Thoughts for the Northern Rebels

General_Eel

Date: Friday, 29 Mar 2013, 6:16 AM | Message # 1

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My ruminations on your potential rebellion.

I realize I represent the "enemy" but I do want you to have a sporting chance so I had a few ideas for you to bear in mind and give you guys the best possible "go" at a successful rebellion.

You're fighting on asymmetrical terms (until you can win over or bring in support from elsewhere). The problem is that you can't really fight a traditionally asymmetric war without losing you general population support (sniping and bombings of civilians wouldn't go down well).

So you need to work out what your priorities to defend are?

Cities? Are you going to take the soviet "not one step back" and hold on to cities despite high cost
Your military forces? A logical move, but risky as you could find yourself being taken apart piecemeal.
Your farmland? or scorch the earth (damaging to yourself, but demoralizing to Govt forces)

And your objectives?
Autonomy for the province?
Overthrow of the Government?

It's good to work out exactly what you want in advance which means you know what to work toward.

Movement
Night is probably your friend when moving forces as the north is mostly prairie land and hills.
The woodland in some of the deeper valleys would be useful for concealing movement but there isn't a lot of that. Tunnels are practical in towns or fortifications, especially for re-disposing men.

Defense
Digging in is likely to be critical due to the immense potential firepower the militia possesses, duracrete bunkers dug into hills with fire points on the surface are likely the easiest thing to build, Durasteel plate might be in surplus from the Magrath construction so lining the rooves of any of these underground structures with it would increase their survivability a lot.
Also, can never have too much fences or barbed wire (presumably easy to come by on a farming world)

How to get harder hitting units
Salvaging and repairing old broken down CIS AATs or even MTTs might provide you with a potential source of Armor (where the militia gets theres, all the old Republic stuff is taken already and most of the CIS that was in reasonable condition. You could probably get a score of AATs and 2-4 MTTs; but these would be resources to shepherd carefully until you can contest the air or they'll end up hit by airstrikes.

Evening the odds
While mercenaries are initially attractive, you could well end up with a King Vortigern situation or worse if you become too reliant upon them without a means to pay their wages. If you could secure offworld advisors from a friendly Government it might be very helpful though, especially if you can get them to lend technical expertise.

If you do plan to have a particular ideology, perhaps there are people elsewhere who share it? If a few hundred visitors from offworld came for a "cultural festival" you held that might provide you with a few men.

Also, while at this stage it's unlikely that the majority of any other province will side with any rebellion, there are always hotheads and young men spoiling for a fight in any province that don't like the status quo - discretely recruiting a couple of hundred could be done without being noticed.

Getting weapons
CIS droid blasters can generally be found on the old battlefields (although most already pillaged).
Import rules will make bringing offworld supplies in difficult (for heavier weapons), as permits are required for anything bigger than a Light Repeating Blaster.
Smallarms and repeaters are cheap and easily available to purchase in the bigger southern towns with no paperwork.

Contesting the air

Useful ground assets?
Well your speeders with mounted lasers (Star wars technicals! I like it) provide a basic level of fire but are unlikely to help against high flying or fast moving spacecraft. I would suggest finding a few ruined HMPs or IG-227 Hailfire-class droid tanks, doubtful even the best on Dantooine could get the platforms going again sadly but if you could collect a couple of dozen concussion missiles you could create surface to air missile sites or even mount them on vehicles... would help to a degree (again against pinpoint low level raids from the Militia)

Taking the Fight to the Skies
This might be difficult, it has been established that the T-16 Skyhopper is often used on Dantooine, although the civilianized version. Retrofitting weapons scavenged from old Clone-Wars Era ruins is a definite option. They're pretty fast and manouvreable in atmosphere and a dozen or two mounted with the armament from a couple of STAPs each could be very efficient in deterring the Militia's bombers from conducting precision bombing.

Also, you could retrofit them with jury-rigged explosive bombs or missiles to make air raids as required. They can fly very low and fast which is similar to the technique of "Contour Skimming" practiced by the RAF during the cold war to avoid radar detection (turned out it didn't work too well against the "wall of lead" machine gun fire of the Iraqis though). I dare say that night raids with them would be very effective.

Buying unarmed ones and then arming them would attract little attention, even small numbers of the armed ones for defense against Rancors might not be noticed.

Curveball thoughts
The Militia doesn't have much of a naval force to speak of. Underwater bases (however crude) and submarines might prove useful if you could construct them.

Lucre
Unless someone is bankrolling you, purchases (not scavenging old CIS stuff though) cost money. Food you can reasonably get from the land at this stage though so that isn't a problem. However, are these men being paid? If not.. are they likely to stick around? And pay costs more money.

Cashflow is something you'll need to think carefully about... or seek a benefactor.

General Trebor Eel
______________________
Commanding General of the Khoonda Militia
Major General Retired
Ex-Quartermaster-General 187th Clone Legion