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All the world, it seemed, had been devoured alive in the maws of unremitting, ruthless, grimy carnage. It was inescapable-- its signature was etched deep into the very flesh of the Paráense nation, scars scrawled across its soil and carved into the soul of its people. The highlands of the state of São Paulo were dotted with flaring founts of fire, like pits that gazed into the essence of hell itself, the ridges of the mountainside intermittently spurting forth the visible report of artillery fire. And amidst it all lay São Paulo itself-- or rather, the broken, battered corpse of what had once been the great city of São Paulo, now viciously torn to shreds amidst the violence of a brutal civil war.

 

The skies were not spared this destruction-- but Fernanda Murai thought herself quite secure in the aegis of a Boeing E-4 command craft's command room, flanked by squadrons of fighter and EW craft, with personnel all around her going about their assigned duties with a discipline something like that of a real military crew. From up here, she could see the E-4's feeds on what was happening down on the ground, collected from amongst several sources-- airborne and ground-based-- and she smiled. The expression pulled taut across her pale lips like a snake languidly stretching in the sun after a fine meal, and the one brown eye that was not obscured by the black skin of an eyepatch narrowed into a slit on the incoming images of devastation.

 

She did not normally like to think herself a sadistic sort of person, but now, to see this utter ruin and to understand what it meant, what it would soon augur... The woman could not help but take a certain admittedly perverse pleasure in it.

 

And the time for all to culminate at long last was now. She did not remove her gaze from the projector before her eye as she called out, "Pull the EC-130Hs back and have them quit jamming the Loyalists' command center." The order was acted upon silently and without hesitation-- after eight years steeped to the neck in this war, a modicum of efficiency was expected even of those who had not been soldiers before the conflict--and Murai was not surprised when, not a moment later, the images on the projector vanished, and in their stead emerged the telltale hallmark of an incoming contact request. Murai's smile broadened briefly, but she would have been remiss to grow careless in her anticipation of what was to come: she moulded her features into a solemnly practised mien as she pressed the button to permit the contact, and the request image dissolved.

 

The battle was not treating General Antonio Cesar well in the slightest; his image crystallised on the screen into the very picture of weariness, but he spoke with the urgency of a soldier whose will had not quite yet been broken. "Murai! It's about time we were able to get you on our communications. The Federalists have been jamming our attempts left and right..."

Murai restrained the urge to smile again. "I've been waiting for your signal," she interjected. "What's the situation like?"

"Not good," Cesar answered grimly. "The Federalists are gaining ground... but we're both in tatters. Neither of us has the will to fight any further than we have-- it all comes down to who emerges victorious here and now." He leaned forward, and Murai could very openly see the despair and the faint shreds of hope in his eyes. "This is our chance, Murai. It's not too late. Send your Unitary forces in, and we can launch an offensive-- retake the city, and crush the rebellion for good. Your faction has not been decimated by this battle-- with the Federalists as devastated as they are, we can end this war now in one decisive blow."

Murai nodded affirmatively. "Our fighters and our equipment haven't suffered so much as a scraped knee in São Paulo. Overrunning the Federalists will be child's play."

Cesar mirrored the nod somberly, and added, "We're counting on you, Murai. The fate of the Paráense country, its people and spirit, shall be borne upon your wings. May we meet one another again soon, not as allies in war but as friends in a newborn nation." And with that, he terminated the communication.

 

She couldn't help herself: Murai admitted a little chortle, shaking her head ruefully as she stepped away from the console. The fate of its spirit borne upon my wings? Give me a break-- this is war, not a poetry reading. She was still chuckling under her breath as she reached over to the console again and opened up communications across the Unitary Faction's waiting line, to commanders standing by with bated breath for orders.

"This is Murai," she began casually, matter-of-factly. "All units, proceed with the battle plan. Assault São Paulo, seize control of the city, and eliminate all factional combatants encountered. Should General Antonio Cesar, Colonel Maria de Saldanha, or any other Federalist or Loyalist officers of note be captured in the course of the operation, they are to be executed immediately. Our adversaries are in shambles: they've worn themselves out with their own bombastic need for glory on the battlefield, and today we shall squeeze from their corpses brutal recompense for eight years of suffering the Paráense people have endured for their bloodlust."

