Imperial Marine Parainfantry Force

The Marine Parainfantry Force is the largest special forces branch of the Imperial Tekkelien Marine Corps. They have the broadest range of operations and locations compared to the rest of the Marine Special Forces, but place an emphasis on being point-deployable anywhere on the battlefield from high-altitude infiltration aircraft. The flexibility, independence and mobility make them ideally-suited for rescue and recovery missions behind enemy lines, meaning they are disproportionally tasked with rescuing downed pilots, recovering sensitive technology from crashed spacecraft, and intervening in hostage situations.

Role
The Imperial Tekkelien Marine Corps is itself a specialized group of combined-arms shock units. Their role is to secure immediate landing zones, gain footholds and spearhead major offenses into enemy strongholds. Owing to their history in beachhead and littoral warfare, they are typically geographically constrained to areas nearby their landing sites. Their special forces are necessarily narrower in scope than the Army's because of this.

The Marine Parainfantry Force is the exception to the normally very frontline marine operations, able to insert deep into enemy territory. They are one of the few units capable of reaching downed aviators, prisoners of war, or even other operators stranded behind enemy lines.

In contrast to the heavily armored regular infantry, their tactics rely on travelling as lightweight as possible, moving quickly and undetected through the wilderness.

Screening
Candidates are required to score in the top 5 percentile of physical fitness compared to the rest of the Imperial Ground Forces. They must also all have been certified as Combat Medical Ancillary, a short series of voluntary courses on emergency first aid of common battlefield wounds. A certification as a Land Survival Guide is also preferred.

As for most specialized positions, the candidate and their close associates are all carefully screened to ensure they can be trusted with a secret-level clearance. A psychological evaluation is used to evaluate the candidate for traits most useful to the paratroopers' missions. It appears that selectors for the MPF favor a more nurturing, empathetic personality than other forces for their search and rescue job, and anecdotally, paratroopers are noted for being generally more agreeable and compassionate than other service branches.

Training
Once the candidates have passed the initial screening process, they are sent to an unconventional warfare training school that teaches them the principles of enemy infiltration, search and rescue, and guerilla tactics. It is also extremely stressful, with an emphasis on emotional challenges, preparing the prospective operators to deal with grievous injuries, deaths and failure.

While most conventional battles are fought over cities and larger urban areas, paratroopers advantage comes from the ability to insert anywhere, including very remote places. After the operational training, incoming paratroopers are trained in wilderness survival in the various extremes of climates and conditions. The candidates are sent into the wild with only a few survival instructors who teach them how to live off the land by foraging for food, navigating without maps, and getting around difficult terrain. They consecutively train in a jungle, mountain, arctic and desert environment.

Weapons
Paratroopers need absolutely minimal weight both due to the constraints of the aircraft that carries them as well as the fact that they operate remotely over rough terrain without transport. There are often paratrooper-specific adaptations of common weapons that use lightweight frame stocks and overall smaller builds. Sometimes, they are also dropped with crew-served weapons such as recoilless rifles, mortars, machine guns, and even light field artillery, however that typically requires them to slow down either by breaking down the equipment into components and carrying them, or pushing them on trolleys.

Vehicles
A number of lightweight armored vehicles have been adapted to survive an airdrop. They must be compact and light enough to fit into the cargo hold of an aircraft, although there are experimental vehicles that can be tossed out of a starship in orbit with reentry shields, so they typically are only armored against small arms and shrapnel. Still, having a light vehicle that can provide heavy fire support and draw away rifle fire is a major boon, especially against enemy paratroopers who are equally lightweight.

Carbon fiber folding bicycles can be attached to the outside of the paratroopers' backpacks, allowing them to move much faster than on foot, but only if the terrain is flat enough.