I always wondered what unit Dutch and crew came from originally and what the story was.
Because it is kind of implied that Dutch had gathered them through previous military contact with them, but only Mac and Blaine seemed to have previous experience working with each other Pre-Dutch, and only Dutch knew Dillon.
Also, were they mercs or regular military? The wiki says they were mercs.
Mercs. "Why don't you send in the regular army? What do you need us for?"
I don't know where the Merc thing came from. They're referred to as "Special Forces" in Predator 2 and "spec ops" in Predators. I never got the impression they weren't some branch of military.
Mercs would make probably the most sense.
I have Dutch as Army SF, maybe something like Project Delta or part of something like MACV-SOG which would get him contacts out of all the branches and the CIA. Having success there as a commander, then getting out and doing odd jobs for the US government with his hand picked crew afterwards.
But they could still be operatives in something like Delta or an Army SF CIF team.
There are lots of Army references, and his rank and his familiarity of fieldcraft would make him most likely former Army or Marine. Navy O-4 is not Major. And even though the AF has the ranks, and even a whole SOF career field dedicated to rescuing people, I don't know that their training includes setting up deadfall traps and running claymores through trees.
It seems we have a diversity of opinions here. Thunderdome?
Dunno. Dutch says they passed on a job in Libya because they weren't assassins. Yet a minute later the general says "I'm afraid we all have our orders, Major".
So on the one hand, could Dutch pass on a job as a member of the military? Particularly when 'we all have our orders'. And what's with the ranks they consistently use throughout? Is that normal for a merc team?
Quote from: SM on Nov 06, 2019, 06:04:28 AM
I don't know where the Merc thing came from.
I was just choosing out of the two.
@The Cruentus @HuDaFuK
I say "retired" soldiers from various warzones who act as irregulars under Dutch, called in for special jobs but exclusively by the US of A, not freelancers.
Surely the guys who wrote the first film who also wrote the second film would know? Or did a script doctor do re-writes on Predator 2?
Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Nov 05, 2019, 01:14:06 PM
Quote from: PsyKore on Nov 05, 2019, 09:25:41 AM
Quote from: Huggs on Oct 31, 2019, 09:43:41 PM
Mike Wincott is still the man though.
They should've kept him longer in the film, to the end even. Kill someone else off instead.
I found him a bit cringey in Resurrection myself.
Quote from: Local Trouble on Nov 05, 2019, 02:26:32 PM
As did I. Even Dan Hedaya is tolerable in other movies, but AR brought the ham out of everyone.
There's definite cringe and ham in this film, but I never not enjoy Michael Wincott in every movie he's in. He was wasted in AR.
The fact Dutch can apparently pick and choose which missions he takes on basically means he can't be military. Soldiers do what they're told, not what they want.
The orders line from Phillips is seemingly about Dillon joining them. Presumably if Dutch and his men have already travelled all the way to Central America to do this job it's a bit late for him to back out because he's having some pencil-pusher forced upon him. Phillips has been ordered to assign Dillon to the team, and now that Dutch has agreed to the op he's taking Dillon whether he likes it or not.
Finally, them referring to each other by rank I just took to be a way of Dutch establishing hierarchy within his team. They're all clearly ex-military, so maybe they've just held onto their former ranks for convenience.
Quote from: SM on Nov 06, 2019, 06:24:15 AM
Dunno. Dutch says they passed on a job in Libya because they weren't assassins. Yet a minute later the general says "I'm afraid we all have our orders, Major".
So on the one hand, could Dutch pass on a job as a member of the military? Particularly when 'we all have our orders'. And what's with the ranks they consistently use throughout? Is that normal for a merc team?
Tier 1 units can refuse missions if missions are batshit insane and would most likely result in unnecessary casualties.... but they are about the only ones.
I think actually most units could try and change aspects of the mission without negative repurcussions, but trying to stop things in motion in the army is like trying to stop a rolling boulder and pushing it back up hill. Too may moving parts.
Quote from: Kimarhi on Nov 06, 2019, 08:31:35 PMTier 1 units can refuse missions if missions are batshit insane and would most likely result in unnecessary casualties.... but they are about the only ones.
So the truly elite units have some measure of "your mission, if you choose to accept it" autonomy within the US military?
When I went through basic in 2011 it took a substantial amount of US dollars (I think 250,000 is what we were told) to put a soldier through basic training and ait. That just initial level training. I think food and housing alone for those couple of months is something like 44,000, but you have to figure in insurance and salaries and travel to and from (for both yourself and everybody training you) and all this other craziness to the fold as well. The numbers can be skewed because it cost less to train an infantryman than it does to train a tanker, and less to train a tanker than it does to train somebody who deals with nuclear weapons, etc.
Delta typically comes from the Ranger Regiment. Who have an intial entry course to get in, airborne school, and then Ranger School, and then many from there go to one of the Special Forces groups, which has its own initial entry selection process and training course which can be over a year long. To be in Delta there is another selection process, plus another six month long operator course afterwards.
Somewhere in all that you have military free fall courses, scuba diving courses, language courses etc. and each unit has their own in house training that never stops.
