First off, a few thing:
McGruff: You win a cookie for not only replying first, but replying in the correct manor.
Mjr. Whoopass: An impeccable analysis.
LOAF: You just kicked ass in the 4 essential ways.
Banbridge and Turner talk about their own illustrious history fighting planets full of terrorists years earlier.
Planets full of terrorists. Now there is an interesting story (and idea) unto itself. Then again, Confed sure has a lot of domestic enemies (Pilgrims, Mandarins, the Church of Man, the occasional spy).
Ok, now my rant:
While I’m inclined to agree about the Pilgrim War not being considered a real / traditional war, the Confed manual states that war was indeed declared:
2632.017 [Celeste, Celeste System] A Pilgrim fleet destroys a Confederation mining colony and military base on Celeste.
2632.018 [Earth, Sol System] The Terran Confederation formally declares war on the Pilgrim Alliance.
Granted the Pilgrim Alliance composed only 12 systems, compared to the mighty nation that is Confed. One does wonder what was in the heads of those silly Newtypes, er, I mean Pilgrims. Then again, World War 2 is a rather good analogy of nations with dreams, and delusions, of grandeur biting off more than they can chew.
And while the Pilgrims did start it, Confed's response appears to have been (somewhat) swift and terrible.
May I be so bold as to suggest that Confed’s heavy-handed response to the situation may have been one of the things that made Daimon Karnes lose his faith in the Confederation?
That aside, the movie material makes frequent mention of the Peron Massacre (which claimed Blair’s parents), and I can’t help but try to envision what this may have been:
Could it be a case where a great number of civilian and refugee craft are used as shields for PA forces (similar to the Battle for Earth), or the PA throwing hundreds, if not thousands of weaker craft (your TIE Fighter/Leo/Dralthi equivalent) at a smaller but better armed Confed force, or just a lot of people trying to escape and getting caught in the cross fire?
Initially I’d disagree, saying that the Confederation (or should I say Federation/WEC) had its fight with the Yan on or around 2300. However, there is no evidence to suggest that there wasn’t a second conflict with the Yan. (I find it rather unlikely of a war being fought, be it continues or on-and-off, from 2300-2534 and not getting much more mentions than a simple historical reference.)
Next to nothing is known about the Yan save for the facts that:
1. They must have been at a similar level of technological development as humanity at the time.
2. They attacked humanity when it was unprepaired to fight, though they don’t appear to have put quite the effort into their fight as the Kilrathi.
3. They have tails, which are extremely rare trade commodities by 2701.
A nice (be it a little silly) fanfic floating around the internet titled Wing Commander: Confederation offers a completely fanon, but interesting summary of the Yan War.
It was then that the Yan race reared its ugly head over Sol System. The Terran Federation was caught off-guard, and despite the efforts of the best in the Diplomatic Corps, war had been inevitable from the start. Twenty years of hostilities, the billions of deaths. It had been the first space-based conflict in history, pitting the awkward hot fusion-powered crates that had been the only suitable craft for warfare of any kind against the "Yan cans," as they had been nicknamed by vets. If the technology level had stood in the Yan’s favor, the war could and likely would have gone in an entirely different and tragic direction. It was truly fortunate that the Yan and Federation had been roughly at the same point of advancement into the vaunted Space Age. By 2388, the pendulum of war at last swung to the battered Federation. The Yan were wandering nomads that traveled system-to-system looking for easily-had habitable worlds to deposit colonies and supplies. The Federation, though merely a birthing space power of the WEC at the time, gave the Yan the fight of their lives. So they left. The war ended.
But file these away with the Mantu and Steltek under “Aliens we want to know more about, but most likely never will”. *SIGH*