The battle of Nopah Citadel

Overview

The Battle of Nopah Citadel was a significant battle waged by members of the 2nd Special Assault Brigade as part of the efforts to support the liberation of the Terran Hegemony during the Amaris Civil War. The action was noteworthy due to the use of large numbers of Land Air Mechs as the primary component of the battle, as well as the tactics used.

Planetary History

The planet of Nopah was a Terran Hegemony world located roughly 60 light years from Terra. While originally a barren world, large swaths of the surface had been terraformed into agricultural land. The planet became a breadbasket world supporting many of the nearby systems.

Significant portions of the continent Non remained barren and the Star League established a significant communications and research facility in the base of a mountain called the Citadel. The Citadel's northern and western approaches were defended by a series of small armoured bunkers as well as the natural mountainous terrain. The southern and eastern approaches faced a wide desert area and were separated by a 300m wide gorge that was 200m deep in the area immediately in front of the Citadel. A bridge connected the two sides of the gorge approximately 3 km southeast of the facility with a narrow, exposed road leading up the far side from the bridge to the facility itself.

This facility was steadily increased in size over the years, eventually accommodating codebreaker division of the SLDF's Intelligence Command. During the reign of Jonathan Cameron the facility, itself now referred to as the Citadel, received extensive defensive upgrades including a wide array of ground-to-air and ground-to-space weapons. In addition, reinforced battlements and supplemental artillery batteries were installed. Air support was provided by the nearby aerospace base. Small landing areas for transports were blasted into the side of the mountain in order to minimize the reliance on the narrow road leading to the main gates of the facility.

While not designed as a for or mini-Castle Brian, the main facility was garrisoned by a battlemech battalion and an infantry battalion with room for an addition reinforced battlemech battalion and two additional infantry batallions.

The Citadel facility was tasked with the development of new interception and code breaking techniques and technologies as well as the processing of intercepted member-state encrypted communications. Using builtin auto-routing systems in the League's HPG network, facilities like the Citadel were able to surreptitiously able to copy and read the sensitive communications of the other states.