Warfare in the Gundam Universe (Juubi-K)

This lore article is designed to explain warfare as it is practiced in Juubi-K’s Gundam fanworks. As such, this article focuses primarily on Gundam SEED: Jupiter’s Dawn timeline.

Introduction

In many respects, warfare in the aforementioned timeline is not that much different from real life; at least with regard to planetary warfare. Wars are fought by infantry, ground vehicles, warships, and various forms of artillery; up to and including ballistic missiles. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are used primarily for aerial reconnaissance, while Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) have largely receded. The technology of warfare has improved in many respects, with electromagnetic artillery becoming increasingly common, and particle beam weapons also appearing. Electronics, such as communications, computers, and sensors, have also seen significant improvements. Nevertheless, the methods and concepts behind the practice of planetary warfare would be largely recognizable and comprehensible at least to an early 21st if not late 20th century soldier. The technology of war may continuously change, but the art of war changes little.

Two major changes have nevertheless occurred; the appearance of space warfare, and the rise of the mobile suit. The former developed gradually over the decades from the 2020s A.D. - when asteroid mining became a major economic concern - through to the space expansion renaissance of the early Cosmic Era, and further into the CE’s first century. The latter is a relative newcomer, only appearing as a weapon in the C.E.60s, when ZAFT engineers modified humanoid labour machines - of a type first developed by George Glenn for his Tsiolkovsky mission many decades earlier - into viable weapons.

Space Warfare

Humanity’s first space battles began in the Reconstruction Wars, as warring powers used primitive spacecraft and aerospace vehicles to attack enemy space assets and protect their own. From the 2020s onwards humanity took increasing interest in the economic possibilities of space, in particular the wealth of raw materials available on the Moon and the asteroids. Driven largely by private interests, early colonies were established on the Moon, and near-Earth asteroids were mined for raw materials. By the breakout of the Reconstruction Wars in the 2030s, missions had even been sent to the asteroid belt; to find viable resource asteroids and launch them back towards Earth. Aside from a faction of the Mars Colonization Fleet, which split off and travelled on to Jupiter in 2035, humanity would not return to the asteroids for nearly a century. Those asteroids that were sent back, however, would provide the resources that fuelled the Cosmic Era colony booms.

The first major space station to be constructed was an international effort; as private investors and frustrated space agencies struggled to convince distracted and disinterested national governments to back their projects. Named Yggdrasil, this station was relatively simple compared to what it would later become but it remained revolutionary for all that. Located at Lagrange Point L1 - between the Earth and the Moon - it allowed crews and cargo to be shipped to orbit by relatively simple space capsules and aerospace vehicles, then transferred to specialised lunar landers for transfer to the Lunar surface. This fuelled the development of lunar colonies, and in turn allowed the construction of larger and more sophisticated spacecraft. The ships of the Mars Colonisation Fleet were the largest of their day, and pushed the limit of technology and construction capacity.

More to come