So, I
really wanted the 101st Airborne to be in my sci-fi universe, and also really wanted to pay homage to Heinlein, and a little to Steakley. For anyone interested, hopefully there will be at least one short story exploring some of the things talked about in this.
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The 101st Airborne Division is one of the Alliance Army’s premier elite special operations forces. Although soldiers in the 101st are still trained for and capable of conventional airborne and air assault operations, the 101st’s primary role is “orbital assault” operations.
The 101st served in the US Army in its traditional role throughout the wars and conflicts of the 21st century. However, with the changing geo-political situation on Earth and the advance of humankind through space, and the reforms to the United Earth Government’s [1] structure and military, the 101st officially “retired” from United States service and was transferred to the newly formed independent Alliance military [2] as a “heritage unit” – the Alliance’s 101st Airborne carries on the history and traditions of the unit, and continues to be officially headquartered at Fort Campbell, and draws the majority [3] of its forces from the United States. Many such formations in the Alliance military are similarly constituted heritage units.
In the years leading up to and during the 2108 Rebellion (and subsequent anti-insurgency and anti-pirate campaigns), the 101st and several other units pioneered “orbital assault,” and made the transition from a conventional to a special operations force as a result. In orbital assault operations, troops assemble in a ship’s drop bay, and then embark into capsules. The capsules (also referred to as pods in Marine Corps jargon) mount the dropping soldier inside an inner plastic “egg,” mounted on gyroscopes and surrounded by a shock absorbent foam layer and an additional liquid gel layer, and an outer layer of ceramic titanium alloy. Surrounding this layer are five additional layers of ceramic titanium alloy (referred to as “shells”). The capsule is then “fired” from a spaceship from a launch tube in the drop bay; drop bays designs are varied, but usually come in two forms. There is the “double barrel” in which a ship is equipped with two launch tubes, and capsules are fired from these tubes at the rate of about once every second. This method necessitates that the launch ship be on the move, and spreads out troops over a large area. Newer bays are designed to be capable of firing all occupied capsules simultaneously, and allows for tighter [4] drop formations.
The three outermost layers of capsule are designed to slough off and slow the descent of the capsule and the soldier contained in it. The next two layers are also designed to slough off, but not before each layer deploys three chutes (none of which are expected to last particularly long until the two last chutes, but play a vital role in slowing the capsule); after all five layers have deployed their chutes and sloughed off, the capsule has slowed just enough for the impact to be survivable and the soldier able to function capably. This system is of course not without failures.
Orbital assault comes in many forms and permutations, either as the centerpiece of an operation or supplementing other formations, but an “o-a” broadly falls into one of three categories: the “lightning bolt,” the “screen” and “bombardment.” All of these categories are not a strict doctrine; they are regularly tweaked, modified, etc., and can be components of one another (i.e., a bombardment can be composed of multiple lightning bolts) but each type has a general set of characteristics. A lightning bolt operation tends to be a “small unit” action carried out by as few troops as a single platoon, and is designed to cause as much damage to an enemy in as little time as possible; the strike force will then carry out a “fighting withdrawal” to an extraction point where special operations aviation forces will extract the unit. A screen is usually a component part of another operation, i.e., an infantry force is assaulting a town, and airborne forces are deployed on the flanks or rear of the enemy positions to distract or defeat them. A bombardment is usually the centerpiece of an operation, wherein usually a large force [5] is dropped and intended to stay and fight until relief.
The nature of this type of warfare necessitates some of the most grueling, harrowing training the Alliance military has to offer. In addition to graduating airborne and air assault school, a soldier in the 101st must receive the highly specialized capsule training at Orbital Assault School at Camp Joe Mann on Sanctuary (and on the various moons in the Moreno System). This training is famous throughout the military for its drop out rate; although the rate varies per training class, it has historically hovered at around 80%. This training is not just how to operate a capsule and survive a drop and related training, although that is of course a large part; the training also covers the various ways an airborne operator is required to fight if they expect to survive. At this stage in their training, a prospective 101st soldier is expected to know how to operate as part of a conventional infantry squad, platoon, etc. However, the nature of orbital assault means that a “cap trooper” is going to be isolated from their unit for at least several minutes; so in addition to being a “team player,” an operator must also be capable of surviving as a lone wolf for an extended period of time while still attempting to carry out the mission objective. In the worst-case scenario (such as what happened during the Independence Day Drop on New Siam during the 2108 Rebellion [6]), an airborne operator could be left completely alone due to the death of their entire unit during the course of a drop or its immediate aftermath. As such, being an airborne operator is regarded rightly as one of the most dangerous occupations in the military. An estimated five to twenty cap troopers die every year either during Orbital Assault School or on exercise, most from accidents related to dropping. The Alliance has deemed these deaths acceptable in the pursuit of maintaining the 101st as an elite fighting force. The totality of what it takes to become an airborne soldier has resulted in them receiving a reputation as “crazy.”