 

As the feeds of the suffocating city began to shift to accommodate the motions of the Unitary war machine, pressing into São Paulo and preparing to subjugate the former capital, Murai smiled, and finished, "Put them down like the rabid dogs they are... for we have returned home to an independent Pará that has no place for rabid dogs."

 

 

 

 

For years, the country of Pará-- previously known by the name of the Federal Hierarchy of Amazonia, and before then as the Republic of Pará-- had known no governance, no unified leadership, and no peace. Eight years previously, Executor Alejandra Valverde had arrested the Premier, Isabel Vieira herself, and in doing so, had hurled the nation into the depths of a brutal civil war between the premier's fanatical supporters and those who shared Valverde's belief that Vieira had devolved into a despot. At the time, Fernanda Murai had had nothing to do with the war; she had not even been a soldier, and had recognised it was of no profit to involve herself in the conflict.

 

That had changed when both Valverde and Vieira disappeared, and the two warring factions found themselves leaderless; they had taken to twisting and writhing about blindly like headless snakes, each lashing out desperately in an attempt to assert itself over the other. And at that moment, the profitability of war had made itself known to Murai-- the spoils to be reaped of a fractured nation of battered, dejected people; the ideological basis, if it could be called that, was there, even if it was really just a general disillusionment with war. And that was all somebody like Murai needed to take advantage of the situation, and turn it to her benefit.

 

Eight years ago, she had been thinking only of how best to avoid being drawn into what seemed to her a conflict both useless and pointless; now, she stood before the ruined carcass of the capital building itself, the head of the victorious faction whose emblem was draped in vast banners across the capital building's shell and throughout the city and throughout the nation, the Unitary Army's jaguar skull and crossed rifles against black a stark reminder of the war's swift and brutal conclusion. She stood now as the Chairwoman of the Reformation Committee, tasked with overseeing the reconstruction of a shattered realm, the unrivaled leader in all but name of a nation born out of blood and ash, ruling over a populace that had no will to fight and would simply bend in accordance to her wishes because she alone had unified Pará and allayed their eight years of suffering.

 

She had not anticipated being in such a fortuitous position eight years ago, but she hardly felt she had the time or the will to dwell on her fortunes now. Fernanda Murai had a Reformation to oversee... and it would take much work to hammer Pará into the shape of a nation worth reigning over.

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About a decade ago, Japan had had an actual presence in South America, having had no less than three holdings in the region, following the South American War. However, as Japan had to reconsolidate itself, such overseas holdings had been abandonned and most Japanese hardly felt sorry for them. For most, Minami-Kechua had been more of a drain in ressources, which only turned a profit through exploitation, which proved to most to be just a bit too controversial in the long run. However, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported the rise of a new old state in the region, it did cause excitement within the cabinet, as to people like Akiyama Kagami, the rise of indegenous independent states was once again an opportunity for Japan to have connections to the Americas. Just, this time in a different fashion.

 

A communique would be sent to the Paráense government.
 

To the Government of Pará

 

As we have noticed the reestablishment of your nation, we would like to congratulate the Paráense people to restoring their independent and sovereign rule over their own country and hopefully, positive relations can be established. I thus want to ask, whether a meeting can be arranged, to maybe establish formal relations between our states and discuss matters of political and economic cooperation between the people of Pará and Japan.

 

With regards,

Akiyama Kagami, Prime Minister of Japan

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Classified

 

The first step in carving an independent nation once more out of what had once been Pará was, of course, its military.

 

Defensive measures were first and foremost. The ability to detect incoming adversaries, by land or by air, was an indispensable tool in any modern military force's arsenal, after all, and to that end, Murai went to great lengths to ensure Pará would never be taken by surprise on any front. Two relocatable OTH-B radar systems were constructed, one in the savannah of Roraima and the other on the coat of Rio Grande do Sul; these two stations would each cover a 64 degree wedge encompassing up to 4800 kilometres. The one in Roraima maintained an active overwatch that spanned the entirety of Central America and much of North America, as well as slices of both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and eastern South America; the Rio Grande do Sul station devoured up the rest of South America and a significant portion of the Atlantic. In conjunction with this, Artillery Hunting Radar (ARTHUR) units were being produced, mounted to wheeled and tracked trucks interspersed in regular patrols across the borders of the nation. These units were capable of detecting incoming fire from howitzers at 35 km, mortars at 55 km, and rockets even further, up to 60 km, and could also determine the nature of the artillery, the point of origin, and the trajectory and estimated point of impact, with a circular error probable of just 0.1%. The OTH-B radars could screen the mobile ARTHUR units from ground-based detection, and could also use DFRM tactics to obscure the position of the ARTHUR units (amongst, of course, other units) from enemy radars.

