Editing Imperial Guard Regiment (section)

== Origin ==

[[Space Marine]]s are all well and good, but the implantation of [[gene-seed]] is a risky, prolonged, and expensive process. Even at the peak of the [[Great Crusade]], there were never more than a few million Marines in the entire galaxy. The [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor]] and his growing Imperium needed more soldiers to take and hold planets, and so the Imperial Army was founded to act as an auxiliary force -- while the Space Marines would smash fortresses and other hard targets, the Army would follow behind to hold the line.

To improve force cohesion, they were under the direct authority of the Space Marines with whom they served, but the [[Horus Heresy]] proved how dangerous such an arrangement could be. When [[Horus]] fell, not only did he take his fellow traitor Primarchs and their Legions with him, but also his associated ships and soldiers. Therefore, after the Heresy was put down, the surviving leaders of the Imperium divided the three military branches so that no traitor could strike such a blow at the Imperium ever again.

The forces themselves were separated into smaller pieces, also to reduce the ability of heretics to cause trouble. The [[Legiones Astartes]] were split up into [[Space Marine Chapter|Chapters]], the [[Imperial Navy]] was divided into [[Battlefleet]]s, and the newly-named Imperial Guard was divided into '''regiments'''. Each regiment in theory could only contain a few hundred to a few thousand Guardsmen (but often times there can be regiments of several million Guardsmen although they are very rare and expensive), and was limited to a single specialty (Infantry, Artillery, Armor), so that if even an entire regiment turned traitor, they would not last long -- without the Navy, they could not travel to other planets (or bomb the shit out of them since the navy also got the aircraft), and without the support of other regiments, they would lack most tactical options. The old Discipline Master system was abolished and the [[Commissar|Commissariat]] was also founded to be an independent watchdog to root out heresy wherever it grew.

Regiments with a bit of a mix, such as armored regiments with some mobile artillery and mechanized infantry elements, do exist but still would not survive long as those elements would be too few to do anything more than support; they would be quickly crushed by a combined arms task force ordered to kill the traitor regiment. Support elements are very helpful but nowhere near as effective as a dedicated unit. Strangely, even the ground-attack craft belong to the Navy. Which is stupid since if a ship goes rogue any surface-to-space defense wouldn’t last long against a surprise air attack from guys they didn’t know they needed to pay attention to. If the Guard had control, the ground pounders wouldn’t need to worry about their own ship blowing them up if their defenses go down due to a rogue regiment (and the regiments would have too few aircraft in this case to matter anyway) or worry about their defenses going down in the first place (a handful of ground support craft die pretty dang quickly when everyone is shooting at them). Then there is the fact the transports don’t carry bombers, support, and fighters dedicated to assisting the Guard, so the Navy usually has only a handful of ground support craft like Valkyries and Vultures but tons of fighters that they proceed to suicidally throw at other ships instead of the atmospheric combat they were given to the Navy for in the first place. Needless to say, the Imperium’s enemies do not share this insane problem. Even worse is the transports’ escorts downright treacherous habit of sallying forth to attack enemy ships instead of following their orders to stay and defend the transports. It goes about as badly for the Guard as your imagining. Then the Guardsmen hit the dirt and learn the hard way that they have limited air defense, maybe a couple Valkyries for carting Colonels around, and few or no other friendly aircraft while the enemy has fleets of bombers and fighters swarming the skies. The Imperial Guard manages to win anyway through sheer guts and a mountain of mangled corpses. Then, they get picked up, shipped off to a new planet a few days maybe weeks maybe mere hours away and do it all over again.