In a Distant Land and a Distant Time

[Lestari]

Violence.

It seemed to have seized upon the very fabric of reality-- the only tangible certainty in a world that had otherwise grown hollow and pale. Even far from the front lines, within the relative security of the forward command base stationed at East Kalimantan, its vehement spectre lingered over the heads of those who, herein amidst this despondent shrine of desperate defensive warfare, scampered through its halls, bearing tides of misfortune upon misfortune. The dejected sense of futile tribulation hung heavy in the air, and it seeped into every pore of the soldiers and officers, suffocating the vaguest hint of hope or faith in the far-flung possibility of victory-- no, not even that, of simply survival, of the nation to whose name and spirit they had dedicated their blood, sweat, and tears persevering through the oncoming onslaught and emerging yet intact.

 

With every update from the front line-- every incoming report, every byte of fresh data, every breathless soldier delivering yet further accounts of adversity-- that dream grew more and more hollow. With each revelation of yet more desertions, survival became an unavailing word-- a promise of something that was simply beyond reality.

 

Colonel Lestari Iskandar knew it. She felt it in every fibre of her being. She had staved off the futility of it all with self-assurances of honour and integrity-- sought to repel those haunting prospects of inevitable downfall with pointless talk of dignity in the face of adversity. All those years ago, when she had first enlisted in the Indonesian Marine Corps, just a street rat fresh from the slums of Jakarta, filthy and disillusioned, it had.... well, it hadn't truly been about defending her country back then. It had been a simple matter of having nowhere else to go-- no options but a career of shedding and spilling blood in the name of her nation. But it had since become something more-- a genuine passion for this once-illustrious realm and its promise for its people and for the world-- it had truly become a matter of defending Indonesia's name, its dignity and people, from they who would have sought to see it downtrodden and broken. Was that not the way of a soldier-- to defend to the last ignominious breath, escaping raggedly from dry, scarred lips, their beloved country?

 

And yet now those words of honour and obeisance fell sallow.

 

This sense of despondency and gloom was not a sensation Lestari was accustomed to understanding and processing, and so she simply converted it to an emotion she was much more familiar with, an emotion she was much more comfortable dealing with, much the way a chemical reaction produces a distinct newcomer. And thus, vehemence overtook her. Virulent hatred for the invaders, for Malaysia and its people. Violent, concentrated rage-- that was most certainly a sensation that to this day she knew all too well, a familiarity instilled by the cruel duress of the slumlands. But it was pointless. Reality was what it was no matter how she hurled obscenities and vehement fury upon its callous ears, deaf to the sorrows of its denizens. And the reality was that Indonesia would fall. First Borneo, and then Sumatra, and then Java, and then... Indonesia would fall.

 

There was only one option that would yet spare the nation total destruction. One lingering alternative which, if employed, would ensure the Malaysians would never be able to annex her nation, and guarantee the distant hope that Indonesia would someday rise again from this devastation. It would deliver a crippling blow to the Malaysians, sate that lust for vengeance and bloodshed that yet possessed the colonel, just as much as it would inflict staggering damage to the people of Indonesia itself. Her thin, cold lips curled downwards in doubt. She had sworn to defend Indonesia, just as she had sworn to defend its people... but was it not possible that in order to secure one, the other had to be sacrificed? To ensure the survival of as many Indonesians as possible, it would be necessary to forfeit this nation for which Lestari had surrended so much of herself. And to guarantee the mere potentiality of the continuation of that very nation... the lives of immeasurable individuals would be forfeit.

 

It should have been a crippling decision-- if at all. And yet, with a twinge of self-loathing and anguish, Lestari recognised that there really was no question of which path she was to take.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But that was a distant land, and a distant time. Years stretched between Colonel Lestari Iskandar and the individual that now reaped the agonising benefits of her actions, though they bore the same name and face. The same person, though... to broach that subject was to venture into murky waters. The years had taken more out of her than perhaps even she realised, and the memories of what had been necessary to guarantee what she was about to do yet hung heavy over her head.

