Khalki is a fairly typical human-settled Alliance colony. It has a pleasant climate, low population, and nothing too weird going on to demand special training or equipment.
Their function is military, and their role is that of a defense force. They’re there to protect their world, not persecute the current out group or keep the population under Dear Leader’s thumb. Khalki’s defense force isn’t very big, maybe a few hundred full-time members and a few thousand reservists. Call it the equivalent of a US Army company with the ability to swell its ranks to a regiment if necessary. Because of its size and area of operations, the Khalki defense forces aren’t raising one enormous force in one place, it’s a bunch of semi-independent platoons or companies spread over the populated areas of the planet.
Khalki is an average Alliance world, so they have pretty advanced technology by our standards. Their standard weapons are largely locally produced lasers. Lasers are supplemented by electromagnetic massdrivers. Massdrivers are mostly used for artillery from grenade launcher to light field artillery size, although a few are used for heavy armor penetration; lasers are good for most duties, but sometimes a target requires a chunk of sharpened depleted uranium traveling at several times the speed of sound to make it understand dead means dead. Guided missiles are used both as light shoulder-fired heavy weapons and heavy artillery. Other special purpose weapons include plasma flamethrowers, MAD, and hand grenades of various types.
They wear flexible armor woven from synthetic diamond nanotubes, helmets of more or less the same material, with breastplates and clamshells available for special assignments. Combat boots are made of the same woven diamond as their body armor, with small overlapping plates in the soles to protect against mines or caltrops.
Defense force helmets have scrambled radio and laser communicators as well as a basic sensor visor capable of seeing into the near reaches of the infrared and ultraviolet spectra with variable magnification up to 4x. They can also view remote feeds from various sensors, including their weapon scopes. This feature allows a number of interesting tactics, including firing around corners while only exposing a weapon and the hands holding it. It also includes a small computer to assist with sensor interpretation, linking with the tactical network, and targeting assistance.
CBR filters are built into the cheek pieces, and with the visor locked and sealed will protect the wearer against respiratory agents for several hours. Skin agents will eventually seep through the woven parts of the armor, and unless the wearer was careful to seal the wrists, ankles, and neck, there will be exposed skin there.
The backbone of the defense force is the reservist rifleman. Khalki’s reservists spend about a month out of every year on training and other duties unless called up for a natural disaster, pirate raid, or other threat to public safety. They wear woven armor pants, jackets, and gloves, with helmets and boots as described above. A rifleman’s standard weapons loadout includes a laser pistol, monomolecular knife, a bag of mini-grenades, and his rifle. Rifles are split more or less evenly between full-power laser battle rifles and lighter rifles with underbarrel massdriver grenade launchers. Either type of rifle will have a scope with HUD link to the user’s helmet. He will also have his mundane gear like sleeping bag, canteen with filter, concentrated rations,
Because he’s not a full-time soldier, his combat skills should reflect this. He’ll be a good shot, but not a sniper by any stretch of the imagination. These skills will be better than the average civilian, though, and he’ll have everything he learned in basic training. All things being equal, he will be head and shoulders above the average civilian but not quite as good as a full-time soldier.
Heavy weapons troopers have more experience as reservists and will be better shots in general as well as having specialized training in one or more heavy weapons. In the field, they’ll trade in their rifles for a heavy weapon, and the rest of the squad will help carrying ammunition or power cells for it.
A squad leader will have slightly better skills across the board than the troops they lead, as well as the ability to lead troops. In most tabletop RPGs, this translates to a combination of leadership and tactics skills, combined with improved military rank.
A standard rifleman squad is four men. Two riflemen, one rifleman squad leader, and a heavy weapons trooper. There are variations on this, including replacing the heavy weapons trooper with another rifleman, the squad leader carrying a second heavy weapon, or a squad of four heavy weapons troopers. A four-man heavy weapon team is nearly always mounted, and squads with two heavy weapons are more likely to be mounted than a standard squad.
Snipers will have excellent skill with a laser or electromagnetic sniper rifle, as well as very good fieldcraft including stealth, camouflage, and survival. They’ll be equipped similarly to their rifleman counterparts, but with a dedicated sniper rifle. Spotters can be treated as a slightly less skilled sniper. The team will carry a spotting scope they pass between them as they trade off shifts. A spotting scope has lower magnification than a sniper rifle scope, but a much wider field of view. Unlike the rest of the defense force, snipers operate in pairs.
Most of the defense force is unmounted, using civilian vehicles if rapid deployment becomes necessary. Mounted squads use small IFVs with turreted antiarmor lasers and missile pods. When the IFV’s passengers may be carrying four heavy weapons, these squads can rapidly deploy withering firepower.
The defense force maintains a company of light tanks distributed in 4-vehicle platoons at vital locations. For air mobility they have four transport helicopters and three dedicated attack helicopters. Both types of helicopter use the same airframe, engine, and other systems, with the attack version carrying more ammunition for the chin turret’s electromag gatling and wings with hardpoints for ordnance.