SF don'ts

[speaker-to-trolls]

I think the idea with the Unsullied is that you cut off their masculine apparatus so they don't get distracted, I think the theory is that, since so much of human desire and drive can be linked to sex then by removing it you get rid of most of the things which could divert attention from the important business of killing things. Well, it works in theory.

Super-soldiers are one of those things which sound really cool but which make less sense the more you think about them. Yeah, you could probably make more effective soldiers if they were genetically engineered and trained from childhood, but honestly, would it be worth it? It's telling that the super-soldiers which make the most sense come from Warhammer 40,000, one of the most shamelessly outlandish and unrealistic universes out there (well, in relatively mainstream sci fi, anyway).

[White Haven]

I don't have an issue against supersoldiers as a part of a military, however, their supersoldierdom is achieved. Having a holyshitelite force to deploy for specific tasks from time to time has value. What goes off the deep end is when authors try to make an entimre military that way. The Imperial Cadre from some of Weber's stuff is a decent example of it...in a moderately large empire, there are at an absolute maximum 40000 Cade across the entire empire, and they're basically the best that technology and training can produce. They're insanely expensive to train, equip, and staff, and it's noted several times that both the quality of recruits needed and the cost of the equipment and enhancements mean that the Cadre rarey fills even that small maximum size.

Now, that's not to say that Weber doesn't wank ground troops, he does, but the concept of the insanely-scaled special forces unit still comes through well in that setting.

[Stuart]

And in that case we'd need no other military branch but SAC.

And the problem here is?????????

If it comes down to having to fight on the ground, if the attacker's doing it it's probably something they want, and if you have defenders it means it's worth enough that they won't be blowing it up themselves unless they have no other choice.

According to that logic, nobody uses artillery at all. In fact, artillery is the great killer of modern warfare (IIRC some 80 percent of all casualties - dead and wounded - are due to one form or another of artillery fire). Artillery fire is random, it doesn't matter how good or well-trained a soldier is, if he's standing where a 155mm shell lands or is under a submunitions burst, he's dead. That's not saying that special forces et al don't have their uses but for full-scale combat, these "super-soldiers" are, at best only very marginally more effective that normal grunts.

The most common environments that combat of this sort will occur in are the places where neither side particularly wants an artillery barrage dropped onto, and where twenty men often have the problem that only four guys will be effective before they start tripping over themselves due to numbers.

Combats of what sort? Special Ops is what its name suggests, a special case. If we're looking at warfare proper, combined arms wins all the time. It simply doesn't matter if one side has "super-soldiers", its the elements of the team that matter.

What's silly is having super-duper-training be the cause of supersoldiers, not supersoldiers themselves.

No, its the whole concept of a "super-soldier" that's crazy. As everybody here is probably bored with hearing me say; think systems, not components. A combined arms system will rip apart any army consisting soley of "super-soldiers"; at the same time a combined arms system depends on the quality of all its components, not just one of them. Exagerrating the quality of one part of a system has almost no effect on the performance of the system as a whole.

[Teleros]

Catachans probably are genetically modified, from looking at them...

They're called "baby Ogryns" for a reason you know .
Speaking of genetically modified Catachan, does it mention whether the planet is a high-G world or not? Might help explain things a little. Even without it though, after a few millennia of living on the planet I imagine natural selection will have had a fairly big effect on them. Just look at the Tanith compared to modern humans.

[Gullible Jones]

Ah, I can't believe that I didn't mention the Charles Manson Military Academy bug.

Actually, the worst thing along those lines that I can think of was sort of the opposite... In Michael Z. Williamson's The Weapon, part of the process of becoming a super-soldier is torture. Not something like SERE, but all-out torture to within an inch of their lives.

What makes this well and truly bizarre is that Williamson is actually a vet. You'd think he would know full well how that badly that could fuck the soldiers up, but apparently he doesn't. You'd think he'd know how badly that could fuck up the officers who have to do the torturing... But he doesn't. Between that, his seeming advocacy of killing civilians en masse when it suits one's needs, and his obsession with knives, I have to wonder if he's a bona fide psycho.

[Falkenhayn]

Wait... What? How does that make them better soldiers?

