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Template:Infobox ProjectThe Kormoran Project was a United States black-project.

History

Before Scarecrow

The Kormoran Project began during the late 20th century, conceived by the United States. Overseen by a number of U.S. military officials, including General Weitzman, the U.S. military contracted the Kopassus Shipping Group to build a number of frigates disguised as ordinary-looking super-tankers, in order to allow the U.S. to move ICBMs around and launch them without foreign nations realising where they were being struck from.

Additionally, it was decided that the Kormoran ships would work best when used in conjunction with another black-project, Chameleon; missiles made to appear exactly like those belonging to foreign nations.

When Majestic-12 began plans to start a new Cold War, they learned of the existence of Kormoran thanks to the Kopassus Shipping Group's CEO, Corneius Kopassus. They planned to destroy a number of western cities in America and Europe, using the Kormoran ships to launch Chameleon missiles in order to stage a terrorist attack.

The Talbot in the English Channel would target Longon, Paris and Berlin; the Ambrose in New York would hit Washington DC and New York itself; and the final vessel, the Jewel, would strike at Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles from San Francisco.

Seeking aide in defending the Kormoran ships if they came under attack before the Chameleon missiles could be launched, Jonathon Killian made a deal with five African nations, who would deploy troops onto each ship in order to defend them.

The chaos-loving Killian, however, had his own plans, and added Chameleon missiles to the Kormoran ships Whale in the Arabrian Sea and Hopewell in the Taiwan Strait, intending to hit India, Pakistan and China, thereby creating global anarchy instead of a Cold War.

Scarecrow

After capturing Weitzman, a pair of MI6 agents attempted to interrogate him, admitting that they knew about Kormoran.

The Mossad agent Benjamin Rosenthal was killed before he could share what he knew of M-12's plan with Schofield's allies, but luckily Book II was able to collect several of his notes. Book II and Scott Moseley discovered the plans for the Kormoran vessels, and used the provided coordinates to locate where the ships were.

Since Schofield was the only one who could disarm the CincLock-VII systems, he had some of his allies infiltrate the Jewel in San Francisco and the Ambrose in New York so that they could provide a satellite uplink for him to disarm them, while he infiltrated the Talbot in the English Channel.

Andrew Trent and David Fairfax's group came under fire from the Eritrean troops guarding the Jewel, while Book II's Marines encountered similar resistance on the Ambrose. Luckily both groups were able to push through and reach the missiles in their silos, awaiting Schofield's connection.

Schofield's initial entry onto the Talbot was easy since the Israeli Sayaret Tzanhim accompanying Simon Zemir had already taken out most of the Nigerian soldiers onboard. However the Skorpions and IG-88 both arrived and disrupted the attempts to disarm the missile onboard, and Schofield ended up ordering Rufus to ram an ordinary super-tanker into the Talbot to turn the tide of the battle. As the Talbot began to sink to the bottom of the Channel, Schofield took cover in a small submerisble set to be crushed by the disguised frigate before Knight managed to rescue him.

After Schofield discovered Killian's other Kormoran ships and Chameleon missiles, he had Moseley arrange nearby attack-subs to sink the Whale and Hopewell, preventing the missiles from being able to launch.

People Involved

Goal

The idea behind Kormoran was to disguise missile-launching warships as supertankers, to maintain an element of secrecy and surprise. It worked partularly well when used in conjunction with the Chameleon Project.

Kormoran Ships

  • MV Ambrose
    • Location - New York
    • Missile Type - Shahab-5's
  • MV Hopewell
    • Location - Taiwan Strait
    • Missile Type - Sky Horse-3's
  • MV Jewel
    • Location - San Francisco
    • Missile Type - Taep'o Dong-2's
  • MV Talbot
    • Location - English Channel
    • Missile Type - Shahab-5's
  • MV Whale
    • Location - Arabian Sea
    • Missile Type - Ghauri-II's and Agni-II's

Trivia

  • As noted by Charles Beaton within the novel, the Kormoran project is named after the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran, which was originally the merchant vessel Steiermark until it was acquired by the navy following the outbreak of war for conversion into a raider.
  • In an ironic twist, all of the Kormoran ships are named after some of the ships from the Winthrop fleet that brought people to New England in the 17th century.
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