RE: [MERCS] Weapons available [FH]

--- CS Renegade <njg@csrenegade.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Twentieth-century mercenaries tend to form units for
> single operations, or are even hired individually by
> the
> sponsor. In both situations, there is often a large
> degree of deniability, so the mercenaries are free
> to
> use methods that government troops and company
> employees
> would face recriminations for.

Uh, not necessarily.  They can get tracked down,
especially if the victims are determined enough.  

And if they are that hard to track down, would any one
trust them with a goddamn nuclear weapon?  Do you have
any idea what sort of standards a nation holds the
custodians of their nuclear weapons to?  Most
personell in the US military could not qualify for the
PRP program to get close to nuclear weapons.

> In fictional backgrounds, different moral standards
> often prevail.
 
Depends. 

> However, what if you have an industrial complex
> worth
> several billion credits and it's been occupied by
> locals
> with cheap automatic weapons? Or even striking
> employees?
> You can pay a mercenary company to flush them out
> using
> similar weapons, or you can hire a platoon to simply
> sanitise the complex with a few gas rounds from a
> mortar.
> Guess which will leave you more of your complex?

Personally?  I flush the place with CS and then send
in riot police or regular infantry.  If you gas your
own citizens you run the risk of ending up a pariah
like Iraq. 

Oh, and you still do it with your own forces.
 
> > How could you explain to your voters that you
> hired a
> > bunch of crazed lunatics?
> 
> That assumes a democracy, or an equivalent method of

> government accountability to the general public.

Other methods of government produce reigimes far to
paranoid to equip those not politically reliable with
WMD.

> Now that's sketching a established mercenary unit on
> the scale of Falkenberg's Legion (and I think I
> recollect
> an episode when a mad vice-president and his stooge
> tried
> to arrest Johnny Christian.) Back to reality: I
> don't see
> the average mercenary fighting under a nom de guerre

> having easily traceable dependents. Yes, many of
> them
> are arrested, often before their operations get
> going.
> This is simply to forestall the operation, rather
> than
> to prevent unacceptable amounts of death and
> destruction.

It's even simpler in any background with space travel:
 If the mercs in question do unacceptable things, they
find it really difficult to get off-planet.

> Applying this to the GZG universe (which may or may
> not
> have been the original intention) I would say that
> there,
> one does not break rules so much as make enemies.
> Being
> wanted by the NSL for undue use of chemical weapons
> is
> no problem if you primarily work within the ESU.

Depends on circumstances.  Would the ESU hire
mercenary units with the firepower to set up their own
fief (which WMD provide)?  I doubt it.

John

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