In short no SHD are not military.Originally Posted by Sergio_ml13 Go to original post
They could be defined as a paramilitary type sleeper cell. Basically the concept has flipped the feared terrorist sleeper cell on its head and made a government backed team to awaken in an hour of need and save the world. At least as America knows it. Its full of gadgets and usual first person shooter level by level approach to escalating difficulty. Its a covert version of the FBI with some help from the NSA.
There are other Tom Clancy branded games that are military based ,such as Rainbow Six. This is based upon a cohort of the fighters from the worlds elite special forces units. They focus upon HRT though. Ghost recon is also a military based shooter and that open world. Perhaps the best open world military based shooter I have ever seen.
Short answer would be that the SHD are civilians who are supposed to grab a gun and defend what's left of the US government in case of an apocalypse.
Long answer, however, would be a bit more... well, long. :-D
So, first of all, SHD agents are NOT military. Nor are they any sort of covert black ops or law enforcement specialists. They are civilians. HOWEVER, there are some Division agents who have had military and/or law enforcement training, and few of them even saw action in Iraq. Aaron Keener, for example, spent some time in the army, although he always had a reputation as a "fobbit". So, while most of them never served in the army, some of them certainly have. And they all had SHD training prior to recieving their patches and those cool tactical sling bags. While we can only imagine what their training looks like, it is safe to assume it doesn't share a lot of similarities with army training.
How does one get selected to be a Division agent? I have no idea. Word of mouth is what got most of them into SHD in the first place, so we'll just leave it at that. It's kind of like the Boyscouts club. Division members pick people who they consider cool enough and ask them to join.
All of the things I mentioned above may be a part of the reason why the first wave of agents failed. But I will leave that for another post.
What is expected of a Division agent? Well, in an hour of desperate need, he or she is supposed to pick up a gun and defend the homeland. Kind of like the minutemen from American history. Division is supposed to have a commander, the big boss of all the agents who issues orders and coordinates actions. Who is he getting his orders from? The government, of course, maybe even the president himself.
How do they operate? With a certain level of autonomy, although still answering to their commander and the US government. Many would say they have a bit too much of autonomy... but never mind that.
So, in conclusion, SHD agents are civilians, although some of them have served in the army. They come from all sorts of professions and backgrounds, and their methode of operation is different then those of conventional armed forces. I would not compare them much to sleeper cells, although that describes them quite accurately, to a certain extent. I think of them more as reservists. National Guard on steroids, with cool gadgets and better quality guns. Or "National Guard meets secret Boyscouts club", with better boots and those cool, cool tactical sling bags.
Not military, but secret government civilian agents. Not law enforcement or espionage agents though. The last ditch group of trained and until needed, unknown people living their lives unless and until needed. The closest we could say to them being military are that they are kind of like the final line organized militia (the organized militia in the US is essentially the National Guard) and the unorganized militia (which is "all other militia members" defined as all able bodied males between 18-35, female officers in the National Guard, and some older people... basically everyone who is a citizen or permanent alien).
The main reason the first wave agents failed was pretty simple really. There just weren't enough activated. The President didn't even do a half measure. Instead of calling all or nearly all, or even just a majority of Agents, he called up a much smaller percentage. Not enough to stop anything. Like sending only 6 trucks to a fire when it needed 20, or trying to have 3 doctors handle 100 burn patients instead of 25.