Moths, Not Butterflies

...which is a reference to Peacemaker Kurogane. Anyway, the Ane-ue put up a post about SEALs, and that got me thinking about special forces. And as always I prefer the Marines; I don't think I mentioned it but, along with basing my SF story's Peacekeepers on the Sovietskaya Armiya (or maybe the Rénmín Jiěfàngjun), I based the felinoids' org chart on the USMC. Which might explain why they won the war—their whole military is Marines.

Anyway, there are some interesting aspects of my felinoids' culture as it relates to special ops. See, as mentioned previously, they have no taboo on stealth, being ambush predators, but they have a huge taboo on deception, and betrayal, being rational beings whose society has to function. What that means is that their police have more surveillance than ours, but no undercover work. Their military uses no false-flag ops, though they still have some disinformation (no rational being would survive long if it forbade feints, in war); likewise, intelligence is mostly gathered by reconnaissance—their operators are all called "scouts"; "spy" is a pejorative in their language, meaning more like "traitorous mole-rat who sells information on his associates to the highest bidder". By courtesy, they call our spies "scouts", though the fact we do allow false flags and undercover work doesn't help their opinion of us any.

Their scouts, like Marine Force Recon, have two classes of mission. Marines call them "green" and "black" ops, i.e. "stealthy reconnaissance where engagement is avoided" and "direct action where engagement is sought" (did you know "black ops" had such a specific meaning?). My felinoids call them "blood" and "bone" missions, the analogy being "light surface contact that'll at most break the skin" vs "serious fighting that penetrates to, or simply smashes, bones".

Blood missions (green operations) include, as in Force Recon, general pre- and post-landing reconnaissance, as well as more specifically battle damage assessments, placing sensors and beacons, and preparing landing- and drop-zones. Bone missions (black operations) include seizure of fuel platforms and similar resources; boarding, search and seizure during interdictions; orchestrating close air support and acting as forward observers for artillery; ordnance and payload delivery (setting bombs, in other words); and bodyguarding and hostage rescue. Most of those, in a 24th-century setting, are still planet-bound—a lot of those functions are performed by shipborne sensors or unmanned probes in space, though you'd probably be sending in specially-trained guys if you're boarding ships or stations instead of just blowing them.

Incidentally the humans' military special forces—the Peacekeeper Special Purpose Forces—are mainly used for black-ops, especially sabotage and assassinations, though they also do some intelligence gathering. Look at the special forces of the Soviet Army or PLA, basically. The PK SPFs have the most people conversant in the felinoids' languages of the whole Peacekeepers, as well as the most people with prosthetic enhancements. I think they use powered armor less, though, since high mobility is key for special ops, and human powered armor somewhat sacrifices speed for power.