The Navy of Ropen

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The Gran Ropen Navy (GRN) is the naval warfare service branch of the Ropen States Armed Forces and is tasked with protecting Ropen from hostile attack, keeping shipping routes open, and preventing piracy. The Ropen Navy traces its origins to the Revolutionary Navy, which was established during the Ropen Revolutionary War. During the war, the Navy was used to harass Machten forces from the sea, as a way to avoid dealing with their formidable defenses. At the time, the ships of the Navy were nothing more than small motor boats attached with machine guns and extra armor. At the end of the war, Ropen inherited many Machten ships, but the government scrapped them all as keeping them around was deemed as traitorous. As the years carried on, Ropen would build up its Navy as a means to easily defend its sole island of Darhurst from any would be attackers. During the Ropen Civil War, the Navy was used as a way to quickly bombard communist holdouts before assaulting them with infantry. In recent years, the Navy has truly exploded in size, now being a much more capable and better trained fighting force.

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The Ropen Navy has 89,124 personnel, with 10,000 in ready reserve. Of those on active duty, more than eighty percent are enlisted sailors, and around fifteen percent are commissioned officers; the rest are midshipmen of the Ropen Naval Academy and midshipmen of the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps at over 20 universities around the country and officer candidates at the Navy's Officer Candidate School.

Sailors prove they have mastered skills and deserve responsibilities by completing Personnel Qualification Standards (PQS) tasks and examinations. Among the most important is the "warfare qualification", which denotes a journeyman level of capability in Surface Warfare, Aviation Warfare, Information Dominance Warfare, Naval Aircrew, Special Warfare, Seabee Warfare, Submarine Warfare or Expeditionary Warfare. Many qualifications are denoted on a sailor's uniform with Ropen Navy badges and insignia.

Commissioned Officers
The commissioned officer ranks of The Ropen Navy are divided into three categories: junior officers, senior officers, and flag officers. Junior officers are those officers in pay grades O-1 to O-4, while senior officers are those in pay grades O-5 and O-6, and flag officers are those in pay grades of O-7 and above

Enlisted
Sailors in pay grades E-1 through E-3 are considered to be in apprenticeships. They are divided into five definable groups, with colored group rate marks designating the group to which they belong: Seaman, Fireman, Airman, Constructionman, and Hospitalman. E-4 to E-6 are non-commissioned officers (NCOs), and are specifically called Petty Officers in the Navy. Petty Officers perform not only the duties of their specific career field but also serve as leaders to junior enlisted personnel. E-7 to E-9 are still considered Petty Officers, but are considered a separate community within the Navy. They have separate berthing and dining facilities (where feasible), wear separate uniforms, and perform separate duties.

After attaining the rate of Master Chief Petty Officer, a service member may choose to further his or her career by becoming a Command Master Chief Petty Officer (CMC). A CMC is considered to be the senior-most enlisted service member within a command, and is the special assistant to the Commanding Officer in all matters pertaining to the health, welfare, job satisfaction, morale, utilization, advancement and training of the command's enlisted personnel. CMCs can be Command level (within a single unit, such as a ship or shore station), Fleet level (squadrons consisting of multiple operational units, headed by a flag officer or commodore), or Force level (consisting of a separate community within the Navy, such as Subsurface, Air, Reserves).

CMC insignia are similar to the insignia for Master Chief, except that the rating symbol is replaced by an inverted five-point star, reflecting a change in their rating from their previous rating (i.e., MMCM) to CMDCM. The stars for Command Master Chief are silver, while stars for Fleet or Force Master Chief are gold. Additionally, CMCs wear a badge, worn on their left breast pocket, denoting their title (Command/Fleet/Force)

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The main role of the Navy of is to keep Ropen connected to the rest of the world, as Ropen isn't able to produce most of its food by itself due to its rather bad geographic positioning. Due to the small size and budget, the Navy has come up with clever workarounds to fulfill this role. For example, the Navy is incredibly submarine centric, allowing for destruction of much stronger fleets with little fear of losses. AI vessels are also in development to make up for personnel issues, specifically, AI operated suicide drones. AI vessels are already part of the Navy, specifically the Grey Eagle class minesweeper. The Navy works closely with the Airforce, in an effort to make up for the small size of both branches. The main battle plan, in case of war, is to use the Airforce to provide the Navy time to fully prepare. Once the fleet is fully mobilized, any remaining aircraft will escort one massive strike group to take care of whatever threat is attacking Ropen. Due to this plan, the Navy must be ready for war at a moments notice, with a minimum of 85% of vessels fully ready at any given moment. In case of a surprise attack, ground stationed SAM (Surface to Air Missiles) and SSM (Surface to Ship Missiles) are ready to eliminate any incoming threats in order to provide time for a full scale retaliation.

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