Quoted By:
loredump for kfp, please tell me if there is something that I can still work on, the picture is a bit unpolished btw
Since their population is low compared to global players like /morig/ or /inf/, at first kfp doesn’t seem very powerful.
A 2-year conscript service gives access to a large reserve army that can be called on in wartime.
However this isn’t feasible to secure long range trade routes for extended periods of time, let alone project hard power on a global scale.
This initial weakness resonated in their military structure, that is forced to use novel asymmetric and sharp power approaches in warfare.
For example the war ministry can rely on an unusually large logistics and supply corps that focuses on moving large amounts of troops and supplies fast around the country as well as a communications division operating a dense network of semaphore towers for rapid relaying of information from all over the
In general, this resulted in a quality over quantity approach.
Since more than 50% of the homeland is covered in rough mountainous terrain, using it to their advantage became a key cornerstone of offensive and defensive strategy.
As a result the Mountaineer Corps developed naturally from traditions of local hunters and mountaineers.
Recruited from the sons of shepherds and farmers living in the mountains, the men of the corps know their combat environment from birth, in fact, their physiology is already adapted to the low oxygen in the altitudes thousands of meters above sea level when they begin their official training.
A specialized, elite branch of the Army, the mountaineer corps is equipped for warfare in the cold and merciless environment of the snowy peaks and glaciers that cover significant parts of the country.
This potent fighting force is trained in sabotage and asymmetric assault on supplies and troops moving through the harsh terrain for example: setting up ambushes or triggering avalanches.
As a result, their gear must be equipped to deal with the difficult environment they are facing on the daily.
The weather in the mountains is cold and wet and the terrain difficult to traverse. Because of this, traditional flintlock rifles are not reliable enough, because:
a) the firing mechanism is exposed to the elements and can easily fail
b) their long barrels and high weight are impractical to carry or to climb a rock wall with.
The solution was a needle-carbine that offered a protected combustion chamber as well as being significantly lighter than a full-size model. Manufactured in a limited production run in the precision mills of the royal armory, it is equipped with a diopter peep sight and a reduced-weight stock, these guns were effective at ranges of up to 200 meters and could be easily strapped to the back of a soldier during extended climbing.
Pictured is the gun with the shoulderstrap, featuring an alpine edelweiss, a rare and sought after flower growing on exposed limestone rock between 6500 and 9800 feet above sea level.
That is a real flower btw, it is used often in Swiss, German and Austrian alpine symbols as well as their armed forces:
> There is a flower known to botanists, one of the same genus with our summer plant called "Life-Everlasting", a Gnaphalium like that, which grows on the most inaccessible cliffs of the highest mountains, where the mountain animals dare hardly venture, and which the hunter, tempted by its beauty and by his love for his fair maiden, climbs the cliffs to gather, and is sometimes found dead at the foot, with the flower in his hand. It is called by botanists the Gnaphalium leontopodium, but by the Swiss Edelweiß, which signifies Noble Purity.