2021 Black Desert Conflict

"Hold on, there's something new coming down..."
This article is incomplete and will require additional work.

The 2021 Black Desert Conflict, sometimes called the Black Sands Conflict, was a three-day period of armed conflict between September 17 and September 20, 2021, in the Black Desert and Dnieper Hot Zone between OEPU-backed Serif Specialty Robotics and Eurasian Soviet-backed Zaftra Free Enterprise, noted by most to be the birth of the age of piloted robotics in warfare.

The conflict was ostensibly over control of the Pripyat Exclusion Zone. It began with Zaftra Free Enterprise firing live rounds on unpiloted machines in the region, and the armed response of Serif Specialty Robotics. The fighting concluded when the Special Research Force, the OEPU organization behind the Combat Experiments Team and their Serif front organization, ordered the Prima Lorica vehicles involved in the conflict withdrawn.

While the battles themselves were ultimately of no historical relevance, the data assembled revealed hints of the Ursa Ruska program to the OEPU and the lessons learned formed the basis of the Lorica Standard, creating the general doctrine of robotic warfare used in the Third World War two decades later.

Timeline of Events

As the Black Desert Conflict was very debatably not a war, its timeline in history is actually relatively clear cut, and the matter was largely resolved over the weekend of September 17th through 20th of that year, with relatively little lasting impact; largely due to the pseudo-extraterratorial nature of the Black Desert and the fact that neither nation wanted to admit to a pressing national interest in the private military contractors which fought the conflict.

September 17, 2021

The conflict can largely be considered to have begun on September 17, 2021.

Polissya Hotel Incident

In the early hours of the morning, the Polissya Hotel in Pripyat, former Ukraine SSR, came under fire by Zaftra Free Enterprise drone operators who were piloting Miniursa RFVs, under development by ZFE, using the pretext of having sighted unauthorized demolitions vehicles in and around the hotel, and claiming authority as contractors to the Eurasian Soviet. In reality, the hotel was the base camp for salvage and operations teams from Serif Speciality Robotics who were involved in Project Lorica and the testing and development of the Lorica Prima fighting vehicles. At the time, only one of the Lorica Prima was available to response - the X-01 Trooper, piloted by former JSDF Lieutenant Umeko Takada. The end result of the battle over the hotel was the complete loss of the Miniursa contingent.

Western Shore Incident

In the late afternoon/early evening of the same day, Takada and X-02 Scout pilot Jesse Matthews were conducting reconnaisance operations in their vehicles of the area around the now-dry lakebed of the Cooling Pond, when they caught a glimpse of Miniursa fighting vehicles escorting a column of trucks across the lakebed. Fearing a second attack, they engaged the Zaftra contingent in combat, resulting in the destruction of the column and heavy damage to X-01 Trooper, which took it out of action for most of the following day.

September 18, 2021

Ghost Forest Incident

In the midday of the 18th, on the second day of the conflict, X-02 Scout and X-03 Hive (piloted by Nassaar bin Abdur Raheem) sortied to the Ghost Forest in an attempt to complete scheduled testing of the X-03's namesake "Hive" drone system. While testing initially looked promising, they came under the attention of a Zerif squad that was testing a prototype of Ursa Ruska, and both X-03 and X-02 were damaged in the resulting fighting, surviving only with the timely intervention of Kenichi Yokota in the X-04 Defender.

Assault on Duga-1

Almost immediately following the Ghost Forest incident, OEPU intelligence assets impressed upon the Serif test cadre the importance of "dealing with" the possibility of an additional attack, and supplied them with information pertaining to Zaftra's apparent supply and operations base - the ruins of the Duga-1 military complex near Pripyat. After a hasty conference, the four Lorica Prima test pilots agreed to a pre-emptive strike against the facility, in part to buy the rest of the Serif team time to make their exit from the region. While they were ultimately unable to take the base, they inflicted mass casualties and confirmed the existence of a second Ursa Ruska unit, before being driven off by UAV air support.

September 19, 2021

Battle of the Amusement Park

Fleeing overland and through the night, the retreating Lorica Prima test pilots detoured through the amusement park ruins in the city of Pripyat, in order to provide close support to a Serif convoy that had come under UAV fire. They were largely successful in driving back the Zaftra force, allowing the escape of the Serif column, but this left them exposed and without a means to leave the city under their own power.

Battle for the Yanov Railway Station

They then proceeded to Yanov Railway Station, which they had to first take, then defend, against Zaftra forces, including both RFVs and additional Ursa Ruska forces. They held the station against this assault for nearly five hours before the arrival of a remotely-operated cargo train, which they were able to use to escape along with their vehicles.

September 20, 2021

By September 20th, armed conflict between the two private companies had ceased, and diplomatic backchannels began to take effect between the Eurasian Soviet and OEPU. The end result of the conflict saw both countries heavily penalize the private entities that they had used as proxies in the conflict, though this was of course largely only a matter of public saving of face. The Serif Speciality Robotics staff and operations largely got folded into the Combat Experiments Team, and almost all of Zaftra Free Enterprise were already black-budget Red Army Assets to begin with.

The mediation of the conflict did see the formal establishment of the Black Desert Exclusion Zone, and formally demilitarized the area until it was again invaded in the early phases of the Third World War, 15 years later.