Suposedly gelding makes them more disciplined and loyal by removing their "need for women" (we're talking about a rape and plunder based logistics train). What it actually is, is the most barbaric way to destroy personal identity in men.

The Unsullied are slave children initially, and "the clean sweep" is made at age 9. They strangle the puppy at 10. Combine this level of abuse and a healthy dose of brainwashing, with the fact that it is now impossible for them to lead normal lives...

[Norseman]

Ah, I can't believe that I didn't mention the Charles Manson Military Academy bug.

Actually, the worst thing along those lines that I can think of was sort of the opposite... In Michael Z. Williamson's The Weapon, part of the process of becoming a super-soldier is torture. Not something like SERE, but all-out torture to within an inch of their lives.

What makes this well and truly bizarre is that Williamson is actually a vet. You'd think he would know full well how that badly that could fuck the soldiers up, but apparently he doesn't. You'd think he'd know how badly that could fuck up the officers who have to do the torturing... But he doesn't. Between that, his seeming advocacy of killing civilians en masse when it suits one's needs, and his obsession with knives, I have to wonder if he's a bona fide psycho.

It gets even better when you consider that if they want to leave they're beaten! E.g. there's this bell, and if you sound the bell you're out. However if you start making your way towards the bell, they start beating the tar out of you!

Also they're supposed to be Super-Elite at everything! Elite spies, able to blend in with any population group. Able to beat the shit out of everyone wherever. Able to cow religious fanatics! Able to track down the leader of a terrorist movement, and frighten the terrorists so badly that they won't dare to strike at you again!

In short... a mixture of James Bond and Tom Clancy at his nuttiest.

It gets even better when you realise that their regular soldiers receive the same training as Special Forces guys! And I'm not kidding, their training seems to be straight out of the spec force manual.

[Imperial Overlord]

The Unsullied have a badass reputation . . . . among the local decadent city states. Their biggest strength is probably their discipline, but we haven't seen them kick massive ass against a good opponent. They could very well be "big fish in small pond" syndrome in universe.

[Junghalli]

It gets even better when you consider that if they want to leave they're beaten! E.g. there's this bell, and if you sound the bell you're out. However if you start making your way towards the bell, they start beating the tar out of you!

So the program is designed to allow only the toughest and most courageous recruits to quit, while retaining those who don't ring the bell only because they're too scared of getting beaten up?

[Gullible Jones]

It gets even better when you consider that if they want to leave they're beaten! E.g. there's this bell, and if you sound the bell you're out. However if you start making your way towards the bell, they start beating the tar out of you!

Right, I forgot about that. IIRC the way it worked was that, once you got to the torture stuff, the only way to opt out was to get them to kill you. I recall the premise was something along the lines of the military not wanting anyone to quit halfway though and leak all the shit they were doing to the press.

Also they're supposed to be Super-Elite at everything! Elite spies, able to blend in with any population group. Able to beat the shit out of everyone wherever. Able to cow religious fanatics! Able to track down the leader of a terrorist movement, and frighten the terrorists so badly that they won't dare to strike at you again!

In short... a mixture of James Bond and Tom Clancy at his nuttiest.

That in itself is just wankish; they're not really any worse than the Envoys in the Takeshi Kovacs novels.

It gets even better when you realise that their regular soldiers receive the same training as Special Forces guys! And I'm not kidding, their training seems to be straight out of the spec force manual.

It isn't out of the spec force manual. Special forces training doesn't involve being unable to opt out, being tortured half to death, and being forced to fight for your food.

[Norseman]

It gets even better when you realise that their regular soldiers receive the same training as Special Forces guys! And I'm not kidding, their training seems to be straight out of the spec force manual.

It isn't out of the spec force manual. Special forces training doesn't involve being unable to opt out, being tortured half to death, and being forced to fight for your food.

No that's their Operatives, I'm talking about Freehold's regular army!

Here are the relevant chapters:
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17

Lots of good stuff in Chapter 15!

