policy. (typically this has taken the form of hunting down Slavers, Pirates and other dangerous types.)
Equipment:[]
The bulk of MCDF's equipment is patterned on, or purchased from, the Klingon Empire's deep stocks of older hardware. There ARE specific pieces of equipment that are manufactured or obtained that are not, and have never been, of Klingon origin, but for the most part, the MCDF uses 'old' or 'refurbished' KDF ships, combat vehicles, disruptors, munitions and similar hardware as standard, often altering Klingon designs to fill roles the Confederacy needs filled. In terms of 'a navy' the MCDF is a 'Frigate Navy' using Birds of Prey or older Raptor designs with very few Cruisers available, and those in use tend to be kept back due to their operating costs, though the MCDF does operate Carrier-level assets, including a fondness for modified QIn Raptors (converted in similar fashion to the federation's Akira class), and at least two known Fleet Carriers (MCDF "Voice of Heaven" and MCDF "Severed Angel").
Enlistment;[]
To enlist in the MCDF is to discover a love of tests. The standards adopted after Independence were written by several ex Starfleet Special Operations, MACO Delta, MACO Epsilon, and similar persons close to the Confederacy's leadership. For purposes of Starfleet, the tests are a near line copy of the qualification testing used to recruit for Starfleet's MACO Delta, including psychological batteries to strain out psychopathic or sociopathic personality types, testing to verify mental flexibility, alertness, learning capacity, trainability, and a host of mental attributes that should be impossible for five worlds to staff a force the size of the MCDF.
What they ignore, are a host of 'disqualifiers' in Starfleet service, including but not limited to past criminal records, medical disqualifiers that do not block immediate service, or prior social background (a major issue for the KDF).
The result of this enlistment testing, is a force that would, if of the appropriate age, wreck the testing curve for entry into Starfleet Academy.
Training[]
Then, they train them. Standard 'book' is a 100 kilometer field problem that also serves as basic training called "Long March". During Long March, field skills are developed and learned, anatomy of the most likely species with a focus on hurt/maim/kill, combat skills, non-combat skills, teamwork and social flexibility are developed and trained. Below the surface, the "Long March" is integrated with the use of somewhat to highly illegal memory engram implantation processes nicknamed "Skill Wires" by those in the know, and derived from the BA portion of Project Siegfried.
The destruction of the Devil's Canyon site did not end the practice of using these memory implantation processes. Negotiations are ongoing to end the practice as one contingent on the Confederacy's continued membership in the Beta Quadrant Alliance (2415).,
Known Problems[]
The MCDF's legal structure requires Officer personnel to have a minimum formal education, typically Bachelor's Degree or higher, in a relevant field. They've run short on that after the Fek'Ihri War consumed most of the extant officers in a conflict that consumed over a million military personnel in addition to the hundreds of millions of civilians lost and infrastructure destroyed.
This has had the rather negative impact of having combat formations of young enlisted, led by slightly older enlisted and barely controlled by extremely junior (or very old) senior officers. The 'solution' is a military whose discipline would look familiar to 19th Century British Naval historians or historians familiar with militaristic periods in the Andorian Empire pre-spaceflight. This presents an integration problem when working with Starfleet or KDF regulars, as the MCDF utilizes corporal punishments, including public flogging, as a means of underlying discipline while in uniform.
off Duty, MCDF Marines compare unfavorably to the rowdiness of Klingons OR Nausicaans, though usually not in the 'assaulting strangers' way, more the 'won't turn the music down and is that...what the hell am I smelling?" way.
Underage Personnel[1][]
Due to a number of factors including the massive population reduction caused by th Fek'Ihri invasion and the MCDF's being derived from what amounts to a terrorist movement, there have been repeated incidents of underage personnel detected in uniform.[2][1]
This continued well after the passage of the Discharge Act which was supposed to remove them from service[2], and created more than a minor scandal during the Goralis operation, with nearly a thousand surviving veterans of that task force being 'outed' as below the age of enlistment, though with the decommissioning of the Devil's Canyon site, there are indicators that further underage enlistments have been caught or blocked.
In the case of the Goralis mission, the detected survivors were at first threatened with entry into Cardassian social services for deprogramming[2], however a compromise was arranged by KDF General Ssharki, Admiral Jesu LaRoca, and Legate Sa'kat, which established a Cardassian-style 'Residential school' environment, in part to handle internment of what were now considered by the Federation government to be criminals[3], and in part to help the outed personnel comply with waiver clauses in the Discharge Act-one of which, being that penalties would be lifted if the offender were enrolled-and completed-an accredited education program, such as Starfleet Academy, Ty'Gokor, or, the new Goralis Residential School.
Counseling and treatment for Traumatic Stress Disorder, combat stress disorder, and emotional scarring from military service was included in the plans, and execution, of the Goralis Residential School. One positive result being that unlike Discharge Kids in other, similar off-world arrangements, suicide rates did not surpass those of non-military personnel in the same age groupings.
Over-Deployment[]
The MCDF has been chronically over-deployed practically since their founding, with demands ranging from antipiracy patrols in the Hromi Cluster, Pi Canis sector, and Ajilon regions, to dedicated contributions in support of KDF missions to help build the Romulan Republic, to units detailed in 2411 through 2413 supporting Task Force Omega as part of the Klingon commitment to containing and observing the Borg, to participation in Task Force Myrmidon in the Gamma Quadrant.
Historical commentary:[]
“…if Operation Son Tay was the beginning of a legend, and the battle for the Goralis system was the middle of the legend, then the Gamma Quadrant operations were the end of it. This wasn’t a matter of failure, though Karemma came awfully close, but rather, it was because of our operational success. Success that proved you didn’t need to treat horrific casualties and dangerous conditions as simply ‘the cost of being effective’. One of the most difficult tasks Admiral Kanril had, was keeping the Moab Confederacy troops from doing what amounts to ‘stupidly brave things’ when such actions were not, in the strictest sense, operationally necessary. This difficult situation requires some clarification, and clarity began with the near total destruction of the crew of the MCDS Phan Minh during the ground battle at Karemma. While there is no question that Major Danjha Theed’s action was noble, her misjudgement resulted not only in her own death, but the deaths of the majority of her crew in what amounted to a futile, and ultimately unnecessary, defense of an imperiled civilian population many hundreds of light years from her homeworld. Out of a crew of 105 personnel, only 22 survived the fighting on Karemma.
Major Theed was not among them, nor were most of her command personnel. A replacement for Major Theed had to be obtained from the crews of other ships in the Task Force, and Admiral Kanril and Colonel Wahlberger agreed to place command of the vessel under the watch of a competent, veteran Starfleet officer in order to continue the task group’s mission, preferably without more ‘futile and noble gestures that result in Pyrrhic ‘victories’.”
— Myrmidons: The Rise and Fall of the Moab Confederacy Defense Force volume 12, Starfleet Academy Press 2431
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1132018/short-feature-semi-rp-comments-etc-solicited/p1
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1135010/faces-in-the-flames-the-chase-season-2-fanfic/p1
- ↑ https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1234149/create-your-own-fate-masterverse-fiction-with-patrickngo/p1