 

And yet here she was, today-- though she had done what she had to ensure someday the return of a proud and dignified Indonesia, not for a moment had the colonel even entertained the supposition that she would be at the helm of it. And yet here she was-- before vast throngs of jubilant citizens, cameras broadcasting her mien, forcibly moulded into a veneer of composure and inscrutability, across the islands, and the world. To declare irrevocably, once and for all, that what she had sacrificed so much, of herself and of others, to promise had indeed come to pass at last, years later-- that a sovereign Indonesia had indeed returned.

 

[I]Now, if I'd known this gig woulda involved givin' speeches all over the place, I mighta reconsidered,[/I] she couldn't help but jibe silently-- partially in mordant half-honesty and partially to assuage her nerves with some vague sort of humour. Honoured though she was to be the guiding force of a freshly independent Indonesian nation, a skilled and perceptive orator she... well, sure as hell wasn't. [I]Let's just hope I don't end up puttin' people to sleep tryin' to announce the birth of a nation,[/I] she added cheekily, unable to conceal a hint of a smile that vanished as soon as she realised that was actually a legitimate concern if she didn't try and avoid going full on deadpan 'yeah we're a nation again' or whatever.

Nevertheless, she made a point of being straightforward and down to earth with it-- the obligatory 'this is an auspicious day that shall go down in the annals of history as a turning point in global civilisation' or however that shit was supposed to go aside, she laid out the basic necessities. The Javanese Federation, with its capital at the city of Jakarta, comprised the islands of Sumatra and Java, both of which had previously operated under the auspices of Selenarctos. Foreign policy would, for the time being, be of little priority whilst the nation's administration worked to organise its domestic policy and its military, and indeed, the newly-christened Chief Executive Iskandar, for her part, expected to do little to engage the Federation in foreign activity. [I]Would it not, after all, be best to simply mind one's own business and go about the process of securing the highest standard of living for our own people?[/I]

 

It was reasoning that made sense to her, at least.

[Lestari]

Classified

With a provisional government set up under the administration of Chief Executive Lestari Iskandar, no time was wasted in the immediate initiation of the industry of the Javanese Federation. The infrastructure that had been produced and maintaining during Selenarctos' aegis over the islands of Java and Sumatra was reviewed, with whatever upgrades and repairs seen necessary being conducted, and new infrastructure manufactured wherever held prudent. Furthermore, initial strides were being taken in producing an independent military force: Chief Executive Iskandar knew only all too well the dangers posed to a nation unprepared at all times for the possibility of defending itself against military action, and so she felt it necessary to immediate put into play a plan of rapid militarisation. As such, a plan was set up in which the Javanese Federation was to maintain the following military force upon the conclusion of a determined period of time.

The army itself was to burgeon to seven hundred thousand soldiers, drawing upon Java's status at the most highly populated island in the entirety of the globe to fuel its military: strict conscription laws were enforced for all able-bodied individuals between the age of eighteen and thirty, barring certain exceptions in the interest of advanced education, for a period of two years in the army and three years in the navy. Corollarily, the intent of the plan was to manufacture seven thousand domestically produced Menyiksa main battle tanks: these tanks were designed to be small and light given the asymmetrical nature of modern warfare, to deliver at a rapid rate from a stand off range devastating precision fire with a 125mm main gun with ATGM capabilities compounded by several more unmanned machine gun turrets, shielded with explosive reactive armour that has been designed to detonate before the incoming round even impacts the vehicle using radar. This armour has been proven to be capable of defeating both HEAT and kinetic energy penetrators, and is to be compounded furthermore with the Arena active protection system, which uses a Doppler radar to detect incoming anti-tank guided missiles and top attack warheads, which are then destroyed with a defensive missile. The Menyiksa chassis would also be used as a basis for other vehicles including IFVs and APCs.

 

Furthermore, the air force was being designed around a customised aircraft built upon an F-22 chassis installed with F-35 controls and sensors to afford the superior aspects of both aircrafts, with improvements made to both base modules given advances in the respective technologies since the advent of both models. This craft would possess several sophisticated electronic warfare suites, a piority for the air force, including IRST capabilities, electro-optical targeting systems, an updated version of the AN/APG AESA radar system, and sensor fusion that combines radio frequency and IR tracking for continuous target detection and identification in all directions, which is shared via MADL to other platforms without compromising low observability. Furthermore, Javanese engineers had designed a strategic bomber to keep up with the demands of a modern air force: christened the JFA-A1: the bomber features powerful active electronically scanning arrays and synthetic aperture radar functions to zero in on and annihilate a given target, with precisely calibrated electron optics affording it even greater accuracy. Its array of counter-electronic warfare suites included its capacity to minimise thermal emissions to deny heat-seeking tracking capabilities, with the nature of its AESA functions as a low probabibility of intercept radar enabling it to reject detection by most passive radar detection equipment and skin of radar absorbent materiels further compounding its anti-electronic warfare capacities. Furthermore, a fleet of UAVs was to be amassed, including upgraded versions of the Sentinel and Global Hawk.

