The General Staff's operational proposal? There really had been quite a lot of surprises today.
It was worth remembering that throughout the past year of war, the Defense Committee and the General Command had been doing everything they could to exceed expectations in logistics and military administration. But when it came to actual strategy, the frontline commanders had simply done as they pleased.
Yet the General Staff, which was supposed to provide guidance to the frontlines during wartime, should by rights have been the most visible department of all. Instead, it had seemed like an invisible mascot.
Of course, the people in the General Staff did have grounds to feel dissatisfied.
The General Command and the General Staff had always had overlapping responsibilities. That unusual organizational structure was actually a lingering poison from the days of the Empire.
But could the Galactic Empire and the Commonwealth really be compared? The Empire ruled half the galaxy, with hundreds of vassal states and dozens of satellite nations under its command, and possessed the strongest armed forces in the world. The vast armies under the Dragon King included the Imperial Guard, vassal armies, local forces, border fleets, lordly fleets, and auxiliary imperial troops, among others. Their soldiers were drawn from more than a hundred civilizations. Many had dual citizenship, and some even held the dual political identities of great nobles' retainers and national servicemen.
Under those circumstances, it made perfect sense to have a Grand Marshal's Office, a Military Affairs Bureau, a Space Fleet Command, and a Starrealm Knights order on top of the Privy Council and the Ministry of Defense.
The Commonwealth's military, by contrast, had relatively simple origins and was nowhere near as large. Establishing a General Command modeled on the Grand Marshal's Office and a General Staff modeled on the