Defiance Industries

With its Hesperus II facility the largest surviving single site BattleMech factory after the fall of the Star League, Defiance Industries is the foundation of the militaries of the Lyran Commonwealth, Federated Commonwealth and Lyran Alliance.

Overview
With the opening shots of the Reunification War, the Star League reached an agreement with Archon Viola Steiner in 2577 to construct a factory jointly shared by both parties to ensure proper resupply of 'Mechs during the Periphery campaigns. To protect the factories from assault or sabotage, workers spent ten years hollowing out one of the Myoo Mountains of the South Whitman continent with the factories built inside.

With the fall of the Star League, control of Defiance Industries passed to the Lyran Commonwealth, who assigned control to the Brewer family who have ensured its prodigious production rate continues even with the technological decline of the Succession Wars and repeated attacks to knock it out. So important is the facility to Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces and the Lyran nation, nearly 14 attempts by other Successor States to capture or destroy it have been launched. To date, control of the factory has only been wrested from Lyran hands once, falling to the concentrated efforts of the Word of Blake during the Jihad.

The Furillo facilities however are much less storied. Formerly the Tolsand WarWorks, Defiance acquired the aging plant in 2992 and poured considerable funds into upgrading and updating the factory. Located near the city of Snohomish Springs in the shadow of the Mont Vert on the Dereka continent, the Furillo assembly lines are primarily configured to construct Light and Medium designs, leaving it overshadowed by the Hesperus II factories in the eyes of notoriously heavy LCAF forces, at least until the Blakist's Jihad made it the temporary headquarters of the corporation.

The company's newest and most secretive production facility is its manufacturing annex on Kwangjong-ni. A former Rim Worlds Republic factory located underwater in the world's massive Lost Sea, Defiance spent considerable sums to locate and refurbish it to function. Acting as a production site for the company's R&D efforts, the Kwangjong-ni plant had three easily reconfigurable production lines which reached full production capacity during the Jihad. To protect it from both attack and prying eyes, the plant's actual location is kept top secret, large cargo subs carrying needed parts in and finished designs out the only method of reaching it, the sub's home port heavily defended by the planet's militia.

In 3012 the Hesperus II facility was the only manufacturer to build the awesome Atlas BattleMech at this time. In 3025 Defiance began producing the Enforcer and Valkyrie BattleMechs. While Defiance Industries' Enforcer line would be one of the many casualties of the Jihad, the Valkyrie continued production at the facility

In 3068 the Word of Blake attacked Hesperus II with WarShips. By 3070 Blakist forces had taken the planet which forced Defiance to rely on its smaller plants on Furillo and Kwangjong-ni as its main production lines. As a result of the damage taken by the various Defiance facilities, Defiance Industries stock plummeted in 3070, with a war bonds campaign launched by Defiance across the entire of the Lyran Alliance only managing to slow the drop. While they controlled the planet, the Blakists converted several Hesperus II production lines to produce their own preferred BattleMech variants. The Blakists were eventually pushed off Hesperus II, but before they left they destroyed many production facilities and damaged many more.

During and after the Jihad, production of the Zeus assault 'Mech stopped on Furillo. The damage to the Hesperus II lines also means that even by 3079 the Battle Hawk, Sentinel, Cobra, Gunslinger, Fafnir, and Banshee BattleMechs are no longer in production on Hesperus. The company started production on five other BattleMech designs at that time, however. In the immediate aftermath of the Jihad was widely anticipated that whatever Defiance was doing at it's Kwangjong-ni plant - a secret R&D facility that foreign intelligence agencies found very difficult to penetrate - the results would soon be adding to the rebuilding efforts being undertaken by the LAAF.

With the formation of the Republic of the Sphere and the transfer of much of the Skye Province of the Lyran Alliance to the Republic, Hesperus II was incorporated into the Bolan Province of the Alliance. This was quite a boom for the Province, despite the damage the mammoth Defiance Industries plant had taken. By 3085 the Hesperus II plant had at least fifteen different BattleMech production lines running alongside a dozen Combat Vehicle lines and a smaller number of battle armor and DropShip lines. Despite the drop in production compared with that of the mid-3070s, the Hesperus plant was the most productive defense manufacturing site known to exist; however, it had been discovered that the damage suffered during the Jihad was more extensive than had originally been believed, and as a result it was predicted that it would take until the 3120s for the plant to be restored to full production.

The Hesperus II facility would bounce back, only to be damaged once more in the Dark Age by twin invasions from Clan Wolf and Clan Jade Falcon. Though the facility stayed in Lyran hands, production was disrupted in the process of defending the facility. Defiance Industries leadership opted to invest heavily in the Furillo facility, which was projected to match the storied output of Hesperus II by the end of 3150.

Leadership
The company's CEO in 3025 is Greydon Brewer.

In 3067 the company's CEO is Duke Daniel Brewer of Hesperus II.

Following Vedet Brewer relinquishing the Archonship and fleeing Tharkad in 3143, control of Defiance Industries would fall to George Dyson.

Manufacturing
Defiance Industries has manufacturing centers on the following planets: