Union Naval Department

The Union Naval Department (colloquially shortened to UN, for Union Navy) is the largest and most powerful fighting force in the populated galaxy – at least on paper. It is subordinate to CentComm, although it takes strategic and logistic direction from GALSIM as well.
Union’s navy is a sprawling, carefully administered organization that projects Cradle's power to all corners of the populated galaxy and beyond. It does this with a (relatively) small corps of Union-flagged capital and supercapital ships, supported by vast fleets of standardized, integrated auxiliary ships drawn from the navies of Union’s subject states. Beyond the comparatively few ships it directly commands, the UN is an administrative and diplomatic body that shares a healthy institutional rivalry with the Union Administrative Department: while the UAD relies on administrators to accomplish its diplomatic goals, the UN relies on a corps of naval liaisons to accomplish its logistical objectives. Naval liaisons are officers of equivalent rank to administrators, with special imperative authority in times of crisis. Unless it is demanded by their local culture, administrators don’t carry weapons; naval liaisons, on the other hand, carry sidearms and wear uniforms of Naval Black, clearly marking them as part of Union’s military.
Liaisons are only sent to states that are capable of building or adapting ships to UN specifications and classifications. They guide these states in production, training, and the theory of naval combat, with the goal of establishing a well-trained auxiliary naval corps. Once this is complete, the UN further integrates that corps into its command structure, offering interstellar contracts to crews and corps seeking to progress further in rank. Those who remain are assigned to antipiracy, peacekeeping, and police actions in their local system.
Administrators tend to view liaisons as impositions on their diplomatic mission – bureaucrats who come in after the hard work is done and demand a military tithe from the administrator’s host state. Liaisons tend to view administrators as overly precious, possessive bureaucrats with an inflated sense of worth.