please note Horizon Islands is much BIGGER than just Tanoa. have a look at this map https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/armedassault/images/8/83/Horizon_Islands_Map.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160610064013

source: Arma Wiki https://armedassault.fandom.com/wiki/Horizon_Islands

Disco,

I do really like the idea of the HIL. It seems to mirror the real-life Fijian Infantry Regiment, which earns revenue for its government by working for the UN as observers and peace-keeping forces. In the lore I have developed, I would like to suggest that the HIL also works closely with the Gendarmerie by helping staff large fortifications left over from the Japanese-modified French bastion forts. These overlook high traffic areas such as Blue Pearl Industrial Port, the approaches to Georgetown, Hollander Baii, Yanukka Baii, and the Baie de Belfort. The forts are used for maritime security, traffic control, and customs work, but are also hubs for SAR operations. The waters of the Horizon Islands are the graves of a good number of ships and the Maritime Gendarmarie's SAR work has gained the grudging respect of many otherwise cynical mariners.

These old colonial forts originally operated as trading posts and anti-piracy stations. Neither the Gendarmerie nor the HIL are cash-rich and survive on what they can earn by working with UN and the Horizon Islands Admiralty Court. The Admiralty Court based in La Roche gives them a percentage of the sale of all goods, equipment, ships, land vehicles, and aircraft seized from the Syndikat and other criminals, such as illegal CSAT deep sea fishing fleets, illegal marine mineral mining facilities, and oil theft from oil platforms. Additionally, the Gendarmerie and HIL are granted all ammunition and weaponry taken from the criminals. Despite this income, renovating and outfitting the forts has been a long process that is not yet complete. They are equipped with WWII and Vietnam-era AA artillery, and some modern radars with some SAM and surface to surface missiles inherited from NATO. To protect these defensive assets, the Gendarmerie and HIL have adapted Iron Dome technology to their forts.

Like many small nations, their TO&E is a mix of old and new, which includes some easily maintained fixed-wing aircraft used for multiple purposes (hint: AN-2 Colts and AN-2 float planes), small patrol boats less than 80 feet long, and smaller gunboat-sized surplus naval vessels less than 120 feet long. In real life, the Australians have for years generously offered small patrol boats that island governments have to arm themselves and maintain. BTW, the Australians may still have trouble getting the cash-starved island governments to accept the patrol boats. There are few big, flashy pieces of military technology, only well worn and well built engines of war.

Aviation and naval assets are operated by the Maritime Gendarmerie, which acts as the HI Coast Guard and reports to the Gendarmerie leadership. Its powers are much the same as its French counterpart. The Maritime Gendarmerie is also charged with protecting marine resources within the 200-mile exclusive economic zone, and has the authority to arrest criminals on the high seas. It has an investigative branch, known as "The Coast Watchers", that operates like the US Navy's NCIS with many of the same missions. Its plain clothes investigators usually operate under deep cover for extended periods. The Gendarmarie Commandant's wife, a very able intelligence operative in her own right, is the Coast Watchers director. She is known by her Georgetown political detractors as "Madame Commandant". The Maritime Gendarmerie has close relations with the US Coast Guard for training and assistance in maintaining navigational aids such as buoys and lighthouses, and international cooperation for fighting international crime. This is in line with real-life US Coast Guard missions with island governments in the Pacific.

Helicopters are generally used for government officials and rich industrialists as by HI standards they are hideously expensive to maintain. This is based on real-life Fijian experience with the French gifting two helicopters in the 1990s as military aid. Both later crashed, causing economic hardship for the Fijian government. This bad experience led the Fijians to abolish their small air force in the late 1990s. Nonetheless, two Soviet-era KA-32s were acquired for utility work as aerial cranes and SAR flights.

The Maritime Gendarmerie has its headquarters co-located with the Gendarmerie headquarters on Tuvanaka at the old harbor remnants NE of Belfort. In addition to its administrative activities, the Gendarmerie conducts training there for its land and sea branches and runs a small command officer candidate school there as well. The docks are once again in use, this time for the Maritime Gendarmerie's training and operational patrol boats. Navigational buoys are refurbished there and new ones constructed from pre-cut steel provided by the Blue Pearl shipyards.

The HIL has renovated part of the Lijnhaven Fort ruins, much to the protest of locals worried about the modernization of the fort, which had an unsavory past under colonial rule and later the Japanese. HIL currently uses the fort as a training base and ensures that community relations are kept cordial. All UN deployments are administered from Lijnhaven's Saint-George Airport aboard UN-chartered transports. These flights also inject money into the local economy from air crew entertainment and billets, aircraft fuel sales, and aircraft servicing.

The Linjhaven Fort also has a internationally-rated museum detailing the military history of Tanoa and the fort, with displays and tour guides explaining the good and the bad of its history. Walking tours of the grounds are available weekly on Sundays. Eco-treks of WII Japanese defenses start from the Fort and give the recon students the opportunity to clear the sites of Syndikat and other malevolent forces and screen the treks from intruders. These tours have proved to be popular with Japanese tourists who wish to visit the war graves of their ancestors and try to understand why they were in Tanoa and what happened to them.

The HIL also operates its own special operations group that acts as a quick reaction force. Known officially as the Horizion Islands Legion Tactique (HILT), it draws its operators from across all of the Gendarmerie, the HI Defense Forces and the HIL. The exact number of operators is not known, but the HILT seems to be deployed in squad and platoon-strength missions. HILT is known for its night operations, stealth, ship boarding, amphibious raiding, fortification defense and counter attack skills. It is called "Night Soldiers" in memory of a WWII Horizon Islands resistance group with legendary exploits. The current Night Soldiers are respected in regional SOCOM community, with whom they regularly train and operate.

Its own TO& E features primarily French and Western European small arms, but includes some Soviet-era weaponry that may have been sold to HI by Vietnam in the 1980s. The force may well be organized as heavy and light teams or squads according to mission requirements. The basic fire team can be as high as seven soldiers, counting the FTL.

Despite HI government foreign policy openly favoring CSAT, Gendarmarie leadership privately sees the long term principal adversaries as being CSAT and the Syndikat. Smaller threats include criminal gangs such as Chinese tongs catering largely to vice who are active in the insular Chinese communities, and Australian-based gangs, who can be found in the major cities. The Australians run "black birding" human trafficking gangs that furnish slaves to Southeast Asian gangs running illegal factories and fishing fleets.

There are also some domestic terrorists who periodically target the wealthy families running the mining, shipbuilding and plantations. These acts usually result in murders and kidnappings of relatives studying and working outside of the Horizion Islands. Not to be ignored, there are rumors of peculiar exotic fauna smuggling and strange occurrences near the jungle ruins or on secluded beaches that the locals only speak of in fearful whispers, if at all. An official relationship with the SCP Foundation can not be confirmed because of that organization's secretive operations, but certainly is likely.

wow thats a very comprehensive writeup of the HI lore. you should start making HI mods

im currently busy on a ww2 scifi project

Originally posted by Disco:

wow thats a very comprehensive writeup of the HI lore. you should start making HI mods

im currently busy on a ww2 scifi project

Good luck with your scifi project!!!

I am generating the HIL-specific forts, air strips and the Gendarmerie Headquarters, so I can start writing some scenarios after that.