Imperial Japanese Navy Strikes Vietcong Targets in the Backbone of Heaven.

The Imperial Japanese Navy has begun striking targets across the Great Orinoco, focusing operations in the Backbone of Heaven cluster. Co-Prosperity Sphere representatives describe it as the start of a “strategic offensive” against Vietcong and communist forces.

Our Analysis: The remoteness of the region means credible details may not emerge for at least 36 hours. However, sources within the IJN have hinted for weeks that this operation will be a significantly larger response than anything seen to date.

The Vietcong almost exclusively use independent colonies, stations and friendly governments to hide their personnel, dispersing them among civilian populations and fleets. The ability of the IJN to target such embedded networks will define the scope & success of the campaign.

Purpose-built Vietcong fortress stations, known to exist in the more remote regions of the Orion Arm, have only been discovered a handful of times, forcing the IJN to focus instead on smaller, decentralized cells operating under civilian cover.

The Vietcong’s major interstellar combatants, classes of warships whose destruction would represent a far larger success for the IJN, have only occasionally been found in independent ports, and usually by accident.