If I recall correctly, Mr. Cameron based the USCM characters in
Aliens on his recollections of U.S. Vietnam War-era Marines. I'll watch it again this afternoon and let you know what I find in the commentaries/special-features.
Edit - found this:
"A military plot also provided the director [Cameron] to layer Vietnam metaphors into the story. Like any child of the sixties, Cameron had grown up surrounded by Vietnam imagery and themes, and had further immersed himself in the conflict while researching his
Rambo script. He watched Apocalypse Now and read Tim O’Brien’s
Going After Cacciato and Michael Herr's
Dispatches. Cameron adopted the cocky attitude and lingo of U.S. troops in Vietnam for the Colonial Marines in Aliens. And he used the arc of the Vietnam story--the pride coming before the fall. "It was a definite parallel to Vietnam to tell the story of a technologically superior military force which is defeated by a determined, furtive, asymmetric enemy," Cameron says.
Quoted from:
The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron
by Rebecca Keegan
Three Rivers Press; Reissue edition (October 5, 2010)