The UNSC's suspected pick to replace General "Stomper" Santorno who is due to retire in August as SPEARHEAD Supreme Commander, one Corps General François Lecointre, was instead today appointed head of the french armed forces by President Macron. The the sudden resignation of Army General Pierre de Velliers Wednesday morning due to budget cuts and well publicised vocal disagreements with the President led to General Lecointre's unexpected appointment.
UNSC regulations on SPEARHEAD specify that the incoming Supreme Commander cannot again be from the same country's armed forces as the outgoing commander; therefore an officer from the United States armed forces cannot be appointed. Instead an officer must be selected from one of the other P5 countries of the UNSC, namely the United Kingdom, the french Republic, the Russian Federation or the People's Republic of China.
As the directors of UNETIDA and UNPASID were selected from the U.S. and the UK since the 1980's, the first Supreme Commander of SPEARHEAD was from the U.S. and the current Deputy Supreme Commander is from the UK and is expected to serve for another two years, it was widely speculated that the next Supreme Commander would be from france and General Lecointre's name as a rising star, significant UN Peacekeeping as well as previous UNETIDA experience made him a likely candidate.
As a Brigade General, Lecointre [left] commanded the 9th Marine Infantry
Brigade which was also trained and designated by UNETIDA as Pawn
Six-Two, the first force to be potentially sent to a hostile
Extra-Terrestrial landing zone in central Europe. Earlier as a colonel he served as UNETIDA's Director of Staff for two years before he
joined the military cabinet of the french Ministry of Defense in 2009.
It's deemed improbable that the current ranking french officer in SPEARHEAD, Division General "Faucon" Davout, the Deputy Commander for Global Strategic Plans would be considered eligible as he has not yet commanded at a corps level nor yet served in a 3-star staff position and is more likely be appointed to either billet instead.
A more likely choice is now British Army Lieutenant General Sir "Knuckles" McKenzie [right], the current SPEARHEAD Deputy Supreme Commander who replaced Colonel-General "Kóbec" Yurkov of the Russian Federation after only a year in the position. General Yurkov retired from the Russian Aerospace Forces prematurely in 2014 due to ill health. McKenzie previously served UNPASID as Regional Operations Commander [Northern] until 2008 when he was assigned to the British Ministry of Defense before Commanding the Scottish Division of the British Army until 2014. It was expected that McKenzie would serve the remaining two years of his current appointment for transition purposes but yesterday's events may force the UNSC to change plans.
After achieving success with lobbying for SPEARHEAD's number two position in 2013 the Russians may petition for the appointment of their Lieutenant General "Voran" Kerimov, the SPEARHEAD Deputy Commander for Operations, but much like the issue facing a french appointment, it's unlikely General Kerimov would be considered eligible as he also has not yet commanded at a corps level nor served in a 3-star staff position.
The Chinese have abstained from most appointment votes and have made no petitions themselves for appointments of their officers but have indicated that SPEARHEAD Deputy Commander for Missile Defence [Eastern] Junior General "Huǒjiàn" Li of the Peoples Liberation Army and Assistant Commander for Air Operations Senior Colonel “Besra” Hu of the People's Liberation Army Air Force will remain with SPEARHEAD for the foreseeable future and are ready to assume appointments to higher grades when and if necessary.
A final decision is likely to be announced in early August.
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