Makes sense you have to fulfill on phase 3. After all all that hardware would have to me custom made.

Yup. Manufacturing bespoke gear itself is pretty trivial, but the gear itself is pretty damn expensive, as is the integration and recovery process.

So for awards, do these guys for for the more British/Commonwealth style or more the American 'fruit-salad' approach?

Haven't actually thought about that. Probably fruity, but maybe a different style of fruit.

Get to phase 3 and then desert, got it.

Any military giving augmentations like that is going to include a locator functionality in them, most likely bio status indicators as well. Less about deserters and more for battlefield awareness... but it'd work for both.

Dystopian, but understandable. Hopefully there's a way to get those turned off when someone gets out.

Agreed, but as I said it would be less about deserters and more about information a commander would need to know in a fight... what status the troops are, where they are located, how combat capable they are, etc.

I mean that's completely understandable, the only reason it's dystopian is that they would also know everywhere you went and everything you were doing while off duty. They would very much know when the soldier was having sex, for instance, and it would probably even trip an alert due to the sudden change in heart rate, blood chemistry, etc. That would be an extreme invasion of privacy that's barely tolerable for active duty, and would be completely unacceptable for a civilian.

It would depend on how it's implemented. A system could be designed so it only transmitted your information when an external signal was transmitted to do so and would notify you that it was online, this would also make sense when running stealth missions so you wouldn't be constantly transmitting and giving away your position. That said, in the original discussion point of going deserter, the locator beacon could be turned on remotely via a broadband signal.

That makes more sense.

In a world fully onboard with neurotechnology and enhancement, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a subculture centered around modding, cracking, and doubly enhancing. Logic interconnects can be fooled / broken, firmware flashes can render hardware useless, and manually cutting out antennae can airgap the user. Having hardware be always online / phoning home to not brick or detonate would be bad for a long-term war.

I would be prodding everything I could get my hands on.

Agreed, but in the context of Six's comment, if you had those kind of abilities and skills in the first place then getting the equipment by way of desertion seems unlikely. It would be more likely to get the military grade implants from blackmarket suppliers or such and not have a personal and direct connection which can be traced.

For the record my comment was a joke, and for precisely this reason; that would be an incredibly stupid thing to do.

Agreed.

I imagine if they cyberize your extremities and organs, there's a very clear clause that they have a killswitch for it if you so much as entertain a thought of skipping out after installation.

Entirely possible as well, though that doesn't seem like something iPoke's species would do unless it was as a means of preventing capture during extremely specific mission types.

Any ability to remotely control the hardware, especially in a way that could disable the soldier, exposes an attack surface that would be very attractive for enemy cyberattacks.

Good luck. S'been nice knowin' ya =w=

I am enjoying this.

Glad to hear it =^w^=

Yer great at what you do.

Good to know.

What's inside. ^^

much enjoyed and well thought out...

Vix

Thank you =^w^=