 

EDIT: Derp. Accidentally posted it halfway through writing it. Will finish this up shortly.

Edited November 26, 2013 by dotCom

[Lestari]

Lestari's heterochromatic eyes, one an almost pleasant shade of green, the other a rather uglier mottled brown, beheld the reports of the progression of the military galvanisation.

 

The process was continuing smoothly-- the conscription laws had gone into effect quite straightforwardly, with the occasional dissenter requiring a punishment tantamount to perhaps a year's penal labour. After all, such individuals had scored too poorly on secondary education exams to qualify for an exception, and were unwilling to serve their newborn nation in the only other fashion available: what more were they worth, and what more did they deserve? It wasn't a matter of control, or of despotism-- not at all. Purely a matter of individuals unwilling to serve their country being coerced into playing their part whether or not they wanted to. It had always been Chief Executive Iskandar's belief that in order for a society to function in any efficient manner, every constituent in that society had to act as a cog in a well-oiled machine. If a cog stubbornly refuses to function, and it thusly threatens to hamper the functioning of other cogs, and thus the machine in its whole, then such a cog must be either repaired or excised. This was her doctrine-- it was not cruelty, not authoritarianism, certainly not self-interest. Nothing more than a matter of practicality.

 

Those individuals, generally, would be put to work serving the military in other fashions-- for example, easing along the process of the largely automated production of military munitions, such as tanks, aircraft, and ships. The creation of a powerful navy was an absolute necessity for a nation so precariously positioned as the Federation was: already, several littoral combat ships, guided missile destroyers, and anti-submarine frigates had been produced, accompanied by a smaller number of submarines and arsenal ships, all capped off by the fulfilment of a single aircraft carrier. Furthermore, steps were being taken to ensure the Federation's ability to project its naval capabilities to potential areas of interest-- this was a purely defensive matter, however. Lestari knew better, after all, to act aggresively in this delicate situation that the Javanese Federation had arisen into upon independence.

 

But she smiled, despite her misgivings-- following the return of Indonesia as a sovereign entity, she had made contact with several of her old comrades who had helped her undertake the actions necessary to guarantee the eventual return of an independent Indonesia following the downfall of the nation to Malaysia. Several of them were now returning to the Federation to take up posts both military and civil, and though as of late-- as would be the case for years to come-- Lestari had been deeply preoccupied with matters of national business, it would be... nice, she supposed, to... what was the phrase? Catch up. Or at the very least, to have some semblance of human contact.

 

That was something she had denied herself since the war. Something she had not felt safe permitting herself. Something she had no deserved.

[Lestari]

The process of bolstering the Javanese military continued, and though the penultimate goal as set out by Lestari Iskandar had yet to be met in full, progress was rapid and efficient. The army had swelled to five hundred thousand actively serving soldiers, supported by five thousand Menyiksa MBTs and various other armoured vehicles, and the navy now sported a second aircraft carrier.

 

Furthermore, efforts were undertaken to secure Javanese military and government information structures against foreign invasion. To this end, the Chief Executive had ordered the creation of the Federal Cyber Command, headed by General Djoko, with the purpose of planning, coordinating, integrating, synchronising and conducting activities to direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defence information networks and prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to adversaries of the Federation. General Djoko had determined that CYBERCOM shall operate with a 'proactive cyber defence' doctrine, intended to mitigate operational risk and enable CYBERCOM to quickly and efficiently respond to attacks on Federal networks.

 

Javanese 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 Javanese military and civil network; the fibres were coated with UV-cured urethane acrylate composite materiels in order to make the delicate strands much more durable, and 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. The fibres were furthermore 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'.

 

The Javanese Federation'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 the Federation'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.