Four weeks in, they began adding weapons. So-called "unarmed" combat made use of everything in the soldier's inventory except projectiles, from boots, sticks, entrenching tools and wire, to climbing spikes, helmets and even the rifle as a club. The simulators and dummies were revolting. Blood splashed, jaws and limbs separated, guts spilled and horrible screams brought home just how deadly a human can be when properly trained. More important than the physical skills, Kendra learned, was that it encouraged a willingness to engage the enemy and an attitude of capability. It required closing with an opponent and getting hurt and in that regard, she agreed it made for better troops than those who trained in sterile rooms with electronic aids. She slept poorly, bothered by the violence involved, but realized that it could be necessary to save her life. The sparring with dummy weapons was painful in blows taken and she could mark her progress in bruises from fresh bloodred to stale yellow. She had a tooth regenerated after one vigorous bout with a man twice her mass, all muscle. The lesson she learned from that was to never try to outbrute a larger, stronger opponent. Stealth and careful grappling were the tools of the small against the large, sheer force only for use against a smaller opponent.

They spent time on the weapons range every day, with their rifle/grenade launcher combination weapons and the school's machineguns, mortars, rockets and other ranged weapons. They practiced stripping and rebuilding weapons in the dark, while restrained and even behind their backs. She learned to separate actual components from bogus parts tossed in to confuse her and even to separate parts from unnamed weapons out, and assemble all the pieces into their appropriate forms. She could identify a weapon, strip it, clean it, assemble it, shoot it and clear malfunctions, whether it was Freeholder, UN, Ramadanian, Caledonian or from one of the smaller colonies.

And then there's this:

That morning, survival training, groundside. Very early, short of sleep, groggy. A heavy transport lifter, a VC-6 Bison, waited on the field. They boarded, along with three recruits recycled from failed exams, strapped in and were whisked north to the tundra of the Hinterlands district. Howling wind and snow awaited them and they clung together for three long days in tiny shelters, two people per for body heat. They built windbreaks of snow reinforced with tough grass, tried with little success to light fires and dug bugs, moss and small rodent analogs out of the matted surface. Kendra felt queasy at the thought of eating any of it, but did so. There was nothing else provided and the cold burned calories at an alarming rate.

The lifter returned, they boarded and were dropped on rafts into the East Sea, right at the iceberg line. They scavenged water from bergs at the instructor's direction, choosing the older and glacial ice that was low in salt, and managed to snag a few slimy fish to eat, raw. The moss from the tundra hit them then, causing screaming diarrhea. The little water they had went to prevent dehydration. Teeth chattering behind cracked lips, Kendra swore under her breath, keeping herself going with thoughts of what she'd like to do to the instructors, who had a heated, roofed raft-shelter to work from. The students weren't allowed within five hundred meters of it.

They gratefully scrambled aboard the vertol again two days later and flew southwest across the continent. They landed again, at 25 degrees latitude, in the middle of the Saltpan Desert. The temperature was over 35 degrees and the wind was their enemy once more. After the rafts, most of them were barely able to walk. They scavenged bitter alkali water from cacti and scrub in their solar stills, wrapped cloth around their faces to minimize the dust, and munched that dust with the meager rations they were issued, supplemented by a few more rodents dried in the scorching heat or cooked on stones that were hot enough to fry. They huddled in the shade of a few rocks and dozed fitfully in the heat.

Once again they were lifted and dragged farther south. Trucks met them at a rough forward base and drove them into the deep jungle. It was fascinating; a riot of green, yellow and orange hues, with multiple canopies and thick growth. Water was readily available, of course, bitter and slimy after decontamination with nanos, and she had no trouble shooting a bird-analog for food. The diarrhea persisted, but at least one could wash in a warm jungle. Biting flies were Freehold pests, not Terran, but the chemistry wasn't precisely compatible. Every bite raised a huge, hard welt that would sting for days.

Once trucked back aboard the lifters after that ordeal, the instructors handed out mugs of hot stew, chocolate and candy. Kendra hadn't thought she could be so hungry. She wolfed down everything offered, then was airsick, as were quite a few others. She wondered if the sadistic bastards planned that, too.

