Integrated Home Air Defence Network
The Integrated Home Air Defence Network (Livarian: Інтегрована Домашня Мережа Протиповітряної Оборони; tr. Intehrovana Domashnya Merezha Protypovitryanoyi Oborony), normally abbreviated to the IDMPO, is Livaria's integrated air defence system that covers the Cheltic Isles and surrounding seas. The network consists of a number of hardened ground-based radar sites and mobile tactical, operational and strategic-level air defence systems, which are linked to Livaria's airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft and Livarian Navy ships, an advanced telecommunications system which sends and coordinates digital data and voice communication on a protected Tochka e-terminal network, which is processed on systems based on TOR/A computers. The system today includes over a dozen long-range Morchenko VB-17 and modernised Lkh-55M radars, specifically designed to withstand radar jamming.
The modern IDMPO was developed in the aftermath of the tumultuous 7660s and 7670s, and underwent numerous changes and alterations as the geopolitical and military environment underwent significant and rapid change. Growing concerns that IDMPO's predecessor, the Sky Shield System, was no longer fit for purpose and exposed Livaria to conventional missile attack led to calls within the Livarian Air Force for an updated radar and early warning system in response to the Stolvic Commonwealth's conventional missile capabilities. The subsequent system, the IDMPO, was declared operational in 7684, and sought to overcome Livaria's vulnerabilities to cruise missile attack and better integrate command and control (C2) nodes across the Livarian armed service branches.
The Liverian IDMPO is heavily integrated into and forms a component part of the North Anarian Air Defence System, which is primarily aimed at monitoring and defending North Anarian air space against potential Orderist activity and attacks, namely Hellish and wider Stolvic Commonwealth capabilities.
History and development
Sky Shield
The Sky Shield System (Livarian: Небо Щит Система; tr. Nebo Shshyt Sistema) had been developed in the early 7670s in response to the proliferation of nuclear weapons following the end of the Second Coalition War. The Stolvic Commonwealth's acquisition of nuclear weapons led to a rapid reappraisal of Livaria's air defence network, which was at that time focused on identifying conventional bomber aircraft. Following the Second Coalition War, the Livarian military rapidly altered its war plans under the assumption that the Stolvic Commonwealth would soon acquire nuclear weapons, and that a future air attack on Livaria would involve hydrogen bombs. As such, efforts to harden radar systems were deemed unnecessary or futile, and the focus was placed on providing early warning systems to identifying an impending ballistic missile or bomber attacks to enable Livaria's own strategic bomber force to sortie before their airbases were destroyed. Hergom's successful testing of its first nuclear weapon in 7672 added further urgency to develop Sky Shield, given uncertainty and growing paranoia around Hergom's burgeoning power projection capabilities.
Given the growing concerns over Livaria's vulnerability to nuclear attack, Livaria sped up the programme at significant expense and the Sky Shield System was officially declared operational by 7673, albeit with numerous capability gaps. These gaps would take a number of years to fully overcome, namely as a result of delays to the new Lkh-50 radar system. These delays required the first roll-out of Sky Shield to rely upon older Lkh-20 radars to bridge gaps in the updated Lkh-50 network, which was not officially acknowledged at the time. By August 7676, the updated system of radar stations was fully operational. However, by this time, the strategic situation was once again changing.
Accord for Restrained Arms and International Harmony
- Main article: Accord for Restrained Arms and International Harmony
The proliferation of nuclear weapons after the culmination of the Second Coalition War led to a decades-long nuclear and conventional arms race, during which Sky Shield was conceived and rolled out, at extreme expense. However, growing concerns of Hergom's nuclear capabilities led Livaria and its principal allies in the Triarchy to call for an international effort to curtain Hergom's strategic capabilities. The resultant International Council of Nations (ICoN)-led initiative led to the signing of the Accord for Restrained Arms and International Harmony (ARAIH) in 7676, which among other articles, placed limitations on nuclear ballistic delivery systems and the disarmament of Hergom's long-Range ballistic launch vehicles under international supervision. While many in Livaria remained deeply distrustful that Hergom would respect the treaty, and sceptical that international supervision would be sufficient to prevent a secret Wol project, the ARAIH did reduce the long-range threat posed by a nuclear Hergom.