The danger of training and of simply being an airborne operator obviously takes its toll in some form on most 101st troopers. A significant portion of airborne soldiers regularly abuse alcohol and drugs. A drug phenomenon almost entirely unique to the Airborne is the abuse of a designer drug nicknamed “zan” by cap troopers. In an anonymous survey of one thousand two hundred and six soldiers, 51% admitted to using zan at least once, and 14% to regular (defined as at least twice a month) use. Zan is a psychoactive drug with (usually) mild hallucinogenic properties; the most common effects it produces are feelings of increased energy, euphoria, “wandering mind” (in which a user’s thoughts wander across their memory jumping from one experience to another at random), and distortions in time and sensory perception. A popular way to use the drug, especially for one time or irregular users, is to take it right before a training or exercise drop, to experience the “incredible” high resulting from the drug use combined with the flood of adrenaline and sensory input of the drop. Recently, there were even incidents of soldiers taking a “short-lasting, fast-burning” variant of zan before a combat drop, perhaps with the hope that the drug would wear off before shooting started.
The nature of orbital assault has also resulted in the 101st and units like it pioneering body armor for Alliance R&D. Advanced body armor technology is first utilized by elite formations like the 101st before being passed along to regular formations, in a continuous cycle. The utilization of advanced armor increased the survivability of airborne forces during a drop.
[1] The Alliance’s predecessor organization.
[2] With much political upheaval in the United States during and after the process.
[3] Upwards of 56% of the 101st hail from somewhere in the United States, and an additional 15% from colonial populations descended from the US.
[4] Drop bays from newer ships are designed so that there is very little chance of capsules colliding with one another, or for debris from the sloughing off of layers to interfere with other capsules. This means that once on the ground, Airborne troops are spaced out at distances of at least six meters.
[5] Normally battalion sized or greater, although companies and platoons can also carry out a bombardment-type strike.
[6] On 4 July 2108, components of the 502nd and 506th Infantry Regiments were dropping from orbit from several ships as part of Operation Mountain, the final assault on Hard Landing, in just the third instance of orbital assault warfare ever. Second Platoon of Charlie Company, 1-502nd Infantry Regiment, was dropping from a single-platoon, double-barrel transport, the ASV Jaguar. Approximately seven seconds after initial drop, when most of Second Platoon was still aboard the Jaguar, it was struck by a mass-accelerator round from a rebel ship, resulting in the deaths of most of the crew and strike force nearly instantaneously. Fourteen capsules had left the drop bay; three of these were destroyed by the explosion, one trooper’s capsule was punctured in such a way as to result in death of the soldier, and two more were damaged in such a way that their chutes failed to fire properly, resulting in the death of the occupying soldiers on impact. Of the eight surviving capsules, five had other mechanical or electronic failures resulting in the deaths of occupying soldiers. Three capsules successfully made it to their platoon’s intended area of operations. Two of these soldiers were killed within two minutes by the rebels in their “heavily populated” AO. This left Specialist Jorge Reyes as the sole survivor of his entire platoon, and the only Alliance (or rather at that point in time, UEG) soldier in his entire AO. For his following actions that day, including the retrieval of the corpses of the two soldiers killed by enemy fire, Reyes was awarded the Medal of Honor and a Purple Heart. For this, Reyes is a legendary figure within the military in general and the 101st and orbital assault forces in particular, and the story of the Independence Day Drop remains a “ghost story” told in the 101st and other orbital assault units that gives chills to rookies and veterans alike, even though the likelihood of such a catastrophe is very low with modern technology; the retort to this is that that was the thinking at the time of the drop as well.
