Excerpts from Briefing on T'swa Mercenary Forces, Department of Armed Forces; Document 711.5 290 196.
All T'swa military units are light infantry.
The T'swa rarely, perhaps never, fight with war machines. This is practical because they do not accept assignments where they anticipate facing war machines or needing them. To date, at least during recorded history, they have been employed only on trade worlds and resource worlds, where the multiplicity of national states and the frequency of foreign rule and Confederation trade prerogatives bring about wars and revolts.
Occasionally, regionally entrenched revolutionary movements on trade worlds have been able to hire T'swa. Only the wealthiest revolutionaries are able to afford them, however.
T'swa mercenaries are very highly regarded as units and as individual soldiers by those who have employed them. They are especially valued in wildland fighting and for clearing hostile towns, actions in which superlative individual and small-unit skills are most advantageous.
The foundation of T'swa military organization is the "lodge," of which there are five, each located in a different region of Tyss. Physically, each lodge is said to consist of a ring of barracks and training facilities around a central administrative installation and school.
The regiment is the largest military unit used, supposedly without exception. The lodges form, recruit, and train the regiments. The lodges are also the contracting agents with whom prospective employers must deal. (There is no planetary government nor any national governments on Tyss. Trade and transportation remain primitive enough and the population orderly enough that local governments, trade associations, lodge councils, etc., suffice.)
The lodges select and recruit children, reputedly of ages five and six, and their training begins at that age. At age 11-12, the trainees are formed into proto-regiments, and from that point, regimental personnel continue to serve together as a unit. After seven years, the proto-regiment graduates as a combat regiment, at which time it becomes available for service, and usually will go into combat within the year. The first contract of a virgin regiment is often part of a multi-regimental operation, in partnership with a seasoned unit, but this is by no means always the case.
One of the advantages of the long T'swa training is the degree of cross-training possible. Every man is able to function in every post with every weapon used by the T'swa. The officers are of the same age and experience as the enlisted ranks, apparently being selected on the basis of demonstrated superior ability during the training years. But every man is supposedly capable of leading his platoon or company, or even regiment.
As in standard armies, the basic T'swa unit is the squad; however, the T'swa squad contains only 10 men. The platoon is made up of four squads, a platoon leader (lieutenant), a platoon sergeant, and two medical specialists, or 44 men. The company consists of four platoons and a command staff of eight: the company commander (captain), an executive officer (senior lieutenant), first sergeant, two communications specialists, and a three-man medical team, or 184 personnel. The battalion consists of 560 personnel; the regiment 1,720, all ranks. That does not include a variable number of base personnel who do not accompany the regiment into the field. Except in virgin regiments, where kitchen and clerical duties rotate among the ranks, base personnel are men with physical impairments, apparently resulting from combat or training injuries.
You will have noticed several peculiarities which will be gone into later. First, however, we will look at what we will term the "shrinking regiment."
The strength cited above—1,720 effectives, all ranks—is the initial strength. As casualties reduce squads to six men or fewer, decimated squads are consolidated within the platoon or company. As platoons lose personnel below some variable level, usually about 30, platoons are consolidated within the company. Higher level units are also consolidated as necessary.
The process of consolidation may, for example, result in platoons with only three short squads, a company with only three short platoons, and a battalion with only two short companies.
Of course, none of that is unusual in combat. What is unusual is that afterward, the units are not brought back to their full complements. Casualties are never replaced.
All of the consolidations described above will be made before the regiment is reduced below three battalions, but in time the regiment will inevitably be reduced to two battalions. As time passes and the attrition of personnel continues further, the regiment will be transformed to a single battalion, redistributing remaining personnel within it. However, the regiment still carries its original designation—the Blue Tiger Regiment, for example—even though it operates only as a battalion. If a contract continues long enough, casualties may reduce a regiment to company size or smaller.
The unit of hire is always the regiment, but the fee charged varies with the regiment's effective strength. Not infrequently, two or three battalion-strength "regiments" may be sent. They will function as a single regiment under a senior colonel, but will continue to carry their separate "regimental" identities.
Apparently there have never been T'swa units larger than regiments, and they never function as ordinary regiments belonging to a division. They operate simply as assault forces or hunter-killer groups. This is written into their contracts. They will refuse to fight on any other basis, standing on their contractual prerogatives. . . .
T'swa mercenaries are invariably loyal. We have been unable to find any verifiable report of T'swa mercenaries having broken a contract. But if a contract with them is broken by their employer, they will invariably extricate themselves from the fighting as promptly as practical, and will usually depart the planet. They have been known, however, to take punitive action against the contract breaker on the authority of the regimental commander. The T'swa mercenary lodges, which commonly operate their own (leased) troopships (!), have even been known to make a punitive strike against particularly treacherous contract breakers, at a time and place of particular inconvenience to the contract breaker. This attitude of the T'swa has become especially well known among the governments of trade worlds, from whom come most of their employment, and a contracting authority seldom breaks a contract with T'swa mercenaries.
The T'swa warrior lodges never contract to undertake punitive expeditions against populations. They will, however, put down uprisings, and they are in fact most renowned for their exceptional value in breaking guerrilla insurgencies. Their approach to this kind of action, interestingly enough, is restricted to recognized guerrillas. They claim the ability to identify combatants through the recognition of what they term "auras." An aura (if it actually exists) is presumably an electromagnetic field around the individual human being.
With one exception, all T'swa weapons are standard, and since Y.P. 461, the T'swa have purchased their weapons from the Royal Armory on Iryala. (Previously they had been purchased from various worlds, based on the most favorable delivery price available.) The single nonstandard weapon is the bayonet, also produced by the Royal Armory, exclusively for the T'swa. The routine issue of standard weapons within a T'swa regiment is nonstandard, however. And as they commonly operate without the service of major ordnance depots, the weapons they take with them on a contract substantially exceed the standard complement. Those carried in any particular action vary depending on the nature of the action.
The bayonet is a form of short sword, appropriate to personnel from primitive worlds. The blade length is 18 inches. It can also be attached to a rifle barrel for use as a clumsy thrusting weapon. Apparently the bayonet is routine issue for all T'swa ranks, including officers, whether or not they carry rifles. The T'swa are said to be well drilled in their use. Bayonets are reputed to be effective psychological weapons when used by well-drilled troops against irregular forces.
Enlisted ranks normally carry the M-1 rifle, and by all reports, every T'swi military personnel is trained to a high level of skill in its use. Commissioned ranks normally carry the M-1 sidearm, but reportedly, platoon leaders may also carry the M-1 rifle in combat situations. . . .