Belesia

Country overview

The Federated States of Belesia is a relatively new democracy in the region. The turbulence of its independence from colonial rule continues to create stability challenges throughout its many member-islands. Political turmoil, popular unrest, and widespread terrorism combine to create a volatile environment for this young federation. One of the few stabilizing factors is the development of economic opportunities and trade. Despite progress in this area, sufficient infrastructure and business processes have yet to be developed, hampering further Belesian progress. The most significant development of the Belesian Federation Defense Force is the formalization and aggregation of member islands’ inconsistent security efforts. This standardization and professionalism is most evident in the establishment of a national constabulary and a national guard. Maintaining a balance between enforcing nationhood and preserving a degree of local autonomy has been the major challenge to national policy implementation and military stationing efforts.

Capital	Davao
National languages	Belesian
Religion	Muslim (86.8%) Christian (10.4%) Buddhist (2.8%)
Government	Democracy
Population	59,966,876 (2020)
GDP	estimate $209.46 billion
Timezone	GMT +8

Country study Video

This country study video provides a short summary of Belesia, encompassing the political, military, economic, social, information and infrastructure aspects of the country.

Country capabilities

Land

The Belesian Federation Army (BFA) is the largest service and maintains a relatively modern conventional capability. The BFA maintains several Divisions worth of troops with varying levels of military platforms consisting of a mixture of western and eastern bloc equipment. The dispersed nature of Belesia's geography means that the BFA is divided along designated security groups to provide both defence and internal security, which has garnered criticism that this has led the BFA to maintain older equipment against a rapidly changing world. The BFA is generally competent and well trained.

Sea

The Belesian Federation Fleet (BFF) is a relatively small force tasked with providing maritime security of Belesian territorial waters (i.e. combating illegal fishing, smuggling and piracy). It does not have a capability to project power outside of its territorial waters and and considered a 'brown water' navy consisting of predominantly modern vessels.

Air

The Belesian Federation Air Force (BFAF) is capable of supporting ground combat and limited defensive air operations. Its primary roles are transportation, ground attack and limited air-to-air. The BFAF has a mixture of modern and legacy combat aircraft and would struggle to sustain combat operations in a conventional conflict.

Cyber

The BFDF is not known to have a formal cyber warfare capability.

Space

The BFDF does not have a dedicated space domain capability and relies on commercially available space platforms for communications.

More Information

For more information, or for support in customising these scenarios to fit your training needs, please use the contacts link below to reach out the the Operating Environments team at the TASSC.

ODIN Belesia