The Preventers was founded at the conclusion of the One Year War as a new and better version of the old Federation Armed Forces. First conceived by Lady Une, formerly second-in-command of OZ under Treize Khushrenada, the concept of the Preventers was at first rejected by the new World Nation government, who were leaning towards a smaller police/SWAT-type force. The argument of the anti-military faction was that a military buildup would lead to another round of civil wars, which was what the new government was precisely hoping to never have happen again.

In the end Lady Une's argument won over the council, which surprised some considering her past background. However, she brought up some points that even the anti-military faction could not ignore: that the Federation's demise had been brought about by excess and the weakness of the world central government, not by the fact that they were a military power, and that there needed to be much more than a police force presence to keep order throughout the world and the colonies.

The Treaty of Geneva on 1 January AC 196 established the World Nation as the legitimate political authority for all nations of the world as well as any colonies. It also officially created the Preventers. The actual Preventers Charter was drafted by Lady Une, General Michael K. Brown, and several of the World Nation leaders and was signed on 2 January. The Charter provided for the mission statement and vision for the Preventers, a general organization structure, and its core functions. Much of the Charter was left intentially vague, leaving Une to dictate policy as she saw fit and leaving her actions to be checked only by the World Nation council. A few World Nation leaders protested this, still seeing Une as the figure that had once commanded OZ, but the larger majority was eager to pass on the unpleasant task of organizing this new military.



ORGANIZATION

The main organizational unit of the Preventer is the major command: an overarching command which groups many similar jobs together and combines them under one commander. Each major command is represented on each Preventers base, though there are specific bases which claim home to the headquarters of a command.

The main Preventers Headquarters is located in Geneva, Switzerland. The small Bern Command Station is a backup headquarters in case anything should happen to the main headquarters, as well as the headquarters for Services Command. Bases in which major commands are housed are: Bolivar Command Base in South America, Chavez Command Base in Middle America, Mildenhall Command Base in Great Britain, Sparta Command Base in Greece, Kashmir Command Base in East Asia, Chi Lai Command Base in China, and MacDonnell Command Base in Australia.

Other support bases are: Los Angeles Air Station in North America, Arctic Sea Station in Greenland, Fortaleza Sea Station in South America (Brazil), Tripoli Air Station in Africa, Warsaw Air Station in Poland, Laptev Sea Station in Russia, Yokohama Sea Station in Japan, and Polar Observation Station in Antarctica. There is also a base, Gemini Command Base, on Colony L3, and a central lunar station on the moon. Lake Victoria, the former site of the OZ Academy, was left abandoned after the war. Plans were made to rebuild it into a support base, but the plan ran behind schedule and was put on hold when the A007 uprising began.

For a map of the locations of Preventers bases around the world, click here.



MAJOR COMMANDS AND IMPORTANT PERSONNEL

Preventers Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
Lieutenant General Une: Preventers Commander-in-Chief
Captain Pierre Gils-Reve: Executive Officer (specialty field: Intelligence)
Headquarters Information

• MISSION SUPPORT COMMAND (MSC)
  Headquarters: Chi Lai Command Base, Shanghai, China
  Major General Sally Po: Preventers Second-in-Command, Chief of Support and Personnel
  Major C. T. Li: Communications officer (executive aide to General Une)

  Mission Support Command is considered one of the two most important of all the commands in the Preventers organizational structure. Due to its (stated) focus as more of a peacekeeping organization than a true military such as the Federation had been, the Preventers was not built around a core of military combat forces. Rather, it is centered around a goal of humanitarian missions, rescue operations, and military envoys for foreign dignitaries. In this respect, Mission Support Command is both the largest command and also the most eclectic in that it consists of armed personnel working side-by-side with those who might be commonly termed "paper-pushers" in any other organization. MSC is divided into two distinct groups: Support and Personnel Group (SPG) and Defense Missions Group (DMG).

  At the forefront of Mission Support Command is its commander, Major General Sally Po. As a veteran of the One Year War serving as a medical officer for the Federation, a rebel freedom fighter, and then an ally of the Gundam pilots, General Po is one of the most respected military professionals of the times. Besides being commander in chief of MSC, General Po is also commander of Support and Personnel Group, the group which runs departments such as the Personnel Center (to handle all transfers, changes of station, deployments, finance, military personnel records, and the like), Communications, Transportation, Logistics and Planning, and Scheduling. General Une's aide, Major C.T. Li, also served with the Federation Army during the war as a communications expert.

