Some more AW:P writing here, just a brief summary of Galacia’s armies. The ADF are the dudes you’ll be playing as in the Galacian campaign, for the record; the regular army is mostly there to act as allies (or targets in the Littorand campaign).
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As in many other matters, Galacians wage war quite differently from their neighbours. The core of Galacian military capability is an extremely small core of professional soldiers: the “Autonomous Defence Force”. This is the only permanent Galacian military institution, and it has a unique position within Galacian government: while it remains ultimately accountable to the nation, it is given the freedom to define its own objectives and priorities in times of war. The ADF’s military technology is far ahead of that employed by Littorand’s armed forces: this, when combined with the tremendous facility for communication that all augmented Galacians have, almost guarantees a tactical edge for the ADF in any conflict. The ADF is a highly diverse organisation; a large number of soldiers, including the current ADF commander, are defectors or expatriates from other nations.
The ADF is also unique in Galacian society in having a much more rigid organisational structure, highly similar to that of the armies of Galacia’s neighbours. While there is no distinction between regular soldiers and commissioned officers, there is still a strict hierarchy, with lower ranked soldiers answering directly to their immediate superiors, and indirectly to higher-ranked officers. The ADF as a whole is led by a single commander, who ultimately answers to the Galacian body politic.
The organisation’s small size and rigid organisation make it highly effective at responding quickly and adapting to unexpected circumstances; when coupled with its hi-tech equipment, this makes the ADF arguably the most effective army in the world at fighting small-scale conflicts. Equally, its size makes it basically incapable of waging a traditional territorial war against a modern army. While Galacia only has one large-scale conflict in its history, the problem cannot be ignored given the instability of the region.
Given this problem, Galacia has provisions for a large army. The core of the Galacian “regular” army is a reserve force comprised of volunteers; while not paid, they are expected to maintain a basic level of fitness and aptitude with whatever weapons or vehicles they would be expected to use in the event of a war. The body of Galacian legislation also provides for an emergency semi-voluntary drafted force to support the ADF and the volunteer army in extraordinary circumstances. The organisation of these larger, part-time forces is much more Galacian than that of the ADF, with a loose democratic framework adjusted by real-time voting among the members. They also do not enjoy the ADF’s freedom of command – the nation itself is allowed to give them specific military objectives as well as broader political ones.
The most crucial worry of Galacian military thinkers is the fact that their forces have never been tested in a life-or-death conflict; every Galacian war to date has taken place outside of the nation’s borders, generally because Galacians have voted to intercede on behalf of one side of a distant conflict. While some reasonable predictions have been made on the subject, the capability of Galacia to defend itself against an aggressor committed to conquest or destruction has yet to be seen.