 

On top of this, all compatible aircraft being produced in Pará were being fitted with top of the line AESA systems-- namely, a variant of the AN/APG-81, with advanced air-to-ground/air-to-air modes, high resolution mapping, multiple ground moving target tracking, combat identification, EW, and ultra high bandwidth communications, with an effective operating range of almost 250 km in intercepting a 1 m target. Additionally, AWACS aircraft were being produced with the intent of making regular patrols alongside AESA-equipped aircraft; the AWACS capabilities enabled these aircraft to detect and track units with low radar cross-sections, and also lent Paráense air forces the capacity of ESM collection platforms, capable of remaining electronically silent whilst detecting and analysing radar transmissions beyond the radar's own detection means.
 

Meanwhile, space was yet another dimension to consider in pursuit of these aims. Satellites equipped with both synthetic aperture radar and electro-optical capabilities were employed in low and medium orbit-- these were destined to be the first in a constellation of satellites that would fulfil various functions, including the deployment of anti-satellite kinetic interceptors; deuterium fluoride lasers were also being explored as a potential anti-satellite weapon. General Alice Calais, the officer placed in charge of the satellite constellation project, also took into account current and future potential threats to the satellites, and took measures to defend against these. All units in this constellation were to be integrated into a single radar, early warning, and missile detection network, using a multi-sensor system that included infrared, microwave, and laser designators in order to monitor and detect both intermittent surveillance pulses and short and regular fixed interval tracking pulses. Passive countermeasures to be employed included lightweight decoys, high power signals (rendering jamming that much more difficult), use of shorter wavelengths and directional antennas, and 'hiding' (ie satellite miniaturisation where possible and orbit manoeuvres). In order to make these functions more potent, two micro-satellites would be accompanying each 'primary' satellite, each one carrying all the above functions in fractioned functions.
 

Chairwoman Murai also knew that an integrated armed force was an effective one, and she ordered adjustments to be made in pursuit of this. Boomerang Warrior-X was a particularly prominent technology in pursuit of this vision; this tool could provide the soldier equipped with it the knowledge and battlefield awareness of entire radar and airborne AWACS systems, contained in a single twelve ounce package integrated into the soldier's tactical vest, localising enemy fire and providing precise coordinates for the location of enemy forces. Boomerang units were also mounted on helicopters and on land vehicles, to provide a more thorough integration for all branches of the military.

 

The intended crafts to be produced for the air force included the F-35 in the capacity of a multirole stealth fighter, the F-22 equipped with Block 3.2A and 3.2B upgrades for air superiority, F-15K strike fighters, B-2 stealth bombers, E-8 Growler EW aircrafts, and EC-130H Compass Call units, along with various support, ground attack, and fuel crafts. On the ground, newly established and restored Paráense factories were producing K2 Black Panther and Type 10 main battle tanks, along with 9A52-4 Tornado and HIMARS MLRS units, PzH-2000 self-propelled artillery, and 9K720 Iskander missile systems.

To the east, in the shipyards of Espirito Santo, a plan was being outlined for the construction of a Paráense naval force. Designs determined to be ideal in the pursuit of this plan included the Sejong the Great-class guided missile destroyer, Zumwalt-class destroyer, Virginia-class attack submarine, Ohio-class cruise missile submarine, and Gerald Ford-class super carrier. Once the designs were finalised and funds were appropriately allocated, work would begin on laying down the foundation for these ships.

 

Murai had also resurrected CYBERCOM, the old Paráense cyber warfare command network, with an upgraded sheen.