[Lestari]

As one of the final stages of the continuing military development of the Federation, Lestari had ordered the rebirth of the Komando Pasukan Khusus-- the special operations division in which she herself had served decades prior, better known on foreign tongues by the portmanteau Kopassus. Granted, perhaps 'known on foreign tongues' wasn't quite the most apt of terms-- after all, they weren't the $%&@in' Navy SEALS or the Vympel, or at least they hadn't been. Definitely not on that level of renown throughout the globe, though then again... Lestari supposed world-wide notoriety wasn't exactly in the interests of a special forces group. In her own days as a Kopassus operative, under the alias Threnodist, she had been more primarily concerned with subtlety-- with going in, getting the job done quietly, and then getting out before anybody was any the wiser for it. Ideally, the enemy wouldn't have realised what had gone down until it was far too late, and ideally when that happened, they'd never be able to trace it back to the Kopassus. In other words, ideally, a special forces group never accrued a 'reputation'.

 

This was a philosophy shared, however tacitly and however despite their flamboyant means of going about it, by the individual whom Lestari had recruited to helm the newly reformed division. Lestari had served with them in the initial incarnation of the Komando Pasukan Khusus, back during the war against Malaysia, and she was well aware there was not a single soldier in the world more qualified to take up the reins of the nascent incarnation of the group. Yes-- we all know the identity of the new commander of the Kopassus-- the dreaded, the notorious, the feared-across-the-world...

 

"Chiquita?" Lestari glanced up at the figure before her with a dubious expression. "Of all the aliases in the world, you... I just... Chiquita?"

 

Chiquita returned the chief executive's disbelief with a hubristic grin. "It's awfully fittin', ain't it?"

Lestari raised an eyebrow at the six feet and four inches of Herculean musculature standing before her, and retorted, "Yeah, it's about as fitting as naming a chihuahua 'Killer' or some !@#$."

Chiquita shook her head ruefully as she sighed melodramatically and collapsed into the seat before the chief executive's desk, behind which Lestari leaned back in her chair with her boots thrown up over the surface of the desk itself. "How I lament the evident abscondence of your sense of humour, Colonel Iskandar," she maligned, as though deeply injured.

 

"Trying to build a nation from withered ashes will do that to a person," Lestari returned dryly. Chiquita gave an inscrutable chuckle of sorts. "I'm sure glad you thought'a me, though." The soldier grinned, and theatrically declared, "For now I shall lead the Kopassus to its rightful place as the most legendary and feared of special forces divisions! Heads of state and generals alike across the globe shall utter odes of awe and respect before our military might!"

"You know just as well as I that you have no such designs."

"Well, yeah, but !@#$, that don't make it any less fun to think about." Chiquita flashed another serpentine smirk, and then added, producing a wide, vivid gesture with her arms, "Imagination."

 

Ever the bizarre specimen, I see, Lestari could not help but muse silently as the extravagant display came to an end and the soldier settled back in her seat. But then, that had been the case even back in the day-- Chiquita had baffled more than a few superior officers with her... eccentricities, so to speak. To say nothing of those that beheld the stark disparity between her vivacious, impish behaviour off duty and the almost disquietingly ruthless persona she unveiled on the field. Perhaps they were two sides to the same coin, or perhaps the former was simply a veneer, a thin layer of varnish over the latter: Lestari, for her part, couldn't be sure either way. To begin with she was anything but skilled when it came to figuring out other people-- when faced with a goddamn enigma like the woman now known as Chiquita, she was no more use than a six year old handed an anti-tank missile launcher.

 

"Well..." Deciding such thoughts did no good either way, Lestari grabbed the datapad that had been sitting and waiting on her desk for her to peruse, swiping through its contents briefly. "Since it's very clear you haven't changed in the past ten years, this should just about make your year right here." Lestari navigated the on-screen keypad of the handheld computer, and, having reached the page in question, leaned over and handed it to Chiquita. "The first generation special forces armour designs produced by our engineers for Kopassus use," Lestari elabourated.

 

Chiquita gawked at the [url=http://imgur.com/HTcwzkg]design[/URL] displayed on the screen as though she had just glimpsed the very meaning of life and the universe itself, and breathlessly managed to get out, "This... this is some total Star Wars sci-fi !@#$ right here."