Then they underwent prisoner training, being stripped and searched, herded into cages, screamed at and prodded in a fashion that made their treatment so far seem positively pedestrian. They were blindfolded with stifling hoods for three days, denied food and given little water. They each had a code word the cadre tried to force them to reveal, with the promise of dire consequences if they did. No permanently injurious tactics were allowed, but they were exercised to collapse, forced to sleep on cold, damp floors with no blankets and glaring lights overhead, then woken before they could properly rest. The second day of it, Kendra was made to hold two buckets of sand at arm's length, muscles screaming, being rewarded with a stinging riot prod when her arms slipped. She'd heard rumors of the version of this used by Special Warfare troops, and shuddered. It could be worse, and that terrified her into dealing with it. She gritted her teeth, swore silently and stood it out.

I remind you that these are all regular army people! I'd make more quotes but I believe that these illustrate my point quite amply, and you can check out the links if you want to see the rest.

[Aaron]

All they've really done is compress several course that soldiers would normally take over the first few years of their career into one. The only thing that I see that's kind of out there is the rip off of the SAS final challenge. But there are events in the Commonwealth that soldiers compete in that are similar for fun and bragging rights.

[Setzer]

The Unsullied have a badass reputation . . . . among the local decadent city states. Their biggest strength is probably their discipline, but we haven't seen them kick massive ass against a good opponent. They could very well be "big fish in small pond" syndrome in universe.

Well, IIRC, Astapor hadn't faced a real threat for ages. They had no enemies, so they spent their time holding gladiator style war games where the slave soldiers died and the citizen officers could jack each other off regarding their military prowess.

When Dany conquered her next city, she would have lost huge numbers of soldiers if Ser Selmy and Ser Mormont hadn't successfully snuck in through the sewers.

[Aaron]

Ghetto edit: If I had to name an objection to their training system it would be that real militaries space their training like this out because most of it is dangerous and you need prior experiance to do it safely and with any chance of passing. You also want to prevent the trainees from being overloaded with info.

I guess that means that the people of Freehold are supermen.

[Zixinus]

The idea of a super-soldier is always a charming plot device or character for space-opera writers, including mine. Would it be more acceptable if the military was broken into two parts: soldiers, recruited and trained civilians for whom the military was a job, and Warriors, proffesional soldiers trained to excel in all methods of combat? They are as likely to lead soldiers in the front lines as much as be special forces.

Specifically, they are either children from clan-like societies and communities , where war was, and still is a common part of life? They are genetically engineered and augmented, but they are not dehumanised, as there is a very humanity-centric belief. For example, Warriors are tested for high tolerances of pain under ritual circumstances, but are not castrated (even if the that particular warrior-clan finds celibacy and chastity ideal). They receive basic training is nearly everything, from various weapons to even plotting simple courses for spaceships (the type that you would need to do in an emergency, mind you).

[Covenant]

The issue there is that a hellish environment and a lot of punishment does not give you super soldiers. It's going to give you a lot of washouts and occasionally give you a psychopath soldier that won't perform properly in combat whatsoever. Things like pain tolerance are absolutely irrelevent, as Space Guns are probably lethal enough that anything serious enough to hurt you might as well just take off your arm and a good portion of your torso as well.

Clans and such are also awful structures--you want people to learn to listen to authority figures so that they can be expected to properly carry out an order when it is given, not balk under some "out"-group's ordering of them. Your structure sounds like an interesting way to get a bunch of muderous, undisciplined savages in power armor running around in complete disregard for orders.

The only benefit to these kinds of 'trials by fire' are that they quickly weed out the people who are utterly incapable of this for some unexpected reason (not having guts doesn't count, everyone starts scared) and breeding a sense of brotherhood between those who've passed. They'd know that everyone else who passed was, in effect, worthy of their respect. It's also somewhat the purpose of an Angry Drill Instructor--the more they hate him, the more they're going to work together as a team.

If anything, I'd use your kind of 'clan of savages' theory as the backstory of a normal but highly skilled soldier dude being sent to hunt down and kill 100 or so of these 'super-soldiers' after the plan completely and totally collapses. There's ways to make a super soldier, but they're not at all 'romantic' in the sense of writing about your soldiers learning to fight by surviving on cracked, volcanic deathworlds and taking only the top 1 percent of those survivors. You're working on the false pretense that the people you'd get out of a program such as that would be, in any way, a good soldier. You'd be more likely to create a sort of "First Blood" style lunatic who has crazy flashbacks and stabs children.

