The commercial conflicts also proved space cannot into Ariadna. Space gun just help to make sure our neighbors know that.
O-12: The Combined Army uses cloaking ships to infiltrate the human sphere. Ariadna: SHOOT AT THE SKY ALL THE TIME!
The Russians use borscht, the USARF has special pork-n-beans MREs and MRRF just use their own laughter when they remind themselves the Rodinans think they're in charge...
Ariadna philosophy is to take 20's century biggest available weapon and put teseum ammo in it. Never fails to destroy the target, ask a tankhunter
A lot of classic science fiction is about how humans are pretty decent at improvising. I have just finished The Moon is a Harsh Mistress where three guys and an AI overthrow Earths control of the moon and build a giant rock slinging weapon of mass destruction. I mean... filthy AI but. I like to think of Ariadna winning space warfare through nasty tricks and not really needing a fleet. I imagine Ariadna space is just as treacherous and dangerous as their midfield game. Exploding rocks, decoy signals and some nasty ordnance around the space port of important sites. Even in the 80s major powers had intercontinental ballistic missiles, its not much of a leap to make them interplanetary. Hell as long as they are not viral a dog warrior could pilot them into a ship and only lose a wound!
I am now in love with the idea of dog warriors running around carrying suitcase nukes. An entire city just gets vaporised and in the middle of it all there's just a big angry doggo with a single wound token.