It was Lestari's turn to cast a cocksure grin at the commando. "Long-lasting and durable on-suit power supply, multiple layers of defence against most ballistics and shrapnel, secure computer-controlled communication networks with functions akin to those old Warrior X boomerang systems, a helmet-based HUD system with multiple spectrums of visuals and information warfare capacities-- and, most importantly, it looks cool as !@#$."

 

Chiquita looked about ready to kiss the chief executive.

Edited December 17, 2013 by dotCom

[Lestari]

The navy had burgeoned to a total of six aircraft carriers, compounded by a fleet of twenty eight submarines, eight arsenal ships, eight missile cruisers, and a larger combination of guided missile destroyers, frigates of various purposes, and corvettes. Furthermore, the air force was continuing to develop in its own right: air force engineers had designed a second stealth bomber, designated the B-3. The B-3 functioned as an optionally manned next-generation medium bomber, a responce to the advent of fifth generation defence systems such as bistatic radar and AESA: a stealthy, mid-range, medium-payload bomber, the B-3 possessed intelligence, surveillance, and ISR capabilities, with powerful sensors and significant advanced electronic warfare and counter-electronic warfare suites. The aircraft also benefited from advancements in network-enabled battle management, command and control, and virtual warfare simulation and experimentation, and enjoyed the maximum level of low observability and stealth capacities, enabling it to loiter over the battlefield area for hours and address threats as they appear. In essence, with the supersonic JFA-A1 delivering massive strikes from long ranges, the B-3 was intended to instead maintain a constant presence over the battlefield and continuously barrage new threats as they emerged.

The air force, in conjunction with the Advanced War Research Agency, was also developing a hypersonic spaceplane-- a currently experimental manoeuvring re-entry vehicle, christened the JFA-HS capable of transporting a one thousand pound payload on a sub-orbital trajectory at hypersonic speeds and releasing that payload into the atmosphere at speeds approaching Mach 20. The payload being developed, as it were, was the Hypersonic Strike Missile-- powered by a dual-mode ramjet, a compact design, and low observable shaping, the HSM's Mach 6 speed in conjunction with its low observability made it incredibly difficult to avert or counter before it met its target-- naval, land, or air-- whilst the JFA-HS went along on its merry Mach 20 way.

The AWRA had also produced designs for a cruise missile that could fry a target's electronics using radio and microwave electronic warfare. An updated version of the old Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Advanced missile, this new missile could easily bypass and fry hardened targets, including incoming counter missiles and aircraft attacks, and were designed to be capable of on-site interlink to maximise functionality. Already on the production line, these missiles were being mounted on submarines, tactical fighters, destroyers, and SAM systems; a significantly smaller design was being considered for the purpose of being mounted on UAVs.

Lastly, a complex coastal defence system was in the process of design and production-- given the highly sensitive nature of Java's location, such measures were a necessary precaution. To begin with, OTH and sound surveillance systems were being constructed at key locations in order to afford the Javanese military the best ability to detect and respond to incoming naval threats; a network of satellites was also being designed, with one of its functions being to enhance this capability. Concealed SAM systems and other missile defence systems were scattered across the innumerable unpopulated tiny islands that accompanied the main islands of Java and Sumatra, and beaches throughout those two main islands would be heavily fortified against potential amphibious attack. To top it off, mine fields were being laid at certain vital points, and along strategic military waterways-- none too far out to affect any ships that were not explicitly and deliberately approaching those key points to begin with.

[Lestari]

-

Edited December 11, 2015 by Lestari

[Lestari]

A new aircraft carrier has been produced, along with several corvettes and a battleship. How lovely.

[Triyun]

"Pending the loss of communications and anarchy along the Imperial lines of Indonesia and citing increases in Piracy along the Malacca Area, Imperial Forces have been dispatched an enacted landings to secure the territories of the Javanese Federation.  Imperial Armies shall be accompanied by the Indonesian Imperial First Minister's office to setup a government of the People and ensure the Javanese Federations glorious enjoyment within our great Commonwealth!"

 

Across the Federation, Imperial Amphibious made the very short treks over to secure the territories of the Javanese Federation along with their critical sea lanes for the Empire.  Immediately fortifying the positions.

Edited March 9, 2014 by Triyun