Re: [SG] ESU Spentznaz

On Sun, May 12, 2002 at 02:58:13PM -0700, John Atkinson wrote:

>ESU Special Purpose Forces are still referred to with
>the old Russian designation of Spentznaz.

I've always been taught the spelling "Spetsnaz", with the understanding
that it was short for SPETSialnaya NAZnacheniya, literally "Special
Purpose". (Given the nature of this list, we probably have someone who's
either worked with them or shot at them who'll be along to correct me in
a minute...) (The "ts" is a single letter in Cyrillic.)

I would generally expect Spetsnaz troops to be at the higher end of the
quality scale - certainly not yellow or green, and probably more oranges
than blues - depending on one's opinion of the ESU's ability to train
and retain expert soldiers, of course!