  The Defense Missions Group is the operational side of the house, having at its fingertips access to various helicopters, transports, jets, and ships. The only military craft which it does not have access to are mobile suits, which are limited strictly for use by Operations Combat Command as per the Treaty of Geneva. DMG is constantly active around the globe, enforcing the World Nations' policies in a peaceful but strict manner. DMG employs many civilians as well as military personnel, and in that number of civilians are many ambassadors, interpreters, foreign ministers, and negotiators. In effect, DMG may be regarded as a militarized ambassador corps.

   
  

• SECURITY OPERATIONS COMMAND (SOC)
  Headquarters: Chavez Command Base, Guatemala, Central American States
  Brigadier General Michael K. Brown: Special Operations and Security Forces Commander, Head of Intelligence
  Captain Enrico Lopez: Executive Officer (specialty: Security Clearance Department)
  Captain Varis Machida: SFA (Special Forces Agent)
  Brigadier General (formerly A007 Lieutenant Commander) Dermand Etille: Special Operations and Intelligence Chief of Planning and Support

  Security Operations Command is the "underground" muscle of the Preventers: the core of what makes it able to remain a militarized organization informed on current world security issues and able to take strategic action if necessary. SOC is divided into three groups: Special Operations Group (SOG), Intelligence (ING), and Security Forces Group (SFG). The head of SOC is Brigadier General Michael K. Brown, a decorated veteran of the One Year War in the Federation Army. Within a "general" section of SOC, not under any group, is the Security Clearance and Classified Information Department, in which Captain Enrico Lopez, Brown's executive officer, is specialized.

  Special Operations Group is perhaps the most controversial of all the organizations within the Preventers itself, and was almost written out of the charter. This is due to the not-quite-legal nature of its being, as the missions of SOG can be regularly classified as Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW), such as sabotage, stealth operations, spying, psychological warfare, and combat rescue. The members of SOG are a unique blend of war-seasoned veterans and new recruits, but all have been highly trained. Members of SOG are in top form physically and mentally, as SOG missions are often conducted under stressful circumstances. In the months following the signing of the Treaty of Geneva, the World Nation often called upon SOG for covert support of DMG missions. Of course, SOG missions are kept strictly confidential and under cover of the publicized DMG efforts.

  Intelligence Group also sends out agents into the field, but is much more open about its movements. The main purpose of Intelligence Group is, in fact, to be seen and to let any who oppose the World Nation know that the Preventers are watching. Any top secret information is usually obtained through means of SOG, but Intelligence has uncovered its fair amount of questionable data, which is immediately rerouted up the channels to General Brown for review. Most Intelligence agents are young, with a background or degree in journalism or radio/television/film, or were war reporters during the One Year War. Public Relations is a subgroup of Intelligence.

  The last group in SOC, Security Forces, is the police force of the Preventers. SFG guards all Preventers bases as well as deployment camps, supplies security patrols and gate and flightline guards, mans the security cameras in all the buildings on and around base, and maintains order and discipline on base by strictly enforcing the law. In the charter, this part of SOC originally did not exist, since Une had wanted to contract security out to local civilian police organizations, but General Brown's arguments that Preventers personnel would keep a closer eye on sensitive information finally swayed her to rewrite the charter.

   
  

• MAINTENANCE COMMAND (MXC)
  Headquarters: Kashmir Command Base, Kashmir, Eastern Arabian Republic

  Maintenance Command is essential for the smooth operation of any Preventers base or station. The soldiers of MXC are each specialized in one or several kinds of craft or vehicle, maintaning and repairing, among others, helicopters, submarines, missiles, jet engines, and mobile suits. The Civil Engineering Group is a subset of Maintenance Command and is in charge of building, maintaining, and repairing all facilities on base or in any deployed location.

  Unlike soldiers of other commands, who have their own headquarters on any base, there is no central maintenance commander on each base. Maintainers are assigned specifically to one unit and expected to integrate into the unit, in order to develop the best working relationship with the crew that actually operates the machinery that they work on.