Paráense information networks were, to that end, to consist of several layers of security. For one, various networks, such as command and control structures, would be largely isolated, so that any attack on a particular network made in an effort to access the system as a whole could quickly be isolated and then mitigated; many of these networks were  also isolated from the outside internet to further make attempts to externally access them difficult. These networks fed back to a number of central information systems depending on their level of classification through heavily secured data pathways: they required at even the barest level of security elastic encryption keys that are frequently changed. Further measures included, of course, cryptosecurity, emissions security (EMSEC), in order to eliminate to as great a degree as possible compromising emanations; traffic-flow security, to conceal the presence and properties of valid messages on a network and including the protection resulting from features, inherent to some of the equipment used in the aforementioned cryptosecurity, that conceal the presence of valid messages on a communications circuit, achieved by causing the circuit to appear busy at all times; and transmission security (TRANSEC), the component of communications security that results from the application of measures designed to protect transmissions from interception and exploitation by means other than cryptanalysis such as frequency hopping and spread spectrum. With regards to physical security, the optical fibre wiring implemented in sensitive military facilities had since been expanded throughout the vast majority of the Paráense military and civil network; as before, the fibres were coated with UV-cured urethane acrylate composite materiels in order to make the delicate strands much more durable, and again, a second external coating was to protect the primary coating against mechanical damage and act as a barrier to lateral forces, whilst an internal coating was applied, designed to act as a shock absorber to minimize attenuation caused by microbending. And again, the fibres were secured in a metallic armour layer to provide even more protection to the fibres. Wireless communications would be prohibited at all levels of vital classification in order to further guarantee the security of the various networks; the only wireless functions would connect the highest levels of classified networks to their respective 'primary systems'.

 

Pará's ability to employ electronic counter-counter measures had also received attention in the interests of improving the military's ability to combat attempts to combat its counter electronic warfare suites. For example, polarisation could be used to filter out unwanted signals, such as those often used in jamming: this was based on the principle that if a jammer and receiver do not have the same polarization, the jamming signal will incur a loss that reduces its effectiveness. Furthermore, aside from power loss to the jammer, radar receivers could also benefit from using two or more antennas of differing polarization and comparing the signals received on each. This effect was capable of effectively eliminate all jamming of the wrong polarization, depending on the degree of jamming. Radiation homing was another primary focus of Pará's ECCM efforts; many of the air force's crafts would be armed with AIM-120 AMRAAM beyond-visual-range air-to-air missiles, fire-and-forget missiles with active guidance. These missiles would be equipped with a primary 'home-on-jam' mode, which would enable them to home in directly on sources of radar jamming if the jamming was too powerful to allow them to find and track the target normally. The military would also put to use ARMs (anti-radiation missiles), with the interest of forcing a potential adversary to think twice about deploying ECM measures; though such measures would obscure a target from normal missiles, they would become veritable beacons to the military's anti-radiation missiles.

 

 

 

 

 

And meanwhile, the so-called First Reformation was launched in earnest.

 

Fernanda Murai knew ideology was one of the most effective means of control at the disposal of any leader-- hell, Isabel Vieira had used it herself when she had spear-headed the pan-South American nationalist movement. To this end, she and her committee adopted 'Reformationist Socialism', an ideology consisting of equal parts social, economic, and political changes. Economically, although it ostensibly espoused a system of 'redistribution by committee' of wealth and means of production to citizens disenfranchised by the war, it primarily was intended to consolidate means of production under Murai and the Committee's authority. Similarly, industry and business was absorbed into the monolith of the government, and the assets of upper class figures such as businesspeople and entrepreneurs who had supported either faction of the civil war were frozen, seized, and devoured by the voracious machine of the Reformation.

 

In order to accommodate for what the public would perceive as shortcomings in delivering redistributed wealth to the masses, reactionary elements were blamed, and the pursuit and extermination of these 'reactionaries' constituted the social component of Reformationist Socialism. Murai declared that in order to guarantee the purity of the Paráense state and to combat corruption and moral decay, regular intervals of upheaval and reconstitution would be necessary. In the context of the First Reformation, this consisted primarily of purging politicians, officers, and supporters of the previous regime and of both the Federalist and Loyalist factions, which was carried out by the newly formed Reforma Direcção; tasked with culling these undesirable elements, which had no place in a Reformationist society, they carried out executions of former high-ranking officials, as well as kidnappings and torture; less prominent officials were dispatched to reeducation facilities located in Roraima in order to be expunged of their corrupt ways of thinking, although mostly they were required to engage in hard labour-- essentially, work camps-- and their sentences were frequently prolonged indefinitely. The common people-- those who'd had nothing to do with the government prior to the war, whose will to resist had been ground down by the brutality of the conflict-- were promised they would not suffer, so long as they did their duty to the Committee by helping to put the civil war to rest through expediting the process of the purge.

