First Robotech War

In the fictional world of Robotech, the First Robotech War (9 February 2009-1 January 2014) was a conflict between the earth-based Robotech Defense Force and the alien Zentraedi. Though it ended with the Earth Forces victorious, that victory was won at a terrible cost, with much of the Earth's surface and population devastated.

Roots
The First Robotech War's roots were laid in 1999 when an alien spaceship (known then by the rather graceless moniker of ASS-1) crash landed on the fictional Macross Island (or South Ataria Island) in the South Pacific, ending a decade of global warfare. Given teeth by the secret discovery of alien people over two dozen feet tall, the United Earth Government acted quickly to unify the warring factions and rebuild the spacecraft. The rebuilt ship was christened Macross after the island on which it had landed and was given the designation SDF-1 (which during and after its operational life it was most frequently called).

Unknown to mankind at the time, the Zentraedi were hot on the ship's tail, and headed for its last known location: Earth. Fortunately, battles with the alien Invid delayed the Zentraedi for several years.

The War
The war began on the day of the scheduled launch of the SDF-1, February 9 2009 (during the early summer in the Southern Hemisphere location of Macross Island) when a large Zentraedi armada led by Commander Breetai arrived on Earth and began an assault in order to recover the battlefortress. The SDF-1 managed to lift off amidst an urban battle between the Robotech Defense Forces and the Zentraedi in the streets of Macross City. An attempted counterstrike by two ARMD class carriers of the Orbital Fleet failed miserably, so the SDF-1´s commander, Captain Henry J. Gloval ordered a space fold maneuver to evade the Zentraedi. The space fold also caught Macross Island along with the fortress, and transported them farther than Pluto instead of the dark side of the moon. Rebuilding Macross City inside the fortress and relocating the city´s 70,000 inhabitants onboard, the SDF-1 began the long voyage to Earth.

During the ship´s two-year journey the Zentraedi attacked constantly, damaging the ship and depleting both its defensive forces and civilian population. Two battles are worth of notice: the battle of Saturn´s Rings, during which the SDF-1 counterattacked at the Zentraedi completely destroying an enemy strike force, and the battle of Mars Base Sara, where the SDF-1 evaded a Zentraedi trap led by Khyron the Backstabber (commander of a Zentraedi reinforcement fleet requested by Breetai) during an attempt to resupply at the abandoned Martian outpost. For his failure to capture the fortress, Commander Breetai was relieved and replaced by the female Commander Azonia.

Eventually the SDF-1 returned to Earth and Captain Gloval requested the United Earth Government to disembark the surviving 56,000 civilians from onboard the fortress. The government and the military, led by Admiral Hayes (father of the SDF-1´s executive officer Lisa Hayes), refused the request, since they had declared that Macross Island and Macross City were destroyed in a nuclear attack by terrorists after the departure of the SDF-1 to cover-up the war against the aliens. Captain Gloval defied the orders and began a series of daredevil flights over populated areas to discredit the official story and force the government to accept the civilians. When a battle with the Zentraedi caused the destruction of the city of Toronto, a previous offer by the Canadian government to grant asylum to the civilians was withdrawn, and the United Earth Government banished the SDF-1 from Earth.

In the meantime, the Zentraedi began to be affected by Earth´s culture, an irresistible force for a race bred solely for war. Mass dissent began amongst the Zentraedi ranks, even leading to defections and a mutiny that forced Commander Breetai (reinstated after Azonia´s own failure to succeed and in command of the elite Zentraedi Imperial fleet of over one million warships) to seek a truce with the SDF-1. The reports of "cultural contamination" of the Imperial Fleet prompted Zentraedi Supreme Commander Dolza to assemble a Grand Fleet to eradicate Humanity and the corrupted Zentraedi. Almost five million Zentraedi warships folded to Earth in response to Dolza´s orders.

The Grand Fleet began a massive planetary bombardment of Earth, eradicating almost every large population center and devastating most of the planetary surface (the area devastated was between 70% and 95% of the surface depending on the source consulted; some place the casualties at around 6 billion killed). The Earth forces counterattacked with the massive Grand Cannon superweapon, obliterating hundreds of thousands of Zentraedi ships. Following this attack, the SDF-1 and the allied Zentraedi Imperial Fleet launched an attack of their own, using the music of Lynn Minmei to confuse the forces of the Grand Fleet, then blasted their way into Dolza´s massive Homebase. Dolza and his fleet were utterly destroyed, but so was most of the Imperial Fleet.

The SDF-1 landed in an area near Calgary, and New Macross City was founded around the battered ship. For the next two years humans and Zentraedi worked together to rebuild the planet. The Robotech Defense Force, led now by Admiral Gloval, established itself as the planet´s primary military force, leading the recovery efforts. Breetai took command of the remaining Zentraedi forces, now loyal to Earth. Commanders Khyron and Azonia led a rebel Zentraedi movement against the RDF, staging several terrorist attacks including the theft of a resizing chamber in New Detroit and a protoculture power source in New Macross City. Eventually, Khyron and Azonia repaired a downed Zentraedi warship and used it on 1 January 2014 to ram and destroy the SDF-1 and the newly-built SDF-2, killing Admiral Gloval and forcing the evacuation of New Macross City. The Battle of New Macross City signaled the end of the First Robotech War, although the now leaderless rebel Zentraedi continued to harass throughout the rest of the 2010´s.

The Aftermath
The most notable effect on the Earth in the aftermath of the First Robotech War was the devastation of its surface and the decimation of its population. The sparsely populated interior regions of most continents were spared destruction, but the heavily populated coasts were strongly hit, and many historic cities including Washington DC, Boston, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Moscow, Calcutta, Beijing and Tokyo were either heavily damaged or lost altogether. The population of the Earth was reduced from six billion in 2009 to just over one billion in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Orbit in 2011. Fortunately, SDF-1 survived and landed and its population of Macross City inside, with the support of Breetai's fleet, provided a basis of a fully equipped technological civilization to restore order to the planet. Ironically, High command had exiled the ship to destroy it as part of their attack on the Zentaradi, but in doing so, they inadvertently spared the last major human city from destruction.

Not all of the aftereffects of the war were bad, however. The sudden introduction of starships and super-advanced Robotechnology to Earth led to a renaissance of sorts, as humanity strove to build a space fleet to take the war to the alien enemy. In addition, it was found that the planet's ecosystem was recovering faster and with more vigor than the scientific community anticipated. Unfortunately, the determination that the next phase of the war would be fought away from the Earth left the home planet vulnerable when the Robotech Masters appeared in 2030 and began the Second Robotech War (2030-31). The devastation of the Army of the Southern Cross led to the Earth's fall to the Invid in 2033, and the planet would remain occupied through three disastrous liberation attempts until the REF forced the Invid to retreat in the Third Robotech War (2040-42).