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History of the Soodean Military*this page is still under construction*
1987-1991:
One of Emperor Su Dou's first actions after seizing the People's Assembly Building in the Decembrist Coup was to designate his forces the Soodean People's Revolutionary Army. Other variations on this term appeared as the movement spread across the country, but all were loosely gathered under the SPRA's umbrella, which in 1988 was expanded to include the Soodean People's Revolutionary Navy and the Soodean People's Revolutionary Air Force. In this era, the primary goals of the Soodean military was to defeat the remaining Menghe Loyalist strongholds and consolidate Soodean control over the country. While its core elements retained the Red Menghe Army's organization, units on its peripheries began to take on a more paramilitary or guerrilla organization, working in fluid, independent ad-hoc units and making use of whatever equipment was available. Chains of command were only loosely established, as many of the coups and uprisings that took place across the rest of the country were executed spontaneously as a show of sympathy to the little-understood new authority in Tianzhengcheng. By May 1988 most of the country had been consolidated under the control of the Soodean revolutionary groups, and in 1989 the People's Communist Party of Menghe officially capitulated, but the struggle to consolidate control over the entirety of the country lasted well into the summer of 1991.
1992-2005:
As control of the government was consolidated, control of the military was consolidated as well. The Revolutionary bodies were re-designated as arms of the new Traditionalist state: the Imperial Soodean Ground Forces, the Imperial Soodean Sea Forces, and the Imperial Soodean Air Force, to name the main arms of service. After making these basic centralizations, Soodean leadership began turning its eyes to more important priorities. First among these was reconstruction; the national economy had been stagnant since 1984, and fighting associated with the recent Revolution had resulted in widespread destruction in several major cities.
Consequently, the military received relatively little priority, especially with regard to the development of new and more advanced equipment. This was a particularly grave matter, as the Red Menghe Army had lagged technologically even at its prime, and had developed little beyond that in the late '80s. The Air Force suffered particularly during this period, as the lethargic development of the Feidou-12 multirole left them heavily dependent on the obsolete "Su-Ne." The military's structure and organization, though revised in the December 1992 re-naming, were still far from streamlined, and their layout seemed more responsive to tradition than to the needs of a modern fighting force. It was fortunate that most of the Soodean Imperium's neighbors had responded well to the change in government [OOC: Not yet canon], or else an invasion may have stopped the nascent nation in its infancy.
As the 1990s progressed, however, the Soodean government began showing an interest in foreign intervention as a way of bolstering its credibility worldwide. The 1994 Soodean Involvement in the Vingarthian Civil War was an early success in this regard, resulting in a quick victory, a new alliance, and the rise to fame of Captain Ivanov. Next came the Parndian Civil War, which created an autonomous Pro-Soodean government in the South. Later efforts, however, proved less successful. During the Masalian War for Independence, Soodean forces in the North were quickly isolated by the Bratislavan Nationalist forces' advance, while those in the South were dragged into a long and bloody battle over the city of Corme. Though Soodean involvement in Bratislav was a lost cause from the start, combat experience during the conflict showed major shortcomings in the inflexible organization of the Soodean Military. This war also soured relations with the neighboring state of Firmador, which had supported the Nationalist forces in spite of their anti-Communist policies. As it became clear that Firmador had directly supported the Bratislavan Nationalists' ethnic cleansing of Muslim Masalians, relations between the two states reached an all-time low, though a last-minute detente managed to restore some semblance of stability to the border regions before a war could break out.
2005-Present:
It was only during the Murder War in Themiclesia, however, that the problems of the Soodean Military became too deep to ignore any longer. In response to the massive death toll and the failure to restore stability in the country, High Command instituted a series of comprehensive reforms aimed at transforming the Soodean Military into a modern, efficient fighting force. In addition to streamlining organization, dismissing traditionalist officers, and accelerating the procurement of new equipment, the 2005 military reforms had the effect of catapulting the Armed Forces to the foremost place of priority for the Soodean government.
Since that time, the Soodean Military has steadily grown in political influence. The thorough removal of conservative, unskilled, or traditionalist officers ushered in a new generation of talented but ambitious commanders, many of whom had an undue sense of confidence in their nation's ability to triumph on the battlefield. At the upper levels in particular, these officers began exerting greater influence over decisions made in the civil realm, leading to the schism of the Soodean Socialist Party into its Hawk and Sparrow factions. Despite its negative consequences, however, the post-2005 period has also seen a widespread improvement in the capabilities of the Soodean Military, from the capability of its equipment to the skill of its officers.
At the same time, there was a significant doctrinal transformation in the nation's strategic-level goals. While the dominant trend in the 1990s and early 2000s had been towards intervention abroad, growing insecurity in the region led to a new focus on national defense. On the western border, relations with the increasingly aggressive state of Firmador remained sour, and repeated border wars between Mizrad and Maverica led to concerns that instability to the West would spill over across the border. Further afield, Libraria and Ausitoria's rise to regional hegemony and the growing aggressiveness of the powerful Nerod Empire led to fears that a Capitalist-aligned fleet would eventually find cause to attack via the Meditethrhean Sea Coast. The resulting philosophy became one of "defense through offense" - gathering a large and flexible force that could outmaneuver and destroy approaching hostile threats on land or at sea.
