4th Corporate War

Military: War

Covert operations explode into a shooting war as Arasaka and Militech move front line troops into battle. The ensuing conflict involves operations all over the globe, with heavy combat in major cities worldwide.

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As major international Megacorps at the absolute apex of Corporate power in the Cyberpunk age, both Arasaka and Militech were at a military scale equal to many of the smaller nations of WWII, fielding armies in the tens of thousands of troops. Both sides also possessed extremely advanced transportation and logistics systems, allowing them to strike at each other across the globe.   This combination of sophisticated war-fighting technology and lightning tactical movement made it all but impossible for many legitimate nations to stop these conflicts within their borders. Small engagements soon flared into major showdowns, until the battle reached a fever-pitch worldwide, with forces from both Megacorps staging major battles that embroiled entire cities.  

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The Land War

  The 4th Corporate War changed not only the face of Corporate interaction and politics, but of warfare itself. Until now, wars were still fought much as they had been in the past, with battle lines, "fronts," and clear-cut areas of conflict. It was easy to tell which side was winning and which was losing merely by looking at who had achieved which objectives. The Hot War was nothing like this. Attacks were sudden, savage, and usually unexpected. Targets could be anywhere on the globe, although most strikes were in mission-critical areas such as transportation, communications, and logistics. Attack forces were highly mobile with fast "hit and fade" tactics making it nearly impossible to stop and engage a force. AVs, panzers, and other highly mobile units made up the majority of the attacking forces, at least at the beginning. ACPAs and combat cyborgs were fielded for the first time in large numbers, with entire companies of them deployed on both sides. Battlefields were transformed into high-tech nightmares as remotes, battlefield robots, and infantry clashed for the first time.   Even so, the War started out slow, as both sides tried to find out how much they could get away with without getting slapped down by the governments of the world. Probing raids were common, mostly targeted at the other side's military assets. As both sides grew more confident in their abilities (and in the realization that no one was going to rein them in) attacks became bolder and more brutal. By mid-year of the War, in parts of the developing world, set piece battles became commonplace. Airports, spaceports, factories, mines, even seaports and banking facilities became fair game as the stakes increased. By mid2022, pitched battles involving aircraft, AVs, tanks, power armors, and thousands of troops were the rule, as well as interdiction strikes on international trade, energy production, and transportation systems.   As the war entered its fifth month, both sides began to show signs of exhaustion. Neither had planned for open warfare to last so long, and vital supplies like spare parts, weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies were becoming scarce. Vehicles, notably traditional "hangar queens" like AVs and panzers, started to show the stress of near continuous use without proper maintenance, as did ACPAs and cyborgs. Meat troops also suffered, as desertions and disciplinary problems became increasingly common, especially among hired mercenaries and independent contractors. Despite this multi-faceted fatigue, some Arasaka and Militech units still continued fighting (without support from either side) well into 2023 before exhausting themselves.  

The Sea War

  One of the biggest effects of unrestricted Corporate warfare came about as both sides attempted to deny the other access to global shipping and transportation. One method to accomplish this was to spread specially engineered bioplagues to target strategic seaport hubs, including Hong Kong, Shanghai, Busan, and Long Beach, all with wildly varied levels of success. Attempts were also made to target the critical port of Singapore, but the Republic of Singapore Navy's (RSN) take-no-prisoner's approach made attacks by either Militech or Arasaka suicidal.   With access to a relatively large number of submersibles and small warships, both sides also waged an open war on shipping, especially on large container ships suspected of carrying munitions and supplies to the opposition (in one case of poor logistics and communications, both sides had loaded cargoes on the same ship, which the other sides' forces subsequently sank). In addition, both sides resorted to deploying autonomous weapons that wandered the sea lanes looking for potential targets, often sinking as many friendlies and neutrals as they did enemies.   The result was a total suspension of the world's transshipping trade, creating a worldwide economic crisis as hundreds of desperately needed container ships sat empty or abandoned by their crews mid-transit. Many of these ships are still drifting even into the Time of the Red, creating vast ghost fleets that are later scavenged or recovered by Nomads.   The last effect of the sea war was almost tragicomic, as submarines and surface warships pounded the sea floor seeking their enemies' subsurface bases, resulting in the obliteration of almost all of the OTEC and CINO assets which had been the cause of the War in the first place.  

The Orbital War

  As Corporate attacks disrupted banking, information, and news services; orbital space narrowly escaped becoming another battlefield with suborbital delta fighters and gunships, but at this point, the space-dwelling "Highriders" decided it was time to take a hand in the War.   Up to now, Militech and Arasaka had held monopolies on the ability to hit ground targets from orbit, known as Orbital Artillery (or ortillery). Orbital artillery can range from small "crowbar penetration loads" to multi-ton "rocks" fired by an ESA mass driver (little more than a normal reentry vehicle loaded with crushed lunar stone). The availability of ortillery made many of the attacks of The Hot War possible.   An ortillery unit is almost immune to counter-battery fire, can be arranged long beforehand, and can be accurately targeted even into the middle of a city. Its kinetic energy and attack speed virtually ensure the destruction of its target and make engagement with any sort of active countermeasures difficult.   The downsides of ortillery are the time it takes to arrive (usually around five minutes from the launch call), its signature (everyone knows you've started using ortillery once the first round arrives), and the fact that you have to have a launcher orbiting above you to use it (which may be hard to arrange).   The other catch is that as soon as a launcher reveals itself, it's only a matter of time (ranging from minutes to a few days) before a rival orbital power destroys or "commandeers" it. For all of that, ortillery strikes are nonetheless commonly used. And both sides had spent years placing dozens of launchers in orbit and spent considerable effort to place systems designed to take command of launchers belonging to other Corporations and governments.   But it turned out they weren't the only ones.