Coyote wrote:But in the explantion of CompForce troops and their deployment within, and subservient to, Army command in the Imperial structure, then wouldn't that make them more like Spec Ops troops, perhaps along the lines of the Soviet Spetznaz?
The
Imperial Sourcebook, Second Edition gives the following description of CompForce:
CompForce is the military arm of COMPNOR. They were created to give the Emperor large forces other than stormtroopers on whose loyalty he could absolutely rely. They are carefully selected volunteers from SAGroup. Assault volunteers are given rigorous training, and then put nominally under the command of a Sector Group. Observation personnel are selected from a different pool of beings than Assault personnel.
Regular Army and Navy personnel have no love for CompForce. Regular troopers and deckmen feel that CompForcers are given priority when it comes to new equipment or the allocation of valuable resources, such as medical attention. In sectors where COMPNOR has a particularly strong influence, this is true. Most of the dislike stems from CompForcers' rabid adherence to the principles of the New Order. While the average deckman or trooper believes in the basics of the New Order, they believe they have better things to do with their spare time than self-examine their lives in excruciating detail to see how they might better serve the New Order. CompForcers are treated cooly throughout the military.
Observation
Observation units are despised almost to a being by the regular military. Observation units are members of SAGroup selected for their political loyalty. In theory, they are then sent to observe the Imperial military in action so they might learn how the Imperial war machine works. In practice, they are spies who insure that the officers and enlisted folk of the Imperial military are acting with the proper respect for the New Order.
Everyone serving knows they are spies (with the possible exception of CompForce assault teams, who are pretty blind to the shortcomings of the New Order), and officers and enlisted personnel alike detest having to pretend otherwise. Acting in an insulting manner to an Observation officer is a good way to have a promising career cut short, and Observation knows this very well.
When their stint with Observation is up, most volunteers forego joining the military but opt for the ISB or another COMPNOR group instead.
Assault
There is no branch of service which takes higher casualties in training than the Assault arm of CompForce. SAGroup has such a large supply of primed volunteers that the Assault arm can afford to train by attrition – if you make it through training you are combat ready. Of the 88 percent who fail to make it through training, nearly one quarter of these are combat fatalities. There is little exaggeration and a lot of perverse pride in Assault's claim that "two die for every one that gets through."
The ferocious training and indoctrination of Assault arm does provide strong unit cohesion for its troops, as well as instill a willingness to fight on despite heavy casualties. Training-by-attrition does have a serious defect in that it selects those who have been merely lucky, as well as those who have natural combat skills, and it processes so many volunteers through training that it does a mediocre job of teaching vital combat skills to its soldiers.
In the field, this lack of training shows in higher than necessary casualties and failure to succeed in objectives against well-trained troops. This deficiency is not seen as important for these reasons; the supply of volunteers is not large, but it is certainly larger than the pool for the Rebellion, and training an Assault arm volunteer is cheaper than training an equivalent trooper in the regular Army.
Additionally, the Assault arm is a recent addition to COMPNOR. Some of the units are lasting long enough to train themselves and pass on skills to the volunteers who replace casualties. These veteran units are gaining a fearsome reputation which is deserved.
The OB for the average Imperial Sector includes an auxiliary battlegroup, an amorphous organization which includes three CompForce regiments. Each CompForce regiment is organized like a Regular Army line regiment (two line battalions, one assault battalion, and one repulsorlift battalion), except that it lacks security personnel or military policemen, these being considered unnecessary for a regiment composed exclusively of political zealots.
As can be seen, there is nothing suggesting that CompForce is any sort of special operations force. Indeed, despite their superior equipment and preferential treatment, CompForce is actually inferior in training and ability to its Imperial Army counterparts. Rather than a special operations force, CompForce is more of a "bargain basement" ersatz army, more useful for the fact that it represents a rival to the Imperial Army and that its loyalty is as sure as that of the Imperial Marines.
