There are in principle two schools of warfare. Those that play Chess and those that play Go. Tablet top pen and paper role playing games are not on that list.
Both classic games that train war strategists minds for centuries are all heavy on strategy and give little room for tactics. Military planning is also made at office desks and the executing soldiers in the field have little space for tactics, while no control of the overall strategy.
That kind of warfare is based on strict hierarchical societies and a system in clear order and therefore enfavors hegemonial politics, while the dark future and fantasy RPGs all play in rather anarchic societies or at least such parts of societies.
Even a special forces military platoon, that already has roughly the size of a gang, does only get a certain set of information from the intelligence service that also created the strategy and even gives tactical guidelines.
Shadowrunners, which are the highest level of gangs existing only in Sci-Fi games are different. They are closer to private security contractors, if they'd also exist for secret services hiring Delta Force like teams and simply do not exist today.
In the dark future worlds they are hired by a manager of a major company, that took the place of todays nations, who is providing a budget, hands over a set of information on the target or the job and meets either the middle man or the gang directly somewhere in the dark and anarchic parts of that world.
The information is comparable to a file today a secret service would have and on a hit job would have information on the target and his whereabouts including life style and friends, if it was about steeling information as much intel as available to find the server or hard disc in an office of a competitor and how the file or documents are electronically and physically protected.
The difference to the real world is, beside being a sophisticated gang over soldiers, that a major part of the shadowrun is gaining more information, checking the given information and creating a plan and plan b on both strategic and tactical level by the executing entity itself.
The shadowrunners have their own hacker, while today no platoon has a hacker outside an office, they have their own driver or pilot, while today special forces are transported by pilots not directly part of the platoon and of course magicians don't exist and all as close as it gets would be PsyOps most certainly not being part of a Delta Force platoon in a battle.
This means that the shadowrunners in dark future RPGs are both related to todays secret service operations, yet way more sophisticated on the platoon level which is only possible in a chaotic almost anarchic world that lost today's system of orders and lines of command that can be used by secret services working next to the top dogs to keep the order alive and instead the world is beyond an oligopol of powers a manifold of thousand of entities all in competition and ever changing unions or disputes in which gangs called shadowrunners are the new elite in warfare.
