Flags of Cochin

Here is a compilation of flags I created for my fictional Kingdom of Cochin based upon the historical flag of Kingdom of Cochin and the emblem of Cochin Royal Family.


National Flag 

The Royal Seal - The King's personal Seal

Royal Cochin Defense Forces


The Joint Command of all the Armed Forces of the nation.

Royal Cochin Defense Forces Crest

Royal Cochin Army - Flag

Royal Cochin Army - Crest

Royal Cochin Navy - Flag

Royal Cochin Navy - Crest

Royal Cochin Air Force - Flag

Royal Cochin Air Force - Flag with Roundels

Royal Cochin Air Force - Crest

Information and Communication Security

0200-0230

Thimphu, Bhutan Province

me: da whr r u?
B: home
 u?
me: me too
B: i got ligament tear da
me: how??????????
B: my right thumb....while playin basketball
me: damn now how do u write nething?
B: i cant
me: damn now how abt s8? wht u gonna do? whn will it be alryt?
B: two more weeks
 will have viva series
me: thn no probs?
ok
B: got good marks in fir

The sudden loss of connection with his friend did not worry Jibin. After all internet is not as good everywhere in the world. However when repeated attempts at buzzing his friend who is on an exchange program with a foreign university did not work Jibin raised the chat window. He tried to raise chats with some other friends who are online and it all worked out, except for those of his friends who are abroad. Jibin did not however pay much heed to it and when he came back after making some coffee around 20 minutes later, a cousin of his working abroad had pinged him for a chat. Without worrying much about the seeming loss of communications some time back, Jibin went back to his chats.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Urumqi, Xinjiang Province

The phone is ringing. The man wakes up and groggily switches on the bedlamp and fumbles to pick up the telephone receiver.
“Hello, who is this?”
“Sir, this is Mandhar Kanth calling from Jaffna Branch Office. We have a serious situation here. There has been an accident on the assembly plant and four employees are injured.”
The bad news from a major branch office of the Tatra Automative Works jolted Yevgeny Filat, the Vice President (Productions) of TAW. Sitting up on the bed he checked the time on the bedside alarm and asked,
“Yes Kanth, I am listening. What happened down there?”
“Sir, the crane for the engine block assembly yard had one of its chains break and the engine block came crashing down on the assembly floor. The four injured are the assembly line movers. Condition of one is critical and the other three also have some serious injuries. We have sent them to the hospital, however the assembly line is now halted. We have 10 more units of the order from Ceylon Tea Corporation pending which we have to deliver by tomorrow.”
“Is there no way you can speed up the schedule?”
“No Sir, we are as of now fixing the crane, however that in itself is two hours of work lost. We have also sent for replacement staffers from other shifts but they also would not be here for another three hours. It is not possible to complete the order tomorrow itself.”
“Okay, I will place a call to the Ceylon Tea Corporation myself informing about the delay, meanwhile…….”
The sudden beeping sound of termination of connection annoyed the Yevgeny however he brought up the number from caller list and dialed it again. Again no connection. By now he was getting more and more annoyed and tiptoing softly to avoid waking up his sleeping wife, Yevgeny went to his study to turn on his laptop to call Mandhar Kanth via the company intercom portal. Again an inexplicable fault is preventing Yevgeny to initiate communications with the Jaffna Branch. He then called the Tatra Corporate Communications Center in downtown Urumqi and ordered them to set up a secure satellite communications line. After an excruciating 15 minute delay, the connection was made with Jaffna branch and Filat could complete relaying the instructions to his subordinate official.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


Shaukat Afzal is driving his truck carrying a consignment of vegetables from Pollachi to Palghat when the Coimbatore FM radio station he loved to listen to suddenly went off the air. Though he tried to switch to all other FM and MW channels in his truck’s radio console, all of them gave the same static. Cursing his old truck’s radio system, Shaukat switched on the rackety old tape player to listen to some Tamil film music.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


Heng Bao is sleeping by the counter in the 24 hours Fuel Station on the road between New Delhi and Jaipur while the television in the corner of his booth is flickering at mute. At 2AM the scheduled news program was disrupted and only static was seen on the TV. If Bao had tried switching to other channels the same static would have been seen. Even when the channels came back at 2.30 Heng Bao did not notice anything, engrossed as he was in a very deep sleep.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


