Mercs, yet again

John A replied to my post, and I reply to his:

'm assuming that most mercenary units will 
probably not be hired by central 
governments of major powers. They will be 
hired by breakaway colonies, regional
governors, and communities on balkanized 
planets. 

[Tomb] A regional governor is a 
representative of a major power. And there 
is plenty of modern evidence that PMCs are 
being retained by major governments to 
fight or aid in the fighting in situations they 
don't want to participate in. And the ONLY 
way the UN will allow a Mercenary Charter 
to come into being will involve the 
mercenaries that are chartered from not 
participating in insurgent operations to 
destabilize a national government, on that 
you can depend. So those doing that will be 
doing it unchartered (quite probable) or 
very carefully and quietly.

> NO soldier in his right mind is content 
with the 
> "well, our plan better work or we're up 
the 
> creek" option. No one plans for that. > 

You'd be surprised.  Hell, take a look at 
Market Garden.

[Tomb] They did not plan to fail. They made 
mistakes, but they did not knowingly go in with 
the expectation of failure. And they were, in the 
sense I described following, participating in their 
own suicide. So this is not precluded by 
anything I have said. It should just be very rare.
Also, these were not mercenaries either, who 
are even more eye-open because of the 
corporate focus of their work. 

Think of mercenary formations this was: Less 
averse than national forces to small casualty 
counts (it is a risky business, recruiting will fill 
the gaps, no flag wrapped coffins on the news) 
and far more averse to unit-destroying actions 
(no national interest, a lot harder to put 
together a decimated or annihilated unit). 

It's really capital-intensive to start a 
spacefleet. 

[Tomb] I wonder if buying a corvette is 
more expensive than equipping a Division? 

It also requires highly trained personell--
you can run a small-scale training platoon 
in your merc batallion.

[Tomb] Look at the size of the Big4 fleets 
alone. Their are plenty of veterans to draw 
from. Though I will admit groundpounder 
merc units will be far more common. 

You can't run a training ship in your 
destroyer squadron.  It's too dangerous to 
have untrained personell aboard a fighting 
warship.

[Tomb] Most modern fleets do on-board 
training. And modern simulators are getting 
very cheap and effective for the shore-
bound part. I don't forsee this as a major 
issue actually (having worked on next-gen 
sims for the Canadian Air Force and for bid 
to a very interested USAF - we also had CP 
Rail and some other military and civilian 
industries looking at our tech). 

I can't recall a single instance of a modern 
naval or aviation (excepting Executive 
Outcomes with a handful of Hinds, bought 
cheap from the South African
government after they captured them.) 
mercenary unit. 

[Tomb] As pointed out earlier, the situation 
is very different in the future of the 
GZGverse. Today's world is "small". Space 
is not (at least not with GZGverse tech). 
Privateers aren't required because big 
powers are not slugging it out (they are 
mostly just beating up little guys with no 
commerce to attack) and most won't 
engage in anti-shipping activity because 
the situation of today allows the nations 
the luxury of being "generous" and 
"compliant with Int'l Treaties". The 
GZGverse seems to feature more heads-up 
fights between major powers in a very very 
very much bigger playing field with far 
scattered outposts. This would seem to 
favour just the type of space-capable 
mercenary force I've discussed. 

The time of privateers and letters of 
marque was the time when the only 
expense in converting a merchantman
to a warship was cutting holes in the side 
and mounting cannon (Yes, I know purpose-
built warships were better.  But they 
weren't required.)

[Tomb] And you can make ad hoc warships 
in GZGverse by removing some cargo 
spaces and installing weapon spaces in a 
fast freighter. The rules don't preclude this 
at all and neither, AFAIK, does the 
universe. Yes, purpose built warships are 
better. That is still the same. 

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Thomas Barclay
Instructor, CST 6304 (TCP/IP programming for the Internet)
kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca 
http://fox.nstn.ca/~kaladorn/CST6304
http://stargrunt.ca/tb/CST6304
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