Every corp seems to have the idea from time to time that they need a “black ops” group. Typically this amounts to one of your FCs taking a few bombers out and looking for targets of opportunity.
Few groups do the “black ops” thing well. Notably, the Goon blackops who have now mostly broke off and formed Elitist Ops (now in PL) were a huge thorn in the side of Atlas when they locked down Omist for a short time.
-MVN- has had a EU TZ and US TZ blackops group off-and-on throughout our history. Currently we’re pretty active in this regard and the last couple weeks have really shown how effective they can be. For example, behind NC lines we’re popping pimped ratters / plex runners with great regularity:
There are many different ways to form and run a “black ops” gang, most of which do not rely upon the “black ops” ship category (e.g. – Sins or Widows) at all.
We’re currently running a mix of 2-3 styles of black-ops / covert gangs across EU and U.S. timezones with great success. When there is no official “deployment” or war to fight, there is plenty of time to experiment, and I think we may be seeing even greater success as more of our pilots get comfortable flying in this fashion.
Of course, some of it is just the fact that we have really strong pilots operating in the north currently. We’ve been smacked and told we only pop so many t3 / faction BS because we’re “cloaking fags.” The truth is, we have been getting the same good kills without flying in purely blackops gang ships in the same time-frame.