[Darth Wong]

The "warrior clans" idea seems to be an outgrowth of some sort of perverse "good old days" syndrome, in an alternate reality where the Scottish clans were actually an effective way to organize an army.

[Stuart]

The idea of a super-soldier is always a charming plot device or character for space-opera writers, including mine. Would it be more acceptable if the military was broken into two parts: soldiers, recruited and trained civilians for whom the military was a job, and Warriors, proffesional soldiers trained to excel in all methods of combat? They are as likely to lead soldiers in the front lines as much as be special forces.

Not really; what tends to happen in armies that get constituted that way is that the small "excelling" component drains away all the natural leaders from the rest. Without those natural leaders, the combat effectiveness of the main force is severely compromised. So what happens is that one gains a small, highly effective (but fragile) force at a cost of a severe penalty to one's army as a whole. If you have a very large army and a very small "excelling" group, the penalty can be swallowed but in any other situation, it can't.

Specifically, they are either children from clan-like societies and communities , where war was, and still is a common part of life? They are genetically engineered and augmented, but they are not dehumanised, as there is a very humanity-centric belief. For example, Warriors are tested for high tolerances of pain under ritual circumstances, but are not castrated (even if the that particular warrior-clan finds celibacy and chastity ideal). They receive basic training is nearly everything, from various weapons to even plotting simple courses for spaceships (the type that you would need to do in an emergency, mind you).

The problem is that clan-structures don't work so well in a modern environment. Two reasons. One is the outsider conflict; a clan-based force doesn't take orders from people outside the group. That makes combat integration almost impossible. The other is when our MLRS battery mentioned earlier does its grid square removal thing, the clan-based unit under the barrage has just lost all its young men. This tends to be socially disruptive. In fact clan-based warfare has never fared well when thrown against regular troops - Culloden being a name to conjure with at this point.

[Setzer]

I figure somebody would think of the Fremen in these discussions.
People wank the effects of living on Arrakis, and I feel Herbert himself is also guilty of this, but it's clearly a case of misanalyzing the keys to their success.

They ignore what I think is a more important aspect. Jessica makes an observation that all Fremen society is trained to military discipline.
This, I think, is what made them so deadly. Their strict water conservation, their habitual obeidience and well executed razzias on the Harkonnens was what made Arrakis such a hellhole for Rabban's men.

They also overlook the fact that the Sardaukar no longer quite lived up to their fearsome reputation.

To be sure, fighting for the Messiah provided a significant boon in regards to morale, but if fanaticism alone won war, Japan would rule the Pacific.

That's the main problem with writing training regimens. Too many authors only emphasize one aspect of war fighting. They're either ultra disciplined, or inhumanly tough, or technowizards. They completely ignore balance.

[Adrian Laguna]

No, its the whole concept of a "super-soldier" that's crazy. As everybody here is probably bored with hearing me say; think systems, not components. A combined arms system will rip apart any army consisting soley of "super-soldiers"; at the same time a combined arms system depends on the quality of all its components, not just one of them. Exagerrating the quality of one part of a system has almost no effect on the performance of the system as a whole.

Again, this kind of shows why WH40k manages to treat its use of super-soldiers realistically. The backbone of their armies is and always has been the Imperial Guard supported by the various Planetary Defense Forces. They are organized and trained in a similar manner to modern armies. The main difference is that they have guns that make the Ak-47 look temperamental, and their tanks and artillery are way more dangerous than ours.

The special cases in the Imperial Guard, are just that, special cases. All of them exist because of the environmental and/or cultural conditions of their homeworlds, and they are not supermen, just extra good at what they do. They are all merely cogs in the machine.

