EarthForce

EarthForce is the military branch of the Earth Alliance, Earth's governing body in the fictional "Babylon 5" universe.

History

Earthforce was founded as a peacekeeping militia with the majority of its members deployed to control terrorist aggression on the ground. It was initially formed from contingents provided by EarthAlliance member countries and later transitioned to direct individual recruitment.

The Fleet was not formed until after the Earth Alliance purchased Jump technology from the Centauri. The first major action of Earth Force was the war against the Dilgar which ended in victory. Unfortunately, this made the force overconfident and they decided to approach the Minbari despite warnings that doing so would be dangerous. As it happens, the warnings were correct as an inadvertently premature first contact ended violently due to a serious misunderstanding that provoked the Earth-Minbari War in which EarthForce found itself hopelessly outmatched. The war culminated in the climatic Battle of the Line in the bulk of EarthForce remaining forces were annihilated until the Minbari mysteriously surrendered on the brink of absolute victory.

Organization

EarthForce, as part of EarthGov, is headquartered in EarthDome (Geneva, Switzerland) with the President of the EarthAlliance as Commander-in-Chief with the Joint Chiefs of Staff responsible for the day to day operations with final authority reserved for the EA President.

Divisions:
* Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised by the Committee on Planetary Security (AKA the Office of Planetary Security)
* Earthforce Command,
* Earthforce Research & Development,
* Earthforce Bioweapons Division,
* EarthAlliance Presidential Security,
* Earthforce Special Intelligence

EarthForce is organized into three separate branches:
* EarthFleet/Navy (blue uniforms) - although the full dress uniform is grey trimmed black
* EarthForce Marines (brown/olive)
* Security (light gray) - a psuedo military police type force.

The Psi Corps was founded as part of EarthForce.

EarthForce Academy is the training facility of EarthForce officers.

Ranks

Officers and crew are allowed to transfer between branches; Richard Franklin (father of Dr. Stephen Franklin) once served as first officer on the EAS "Ares", but by the time we actually meet him, the elder Franklin was a general in the EarthForce Marines. EarthForce uses a unified rank system, with both Army/Marine and Navy-style ranks [http://b5tech.com/misctech/earthforcerank/earthforcerank.html] :

* Ensign
* Lieutenant Junior Grade
* Lieutenant
* Major
* Lieutenant Commander
* Commander
* Captain
* Colonel
* General

Admirals were mentioned in a few episodes, although they did not appear onscreen; its place in the above rank system is unknown.

EarthFleet

EarthForce operates a large fleet of ships, comprising such vessels as the Cotton class tender, Olympus class corvette, Omega class destroyers and Hyperion class heavy cruisers, Nova class dreadnought, and numerous smaller support craft. Their newest design is the Warlock class destroyer, which incorporates several new technologies such as artificial gravity (given to EarthForce by the Minbari). The "Victory" class starship "Excalibur", designed and built for service with the Interstellar Alliance, was loaned to EarthForce for the mission to scour the galaxy to find a cure for the Drakh plague that had infected Earth in 2267.

All EarthForce ships have the registry prefix EAS, which stands for Earth Alliance Starship.

EarthForce may have many hidden black ops projects some of which could have been seen in the Earth Alliance Civil War where Omega class Destroyers were merged with Shadow bio-tech to create powerful warships for President Clark's regime. Even after Clark's defeat, these rogue operations continue to experiment with the technology to create even more powerful ships, one of which was responsible for the destruction of the "Cerberus", a ship that Matthew Gideon (then an ensign, later captain of the "Excalibur") was the only survivor of.

"EarthForce One" is the ship of the President of the Earth Alliance.

References

*The Babylon Project EarthForce Sourcebook by Joseph Cochran and Jon Tuffley CEE Publications ISBN 1-887990-06-2

See also

* "Babylon 5" influences
* List of "Babylon 5" articles
* "Babylon 5's" use of the Internet
* The Be Five
* List of television series that include time-travel
* rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
* The Lurker's Guide to "Babylon 5"

External links

* [http://tgm.firstones.com/wiki/Earthforce EarthForce] : Babylon 5 wiki