Similar communication outages occurred all over Cochin. It would also be experienced by any person from a foreign country on trying to initiate communications with people in Cochin. Just as inexplicably as the communication breakages occurred, precisely 30 minutes later, it was reestablished.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


Bangalore, Karnataka Province

The routine Communication Security Protocol Testing was successfully completed by the Section 323 personnel along with the National Communications Database, National Reconnaissance Agency and Strategic Reconnaissance Agency. At a single command from Gen. Mohammad Faraz of Royal Cochin Police Force at 0145, all communication channels to outside of Cochin had been blocked. In the concerted action, overrides placed with all the cellphone networks, Internet Service Providers, Landline telephone service providers, radio stations and television stations. All commercial communication satellites would also be subjected to inexplicable jamming while over Cochin airspace for these thirty minutes, seeming like a software glitch. During this thirty minute period of communications blackout, the National Reconnaissance Agency’s electronic intelligence satellites and network of terrestrial antennae would sweep for any sort of electromagnetic signal traversing the Cochin skies. Complete communication blackout would be thus enforced and ensured. After the routine test, the communication systems were reset with most citizens of Cochin hardly noticing what happened. 

Section 323

For years they had been working as part of different agencies with the same aim, doing similar jobs. Now for the first time a Joint Command Center for Cyber Warfare has been set up, with a deceptive name - Section 323 or Section Cyber Warfare. Composed of Cyber Security and Network Security experts from National Intelligence Agency, Central Bureau of Investigation, Strategic Reconnaissance Agency, National Reconnaissance Agency, Strategic Engineers Corps, Research and Testing Directorate, Royal Cochin Special Forces and Varma Institute of Fundamental Research and ace hackers and crackers identified from several walks of life by CBI, Section 323 would be the principal Cyber Warfare unit of the Kingdom of Cochin. Ultra secretive, Section 323 does not advertise. Its discrete office at Bangalore is tucked away amidst the sprawling Electronic City Campus ensures a degree of anonymity for its staff. The building housing Section 323 is also one of the best protected in Bangalore with its entire Security being undertaken by Royal Cochin Special Forces albeit under guise of civilian security personnel. Unknown to the other companies operating in the building even the facility management at this secure building is managed by Central Bureau of Investigation.

It is from these premises that the defenders of the Kingdom's Networks work from. With access to every principal Government Department, ISPs and the Online Service Providers Section 323 is always on the watch for attacks against the IT infrastructure of the nation. Though at any time Section 323 may not have more than 200 staff at its office in Bangalore, its personnel are assigned to IT Services department in every major Government office. These officers may not have the designation of Cyber Security Officers but their jobs would be to ensure the security of these departments. When faced with significant attacks they call in support from Section 323. Section 323 also has teams stationed at the three National Communications Databases.

The role of Section 323 is not just defense but also offense. As the Fifth Domain of Warfare, Section 323 also evaluates possibilities of attack against nations and organizations potentially hostile to the Kingdom. With the assistance of NIA and SRA they are able to hack into commercial communication satellites and with the resources of a nation state and intellectual backups of some of the brightest minds in the world Section 323 is capable of launching covert attacks against the Kingdom's enemies in such a manner that all traces relating to the Kingdom would be erased. Section 323 is capable of targeting the Infrastructure, Power, Banking, Industrial, Communication and Trading sectors of enemies. The offense team is also involved in designing worms and malware which can be implemented by NIA Officers to cripple any hostile nation's infrastructure. It also actively assists NIA in gaining intelligence from enemy targets. 

National Communications Database

In order to safeguard the Kingdom from cyber warfare from within and without National Intelligence Agency, Central Bureau of Investigation, National Reconnaissance Agency and Strategic Reconnaissance Agency are operating as a joint venture the National Communications Database. A redundant secure system with three parallel physical operation centers at Madikery, Shimla and Kathmandu, NCD is a depository of all electronic communications going on in the Kingdom.

