In fact, the Modern Era troopers just land in front (just 3 or 4 spaces away) of my soldiers and deal the first attacks immediately.
It is important to understand the abilities of the individual units and the bonuses they get against each other and their special abilities.
As someone else noted paratroopers are a poor choice to use with rogues as paratroopers (which is not what I meant by modern era troops - I meant all of the fighting units of the modern age) as paratroopers deploy randomly. That means that your paratroopers may very well land nearer to the enemy and be in range when your rogues are not in range thus the AI will kill your paratrooper. It does act 1st as I recall but the random nature of the landing tends to negate that advantage unless you get pretty lucky. The paratrooper is best against artillery as it gets a bonus against them and a bonus against the bazooka teams (light unit). It does have stealth in forests so if there are many forest tiles you might be able to not get it shot at by the enemy but because of the paratroopers' range and depending on the enemy units you are facing that might not help you.
Mechanized infantry is decent since it has good movement range, and it has bonuses against the bazooka teams (light) and the paratrooper (ranged unit). It has no special abilities but if you are manually controlling the mechanized infantry you can usually control how many of your units get 1st hit (artillery and sniper units can shoot pretty far so not so good against them).
The Bazooka team is the light unit of the modern era. It has the 'dug in' skill so if it is attacked from more than 2 sectors away it gets a defense boost which makes it a bit tougher. Downside as I recall is that it is slow and the range isn't the greatest. It has boosts against the battle tank (heavy unit) and the mechanized artillery. It is too slow to be effective against artillery as I recall. This unit is best against a lot of tanks and might mix well with rogues depending on the enemy units.
The battle tank (heavy unit) has boosts against the paratroopers (ranged unit) and the mechanized infantry (fast unit). The heavies tend to be popular as mixed with rogues they do a fair bit of damage if used right and tend to be tough to kill (bazooka and artillery can be an issue for them though).
Mechanized artillery gets bonuses against the battle tank (Heavy) and the mechanized infantry (fast). If facing all tanks then 8 artilleries can work pretty well as I recall but the mechanized infantry can close pretty fast so less effective against them.
From an online source the champion for this age is a fast unit so it gets the bonuses against the same units as the mechanized infantry. Generally, not worth the time.
You need to try a mix of units to see what works best for your tactics. I'd suggest a couple of artillery units and battle tanks and 4 rogues if you aren't facing many enemy units that can target you long range. The 1st few hits should land on your rogues (assuming you aren't on the continental map) so you get a few hits in for free with the artillery. As I recall my preferred tactic was to eliminate the artillery 1st (so I might bring 4 and 4 and no rogues in some cases) and then control the pace of the battle by keeping away from the enemy while I wounded the ones in front so that the tanks could kill them when they moved in 1st.
Note: my apologies the machine gun unit is postmodern not modern.