Here is my counter argument:
You (yes You!!) are responsible for recruiting people into Morrow. To minimize training costs, you have been given a list of skills and characteristics to look for, including but not limited to military experience. And because that list was not made by buffoons, certain types of military experience are preferable to others.
So you go recruiting, and you wind up with X military veterans. Good job You! Assuming you did a good job, X is going to skew at least a little towards the most preferable military professions, but even if it doesn't you certainly don't have a uniform set of skills and experiences - you some guys whose military experience consisted of doing laundry or opening #10 cans of slop, but you also have guys who just got out of years of combat duty in tough, tough units.
Now You get promoted to actually assigning those veterans to teams. You really are doing great! You could just assign them randomly, but if you are not a complete schmuck, or at least consult some of the guys you are assigning, you realize that just about any quasi-military unit has "line" units and "elite" units. Heck, even the police have SWAT teams! So you decide to create tiers in your MARS and Recon assets (heck, probably ALL team types, but not right now), which means that you have at least one team that is "top tier". Who goes on that team? Probably those guys with the REAL thousand yard stare and a decade of swamp fighting under their belts.
Wait, this is starting to sound a lot like... Phoenix Team! The details may vary a little, but I cannot see how any sane organization would NOT wind up with something very like Phoenix Team at PB for the same reason that they would have a whole lot of other experts there too. The characters' team would not expect to have the best doctor in the Project, or the best leader, or the best shooter, and they should reasonably expect that those "bests" are going to be at PB.
Now, there is a definite role-playing challenge with Phoenix Team, but that doesn't mean that the reasonable solution is to eliminate the very idea. Just have them killed with everyone else! The 3ed demise of PB certainly gave a few instances where activating the team would have been a reasonable choice, and no amount of special operations training or experience will render you immune to NBC weapons!
So don't make the planners of the Project idiots out of step with every concept of organizational structure and leadership, just use the enemy to kill off the parts you don't want!
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