Squaddie Stats

"Squaddie Stats"

Your soldiers are the core of your Raider team and your most valuable asset. The experiences and skills that make a man or woman a crack team member are much harder come by than those demanded of any other corporate employee! While there will always be those who are willing to fight for money, the number of those who fit Raider team environment demands--intelligence, initiative, stable psychological profile, a team orientation, and discipline—are rare. Your recruiting efforts are also complicated by two cold realities: you have a budget tightly monitored by the bean counters hawk-watching your budget and you aren’t the only game in town. Everyone wants the best people and some people have more payroll dollars than you. You hire with the following characteristics in mind:

Experience. This is the one that separates the men from the boys. It feels much more comfortable having a steel-nerved vet who has “been there, done that,” covering your back than some gung-ho FNG (green horn) who may (or may not) be talented as hell, but is as keyed up as a Chihuahua on amphetamines. Your hires may come with military time in some nation’s army, previous Raider time with another corporation, mercenary experience or survival skills from a lifetime on the inner city streets of some city’s militarized zone. You have to decide what you value in a soldier’s experience. At least the corporate S-2, the intel guys, do up a pretty good dossier for you.

Alertness. That blend of intelligence, instinct, initiative, situational awareness, and focus that’s as important in a Warrior as it is difficult to quantify. It often means the difference that separates those who become steely-eyed killers and those who become glassy-eyed corpses. Those with a predisposition to become the latter have a way of causing deaths other than their own. Human Resources (HR) can give you all the data you want on the separate factors that indicate mental alertness and reactions. Your experience is all you have to use when it comes to judging how well they’re integrated in the man you want to hire.

Strength. This is no longer a world where the strongest man swings the baddest sword. But neither will it ever be a world where nothing goes wrong. And sometimes the man who can bend steel with his bare hands, or carry two wounded teammates to safety, is nice to have around when things go to hell in a hand basket—which happens all too often when groups of people begin shooting at each other. That's why the Gunny says, "You can't always kill those sonsabitches at maximum effective range; that's why God gives you a bayonet, shithead."

Endurance. Not all missions are snappy quick, in-and-out affairs. Sometimes its the wiry little pieces of rawhide some men have for muscles that enable a 140 pound man to carry a 120 pound rucksack long after the Goliaths of the world have collapsed to the ground. When the dustoff chopper gets shot down by the team trying to keep you from getting away with their triton, its nice to have soldiers who can make like Energizer Bunnies until you can get to another PZ.

Stability. Some people don’t get upset by anything. They keep thinking coolly even when the bullets are kicking chips of bark into their eyes. That’s a nice characteristic to have and a tough one to train into someone who wasn't born with it. ‘Nuff said.

Loyalty. This is a tough one to determine in an interview. The psyche profilists do the best they can to measure it, but many of their techniques are as explainable as voodoo. The measurement attempts to predict the reaction of a soldier who is either a) captured and offered a position on the capturing team, or b) the recipient of an offer by a rival corporation. No one wants to invest in someone who’ll fly the coop as soon as Acme Corp offers him a few more bucks a week and a company car. History shows that soldiers who jump teams tend to take gear with them--which really gets the accountants’ panties in a bunch. And no one wants to find himself in a tight spot in a fire fight with someone who is considering a bullhorn offer from the enemy to switch sides. The fact that it’s no new hazard to the politics of mercenaries doesn’t make you feel any better when a teammate turns on you. A high loyalty rating usually means better retainability and a more certain return on your training and payroll investment.

Combative Skill. Some people are natural fighters. Some people can train themselves to make up for the fact that they aren’t natural fighters. Some people are wizards with weapons, but can’t fight their way out of the proverbial wet paper bag without them. Sometimes, weapons don’t work. People with high combative skills are nice to have around when technology ceases to be an equalizer….

Marksmanship. Easily measured, quite important. You can’t depend on that random ricochet to take out the bad guys when you're in Indian country, nor can you carry infinite ammo. It’s important to remember that skills like these can be severely affected by situation and characteristics like stability! Real marksmanship isn’t proven on the target range.

Woodsmanship. Stealthy, rapid movement through woodland, jungle, even meadowland is a learned art. The cat-quick, leopard-silent, woods-smart point man is invaluable. The man who moves no more quietly than a rhino walking on potato chips can kill a lot of people, most of them friendly.

Leadership. Defined as the ability to influence people to accomplish a mission, a leader can stabilize nervous men in a tight situation, keep their morale up, and focus their energies. Strong leadership indicates the ability to give smart, fast orders, and receive and execute them smartly. You’ll never have any doubts about your ability to drive men to success, but what happens if you take that magic “BB” and become just another piece of baggage to your team? Someone has to be able to take over.