All Internet Service Providers would send a duplicate parallel of their data traffic to this Signal Intelligence database. Tier I, Tier II and Tier III ISPs have to comply to this mandate. Three massive signal farms at the three NCD locations would process them using an intricate Cloud Computing Architecture with Artificial Intelligence Processing. Redundant processing of the raw data would be conducted at the three data centers independently using in house decryption teams. Geosynchronous satellites would also monitor all communications apart from NRA's own network of communication antennae to capture any data transmission from a non native ISP. Strategic Reconnaissance Agency would be tracking all LEO, MEO satellites traversing Cochin territorial space and their communications would be captured by SRA's ferret satellites, aerostats and Trisanku Space Station. Records of all internet, telephone, mobile phone, VLF, ELF, SW, MW, FM transmissions made in the nation would be captured by the National Communications Database. Any commercial and conventional communications would thus be captured. Any non conventional communications detected would by default be tracked for possible subversion.

The data received at the National Communications Database, being in bitstream would be sifted in a modular process. All routing information would be analysed for network security purposes. All open communications would be analysed for key intelligence target patterns. Secure communications would be decrypted by progressively higher decryption machines and further analysed. Each NDC would consist of 50 BDH150 , 50 PFLOP Super computers in a Cloud Computing Architecture developed by Varma Institute of Fundamental Research and an Artificial Intelligence Protocol developed by Rajendra Varma Advanced Research Laboratory. Urgent data would be immediately be sent to CBI and NIA. Every bit of data received at the NDC are stored in vast subterranean databanks. Databanks that are full are relegated to reserve status in an ever expanding database as every data is considered non erasible for future intelligence applications. The data would continue to be accessible under the Cloud Computing database however through the interface of a mirror which would screen users from direct access to data without necessary clearances.

The National Data Centers have been in operation for several years now and the operations have been streamlined in such a way that the Kingdom of Cochin is one of the most information secure nations in the world. 

Local Area Attrition Defense Policy

"Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen. My name is Lt. Gen. Shankar Iyer, Chief of Army Staff, Royal Cochin Defense Forces. Today you, Municipal Commissioners of Ministry of Interior, officers of Royal Cochin Police Forces, National Defense Corps planning officers, Border Guard Brigade Commanders and staff of General Staff High Command are here to enumerate the Attrition Land Defense Doctrine for our nation."

"This week you would be creating the planning structure for our multi-layered defense structure. Currently our Border Guards are the principal defense layer. Each Border Guards Brigade has a defensive depth of 50 km during which they have emplaced adequate defenses to stop a massed assault as well as area assault. However the General Staff High Command cannot depend on a single layer of defense. We need better doctrine and systems to ensure the defense of our nation."

"War is an uncertain business. All our plans may get invalidated at the point of commencement of conflict. However that does not mean, we should not plan for those contingencies we can foresee and prepare for. Our current defense posture is designed to repulse multiple front assault by using the Border Guards to delay the invasion and then use the Royal Cochin Army formations to perform counter offense against the enemy formations. Now this doctrine is perfectly suited if and when we are invaded by an army of comparable size to Royal Cochin Army. It also lends greater thrust on high mobility warfare conducted within our borders by our premier strike forces. This doctrine was enough when Royal Cochin Army had one of the largest armies in the region and our strategic security was more secure."

"However what would happen if we were invaded by forces that grossly outnumber us? The Royal Cochin Army no longer has the absolute superiority in numbers that we enjoyed until the secession of Kazakhstan and Kyrghyztan. The Global strategic politics has also evolved in such a manner as it is possible that we may be faced with grossly outnumbering forces. In such a case depending on high mobility warfare alone would not be enough, we must prepare our nation to fight a high intensity attrition warfare as well."

"It is not possible to have defense structures like Border Guard Brigades spread out throughout the Kingdom. Such a policy would be a gross waste of our resources and man power. They would also be tactically unsound. It would spread our conventional and regular forces far too thinly, a situation that brings Napoleon's admonition on smuggling to memory. It is also pointless to create fortifications reminiscent of Maginot Line or Atlantic Line. No, what we need are more simpler, but more effective fortifications, that are easier to construct, and inexpensive in terms of men or material. This should be a defense network that can be maintained easily during peace time, with no unnecessary constraints on national economy or cause any grievance to our population."