   
  

• OPERATIONS COMBAT COMMAND (OCC)
  Headquarters: Sparta Command Base, Thessaloniki, Greece
  Colonel Milliard Peacecraft: Combat Command Chief of Operations
  Major Lucrezia Noin: Mobile Suit/Ground Support Division Commander

  Usually the backbone of any conventional military, the combat front of the Preventers has been scaled back due to the fear of many World Nation politicians of another Federation-like military or another One Year War. Combat Command, therefore, is a small but tightly organized command, made up mostly of mobile suit pilots. The Chief of Operations is Colonel Milliard Peacecraft, better known as Zechs Merquise, the Lightning Baron, during the War.

  The units of OCC are divided, Army-style, into divisions usually led by a lieutenant colonel or a major. Though the soldiers of OCC consider themselves pilots first and foremost, they have also received special training in ground combat. OCC also encompasses the smaller but very deadly Missile Operations Command. The World Nation uses OCC mainly to stem small, grass-roots rebellions in several of the smaller nations or new colonies that have been set up since the war ended.

  The future of OCC depends on the fate of the mobile suit: according to the Treaty of Geneva, the World Nation hopes to phase out the use of the mobile suit by the end of AC 200. If this succeeds, the World Nation may decide that in an era of world peace, OCC may no longer be needed and may be disbanded altogether.

   
  

• MATERIEL COMMAND (MTC)
  Headquarters: MacDonnell Command Base, Australia

  Materiel Command, as its name suggests, supplies the resources to construct new weaponry, vehicles, facilities, and virtually anything that needs building. The Contracting Group, part of Materiel Command, oversees the purchase of new weapons systems and is the only part of MTC that is entirely made up of military personnel. Most of the personnel in MTC are civilians working for the World Nation who have been put in MTC as liaisons between the Preventers and the government.

   
  

• RESEARCH AND SCIENCE COMMAND (RSC)
  Headquarters: Bolivar Command Base, La Paz, South American States (Bolivia)

  The World Nation gives a limited budget each fiscal year to the Preventers to fund research of new military technology. Though most of the politicians on the World Nation council oppose this research, they hope that RSC will make some important breakthroughs that will help the civilian community as well. Most of RSC is made up of engineers and scientists.

   
  

• SERVICES COMMAND (SVC)
  Headquarters: Bern Command Station, Bern, Switzerland

  Services Command provides food services, recreation, family centers, lodging and housing, athletic facilities, and organizes base-wide activities for holidays and special occasions. Although regarded widely as a group existing only for morale-boosting purposes, SVC does its job very efficiently and some of their cooks are known even to the civilian world.

   
  

• MEDICAL COMMAND (MDC)
  Headquarters: Mildenhall Command Base, Mildenhall, Great Britain

  Medical Command provides a full range of health care to the Preventers military community, including health insurance, benefits to family members, and discounted rates on most drugs and hospital stays. The facilities of MDC are very up to date and some of the most modern found throughout the world or the colonies. Many of the doctors of MDC are also funded to do research through the Research and Science fund given to RSC by the World Nation.

   
  

• COLONIAL COMMAND (CC)
  Headquarters: Gemini Command Base, Capitol District, Colony L3

  Colonial Command was founded to encompass all five major colonies, the Moon colony, many of the smaller industrial colonies that are scattered through space, and the new Martian and Jupiter Moon colonies, including A007. The colonials tolerate the presence of a military, having stated that as long as there are no pressures exerted upon the colonies like that of the Federation or OZ, they will support the Preventers.

Included into the Preventers Charter is authorization for the construction of a ballistic missile defense system. This is a special high security clearance-operated system designed to be a last-ditch defense measure if anything like the Eve Wars would ever happen again and something like a colony or a ship would be dropped to earth. The state-of-the-art missiles housed in this defense system have a range as far as Lagrange Point 1, or Colony L1, and are designed to be able to destroy massive objects, such as the former Libra.

The point of construction chosen for the MDS was Kashmir Command Base in Asia Minor, headquarters of Maintenance Command. The base was enlarged to build five missile silos in a ring formation, with each silo being able to house up to four missiles.

Only one control exists to the system, located in the central headquarters building inside the Kashmir base. The codes for this command system are complicated and only to be used in extenuating circumstances. Once inputed, the system then triggers the release of missiles to whatever target is specified. The only three people in the entire Preventers organization with access to these codes are General Une, General Michael K. Brown, and General Sally Po.