 

Indeed, 'duty to the Committee' was more or less the summary of Reformationist Socialism's political wing. All citizens were obligated to register as members of the Reformationist Socialist Party, and issued a card that identified them as such; their information, down to genetic data, was then logged in an immense directory containing information on everybody who consented (and who hadn't consented) to the registry. And Murai herself, the head of the Committee, was presented not so much as an individual or a leader, but as symbolic of the entire nation-- a force to which all citizens were beholden.

 

In her office deep within the broken remnants of Amazonia, a city that was slowly but surely reconstituting itself, dredging itself back up from the depths of war, Murai smiled at the thought. Domestically, the process was continuing quite smoothly-- the people with the power to rally resistance were dwindling in their numbers every day, and the masses... well, their will was broken, and all Murai'd had to do was permit the civil war to continue long enough to accomplish that for her. For the time being, it was time to consider international ties.

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Work had begun on a comprehensive missile defence system making use of every technological advantage available to Pará. This system was to consist of several components. Firstly, it would employ an exoatmospheric kill vehicle, launched from a specially designed missile in order to intercept and destroy incoming warheads, possibly nuclear or chemical in nature. Secondly, several solid state phased array radar systems were being constructed at key geographical regions throughout Pará-- one in Rio Grande do Norte, one in Santa Catarina, one in Matto Grosso, and one in Roraima-- in order to equip Pará with the maximum ability to detect incoming missiles, or in the case of the ones in Rio Grande do Norte and Santa Catarina, to detect and respond to a launch at sea. Sea-based X-band radar systems were also employed, mobile AESA systems mounted to semi-submersible rigs that could individually track an object the size of a baseball from almost 5000 km away. ICBMs that were too low in the air to be killed by the exoatmospheric kill vehicle were to be targeted by a second layer of defence: Patriot missiles of the PAC-3 variant. Each such missile was equipped with a Ka band active radar seeker, enabling it to drop its uplink to the central system if necessary and acquire the target itself in the terminal phase of the interception, providing it with superior reaction time to particularly swift targets; each warhead was armed also with twenty four low speed tungsten fragments, to be launched in a radial direction upon impending impact to make the missile's cross-section greater and enhance killing capability. And failing that, supposing the missile was perhaps not of ICBM capacity but intermediate range, a terminal high altitude area defence system, or THAAD for neanderthals who can only deal in acronyms, would be put to use in destroying it and others like it; given the THAAD system's use of kinetic rather than explosive warheads, it could avoid exploding a conventional, nuclear, or biological/chemical warhead upon impact.

 

In further developments on the missile side of things, DF-21D anti-naval ballistic missile systems were being installed throughout the coastline of the nation, from Amapá to Rio Grande do Sul-- conventionally armed, high hypersonic weapons that could easily target a moving aircraft carrier strike group from over 1500 km away. These missiles were developed and installed in close cooperation with the Military Space Command in order to provide the missiles with the highest degree of support from Pará's satellite constellations, a significant portion of which was equipped to dedicate its services to ensuring each missile was individually a deadly force to be reckoned with. The satellite constellation, for its own part, was well underway in its development; much of the infrastructure, including several operational satellite 'teams'-- primary satellites with two micro-satellites, as delineated previously-- was in space, awaiting the finishing touches. But for all its defences and (lest one be accused of hubris) nigh-impervious nature, the Missile Assault Battalion would have been remiss to depend exclusively on the satellites; fortunately, they had also the OTH radar systems on hand, which had their own countermeasures to avoid being jammed or spoofed, alongside mobile systems such as AESA in the air and ARTHUR systems on the ground. It was all designed so that Paráense missiles could cripple any naval incursion into areas of interest to the Confederacy-- and destroy any attempt to retaliate in kind.

 

Speaking of navy, the Paráense navy's first units had already emerged from production: several submarines and destroyers had been completed, and soon, a functioning aircraft carrier would follow. The militarisation of Pará, after years of devastation, was proceeding nicely-- keeping good time with the intensive pace of the First Reformation.

Edited by dotCom
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