However, the new treaty did little to offset the nuclear threat posed by the neighbouring Stolvic Commonwealth, whose nuclear-capable bombers and missiles could readily strike Livarian territory within minutes. While this threat alone ensured continued political support to maintain Sky Shield and the nuclear deterrent.
Livarian vulnerabilities to conventional war
Since the culmination of the Second Coalition War, Livarian war planning had been overwhelmingly focused on the threat of a nuclear strike, from either Helreich or Hergom. However, the ICoN-organised international summits leading up to signing of the ARAIH in 7676 led to a steady shift in Livarian war planning. Given growing fears of a global thermonuclear war and the resultant international caps on nuclear capabilities, renewed focus was placed on innovative conventional military capabilities and threats - namely Orderist cruise missile programmes.
Livarian war planners no longer agreed that the principal air threat to Livaria was a sudden, massive strategic nuclear attack, given Hergom's diminished long-range ballistic systems and neighbouring Helreich's likely concerns that even a limited nuclear attack on Livaria would result in catastrophic fallout affecting their homeland. Instead, it was assumed a war would have a protracted conventional stage before going nuclear, if it does so at all, with a conventional air attack on Livaria no longer deterred by Livaria's strategic bomber force. Under this strategic environment, the Sky Shield System of radars was highly vulnerable to conventional attack. However, despite growing concerns within the Livarian military, the extreme cost of the original Sky Shield programme meant that the government of the day was loathe to agree to an even more expensive overhaul of a system that was less than ten years old.
Livaria's apparent vulnerability to conventional attack was most famously (and controversially) brought to public attention by an anonymous Livarian Air Force officer who published an article in the Rubizhne Gazette in 7679. The article warned that Livaria's air defence systems were so poorly coordinated and integrated that it would be unable to prevent an overwhelming conventional Orderist attack that would wipe out Livaria's exposed radar systems, essentially blinding Livaria strategic command and allowing Orderist forces to gain control over the entrance to the North Settant Sea. While numerous members of Livaria's military criticised the article as overly alarmist, the effect on the public was palpable. Growing public concerns and pressure within Parliament led the government to approve an initial review of Livaria's air defences and accelerate the creation of an integrated successor to Sky Shield.
Development of the IDMPO
The integrated reivew of Livaria's air defence network focused on overcoming numerous key vulnerabilities and technological developments that exposed weaknesses in the earlier Sky Shield System. The new network, which would become known as the Integrated Home Air Defence Network (IDMPO), was designed to be highly survivable in a conventional war. Sky Shield's fixed communication links that connected the various radar stations was replaced by a packet switching network which sent packets of data to mutliple command centres across metropolitan Livaria. Under this more decentralised command and control system, radar sites had the capability to control interceptions themselves, while the strategic air picture was simultanously compiled and directed at Air Command headquarters. This allowed Air Command to disseminate strike orders and take control of the air defence system when possible, while empowering individual radar stations to launch intercepts without having to wait for orders that may have come too late. Another key priority of the new IDMPO system was to mitigate advances in adversaries' radar jamming capabilities, which threatened to effectively blind Livaria's Lkh-50 radars. As such, several new radars (including the modernised Lkh-55M radars) were introduced that operated across a large band of frequencies from C to F, mitigating this threat.
While originally spearheaded by the Livarian Air Force, the review to overhaul Livaria's ground-based air defence network quickly identified the need to sufficiently integrate Livaria's non-ground-based air defences to provide Air Command and the decentralised command and control (C2) nodes with sufficient ability to intercept a multi-vector air attack successfully. The Livarian Navy's air defence destroyers and Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft were integrated into the network as what become known as 'outer layer home air defence nodes', providing Home Command with vital intelligence at the very earliest phases of a materialising air attack. These 'outer layer' nodes work in tandem with the 'inner layer home air defence nodes', which include not only static ground-based radars but also operational and tactical mobile air defence systems operated by the Livarian Air Force, Army and Navy, which in turn had responsibility for a particular air defence sector.