He does have a point though, the whole spiel about malleable minds doesn't really apply to teens. If you give a teen a warmachine he'll tell you to shove it up your ass because he wants to be a rock star or climb on it and wreck as much shit as possible. If it's malleable then it's child soldiers through and through. Unless our characters are implied/all but stated to have been raised for this, in which case we're still playing child soldiers, just grown up now. On this subject, I don't know why anyone would give control of experimental, potentially tide-turning equipment to child soldiers/teens instead of experienced veterans or even just older people who'll be able to handle the stress better on account of not being at a period of their lives where their own system conspires to make them less stable.