Owner: Earth Union
Location: Earth, Alaska
Add-Ons:
- Unknown
Mobile Suits (???):
- Unknown
Mobile Armors (???):
- Unknown
Defenses:
- Unknown
Occupants:

The Joint Operations Headquarters Alaska, or “JOSH-A” (pronounced “Joshua”) for short, is the Earth Union’s military headquarters and a state of the art fortress intended to repel an attack of virtually any magnitude. Originally constructed by the Earth Sphere Alliance as the presumptive command center of the entire Earth, the Union has fully realized this concept and significantly underscored the fortress’ capability as a bastion against enemy attack.

The Joint Operations Headquarters is entirely underground, not only for the defensive benefits but also to mask the exact location of the installation. Elevators, defense emplacements, and even an entire airstrip are built to raise up from below the surface from concealed positions, allowing the base to essentially “disappear” into the perpetual snowfields north of the Arctic Circle. The base’s location is anything but geographically notable – invading enemy forces will quickly find themselves amid a forest of rapidly appearing and disappearing defensive emplacements in a disorienting pattern while defending mobile suits emerge from concealed elevators and launch flanking maneuvers and pincer attacks.

As the most secure location on Earth, the Alliance chose JOSH-A to be the main production site for its infamous mobile doll units, and at one point had a totally automated factory complex producing the machines day and night. After the global chaos caused by the infection of the Alliance’s Skyline Network with an anti-mobile doll virus the entire program was terminated with great rapidity. As part of the worldwide re-organization between the Alliance and Human Reform League that would later found the Earth Uniont the manufacturing complex was totally dismantled and rebuilt to mass produce GN-X-type mobile suits.

The pride of Alliance technical development, JOSH-A was equipped with the unique Nibelungen Air Defense Array, intended to grant the base total immunity from orbital drop operations that were used to great success by the Space Revolutionary Army, ZAFT, and even the Guild during the pre-unification period. The base concourse, typically covered in snow and otherwise indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain, serves as a giant collection amplifier of hundreds of microwave emitters, built into caverns below the base itself. In the case of an orbital drop attack, or some other kind of weapon being dropped from very high altitude, the Nibelungen can project a monstrous focused beam of microwave energy high into the atmosphere, essentially vaporizing all manners of liquids in its path (including the water inside human bodies and propellant/coolant/ammunition inside mobile suits), making it a devastating effective, if rather unconventional, technological feat. While explicitly intended to thwart an orbital drop, the Nibelungen can also be used to defeat conventional aerial forces loitering above the base’s airspace, although care must be taken not to fry friendly units at the same time. Because the unfocused microwaves travel through the interior of the base during firing, the ambient temperature raises considerably as the humidity drops, leading to many cases of stiff, statically-charged hair and dry eyes. With the massive overhauls of the facility committed by the Earth Union, such as the re-purposing of the giant mobile doll production center, as well as the focus on GN-derived weapons and technology, it is unknown if this weapon system is still operational or even installed.