Armed Guardian Services (ARGUS) is a private military company (PMC) that operated at least from 2006 during the Indonesian Crisis, to 2007 during the East Asian Crisis. They accepted many different contracts from multiple clients across the world, with numerous conflicts against Shadownet, a sub-branch of Third Echelon.
Overview
ARGUS Private Military Corporation is a private military company that provides multiple services to clients, with a high degree of focus on defensive and asset/property protection services for those employers who can afford to hire them. ARGUS is very wealthy, with access to advanced weaponry and equipment - which includes gas masks, multiple types of wall-mounted mines, a set of advanced modern firearms, and a full range of other equipment to aid in their protection objectives. ARGUS has succeeded in the highly competitive realm of PMCs by offering bonus/injury incentives for employees. Any ARGUS employee injured or forced to harm or neutralize a hostile presence in the line of duty will be richly rewarded. The typical ARGUS soldier is a law enforcement or military veteran who excelled in that line of work, making the company's soldiers worthy of the high costs the company charges to clients.
Contrary to the popular conception of mercenaries by the average member of the public, Argus PMC's soldiers are not hitmen, thugs, or guns-for-hire. On the contrary, they have every appearance of highly-trained, highly-professional private soldiers. In the appearances made by ARGUS in Splinter Cell, the company's soldiers are employed exclusively in defensive work, protecting the valuable assets and property of clients, primarily from the operatives of ShadowNet. To best defend their clients' assets and interests, ARGUS mercenaries go heavily armed when on duty, and will not hesitate to use lethal force against intruders on a property they are guarding.
Their generic traits of every personnel are as follow:
- Tough
- Powerfully armed
- Hunters and trackers
An ARGUS PMC member sporting armor and equipment used during the East Asian Crisis in 2007.
Equipment
- E.R.S. visor helmet (with mounted EMF, Motion (for EMF/Motion vision) & Accustic sensors, Zoom Optics (Sniping mode))
- Shotgun
- Uzi
- FN2000 Assault Rifle
- Helmet Mounted Flashlight
- Flares
- Fragmentation Grenade
- Phosphorescent grenade
- Laser Mines
- Proximity Mine
- Poison Mine
- Multipurpose mines (Laser/Proximity Modes)
- Spy Finder
- Spy Trap
- Camera Network Browsing Device (CNBD)
- Taser
- Backpack
- Gas Mask
- Laser Sight (on weapons)
Trivia
- Ubisoft and Penny Arcade created a comic named Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (comic), which gave some background about ARGUS, and one of the conflicts between ARGUS and Shadownet.
- Argus PMC takes its name and inspiration from Greek mythology, from a guardian, Argus Panoptes, who possessed many eyes and was said to be a perfect, eternally-vigilant guardian. Argus Panoptes was described thus in a fragment of a now-lost poem: "And set a watcher upon her, great and strong Argus, who with four eyes looks every way. And the goddess stirred in him unwearyingly strength: sleep never fell upon his eyes; but he kept sure watch always."[1]
- The Pandora Tomorrow manual confirms this, stating it to be the 100 eyed guardian that protected the Golden Fleece from Jason and the Argonauts.
- In Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, one factory map in Germany is implied to be owned by a mobster or illegal arms dealer, indicating that ARGUS is willing to accept contracts from individuals who are less than law-abiding citizens.