User:Helianthus/Sandbox

The UNSC Navy (UNSCN) is the naval warfare service of the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) and is one of five primary uniformed services of the Unified Earth Government (UEG). The Navy conducts operations throughout interplanetary, interstellar, and to a limited extent, transgalactic space, and planetside at sea, on land, and in the air as the main provider of military aerospace vessels and stations for Earth and its colonies throughout the Orion Arm. Fleet operating forces have been charged throughout its some 396 year history to ensure space supremacy in the defense coordination zones surrounding Earth, its colonies, and aligned corporate holdings, including nearby interstellar jump points and space lanes.

The Navy traces its roots back to the national space-faring fleets contributing equipment, materiel, and personnel to the United Nations prior to the 2164-2170 Interplanetary War, having cut their teeth in the Jovian Moons and Mars campaigns. In the resulting conflict the UNSC absorbed entire navies of Earth's nations into a single, regimented order of battle. In the Domus Diaspora the Navy would expand in capability courtesy of the advent of the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine to embark on expeditions into what would become the Inner Colonies and conduct spacelift therein supporting colonization efforts funded by the UEG. At this time, the Colonial Military Administration (CMA) was established to defend the Inner Colonies and the looming frontier in the Outer Colonies, by law relegating the UNSC Navy to the defense of Sol. Despite this, UNSC and CMA naval forces regularly encroached on each other's spacial jurisdiction, attempting to usurp and absorb missions, equipment, personnel, and funding for their own means. By the 25th century the Earther-backed UNSC Navy had assumed authority over both Sol and the Inner Colonies, restricting their CMA counterparts to Orion's frontier. The lack of political, economic, and social autonomy in the Outer Colonies led the UNSC Navy into the Callisto Incident, sparking the decades-long Insurrection. Fleet forces waged war against a asymmetrical threat utilizing large combatant ships, disembarking and supporting Marine forces ashore, and razing entire colonies with naval gunfire and weapons of mass destruction.

Waging a modern naval war across vast stretches of the cosmos prepared the UNSC Navy for the existential threat accompanying first contact with the highly-militarized alien union, the Covenant. In the Human-Covenant War of 2525-2552, the Navy would face one major defeat after another delaying the Covenant from progressing into the Outer Colonies, then the Inner Colonies, and ultimately its final bastions at Reach, and later, Earth. The Navy stood technologically inferior to the Covenant throughout its wartime combat record, and on occasion, severely outnumbered. Pivotal, yet seemingly token victories at Harvest (2531), in Psi Serpentis (2543), at Sigma Octanus IV (2552), and at Earth (2552) kept morale high in spite of a potential extinction event. The Navy suffered the loss of hundreds of millions of sailors, and tens of thousands of starships and countless more aerospace craft in operations against the Covenant over 27 years.

The Home Fleet in Sol marshalled the Navy's remaining available fighting forces in early 2553 to liberate occupied human space and reestablish Earth's authority over their now increasingly disparate colonies. Rearmament persisted well into the 2550s through supplementing and ultimately replacing wartime and even pre-first contact ship classes and aircraft. The Navy would capitalize on reverse-engineered Covenant and Forerunner technologies, ushering in a new era for human spaceflight with the introduction of precise slipspace drives and energy shielding. The Spartans would gain independence from Navy control in the first postbellum year while the Office of Naval Intelligence sought greater autonomy out from under the broader Navy's authority. Joint Occupation Zones were stood up and patrolled alongside the Swords of Sanghelios, the UEG's first alien allies, pursuant to the Treaty of 2552. The UNSC Navy would continue to reassume its capacity for expeditionary warfare with operations throughout the Halo Array and at Requiem, and in combatting the resurgent Covenant. Cortana's 2558 blitzkrieg leveraging the Guardian network for area denial and subterfuge via the Created AI devastated the Navy's ability to make war.

Civilian authority and oversight of the Navy resumed following the disbandment of the emergency military government in 2553, beginning with President Ruth Charet in her capacity as Commander-in-Chief. The Naval Command manages the administrative and operational functions of the service with a five-star flag officer as Chief of Naval Operations and Commander-in-Chief Fleet (CNO/CINCFLEET) at its head, an office currently occupied by Fleet Admiral Terrence Hood; CNO/CINCFLEET is a sitting member of the Security Council. The Navy's headquarters is currently situated alongside its sister services in the capital Sydney at HIGHCOM Facility Bravo-6.