2021-07-15 Update

SPSF has had a slower week of activity due both to the decreased threat from raider forces and some of its members taking breaks from updating, including myself. As Minister of Defense, I welcome that our members are taking breaks to focus on themselves and their RL obligations, especially since raider activity is particularly low recently. While sometimes members being on leave makes me nervous about those members staying engaged with the SPSF and its activities, all of our members have stayed active in TSP, SPSF, and Libcord chats and culture, which makes me highly optimistic our members will remain active in defending after their breaks, especially for significant and large scale operations. Since the past report, relevant SPSF activity has included:

• Given the decline of more established raiding organizations, the SPSF and its allies have had more time to focus on lower-level raiding activity which can still be damaging if it is not countered. On July 12 at minor update, the SPSF defended the historically significant region of England from a smaller raiding party as well as defending the region Katzen on July 8 at minor update.
  
• On the front of tag raiding, the SPSF has defended attempted tag runs by The Black Hawks and the North Pacific Army this week. On July 10 at major update, the SPSF and its partners significantly outmatched the firepower of The Black Hawks and secured 8 tag defenses against them. Additionally, on July 7 at minor update, at a relatively low attendance update, Officer Melix and myself took the lead in defending a tag run by the NPA, securing 2 tag defenses against their forces despite low turnout. Successful hits by the NPA were detagged in subsequent updates.
  
• Tidal Force has been supporting an anti-fascist mission in Federated Sovereign Nations of Europe along with our partners in the East Pacific Sovereign Army and Thaecia. This mission concluded this morning and Tidal Force will be temporarily suspending activities for the next several days so its members are free to vote in our domestic Delegate election.
  
• SPSF deployed to defend against a quorum raid on July 14 by the Joint Task Force targeting the resolution "Recognition of the General Assembly". After about 10 minutes, JTF gave up their quorum raid attempt when faced with the force of SPSF and its partners. A total of 5 quorum raids were attempted, 2 were successfully defended, 2 were operational failures for the JTF, and 1 approval was removed. The approving Delegate who was removed was contacted via telegram and given information about how to restore their approval, which they successfully did at the next update. I have updated the Cabinet Twitter accordingly.

In terms of maintenance and infrastructural work, the main effort has been advance planning for the Defender Day and Independence Day joint celebrations which are being hosted by the Ministry of Culture. While MoC is carrying the majority of the work here, MoD will be providing additional assistance.