"This is the policy as has been devised by Royal Cochin Army, Ministry of Interior and Royal Cochin Police Forces. The National Defense Corps formations in every Province and in every Municipality would be tasked to identify various potential axis of attack that could come upon their locality. City, Town and Village based defenses are what we are planning for. We should make every village as a point of attrition. Every center of population must be capable of supporting defensive operations. We must conceptualize a hostile force which would be massively over numbering us, we must slow their advance, we must be able to wage an attrition warfare so intense that they quit their invasion. For this every center of population must become a fortress in effect, complete with basic defensive structures, passive defenses and active defenses, called a Local Administrative Area Defense (LAAD)."

"NDC personnel along with Municipality Officials shall construct numerous Reserve Arsenals which shall be concealed structures with sizable weapons stores. Sizable quantities of fire arms for squad defenses, heavy machine guns, infantry mortars, Anti Tank Guided Missiles, MANPADS, Anti Vehicle and Anti Personnel Mines, field radios, demolition explosives and large quantities of infantry grade ammunition. All these weapons are to be drawn from respective QMC depots in the area. The major QMC depots could be identified by enemy and even destroyed, but the tools for defense must be scattered for ready use. Warehouses should also be maintained with structural materials for road blocks, hedge hogs, Caltropes, Barbed Wire, Sand bags and armor for pill box defenses. These stores would be maintained by the local NDC personnel along with the Municipality and Police officers of the area. These sites must also be made aware to the local Border Guard Brigades and any regular army formations. All help would be provided to conceal these depots using maskirovska. The NDC units must also prepare defense strategy so that in the event of a national emergency the required buildings in the area can easily be fortified s centers of resistance."

"Apart from these stores of local administrative area defense units (LAAD), NDC are also expected to establish District level Artillery Reserve Battalions (DARB). In every District concealed depots for the fielding of one full Battalion of 155mm Towed Guns must be established. These depots would comprise of the guns, tow trucks and sufficient ammunition and fuel for 45 days of continuous fighting. These DARB would also have integrated Air Defense Units to protect the artillery battalion comprising of a Company of Anti Air Artillery, tracked and wheeled."

"This would be the preliminary defense structure for the Attrition Defense Policy. The reserve personnel comprising the National Defense Corps wont be manning and operating these defenses, their operation would continue to be the mandate of service personnel of Royal Cochin Army. The National Defense Corps's principal duty would be as a support infrastructure for the combat operations which would be conducted by Royal Cochin Army units which would be assigned to these sectors. Only in case of incapacitation of these regular units can the local NDC units take over. The combat efficiency and tactical expertise of Royal Cochin Army units is not expected to be attained by the reserve duty personnel of National Defense Corps. However the local area expertise, tactical intelligence and terrain knowledge of the NDC personnel in these LAAD would be extremely important for sustained operations by the RCA units which is not expected to have local area awareness for effective defense. So both these formations would be mutually supportive but would have their own area of expertise."

"Now detailed information regarding tactics and procedures for this policy would be taught to you in this week. Accordingly you must supervise the establishment of these defenses in your assigned LAADs. Your dedication and work is absolutely essential for the all encompassing defense of our nation. Reserve personnel of NDC who report for their active duty would henceforth be trained in this policy so that during their weeks of service they learn how to properly integrate with regular units to mount an effective defense of their LAAD."

"So best of luck, Gentlemen. Let us work hard to secure our nation." 

Mountain Warfare School

Tok
Tibet
Mountain Warfare School

"Come on you stinky girls, is that all you can do? And you call yourselves soldiers. Do you want tampons my dearies? Bloody fairies, the lot of you."

The Drill Sergeant is bellowing in the faces of two elite soldiers of Royal Cochin Special Forces.

A Battalion from 23rd Special Forces regiment has been training at this facility for the past three weeks.
While the first 2 days of acclimatisation to the sheer cold and thin air of the Tibetan plateau was hell itself, the days succeeding made them think their intensive training regimen of initiation was pure vanilla.

Now the two commandos, both combat vets and with ranks of E5 Sergeants are having their backsides chewed to a pulp by a Squad Sergeant E6. The Sergeants had to deactivate a nuclear warhead. That in itself would not have been overtly taxing to these elite soldiers who between them had enough working knowledge to shame a University Professor. However the fact that they had to hack a hole in a perma frost lake and dive 30 ft under the surface to reach the warhead and they had to all that with a bare standard dive suit, no underwater breathing apparatus and only a weak penlight definitely put a cramp in their working.

