There is no branch of service which takes higher casualties in training than the Assault arm of CompForce. SAGroup has such a large supply of primed volunteers that the Assault arm can afford to train by attrition - if you make it through training you are combat ready. Of the 88 percent who fail to make it through training, nearly one quarter of these are combat fatalities. There is little exaggeration and a lot of perverse pride in Assault's claim that "two die for every one that gets through."

The ferocious training and indoctrination of Assault arm does provide strong unit cohesion for its troops, as well as instill a willingness to fight on despite heavy casualties. Training-by- attrition does have a serious defect in that it selects those who have been merely lucky, as well as those who have natural combat skills, and it processes so many volunteers through training that it does a mediocre job of teaching vital combat skills to its soldiers.

In the field, this lack of training shows in higher than necessary casualties and failure to succeed in objectives against well-trained troops. This deficiency is not seen as important for these reasons; the supply of volunteers is not large, but it is certainly larger than the pool for the Rebellion, and training an Assault arm volunteer is cheaper than training an equivalent trooper in the regular Army.

Additionally, the Assault arm is a recent addition to COMPNOR. Some of the units are lasting long enough to train themselves and pass on skills to the volunteers who replace casualties. These veteran units are gaining a fearsome reputation which is deserved.