Literally YEARS of training to get to that level and if it cost 250,000 bucks to just get an initial entry soldier through training IMAGINE the investment the US Government is putting into each of those guys. There not going to want to put those guys in situations where they don't have the best possible chance to come out with the W,
I think it was Chuck Pfarrer who stated that the Navy's version of Delta which is ST6 shoot more in the peacetime military than the entirity of the Marine Corps did in the same period. A handful of guys who had to be so proficient with their firearms they outshot an entire BRANCH of the US Military.
The shit is fascinating. Everybody with even the teeniest interest in military should check out their countries military elite. Our guys have masters degrees, speak multiple languages, run human sources like intelligence agencies, are marathon running body builders, and function as human automated turrets who have to hit something ridiculous like 95% of the targets they shoot at in training to stay Delta/Devgru.
So why didn't you go for all that yourself?
You'd need to go AD to get that kind of look and have better vision.
On the Army guard side the only SOF is 19th and 20th Group. Neither of which I qualify for because of vision.
But I lost my desire to want to shed blood the older I got.
You should've seen him in the old days. Desire out the wazoo.
So I'm still unclear as to whether Dutch's team was a band of mercs or if they were such super elite active-duty US military badasses that they actually had the right of refusal over their own missions.
Like if Kimarhi was US Army Major Dutch Shaefer and some pencil-pushing colonel ordered him to go hang a metric f**k-tonne of c-wire in 110-degree heat w/90% humidity for no good reason, what could he say?
I lean towards them being army guys.
"Where the f**k are the Army guys?! >:("
From Wikipedia:
Quote from: WikipediaSome time later, in a Central American jungle,[notes 1] retired U.S. Special Operations Forces veteran Major Alan "Dutch" Schaefer[notes 2] and his elite mercenary rescue team...
Problem is that the source is not listed, so not possible to verify.
Their uniforms and equipment are quite a mix-and-match which would suggest Mercs/PMC's but then again that's not unusual for Special Forces operators either. Blains M134 Minigun might suggest military personnel but then again the PMC's in Iraq also had access to that kind of artillery. :-\
This matter should probably get its own 200-page thread. We must have consensus.
does this count for anything?
https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Alan_"Dutch"_Schaefer (https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Alan_"Dutch"_Schaefer)
It's been mentioned, yes. Still not sure what the source for that is.
Maybe they can be both?
For example, after the invasion of Iraq there was a huge demand for mercs in Baghdad and PMC's were luring away a lot of the top/most experienced SAS operators with promises of huge salaries. But as Kimarhi mentioned, it cost a huge amount of money for a country to train top tier operators, so in order to avoid losing more of those highly skilled men, the SAS granted senior NCO's official permission to leave the regular army to go and earn money on the "security" circuit and then having "loaded up", they were allowed to return to regular service after 18 months without loss of rank or pension.
The same sort of thing can happen in US Military.
I've heard in the ARNG SF units that the SF guys will go work for a PMCs when they are not officially training/deployed with their Groups.
But this is a relatively new scenario, as the resurgence of American PMCs really only blew up with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
There are also examples of American special agents with varying agencies getting pulled for overseas duty. I know the DEA had some people deployed to Afghanistan, as well as the FBI's HRT (which will often go through the learning portions of the SEALs, SF, training cycles) got attached to various military agencies as the gunhands. Even though again, this is not hinted anywhere in the story.
I defer to Kimarhi on all matters pertaining to the military, but I'm still not sure what his decision is.
As far as I've read no PMC has authorization to US military equipment, so I would think mercs except for the ending with the chopper coming in flown by the predator who was clearly dressed as US Army aviation personnel.
But maybe that was just an old military friend bailing out one of his former subordinates.
Arnie didn't arrange the chopper though. Phillips did, and he's clearly legit army.
Add in the CIA involvement and it doesn't seem that far fetched for the US Army to be using their kit to ferry mercenaries around.
Whose choppers dropped them off?
Quote from: HuDaFuK on Nov 17, 2019, 08:39:05 PM
Arnie didn't arrange the chopper though. Phillips did, and he's clearly legit army.
Add in the CIA involvement and it doesn't seem that far fetched for the US Army to be using their kit to ferry mercenaries around.
You have to communicate with each other. I can't be Army and call a Marine help to come get me. For Dutch to have the freqs there had to be some sort of communication before hand. Lots of Army units done even talk to one another even.
Well it's not like they went in without an extraction plan. The mission was always to be extracted by chopper, so of course they'd have the necessary info to contact said choppers and/or whichever base they're operating from.
Something that you don't typically give to mercs. But maybe dutchess unit was the blackwater/xe/whateverthehelltheygobythesedays of the eighties.
What was it that Dutch asked Dillon that Dillon replied to: 'no such thing old buddy'? something about backup?
or maybe i am just remembering wrong. then Dutch said something to the tune of: "this gets better by the minute"
they were still on the chopper.
Dutch asks Dillon what their backup is should anything go wrong once their over the border. Dillon says they have none.
Quote from: Local Trouble on Nov 07, 2019, 04:57:11 PM
This matter should probably get its own 200-page thread. We must have consensus.
In the chopper, Dillon shows his lighter and stated that Dutch also has one. It has the screaming eagle logo on it from the U.S. Army Airborne. He mentioned the city of Hue, which had the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne operating in that battle. Obviously, that is Dutch and Dillon's previous unit but would be interesting to know what typical assignments ex-U.S. Army personnel accepted in the 80s.