The Imperium's true super-soldiers, the Space Marines, are supermen, genetically engineered, after a fashion, to be stronger (rip men apart with bare hands), tougher (they can survive wounds that would kill a dozen men) and faster (physically and mentally) than normal humans. Yet going back to Stuart's MLRS strike example, the ridiculous endurance would only change the result from "expensive dead super-soldiers" to "expensive half-dead super-super". Except that example only applies when your super-soldiers are deployed to replace regular dirt-cheap infantry, Space Marines are not.

The Marines exist to fill a specific role only genetically engineered supermen can, that of the most highly mechanized force in the Imperium. Thanks to the enhancement process they are able to mechanize every individual through the use of power-armour. That coupled with their use of an integrated combined arms structure built around rapid-response and shock-tactics makes them an extremely effective strike force that is well worth the expense. However, they are still only part of the larger whole that is the Imperium of Man's war machine. As deadly and powerful as the Marines are, they are worthless without the hordes of Guard to serve as an anvil for their hammer, and a buttress against the superior number of the enemy.

[Connor MacLeod]

Space Marines are a bit more complex than just "genetic engineering." alot of what is done to them tends to bear more along the lines of "bionic enhacnement" (with quasi organiwank tech that is based on magical supermen - ie the Primarchs or Emperor himself.) The Black Carapace, Skeletal enhancement, or the additional organs (multi lung/2nd Heart) all tend to qualify more as a "augmentic" than actual genetic engineering. And most of those organs also tend to be little more than added capabilities (larraman organ, Omophagea, the Sus-an membrane, or betcher's gland.) While the rest generally confer some sort of specialized immunity or resistance (poisons and toxins, disease, ,etc.) or perhaps influence the extended lifespan, or the physical/mental growth/development of the marine (increased strength, reflexes, enhanced senses etc.) - this last bit comes close to the "genetic engineering" bit.

In practice, the Space Marines are probably the Imperium's closest analog to robotic or Droid troops (outside servitors or heavily cyborged troopers, both of which are largely AdMech province) in this regard. Cybernetics and droid technology would make them unneeded in Star Wars, for example.

Dawn of War suggests that Storm Troopers/Kasrkin might be genetically enhanced in some ways (minor ways) but again I'm not sure if this isn't more akin to bionics, ,because they seem to do the modification "after the fact" - it might be more subtle than augmentic/bionic implants though (though I suspect with essentially the same effect.) Bionics are also very common, so even a common Imperial trooper could in theory have enhanced abilities (Strength, eyesight, speed, etc.) Of course, the AdMech restrricts the really good stuff to their people again.....

The only other group that comes to mind immediately are the Sparrtans from Halo, whcih seem to be a combined "genetic engineering/bionic enhancement' combination, as do the Fifth Imperium bio-enhancements. I'm sure the Culture has some insane stuff too.

I'd say genetic engineering might be useful in some ways such as prolonging the viability/useful lifespan of experienced troopers (making them be better able to fight more years or fight at peak physical condition for longer.) or providing increased poison/disease resistance. Some minor sensory enhancements or adjustments meant to "optimize" might not hurrt either, but any real augmentation probably would be better off through robotic or cybernetic augmentation.

[Connor MacLeod]

They're called "baby Ogryns" for a reason you know .

No, that would be the Kanak Skull-takers...

The Catachans are, at their most essential, the most extreme and adaptable survivalists, because Darwin ensured that on their homeworld. They're geared basically towards taking the most dangerous death world/jungle enviroments. Outside of that they're probably not as effective. They don't have the combined arms doctrine of some regiments (like the Tanith do) or possess vehicles (like the STeel legions) or are as well protected as heavy infantry (like the Vostroyan.)

[Connor MacLeod]

The Schola takes them in at a very young age, and a major (plot wise) world (Cadia) is said to have children who can fire and field strip (admittedly, idiot-proof)guns before they can walk.

I don't think Cadia is totally an example of "super-soldiering from birth", its more an example of a highly militarized world at the forefront of one of the most dangerous locales in the 40K galaxy (the Eye of terror.) The "train them at an early age" probably has more to do with ensuring that as much of the planet can qualify as a combatant as possible than with "super soldier" type tactics. After all, they neve know when an attack might come and when attacked, everyone ought to be expected to fight if need be.