It is here that CompForce's similarity to the SS in organizational nature becomes especially visible. Much as the Wehrmacht had fiercely opposed the SA's attempts to bear arms – which the Wehrmacht regarded itself as the sole legitimate bearer on the Reich's behalf – and was deeply resentful of the fact that the SS broke its monopoly on armed force, the Imperial Army and Imperial Navy are resentful of CompForce, which resembles nothing quite so much as a merger of even more fanatical Communist political officers and generally incompetent National-Socialist Waffen-SS troopers. CompForce Assault regiments are comparable to the GRU's Spetsnaz only in that both happen to march in formation and use firearms.
Perhaps all this ballyhooing about how much the Empire resembles the Third Reich (a natural tendency given that both had troops called "Stormtroopers") is off base-- the Soviet UNion might be more adept a comparison.
There is an excess of attempts to shoehorn the Galactic Empire into a convenient, simplistic classification like calling them "Space Nazis" or "Space Communists." In the first place, the Empire is unlike the Third Reich and the Soviet Union in that it is not actually totalitarian, nor are its politics dominated by a single political organization (COMPNOR, though pervasive in influence, has nothing like the overwhelming power in Imperial politics that the National-Socialist and Communist parties held in their own countries). In that regard, it is more accurate to compare the Empire to the Spanish State under Generalissimo Franco; there, the political organization (the Phalanx) was unambiguously subordinate to and defined by the regime, not vice versa. In other respects – such as its peculiar federal/confederate constitution – the Empire more resembles the Holy Roman Empire (the so-called Second Reich) or even aspects of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire.
Certainly, CompForce's Observation arm is clearly reminiscent of the CPSU's habit of spying on its own military with "deputy commanders for political affairs"; Titus Klev is said to have served as an "Ideological Monitor" early in his career, presumably before he formally entered the Imperial Navy as a Battle Station Operations Officer. And yet COMPNOR's influence is not all-encompassing; the
Imperial Sourcebook, Second Edition clearly indicates that CompForce receives preferential treatment in some Sectors where COMPNOR is particularly influential – with the necessary implication that it does not receive preferential treatment in other Sectors where COMPNOR is not influential. Therefore, it may be more accurate to say that the Empire resembles the Soviet Union in certain places, at certain times, and in certain respects, but this is not a universal thing (in methodology, that is – in terms of ideology, COMPNOR is distinctively Fascistic). Certain Sectors are ruled by "Space Nazis" or "Space Communists" or "Space Fascists," but this varies from Sector to Sector; the Imperial political structure is addressed in the article "
All the Emperor's Men."
Perhaps the Stormtroopers are more analagous to the KGB military regiments, ie, the Border Guards, which had high priority and used Army equipment and organization, but were in a political role. Then the CompForce troops are the Spatznaz, small elite teams not organized in large formations except perhaps for adminstrative purposes only...
Why should the Imperial Marines be analogous to the KGB's paramilitary Border Guards? The two services have very little in common. The Border Guards were well-equipped and used for political purposes in a domestic context; the Imperial Marines are elite shock troopers who serve regularly aboard Imperial Naval warships and spearhead Imperial planetary invasions as a spaceborne amphibious assault force (their prestige and reputation results in additional duties like security and military police, honor guards, and other ceremonial duties).
The fact that both are considered (rightly or wrongly) to be above suspicion and completely loyal, and both receive preferential treatment in equipment and allocation of resources is insignificant: the Border Guards were a paramilitary force belonging to "the Sword and Shield of the Party," whereas the Imperial Marines are financed and equipped better than the other branches merely as a result of favoritism in funding within the Armed Forces, prompted by the Imperial State's fondness for an unquestionably loyal force of shock troops.
A better comparison for the Imperial Marines would be Napoléon I's Garde impériale – it grew to be up to 80,000 strong – which was the elite of his armies and renowned for its loyalty to the Emperor and its ferocity in battle (the Garde did not retreat until the Emperor met his Waterloo). The Emperor's appreciation for the Garde's loyalty and superb soldiership manifested itself in his favoritism, which provided the Garde with the finest equipment and supplies available, and gave it preferential treatment to the point that the soldiers of the Garde ranked higher than their counterparts in other units. Like the Imperial Marines, the Garde impériale was one of the regular forces, but was treated specially to reflect its special relationship with the Emperor. Favoritism and especial honors are not unique to paramilitary forces.
PUBLIUS
