Mercenary units and formations

thumb|Drawing of the archetypical ninja from a series of Hokusai Manga|sketches by Hokusai. Woodblock print on paper. Vol. six, 1817.

thumb|A group of bashi-bazouks, Ottoman postcard thumb|Bashi-bazouks in Bulgaria, ca. 1877 A bashi-bazouk ( , , , roughly "leaderless" or "disorderly") was an irregular soldier of the Ottoman army, raised in times of war. The army primarily enlisted Albanians and sometimes Circassians as bashi-bazouks, but recruits came from all ethnic groups of the Ottoman Empire, including slaves from Europe or Africa. Bashi-bazouks had a reputation for being undisciplined and brutal, notorious for looting and preying on civilians as a result of a lack of regulation and of the expectation that they would sup

group of American military pilots who flew for the Republic of China Air Force in 1941-42

Seimeni (plural of Seimen) designates the group of flintlock-armed infantry mercenaries charged with guarding the hospodar (ruler) and his court in 17th and 18th century Wallachia and Moldavia. They were mostly of Serb and other Balkan origin. The term is of Turkish origin: seğmen means "young armed man", it itself derives from Persian سگبان (sagbān). In modern transcriptions of Slavonic, it may also appear as simén (plural: siméni) or siimén (siiméni).

Turkey-based private security contractor

conceptualized agency that provides personal protection and military defense services voluntarily through the free market

Hong Kong military contractor

former private military company based in London

international anti-communist mercenary organization disguised as a pseudo-press agency (1966 - 1974)

regiment of the Indian Army

Swiss mercenary infantry regiment

mercenary unit employed on the side of Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko during the First Congo War

Šajkaši (In Serbian, , ) refers to the river flotilla troops guarding the Danube and Sava, and especially, the Port of Belgrade, against the Ottoman Empire from the 16th to the 19th century. During that period, the rivers were natural borders of the Kingdom of Hungary and Habsburg monarchy with the Ottoman Empire, part of the Military Frontier. The troops were composed of ethnic Serbs, who had special military status. Their name derives from the small wooden boat known as chaika (šajka, tschaiken), a type of galley.