Ordo Belli — Operational Structure

Commission

• The operation is recognised as combined-arms scale — more than one Branch committed.
• The unified commander is designated. The designation weighs the threat's primary domain (a system-mouth threat favours a fleet officer; a defended-world threat favours a ground officer; a coastal threat favours a sea officer), the senior officers present, and the operation's expected duration — longer operations may favour a commander who can sustain the command burden.
• The commission is formally recorded by the Holy Office and the treasury, with copies to the standing staff, the Vox liaison, and the operational command-post.
• The commission specifies: operational scope, geographic and temporal; the Branches committed; the cradle defended; the casus belli; and the dissolution criterion.
• Command is assumed at the operational start time. From that moment every Branch's senior officer reports to the unified commander for cross-Branch matters; standing chains continue for in-Branch matters.

Dissolution

• The operation reaches the dissolution criterion — cradle secured, threat broken, operational withdrawal, or recall.
• The unified commander declares operational close on the operational channel.
• The Reckoning is held.
• The commission dissolves; Branches resume standing chains; the commander writes the after-action; the senior staff and the Holy Office review.

The vox-net at combined-arms scale is layered. Three in-Branch channels — command, unit operations, and general traffic — sit beneath a fourth: the operational channel, held by the unified commander and voiced by the Servitor Vox, heard by every Branch's senior officer at once.

• The Vox holds routine traffic — situation reports, the count, formal liaison. Human commanders speak on the operational channel only when the operation must hear something now.
• The unified commander speaks operationally — assignments of objective, reinforcement decisions, the formal Reckoning opening.
• A Branch's senior officer breaks onto it only for a Branch-level event the operation must know, a reinforcement request the commander must decide, or a communication from the apex.
• The cut-to-static on the operational channel is a combined-arms small death — the operational commander has been hit; the flagship has lost its long-range vox; the operation is in the hands of the next senior officer until the channel comes back.

At operational close the channel returns to the Vox's standing liturgy and dissolves gradually as Branches detach. The recording of the operational channel is a doctrinal record, sealed and reviewed as part of the after-action.

• The unified commander declares operational close on the operational channel.
• Each Branch's senior officer reports the Branch's count in the formal liaison voice — hulls returned, hulls lost, named; Centuriae spent, named; wing pilots not returned, named; and the civilian count, where the operation defended a populated cradle.
• The Servitor Vox compiles the cross-Branch count and speaks it in the formal liturgical tone. Names from orbit, names from sea, names from the ground, names of pilots, names of civilians — all in one Reckoning.
• The Vox concludes with the formula: Pro Humanitate. Sine numero non habemus.
• Where the Imperial Armada engaged, the Vox adds that it did so and that its count is held by the Armada. No Armada names are spoken on the regular channel.
• The operational close is recorded — date, location, commander, Branches committed, count, outcome — and filed with the Holy Office, the treasury, the senior staff, and the standing record of the cradle defended.

The Reckoning is the doctrinal closure of the operation. No operation is doctrinally complete without it. A unified commander who dissolves the commission before the Reckoning has failed the doctrine.