I remember seeing something about the Spetsnaz as well, though for the life of me I can't remember.

Corp Download, in the Yamatetsu chapter.

Oh sure, the very last place I ever would have looked. Figures.

Back to teh CAS, proper, I wonder if there's a move on to take a swing at Aztlan at this stage? Lots of Azzie forces are tied up in teh Yucatan, they've lost MAJOR magical mojo the past year or trhee, they're having some financial worries, and Amazonia's stepping up teh underbelly nibbles.

Add in Ghostwalker turning them sideways and Pueblo taking a beeline to LA and you have an interesting setup where the Puebs need extra land to guard that pencil-thin stretch they have, the CAS retakes Texas (And maybe a bit more), backed by a horked off Ghostwalker lending spiritual and magical support (But not being actually on-site) ... Not a huge war that drives for Tenochitlan, mind, but a 24 hour push sort of thing.

Hmm...

-- Johnny Reb

"Jon" is just a little too generic. When people use "Szeto," it leaves very little doubt who they're referring to.

Jon, maybe you should change the tag under your name to 'Which Szeto?'

Speaking as another Jon, my calling it "Jon's description" just sounds weird.

~J the self-centered

There are entirely too many Jo(h)ns in this world.

Well, at least you don't mind the context of the sentence.

*singing*

These are the Johns I know
I know I know
These are the Johns I know...

I know a hooker who sings that.

Too many jokes...brain...overloading....

The CAS clearly has at best the second largest army in the world. The Crowning glory of world's biggest army has to be the NEEC. Witch has roughly the same ratio of soldier pre-capita as CAS. (at least in divisions with 20,and three fleets.). The Europeans really like big armies.

As for special forces, I recall SONA saying that they were in the middle.Nothing to great, but nothing to be ashamed of. Not everyone can be the best.

As I recall the CAS also has the CDC, witch may be an AA.

Yeah, I had a re-read of SoNA. Whilst CAS special forces are good, just not in the same league as the Wildcats or Ghosts, man-for-man their normal troops are the best trained on the continent apparently.

Seems that 'Ferrets' is more just a nickname that was given to a section of the CAS's Marine Force Recon battalion.

in SR, they vey well might prefer huge-ass armies. their most recent war involved unending hordes of suicidal assaults. the one just before that involved a heavy armor blitzkreig. large, well-equipped armies are quite possibly the order of the day.

In that case I would highly recommend that you stay well away from the two original Tir sourcebooks- they take it to new heights.

Actually, I can buy the Ghosts being badass simply on the principles that the Tir throws assloads of magic and money for gear at them. TNO... I don't know.

The Wildcats being better than your standard U.S. or British SF team? No effing way.

Well, really the wildcats are a cover for an awakened species of planarian worm (IRL a kind of flatworm that a assimilate some 'memories' by eating the brains of another planaria (sp?)). Once they got the worms through basic training, they had they visit a lot of military graveyards, with shovels...

Now having consumed the brains of some of historys greatest soldiers, they are perhaps the best worm commando that the world has ever seen.

Maybe they're all shedim.

I thought the Wildcats took genetic material from History's Greatest Warriors ™ to clone their General, Serpentor!!!, but I could be remembering that wrong.

There was a site I found a few years ago (and don't care anywhere near enough to try and find again) that had some homebrewed CAS material on it, most notably the CAS-Army Special Forces on the Aztlan Border called the Desert Rats. I liked the name (in fact, I liked it when the British were using in in N. Africa in WW2), and so I've used them a few times in character backgrounds and so on.

Daniel Casquilho's site, wasn't it? And they were Border Patrol, IIRC.

Yes, and bankrolled with an economy that makes the Tir's look realistic, no doubt.

The other problem with having a good SF group is you need a good army to draw them out of. You don't just turn the 18 year old high school graduate into a SF trooper, they join the army, and if they are any good, they go on to SF.

Here's some fun, tho:

As of the 1990 census, there were just under two million persons of AmerInd ancestry in the US. Figure that VITAS and teh war would knock that down quite a bit, then breed 'em up for two generations. You're still looking at, what? two and a half million? Three tops?

The UCAS and CAS combine to well over three hundred million.

Yes, teh native nations have a lot of people, but the Anglo types have to have a ten to one advantage ove rthe natives, if not more. There's simply no way around that unless the average Native family numbers twenty kids or so.

