Quote:
Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen
The canon evidence is contradictory. Personally, I think that if there wasn't an Imperial Army, someone would have invented one, in the sense that the Army of the Domain of Sylea (assuming something like that existed) or the Army of the Duchy of Core or the Army of Sylea would have been tasked with Imperium-wide coordination of army activities, in much the same way as historically the British Horse Guards by default grew to perform the functions of a non-existing 'Generalty' (army counterpart to the Admiralty).
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Couldn't the marines do that? Functionally the Imperium is different from modern day militaries in that there is generally no way to attack with a military without using naval forces. The Imperium has no land borders to attack across. Therefore there's a certain logic to the idea that while planets have armies as part of their defensive forces, the senior service is the navy, and the imperial ground forces are the marines, period, with the various local armies being primarily garrison and defensive forces under marine leadership when they called up.
(Interestingly in the Foundation series, the Empire didn't _have_ a navy. The spaceships were run by the Imperial Army, led by a general, not an admiral.)