Luna II

Luna II (ルナツー, Runa Tsū) was a major Earth Federation Forces military base constructed from a captured asteroid in lunar orbit. Serving as strategic fortress, fleet anchorage, and resupply depot, Luna II was one of the Federation’s most important military installations throughout the Universal Century, from the One Year War through multiple subsequent conflicts.¹

Construction and Purpose

Luna II was constructed by capturing an asteroid and converting it into a military base:¹

Fortress Design

The captured asteroid provided natural shielding that engineers reinforced with weapons batteries, multiple docking bays, and command facilities, turning Luna II into a hardened stronghold capable of withstanding mobile suit and fleet assaults.¹

Strategic Functions

From this vantage, the Federation based its fleets, handled resupply and maintenance, staged operations throughout the Earth-Moon system, relayed communications, and guarded the vital corridor between Earth and the Moon.¹

The asteroid fortress design provided defensive advantages impossible with conventional space stations.

One Year War

During the One Year War, Luna II served critical functions:²

Fleet Anchorage

During the One Year War, Luna II served as the Federation fleet’s anchorage, repairing and resupplying units, staging offensives, and offering sanctuary to damaged vessels returning from the front.²

Strategic Position

Its location counterbalanced Zeon’s hold on Granada, safeguarded Federation interests in cislunar space, denied Zeon uncontested lunar dominance, and supported operations against enemy space forces.²

White Base Operations

When the White Base reached Luna II it took on supplies, repaired battle damage, regrouped its crew, and aligned its actions with wider Federation strategy—support that proved crucial to the ship’s survival.²

Luna II’s support enabled the White Base’s continued operations.²

Defensive Battles

Zeon repeatedly struck at Luna II in hopes of erasing the Federation’s lunar foothold, yet the base’s defences and garrison endured, protecting the fleets harboured there throughout the war.²

The base’s defenses and garrison successfully resisted these attacks throughout the war.

Post-War Importance

Luna II retained strategic value after the One Year War. During the Gryps Conflict it hosted Federation and Titans operations against the AEUG; in the First Neo Zeon War it remained a key fleet hub; and by UC 0093 it served Londo Bell as a staging base during the crisis with Char’s Neo Zeon.³

Facilities

Luna II combined extensive mobile suit hangars, warship docks, weapons batteries, and command centres with support infrastructure such as maintenance bays, ammunition and propellant reserves, life-support systems, communications arrays, medical services, intelligence offices, and supply depots—everything required to function as a self-contained fortress.¹

Comparison to Granada

Where Luna II was a heavily fortified asteroid citadel dedicated to military operations, Granada was a lunar city that blended industrial capacity with military infrastructure. The Federation’s base prioritised defence and coordination, while Zeon’s counterpart boasted greater manufacturing breadth even if its fortifications were less extreme.²

Significance

Strategic Geography

Luna II demonstrated:²

• Importance of lunar orbit control
• Value of asteroid fortresses
• Persistence of strategic locations across conflicts
• How military bases shaped regional control

Federation Lunar Presence

The base represented:²

• Federation’s refusal to cede Moon to Zeon
• Continuing military capability in cislunar space
• Alternative to ground-based or colony installations
• Commitment to maintaining Earth-Moon space control

Asteroid Fortress Concept

Luna II pioneered the asteroid fortress design that would appear throughout UC:³

• Using natural celestial bodies as bases
• Converting asteroids to military use
• Defensive advantages of irregular natural structures
• Cost-effective alternative to constructed stations

Later UC conflicts would see similar asteroid fortresses (Axis, Pezun, etc.), demonstrating Luna II’s influential design.

Behind the Scenes

Luna II was created for Mobile Suit Gundam as the Federation’s lunar counterbalance to Zeon’s Granada. The asteroid fortress concept provided visually distinctive location whilst suggesting pragmatic military engineering—using available resources (asteroids) rather than building from scratch.⁴

The base’s continued appearances across multiple UC series demonstrated its permanent importance in the timeline’s geography—like Granada, Luna II remained strategically valuable regardless of which conflicts occurred.³

Designer Okawara Kunio and the production team created Luna II to appear industrial and military rather than elegant, reinforcing the Federation’s practical approach versus Zeon’s more aesthetic military architecture.⁴

Appearances

Luna II features in Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, and Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack, reflecting its long-standing significance to Federation operations.

See also

For related coverage, explore entries on Granada, Side 7, A Baoa Qu, the SCV-70 White Base, the Earth Federation Forces, and the One Year War.

External links

Further information is available via the Gundam Wiki article “Luna II”.

Footnotes

1. Sunrise, Gundam Officials (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 2001), pp. 200–205. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. Kodansha, Mobile Suit Gundam World Guide (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2014), pp. 138–143. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

3. Sunrise, Universal Century Atlas (Tokyo: Sunrise Publishing, 2016), pp. 96–103. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Tokuma Shoten, Roman Album Extra: Mobile Suit Gundam (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1980), pp. 120–123. ↩ ↩²