History Literature / Frontlines

* The Cavalry: This occurs many times during the series.

* The Cavalry: Occurs many times during the series.
** The NACs Manitoba, a supercarrier, and her battlegroup the ones who respond to the Versaille's distress call and ends up saving the remnants with airstrikes.

* TheCavalry: Occurs many times during the series.

* CoolPlane: Dropships are basically troop ships designed to also act as close air support for the troops they drop from orbit. The Blackfly class takes the cake as a stealth variant piloted by the very best pilots in the force.

There are also two novels written in the same universe, ''Lucky Thirteen'' and ''Measures of Absolution'', both published in 2013.

** NAC forces in book 1 get one when they first run into the Reapers.

* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: In book 7, Grayson mentions that the NAC would have willingly nuked a group of 17 Lankies during the early days of the war. Justified at the time as since Lanky bodies are so heavy that they can't be picked up by dropships and Humanity loses most of their major ground battles, they can't easily study Lanky corpses to make weapons until the Battle of Earth.

* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: In book 7, Grayson mentions that the NAC would have willingly nuked a group of 17 Lankies during the early days of the war.

* BFG: After discovering that their current line of M-66 Assualt Rifles don't do well against the Lankies, the NAC (along with the SRA) begin developing a line of weapons to counter the Lankies. This starts off with the double barrel M-80, then moves to the semi-auto M90, then the full auto M95, and then in books 7-8, the JUMBOs. Compared to the M-66, these are considered very big guns for very big targets.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The NACS Washington's crew returns to the Capella system, but for everyone's POV, [[YearOutsideHourInside they were gone for the last three years]] instead of a few weeks. Andrew loses almost half his company, the first months of his daughter's life and (possibly) his right eye. However Halley never gave up on him, the NAC and the SRA merged into the Pacific Alliance and they figured out the Lanky stealth technology and one of their transit nodes. Humanity is no longer hopeless.]]

** [[TruthInTelevision Truth in Television]], as this is based in real-life conventions.

* NuclearWeaponsTaboo:
** The [[FictionalGenevaConventions Svalbard Accords]] bans the use of nukes, kinetic weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction by the power blocs of Earth, including the NAC and SRA.

** Averted when fighting against the Lankies, as there is almost nothing that can penetrate the outer hull of their seed ships.

* ThemeNaming: The Avenger class of battle carriers are named after the capitals of pre-war nations. There are ships named after the cities of Ottowa, Washington, Seoul, Moscow, etc.

** The NAC Washington's plan to get back to Human space in book 8 is pretty much this. The plan is to fight their way to the Lanky jump node, hitch a ride on a Lanky seedship FTL bubble, and hope for the best. You heard that right: hitch a ride on a alien ship that cam annihilate entire Human fleets. The fact that the Washington survives, returns to Capella, and manages to get most of the crew home is a mircale.

* StunnedSilence: In ''Chains of Command'', the Battle of Arcadia ends when [[spoiler:Major Khaled Masoud [[NukeEm detonates a nuclear bomb]] just ''five kilometers'' east of Arcadia City.]] There's a dead silence in all radio channels and gunfire stops as both sides realise what happened.

* DropPod: Special Forces like the SEALs and Combat Controllers of the NAC Defense Corps use drop pods to infiltrate enemy-held planets. The pods themselves are fired out of modified missile tubes. In Book 5 during the Human invasion of Mar, NAC, SRA, and EU special forces use these pods to help secure a landing zone for the incoming invasion force.

* StarfishAliens: Lankies’ resemblance to Earthly life begins and ends at having four limbs. They are much larger than any land animal really should be, they have no eyes, and they thrive in atmospheres with enough carbon dioxide to kill just about anything on Earth. They’re clearly an intelligent species, but they’re so alien that nobody has any clue how they communicate or even if they know that humans are sentient.

** In ''Chains of Command'', Major Khaled Masoud asks Andrew to lead a platoon in a mission to go after the remnants of the old NAC government in the distant Leonidas system. Describing the operation as a recon mission for a future Corps attack, Masoud later orders the platoon to attack an enemy airfield. A team of [[spoiler:Masoud's SEALs team]] uses the ensuing chaos to [[spoiler:sneak nuclear bombs across the moons' terraformers]], knowing that the enemy forces would engage all their troops against Andrew's platoon. He later uses this to beat the renegade government into surrendering.

* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: The Lankies are described similarly to the Cloverfield monster. They are 20-25 meter tall creatures that weigh in at close to 1000 tons. Their long strides mean they can also [[LightningBruiser cover a kilometer in under a minute]]. Their tough hides prevent them from being killed by conventional small arms, thus necessitating the use of high explosive rockets, armor piercing ammo and specialized anti-Lanky bullets that work by [[KillItWithFire injecting flammable gas under their hides and incinerating them from the inside out]].

* StandardSciFiFleet: The Human navies have the standard Dropships, Fightercraft (Shrikes), Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers, and Carriers pre-war. They also have a number of Stealth ships like the stealth orbital combat ship NACS ''Indianapolis'' and various supply vessels. Later and after the battle of Earth, the Human navies introduce battleships and battle carriers that lean towards a more anti-ship role like the Avenger class.

* StandardSciFiFleet: The Human navies have the standard Drophshipes, Fightercraft (Shrikes), Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers, and Carriers pre-war. They also have a number of Stealth ships like the stealth orbital combat ship NACS ''Indianapolis'' and various supply vessels. Later and after the battle of Earth, the Human navies introduce battleships and battle carriers that lean towards a more anti-ship role like the Avenger class.

** The NAU breaks out weapons from the 21st century to arm the Lazurus Brigades. Sergeant Fallon is noted to be carrying an old M4 when she meets Andrew in book 4.
** After five years of fighting the Lankies, the Human militaries are doing everything they can to bulk up their depleted forces. The NAU are noted to have pulled older varients of dropships from the mothball fleet and even carriers several decades old like the Midway and Treaty Class Frigates.

* BreakOuttheMuseumPiece:

The ''Frontlines'' series is a (currently) 8 book MilitaryScienceFiction series written by German-American author Marko Kloos. The books are set in the {{Dystopia}}n universe of the 22nd century, where Earth is overpopulated and countries spend taxpayer money on space fleets and colonizing far off worlds instead of on infrastructure. They follow the career of Andrew Grayson, a young man from a [[UrbanHellscape Public Residence Cluster]] located in Boston who joins the military of the [[ExpandedStatesOfAmerica North American Commonwealth]] for the same two reasons everyone else does: real food instead of [[NauseaFuel soy-based and recycled proteins]] and the paycheck a soldier gets as a lump sum at the end of his or her service.

* BreakOutTheMuesumPiece:

** After the battle of Earth, the Human navies are doing everything they can to bulk up their depleted forces. The NAU are noted to have pulled older varients of dropships from the mothball fleet and even carries several decades old like the Midway and Treaty Class Frigates.

* BreakOutTheMuesum:

** After the battle of Earth, the Human navies are doing everything they can to bulk up their depleted forces. The NAU are noted to have pulled older varients of dropships from the mothball fleet and even carries several decades old like the Midway.