This two man team attempted their first test today and it failed miserably. After 30 minutes in the bone chilling water they both were recalled to surface on the verge of hypothermia.

"You sodden fools, in a live situation by now you would have been dead and your genitals would be flying in a cloud 9 kms up in the sky. Now let us see what went wrong." The admonition from the instructor was particularly harsh for its decrease in vulgarity and forceful delivery. The Captain commanding the course took the team through video tapes that recorded their performance. Instead of alternating between one on bottom deactivating and on on surface maintaining the breach, switching positions every 50 seconds they both dived and when after 60 seconds came up for air found the breach in surface ice closed leaving only a small air gap. They had to expend a further 60 seconds to breach the ice.

The Captain then delivered the team to the hands of Squad Sergeant who would educate in a more forceful manner.

The Mountain Warfare School was set up as a joint venture between Kingdom of Cochin and Tibet. Before his soldiers could be tested this way their officers had to undergo an even tougher regimen. They had arrived three weeks earlier itself and had gone through the regimen with an even greater thoroughness. The very same Squad Sergeant had in fact questioned the very same Captain about the estimate numbers of fathers he possessed. Only after passing the tests would an officer would be permitted to command his soldiers to do the tests.

While the underwater exercises were going in one section of the lake , intense survival tests were being performed by still more commandos at an other part of the shore. Here they had to swim in the ice cold lake wearing only their uninsulated swimming trunks. They had to swim a distance of 100 meters and back and then had to pass a shooting range. 

Meanwhile at some distance another group of commandos were doing a hard jog through the towering Himalayan mountains carrying a full combat load of 56 kgs. They were also being led by their officer who was packing a similar load. Shaming them and leading them were their drill sergeant a diminutive Sergeant First Class E7 who was jogging on the craggy and treacherous path carrying a non standard 60 kg path yet not breaking even a bead of sweat.

That was the standard these soldiers are aiming to attain.

For this was the toughest combat school devised for soldiers of Royal Cochin Defense Forces.

Only best units are permitted to come to the School and they must all be either combat veterans or have scored more than 500/550 in a Live fire field exercise. Even then enrolling for the program is voluntary as the School boasts a very high rate of attrition both in fail to pass as well as in deaths, for the harsh environs of Himalayan mountains test the commandos more than the craziest of the Instructors of the School.

The Mountain Warfare School is situated in a knoll of hills 13 kms west of the rustic village of Tok in northern Tibet. The lake of Dyap Tso is a perma frost endorheic lake. To further east of the school is a glacier that goes on to feed the lake Manasarovar further South.

On arriving at the rough landing strip supporting the base the recruits spend 2 full days acclimatising to the thin mountain air of Tok. During these days the recruits stay in well heated camp buildings and are fed with high protein and high fat diets.

On the third day the grueling initiation begins. Moved from their warm rooms to field tents adequately exposed to the nature they are henceforth given only standard combat rations. Each day begins at reveille at 0600 followed by a 5 mile run in the mountains. After 2 hours of running they come back for breakfast and freshing up.

At 0900 teams are assigned to various instructors for various physical tests of the day. Lunch will be at 1300 and will have to be carried to their test sites by the recruits themselves.

In the afternoon the recruits attend various lecture demonstrations and combat classes. In the evenings yet another endurance jogging is in store for the recruits now with full combat loads.

After the first week of joint training, recruits are divided into batches and tested batchwise. Their next lecture classes would be a hellish 21 days ahead.

The tests include further endurance marches, underwater weapon deactivation, Arctic endurance swimming, Arctic paradropping etc. On the 30th day of training the recruits board a couple of jeeps and are taken to a monastery nearby. There they shall be shown the spartan way of life followed by the monks. They would be taken then to several remote caves where ascetic Hindu sages would be in penance. These sages who live in the arctic conditions wearing only their bare loin clothes and swim in the freezing water and subsist on barely nothing would be visited by the soldiers. The sages had been persuaded to tolerate this interruptions by the King of Cochin himself who had come to visit them and seek their blessings when the camp was being set up.

