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Some of you may have seen my questions about the navy stuff. I currently have a story going on that involves a relatively small, super-elite corps of soldiers. Soemwhat generic. Anyway, I was wondering about several things in writing this story, such as call signs, how do you set them up, use them things like that. I'm looking for general details to enrich the story without boring anyone.

And, Sniper, you take apprentices? I recently volunteered, desptite no experience, to help out a friend who has a shortage of mods on her board. It doesn't yet look like I'll be doing anything, btu if she says yes, than I would be looking for help learning the trade.

"Some pup"
Nickname by Fenderstrat72

_________________
Evil is evil, no matter how small.

Gifted: Not an expert on the subject, but in my experiences between reading, and dealing with fighter pilots...here is what I can spit at you.

Call signs eitehr come from:

1) The military alphabet; Alpha, Bravo, Charle...Zulu...withe ach letter referring to a team, and a following number that is standardized a team member, for example Alpha Team lead = Alpha 1

2) Depending on the mission, some call signs are standardized, others are based loosely off of the unit flying, or animals, or other "tough sounding" words...like Psycho 1 or Maniac 4.

That's all the help I can give...

--Raven

"'When it comes to my turn, will you want me to go?' 'For democracy, any man would give his only begotten son.'"

Sure, i'll give ya some pointers. I've always wanted a deSniple.

You need to be more specific in what you need for the story. I can probably help you out quite a bit.

Callsigns are not permanent, they are assigned at the beginning of an operation, and can change on a daily basis if there is reason to believe the Commsnet is unsecure. In the army callsigns are just randomly picked, but i think the Navy uses the same callsigns for certain mission types all the time. Is this an Army unit or a joint force unit, etc?

"It should come as a surprise only to the fools among the men of our generation that we liked war."

Major V. 'Popski' Poniakov, British LRG, WWII

A bit more of a rundown: You read Stony Man? Somewhat similar, except that it's closer to a company in size(I get that right? A few hundred fighters in the unit), and they have had a considerable budget since the beginning of the Cold War, when the unit was formed based on past temporary units in other wars, to do ultra-covert stuff in other countries, and sometimes in this one. Their existance was recently declassified to allow them to take on other duties.

The thing with the callsigns is that each member has a permanent callsign, which is used instead of a name. Thier real names are classified, not even their commander knows everything, allowing them to be sheltered from the political process, allowing them to do their job without alot of stuff that cops and the army have to worry about(without this you might as well use the army). I can see temporary callsigns in combat, but when the news, or Congress, or anyone else refers to one, they use the callsign. Among the members of a team, you might use a nickname, or something, but even they don't know who you are when you aren't blowing stuff up(one drawback to using the unit is alot of collatoral damage, they do whatever's needed to achieve the objective). The method I was thinking of was this: A letter to indicate a security status(how bad of a compromise is it if someone finds out who you are; if you think about it, they have alot of enemies, not all of them nice), a number to distinguish individuality, and the team names are colors. For example, the main character is leader of Blue Team, his sign is B12, The Bravo being because he's so nasty in combat no one would willingly mess with him, even indirectly, and then the twelve to destinguish him from all the other people with Bravo classification. Does that work? There are armored units, and air cover, I figured I'd play a conspiracy theory and make their trademark vehicles black, unmarked. A few Apaches in there...

Here's the forum if you're interested, Sniper, Apparently she hasn't gotten back to me yet, perhaps if you put in a good word...http://angelsofiron.conforums.com/index.cgi

"Some pup"
Nickname by Fenderstrat72

_________________
Evil is evil, no matter how small.