Lodamun

[imperialpearl]

“Lodamun remains committed to providing the Badaran Government and Armed Forces with intelligence about combatant forces and will, in the coming months, expand the scale of our intelligence-sharing efforts,” said Dr. Ronald Turner, the Director of National Assessments. Expanding the scope and scale of intelligence & information sharing between Lodamun and Badara could, according to Dr. Turner, provide Badaran forces with much-needed situation awareness, which in turn might enable them to respond more effectively to counteroffensives launched by opposing factions, whilst also allowing greater precision in decision-making, especially as it relates to airstrikes and other airborne operations. For the better part of the last two years, the Lodamese Armed Forces, through its military installation in Kafuristan, has been providing the Badaran Government and its Armed Forces with precision intelligence on the movements and planning of the various factions currently scattered throughout the country, with the hopes that it may dramatically swing the internal conflict’s outcomes in the favour of the democratic government. 

The nation has been embroiled in a brutal internal conflict against factions which rose out of the failures of the previous political order. In Al'Baharia, a state of near-total anarchy reigns, primarily led by a criminal organisation branding itself the Free Brigade. The group’s province-wide extortion racket, according to intelligence and security officials, is reminiscent of the westerns of old, with bands of robbers imposing their twisted forms of “justice” and demanding taxes in exchange for “protection”. In Al'Salmania, the Dufazi are a heavily armed, religiously zealous paramilitary force under the command and direction of Abadi cleric Moqtada al-Dufaz. Al-Dufaz presides over a religious thought police who enforce his, according to more liberal clerics, barbaric misinterpretations of the Book of Bliss. The Babaran Armed Forces has been attempting to wrestle control away from these factions and many other, much smaller groups to varying degrees of success.

Although he did not mention the broader details of Lodamun’s intelligence-sharing efforts in Badara, Dr. Turner noted that recent successes by the nation’s Ministry of the Interior, the body which has been at the centre of the government’s efforts to stabilise the nation, were evidence of the positive impact Lodamese intelligence has had on the outcome of the various military offensives being waged throughout the country. “The successes we are seeing in Al'Salmania, where government forces have pushed the Dufazi into the central highlands, are further evidence of the impact of our intelligence gathering and sharing efforts,” Dr Turner said. According to the Office of Defence Intelligence, Lodamun’s premier military intelligence agency, much of the intelligence used by Badaran forces had originated from long-term, high-altitude drone patrols, which had been made possible by the efforts of Lodamese Navy Azuron maritime patrol drones stationed in Kafuristan. 

According to the agency, the drones, which are primarily tasked with conducting maritime surveillance patrols in and around parts of Eastern Majatra and Southern Seleya, have proved to be indispensable, given their advanced sensor suite and optics. According to Dr. Turner, although the drone’s sensor suite, which is capable of detecting ships of varying sizes, its worth in Badara comes from its camera optics. The internal conflict’s low intensity nature and the lack of advanced systems have made visual surveillance all the more important. “I think what has become a major factor in the success and worth of our intelligence is both the visual surveillance from our drones alongside the analysis by the ODI, which provides Badaran military planners with a detailed breakdown of the dynamics being observed. From that breakdown, they can make those crucial decisions in where to apply pressure, where to alleviate it and where their attention ought to be in the future,” Dr Turner explained.

Part of the enhanced intelligence-sharing effort as articulated by Dr. Turner, the Lodamese Air Force is reportedly set to deploy three StratoHawk drones to augment the work of the Navy’s Azuron drones. The StratoHawk is the Lodamese Air Force variant of the Navy Azuron long-range drone. The StratoHawk, unlike its naval variant, was designed for deep inland reconnaissance, the sort of reconnaissance the Azuron drones have been conducting since hostilities began. Dr. Turner is expected to fly to Badara to formalise the two nations’ intelligence-sharing relationship, stating that the otherwise public relationship between the Lodamese intelligence community and the Badaran General Intelligence Service (GIS) warranted a degree of formalisation, especially given the potential for intelligence between the two parties to be leaked to third party sources. The Common Intelligence Sharing Agreement (CISA) will likely be brought up, given that the agreement has formed the backbone of Lodamun’s intelligence-sharing relationship with other nations. Here are reportedly rumours that, in addition to deploying the unarmed StratoHawks to Kafuristan for use in Badara, the Lodamese Air Force is also deploying attack drones for potential use in Badara, with the rationale being that the drones would be used to conduct precision decapitation strikes against Moqtada al-Dufaz and the leaders of the Free Brigade. Dr. Turner, in refuting the claims, stated that the extent of Lodamun’s involvement in Badara would be limited to providing intelligence and analytical reasoning.