Operatives Update: Hawks Is Required on Story Missions

What the Official Update Establishes

• EA confirms that Hawks must deploy on story missions, while skirmish missions allow any available Operator combination.
• The supporting first-party source is the EA community Q&A, published July 21, 2026.
• The game remains scheduled for August 27, 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

For the Operatives hub, the usable conclusion is narrow and practical: authored characters, custom recruits and roster management can now be organized around this confirmed boundary. Details the source does not provide—such as final numerical balance, exact unlock timing or every mission exception—remain reserved for launch verification.

Why This Matters for Operatives

The page is intentionally scoped to the relationship between this announcement and authored characters, custom recruits and roster management. That makes it different from the general announcement page: readers entering through this navigation tab receive the implication that is relevant to their current task, then can move to the source or related guide.

After launch, this URL will be updated only when the shipped game or a later official statement changes the specific answer. Patch-dependent information will be dated rather than silently replacing the original evidence.

Launch Verification Checklist

Check which mission labels count as story or skirmish content, when the roster screen locks Hawks in place and whether optional operations use the same deployment rule.

The resulting evidence belongs in Operatives only when it answers the navigation intent described above. Screenshots, version numbers and observed exceptions will be attached to this route instead of generating overlapping pages.