After all, even though some 70% of the populace can be considered under arms, I think only something like 10% of the actual population qualifies as an actual military force (PDF - the Interior Guard) at any given time. And even the Cadians are still fairly self-sufficient (someone has to run all the factories on the world, or farm, or whatnot. I don't think they rely entirely on offworld supplies the way some Hives do..) Nevermind military supportt functions (For both the ground forces and the Naval forcecs, at that..)

Catachans probably are genetically modified, from looking at them...

Or this is simply the basic nature that 40K humanity has mutated to some degree or another over the various millenia. Your average 40K human seems to be taller and bigger than most normal humans, after all. Nevermind those hulking giants like Bragg. Enhanced strength and/or reflexes don't seem all that unusual on most worlds.

For "genetically engineered" you probably would look more towards Necromundan Goliaths

[Teleros]

I figure somebody would think of the Fremen in these discussions.

Same with the Valerians of the Lensman series actually:

Each of those space-fighting wild-cats measured seventy-eight inches or more from sole to crown; each was composed of four hundred or more pounds of fantastically powerful, rigid, and reactive brawn, bone, and sinew...
...
One-handed, with simple flicks of his incredible wrist, the smallest Valerian of the Dauntless' boarding party could manipulate his atrocious weapon as effortly as, and almost unbelievably faster than, a fencing master handles his rapier or an orchestra conductor waves his baton.
...
The puniest Valerian of the company could do in full armour a standing high jump of over fourteen feet against one Tellurian gravity; and could dodge, feint, parry, and swing with a blinding speed starkly impossible to any member of any of the physically lesser breeds of man.
...
There ensued a startling and entirely unorthodox manoeuvre, one possible only to the troopers there at work, as at Kinnison's command every Valerian left the floor in a prodigious leap. Over the womens' heads, over the heads of the enemy; but in mid-leap, as he passed over, each patrolman swung his axe at a Boskonian helmet with all the speed and all the power he could muster. Most of the enemy died then and there...

This from troops in (powered?) armour from Valeria, a world settled by humans in the early days of the Galactic Patrol. Based on the conditions they train in, gravity there is probably around 2700 J/cm (vs 980 for Earth), 40lb/square inch for air pressure, and 96°F (35.6°C). They also have a very warlike culture there, and are trained primarily as space marines (ie, for boarding ships etc), but still, swinging a 30lb axe around like a conductor's baton...

They're called "baby Ogryns" for a reason you know .

No, that would be the Kanak Skull-takers...

I won't have access to my codices for another week, but if anyone has access to Codex: Catachans I'm positive it's from there and describing the Catachans. Along the lines of "other Guardsmen call them that when they think they won't be overheard" .

[Zixinus]

The issue there is that a hellish environment and a lot of punishment does not give you super soldiers.

I don't actually aim for super-soldiers. I aim for "better then average" soldiers. Or at least soldiers that have more of a crap on what should be done then your average recruit.

Can it be argued that such "training" can at least improve the overall toughness of soldiers?

I don't want hellish environment or ruthless and merciless training. I want training that actually TEACHES the soldiers something they might need.

Things like pain tolerance are absolutely irrelevent, as Space Guns are probably lethal enough that anything serious enough to hurt you might as well just take off your arm and a good portion of your torso as well.

While its a good argument, it is not necessarily true. The energy required to kill a human will be pretty much the same in the 32th century then in the 21st, not counting armour.

The "warrior clans" idea seems to be an outgrowth of some sort of perverse "good old days" syndrome, in an alternate reality where the Scottish clans were actually an effective way to organize an army.

Closest word I can think of that describes these isolated societies.

When the stories would set, they are anything but truly isolated societies. There is regular trade, culture, technology and information between other "clans" and various governments that cannot be described even remotely as a clan. There is a federation all fall under and every clan views themselves naturally under. The "warrior-clans" are no longer actual clans, except by name. They do partake very much in the military, more so then other members of the federation, but there is no longer any true"clannish" structure and mentality.

The "clan" thing is more of the way the society was originally built up, and how they think of their origins. For "warriors" (carrier soldiers) its has more to do with romanticism and feelings akin to nationality, then actual mentality. They primary serve their federation.