On the next day individual commandos would be issued with a regular Special Forces combat load and paradropped into the Himalayas. They would be dropped individually at a distance of 100 kms from the base camp and have to find their way back alone. Each team of 4 shall have a particular base camp where they would have to reach successfully. They are given coordinates of base camp, a school atlas and a compass for navigation.

If a recruit found himself unable to cope with the harsh conditions or fell in some accident he could activate his alert beacon and be rescued by a team of CSAR helicopters on standby at the School.

Once the final endurance test is passed the recruits are given the Mountain Warriors Badge in a spartan ceremony at the Mountain Warriors School.

However that day is still far ahead in a distant future for these 2 Sergeants as they finally passed the test on their second attempt and moved on to the next test. 

War Memorial

The 21 gun salute reverberated across the Parade Grounds in the city of Cochin as a honor guard composed of all combat wings of Royal Cochin Defense Forces, fired off their guns in unison to mark the start of the ceremony.

In the chilly morning of this somber day the King of Cochin, his cabinet secretaries and the military chiefs of staff were standing in attention as they were paying tributes to the fallen warriors who gave Cochin its freedom and integrity.

In the center of the Parade Ground a Grey silk shroud covered a massive monument. Once the guns were silent The King and the service chiefs marched towards the shroud to the beats of the King's Guards band which was playing the National Anthem.

As the procession came to a halt so did the band.

The King reached up and pulled the shroud off.

And thus the National War Memorial was formally submitted to the nation.

The massive granite obelisk was engraved with the names of the nearly 300,000 soldiers who had died in service of the Kingdom. More than half of them had died in offensive warfare and that was the burden upon the shoulders of the King. As a young officer in the armored corps of the nation Rama Varma had personally seen the horrors and futility of war. Thus while drawing and shedding blood in defense of the Kingdom under the reign of his uncle, the previous monarch, Rama Varma had sworn that never again shall Cochin be expansionist in nature.

Today he had the chance to finally put his horrors at ease. The names of his comrades from Echo company went through his mind also the the ghastly images of a tank burning and the sight of a young man desperately trying and failing to climb out of the hatch of a stricken tank while being devoured by flames from a sea of burning diesel and dismembered by shrapnel from exploding ordinance. 

He could still remember sharply the final image of the young Peter looking at his Commander before the tank finally exploded in a fountain of flames.

Tonight he had a chance to lay his old nightmares to rest.

Also looking at the monument with an unfocused eye was his elder cousin and the commander of his regiment during the war, now Commander of Royal Cochin Defense Forces, Gen. Mahesh Varma. He too was remembering the voices and faces of people long dead.

This was the least a grateful Kingdom and its King could do for the glorious martyrs who laid down their life in the line of duty.

As the King and his generals walked back to their vehicles tears were shed ,some solemnly , some copiously, but not an eye was dry.

Vice Adm. KP Marakkar was remembering the groan of a hundred sailors drowning to death in a sunken destroyer which his submarine had torpedoed. As the Captain of his attack submarine he had listened to the sonar while his enemy was sinking. The sounds of strangling emanating from a hundred young extinguished lives had reminded him that no, war is never acceptable. He proceeded to sink more ships as the CO of his submarine and later as CO of the submarine squadron but he never forgot the gravity of actions he was doing.

Air Vice Marshal Praveen Kumar was remembering the fateful May Day when he led his squadron of fighters against the deadline enemy aerial blitzkrieg. He could remember the shrieks of his wingman Bronco who was shredded in his seat by Vulcan gunfire. Nor could he forget the bleeding face of his Navigator Jumper while they ejected as a desperate missile shot by a dead fighter homed in on their engines and blew merely yards away from their wings. Jumper was his best friend and was eager to meet his young daughter who was born merely day ago. He never saw his daughter.

The senior enlisted personnel who stood guard at the Memorial understood and were grateful for the tears of their commanders. They too had known the horrors of war and were glad to see that their commanders and King understood it as well. 

The King shook hands with the Command Sergeant Majors and Chief Boatswain's Mates from all services who comprised the Memorial Guard and with a sad but lightened heart returned to the Palace.