Teh Great Ghost Dance has *very* clearly rattled the UCAS past rationality. I'd imagine that the Wildcats have to be in a similar situation.

Then again, it could just be poor writing.

-- Johnny Reb

It's cool. I am just somewhat familiar with the Desert Rats, as my father was one of them. The British had equivelant forces there (the LRRP), but they used a different name.

Some Gogleing puts the Australian Army at around 2 divisions + some attachements. This gives them around 15,000 ? combat soldiers to recruit SF from. Assuming that around 5% of soldiers are 'SF potentials' that gives them around 500-1000 people to choose from. After that it is largely about training and retetention. These numbers would let them field a 'short regiment' or so of specops forces.

Having high quality SF is not directly related to having a large standing army, it's just a pre-requirement. You need a 'large' pool of grunts to choose from, who you wouldthen train as SF. The CAS would certainly have a large enough pool of grunts, but their armed forces may not place all that much emphasis on SF. Also, the cross training that SF forces participate in is usually necessary to avoid 'group think' in your SF community as the selection process will tend to produce soldiers who troopers who have all been through the same training, follow the same doctrine, think the same way, etc.

So reasons that the CAS SF guys might not be 'that good':

Different funding pattern:
The CAS SF funding pattern might be toward 'more good troops' rather than 'few great troops'. So the CAS might have a lot 'Rangers', but no 'Delta'.

Lack of political support (either from the army and/or the goverment)
Good SF forces need political support, without this they will tend to miss too many opportunities.

Doctrine
The CAS SF structure has embraced a non-optimal method (i.e.over emphasis on close/hand to hand combat), have 'too much' of one subsection (i.e. lots of combat deckers), or turned it's back in a 'required' one (i.e. anti-magic)

Reputation among the Grunts (who would normally try out for SF)
"Ah yes, join the Ferrets, travel to Mexico, meet blood spirits, get medals, have them sent to your relatives." say the grunts.

I get the feeling that the Ferrets, like the 1st SFOD-Delta, the SAS, and many other of the "super" Special Operations units IRL, don't normally take just grunts that show potential either. Soldiers who try out for Delta are usually already Rangers or Special Forces, some of the best in those units, and then only 1-in-10 or 1-in-20 or so make it through. But then the Delta is around 200-300 members, maybe, out of a pool of around 5,000-8,000 of Rangers and Special Forces alone, plus hundreds of thousands of other troops.

Although, like I said earlier, those requirements must have fallen if out of a pool of 1/3rd the size they can pick out twice as many (although that's apparently just fluff from that one website). But I don't think it's quite fair to call the Ferrets equivalent of Rangers or SF instead of Delta or SAS, because I do get the feeling these are supposed to be used for counter-terrorism and extremely high-risk raid operations in very small groups very deep inside enemy territory. Rangers, who are mostly just "elite" airborne infantry, and SF, whose specialty is guerrilla warfare and training/leading/communicating/working with local populations, aren't suitable for those kinds of ops.

RL examples do tend to show that a decent standing army and experience in special operations correlate strongly with having successful special operations units. Maybe the Tirs and some of the Native American Nations have benefited greatly from ex-US experience and have been training their specops units like mad since they were formed. They also benefit from very high levels of patriotism (ultranationalism, even), which helps put together a good standing army and maintain those specops units.

That's all true, but ...

As far as I know, the Australian 9th Infantry Battalion was the first to use the term 'Desert Rats', which was slightly changed from the nickname 'Rats of Tobruk' that the Germans gave them in, of all places, Tobruk.

Of course back then all Oz troops had British Officers, and Oz units were attached to larger British Brigades and Regiments. It's fully possible that the term refers to both and each came about it independantly, but more than likely that it was just broadened to include the entire Brigade. I have the medals and citations to prove my father's participation in the 'Australian 9th Infantry Battalion - Desert Rats'

Ok, reediting my post. I've reread the Ferrets weblink again. It seems interesting. But really what do we know that's canon about the Ferrets? That's what I'm asking about.

A small mention in the CAS section of Shadows Across North America. It's the nickname of one Marine unit there. (Tho tehre's some debate in-book about that,)

They were first mentioned in Just Compensation as being, or being part of, CSMC Force Recon.