Cascadia’s military establishment is grounded in an essentially defensive doctrine designed to deter or neutralize the armed forces of the United States, which is considered to be the most significant threat to Cascadian national sovereignty. Among Cascadia’s three armed services, the army is the most robust, organized into a Supreme High Command and three subordinate operational commands, the latter consisting of a division and at least one separate brigade each. Augmenting the army, and a modest navy with a limited amphibious capability and air force with the potential for providing logistical and close air support. Cascadia’s army possesses an eclectic mix of older equipment, bolstered by a tailored selection of more modern and technologically advanced weapons systems. Cascadia recently attempted to develop a space force. Early attempts to launch unmanned satellite systems have proved problematic, so the nascent Cascadian space force is currently focused on the cyber domain.
As relations between Cascadia and the United States have deteriorated over time, Cascadia has gradually abandoned the United States military doctrine and tactics in favor of methodologies more aligned with those typical of Eastern countries. The same can be said for its munitions and logistical equipment: the military is slowly replacing its inventory of United States weapons systems with less expensive but reliable models designed in Eastern Europe and Asia.
Cascadia has configured its military to operate through a National Command Authority, a construct that channels the application of all instruments of national power to support the overarching national strategy formulated by the country’s democratically elected civilian leaders. Cascadia’s military strategy focuses the capabilities of its armed services on deterring or repelling any potential United States aggression, which most leaders believe will involve some form hybrid warfare involving proxy forces bent on exploiting local religious and ethnic tensions that have long plagued the Cascadia’s eastern region.
Cascadia fields an army of approximately 100,000 soldiers by drawing from a national personnel pool of conscripts, who are required to serve 24 consecutive months on active duty. The salient feature of Cascadia’s army is its four separate maneuver brigades, designed to operate either independently or as part of a division-level (or higher) command. Cascadia’s military leaders are faced with an array of militant threats that include an indigenous ultra-nationalist movement, the America’s Liberation Army (ALA), a resurgent separatist Greater Idahoan Movement (GIM), a leftist anti-capitalism movement, and several criminal organizations.
Lacking a viable first-strike capability and unable to wage a sustained offensive war, in the event of an incursion by conventional forces of the United States, or some possible hybrid combination of all of these, Cascadia will most likely attempt a static defense-in-place pending the arrival of outside reinforcements.
The United States is concerned that increasingly closer ties between Cascadia and Eastern nations foretells a wider and increasing regional influence, primarily by China. For its part, China insists that a sovereign and independent Cascadia committed to democracy and a rules-based international order is a cornerstone of Pacific Rim security. Cascadia’s cooperation with the East has intensified in proportion to its declining relationship with the United States.