The Confederacy was struggling for its very survival when the other superpowers began sending expeditions through the newly discovered warp gates. By the time the RIC made it into space in significant force, many of the choke point systems were occupied, and the Russians were compelled to fight hard to assemble a small collection of colonies.
South American Empire
When the world economy began to collapse, the nations of South America suffered catastrophic depressions followed by mass starvation and revolution. Warfare erupted throughout the continent, as nations and shattered remnants of nations fought each other savagely for a dwindling pool of resources.
Eventually, a brilliant Venezuelan warlord named Gabriel de Santos conquered most of the northeastern portion of the continent. The formation of the Western Alliance, and the resulting increase in U.S. military power created a fear that South America would fall under Alliance domination. Fanning these fears, de Santos was able to unite about half of the continent under his rule, and he declared himself emperor. Several decades of war were required to subdue the rest of the South America.
The newly formed empire was in ruins and economically prostrate, and it was left to the conqueror's son, Gabriel II, to rebuild the shattered realm and attain true superpower status. By the time this reconstruction was sufficiently complete to support a program of space exploration, the other powers had sewn up all the lucrative systems. The SAE has the smallest collection of colonies, and this cluster has no known warp gates leading to unclaimed space. The empire cannot expand in space without taking someone else's real estate, and they lack sufficient force to do so alone. As a result, the SAE strategy has been to seek opportunities to align with stronger powers to attain its goals.
SAE space forces consist of quasi-irregulars supplemented by a very few elite Imperial Guard units. SAE worlds are owned and operated by major corporations, which field their own private armies. It is common for these forces to be hired out as mercenaries to any power that can pay and not unheard of for SAE troops to be fighting on both sides of a war.
Free Martian Confederation
In the years just before the start of the Unification Wars, several small U.S. colonies were established on the surface of Mars, followed by similar settlements from China, Russia, Japan, and the U.K. While the nations of Earth fought decade after decade of increasingly savage and destructive war, these colonies survived, prospered, and grew.
Millions wished to escape from the cataclysm occurring on Earth, and the Martian colonies had their pick of immigrants. Consisting almost entirely of the highly skilled and educated, the Martian Exodus, as it was called, created somewhat of a "brain-drain" on Earth, but fueled the expansion and prosperity of the Mars colonies.
When the Treaty of Paris was signed and the nations of Earth again focused on space exploration, they found that the Martians, as they called themselves, felt they were independent of any Earth authority. They banded together into a loose confederation and demonstrated that Mars was quite capable of defending itself, possessing what was at the time the largest fleet of spacecraft of any nation.
While the population of Mars was tiny compared to that of the superpowers, it was almost entirely comprised of productive elements. Where the superpowers had crime ridden, poverty stricken, and useless cities, the Martians had a well ordered and highly educated society. Where the powers of Earth were devastated, exhausted by war, and plagued by crumbling infrastructure, Mars was a high-tech and productive society. The superpowers had no viable choice but to accept the Confederation as an independent power.
By far the smallest of the powers, the Confederation relies upon small, well-trained, and superbly equipped ground units to maintain its position in the interstellar race. The Confederation is the least expansionist of the powers, and while it dominates the moons and asteroids of the Sol system, it has a very small group of interstellar colonies. Mars rarely intervenes in the wars between the other powers, preferring to maintain a policy of armed neutrality.
Notes on Military Formations
U.S. Marine Assault Platoon Organization
A platoon of U.S. assault marines consists of 50 men and women organized in two sections and a command group. It is an extremely flexible force that can be equipped and deployed to handle a large range of missions.
The command group consists of the platoon commander, typically a lieutenant, a platoon sergeant, a 3-person heavy weapons team, a sniper, a scout, and a technician. These specialist positions are sometimes altered to suit particular missions, such as situations where engineering, demolition, or other specialized personnel are required at the platoon level.
The platoon heavy weapon is also mission-programmable, and the teams are cross-trained on multiple systems. Typically, depending on need, the platoon is equipped with a guided missile launch system capable of utilization in both an anti-aircraft and anti-vehicle capacity. Platoon heavy weapons are sometimes equipped with a nuclear strike potential.
Each section consists of 21 marines, a section commander and two squads of 10 troopers each. The section commander is typically a senior sergeant, and the position is frequently used as a testing ground for individuals under consideration for eventual promotion to commissioned rank.
Squads consist of two fire teams, with five troopers each. The A team is commanded by the squad leader, typically a junior sergeant. The B team leader is usually a corporal. Each team has one heavy weapon, operated by one or two troopers. Standard deployment is for three teams in a section to have a squad automatic weapon (SAW), intended primarily for anti-personnel use, while the fourth team is armed with a squad heavy weapon (SHW) for use against vehicles and fortified positions. This mix is frequently adjusted in accordance with mission specifics, and the crews are trained in the usage of multiple weapons systems.
Powered Infantry in the Third Frontier War
The 21st and 22nd century soldiers who fought the Unification Wars were equipped with what was then extremely advanced body armor and weaponry, but the fighting suits utilized in the Third Frontier War are an order of magnitude more sophisticated and capable than anything seen before on the battlefield.
The modern suit of armor was made possible by advancements in nanotechnology, which facilitated the miniaturization of various operational systems. The development of a nuclear power source small enough to be carried as part of a trooper's kit caused a quantum leap in the amount of firepower and destructive force possessed by the armored infantryman.
The massive increase in energy available to power the suit led to an increase in defensive strength, as weight concerns became far less important. The availability from colony worlds of materials that were extremely rare on Earth facilitated the creation of more sophisticated designs for armor plating, increasing the survivability of the soldier and creating near-invulnerability to any enemy not themselves armed with the most powerful weapons.
The Model 7 armor worn by Western Alliance troops is constructed of a multi-layered arrangement of steel, osmium, iridium, and a variety of polymers. The result is an extremely hard and dense, yet not at all brittle, metal suit, which provides excellent protection against virtually all types of small arms.