Non-commissioned officers in ST world
- Thread starter jonds91
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In what sense does having people choose "command" as a career path whilst others choose "specialist" not sit with ST philosophy, given that everyone has the option of applying to SF academy, everyone has the option of working towards their chosen career goals?
The Federation is FAR from being a genuine utopia, I've argued this several times before and frankly the myth it was ever intended to be gives a quite distorted perception which is often hard to gel with what we see on screen. Not sure this is one of those cases though.
The uses and purposes of traditions and systems are ultimately fluid, a thing having it's roots in a system does not mean it still represents such a system or endorses it.
Modern day military officers still salute, they aren't endorsing a feudal monarchy where knights removed their visor as a form of identification and to establish status.
The House of Commons was to an extent originally planned and structured in such a manner as to reduce the risks associated with sword fights between rival MPs. That structure has been maintained through numerous refurbishments without anyone endorsing the concept of duels of honour.
O'Brien was twice identified as a "Chief Petty Officer": in Family where Sergei Rozhenko greets him as "a fellow Chief Petty Officer" and in Hippocratic Oath the Jem'Hadar instantly identify O'Brien as a Chief Petty Officer based on his rank insignia on his collar. Although I don't think anyone has ever been referred to as just "Petty Officer" surely the presence of O'Brien being a CPO indicates there are Petty Officers in Starfleet?
This is definitely not the case in the US. Nominations to the service academies (except USCG) are given by members of congress in an opaque process that varies from district to district and can give substantial advantage to those with the right political connections. The USCG Academy alone uses a competitive selection process. But each year there are thousands of students who meet the entry requirements and cannot get a nomination.
It hasn't been done away with today, but it has changed very much in the past 200 years. For instance, in the late 1800s, the US Navy had a department responsible for officer personnel, while enlisted personnel were handled by the Bureau of Equipment; they were just parts that made a ship work, like anchor chains or a steam windlass. There was no "school" system for training, nor were any records kept on enlisted personnel above a ship's own books. Petty officers were 10-15% of the enlisted total, now they are over 70%. It's hard for me to believe that today's structure would survive unchanged 200 or 300 years into the future.
I don't think Trek took a particularly "futuristic" approach for its Starfleet personnel structure, basically transposing something like the present day when it bothered to think about enlisted personnel at all. Certainly, naval ships with large crews were originally mostly unskilled labor, pulling ropes, lifting shells, shoveling coal. The trend has been steadily toward fewer numbers and higher skills. A modern USN guided missile destroyer is twice as big as a WW2 destroyer, but has a smaller crew, and the next-generation Zumwalt is larger still, but with less than half the crew of an Arleigh Burke.
But in Trek we have starships with crews of several hundred. Did the trend reverse at some point and a lot of starship jobs open up for kids just out of high school? Doesn't seem likely to me.
So I can see what jonds91 is saying. If you take all the ranks top to bottom, ensign is, say, half-way up. If, as I think more likely, the grades below that are educated, technically qualified and experienced, why does someone get to skip so many steps on the ladder? Especially if they are shown to be green in a lot of ways. Why should an experienced senior person have to defer to them while at the same time trying to educate them? If you were an observer who knew nothing about the traditional system, the arrangement might seem odd.
One answer might still be education. If the petty officers have bachelor degrees, maybe ensigns have to have a master's. Another might be time: If you want to develop officers who can be future admirals in their prime years, you probably need to accelerate the promotion process at some point.
Also, the social differences between the "classes" may really be mostly gone. Trek's vagueness when dealing with enlisted personnel may work to its advantage, there.
There is no specialty of "command" that can be taught in school. It is an ongoing process that is developed with assignments of increasing responsibility. Nor is there a "generalist" officer. Naval officers have to have technical expertise and have for hundreds of years. At first it was higher math for navigation and mastering the control of a complex wind-propelled vessel. By WW2 British naval "line" officers had to have a technical specialty: gunnery, torpedoes, navigation, signals, aviation or submarines. The USN was similar but also included propulsion engineering. Admiral Nimitz of WW2 fame could have been the highest-paid diesel engine expert in the country if he'd left the navy as a lieutenant. Starfleet seems to be much the same, officers starting out as engineers, scientists and so on and progressing (or not) to positions of command.
Re read my post, I was speaking within the context of the star trek universe, where there has numerous times been references made to command being a speciality and career path in it's own right.
Also, just because the US navy does not teach "command" in school is neither here nor there. The fact that one organisation doesn't offer such a facility (which I'm taking on faith from your post) doesn't detract from the thousands of organisations around the world that do. It can be done and commonly is. This is what management courses are.
If your parent is/was a recipient of the Medal of Honor you don't need the endorsement of your congress-person, you can apply directly. But that's pretty rare.
A waste of time?
There was also Dorian Collins from Valiant (presumably she was an enlisted recruit rather than an officer cadet):
COLLINS: Are you all right, sir?
JAKE: Yes. It's nothing serious, Cadet er, Chief?
COLLINS: Acting Chief Petty Officer Dorian Collins. The Captain's asked me to escort you both to the bridge. If you'll follow me?
And one of Chu'lak's victims from Field of Fire:
ODO: Petty Officer Zim Brott. Bolian. Five years of service on Deep Space Nine.
EZRI: I knew him. Or at least Jadzia did. He has a wife and co-husband on Bolarus.
It's possible that Petty Officer is a billet/role (most likely section leadership, cf USAF 1st Sergeant) rather than a rank, but I'm not entirely convinced.
Not at all, you get to paintball and stay in hotels
It's clear which of us works for the better company. Hint: it ain't me.
I kind of thought of the Army, 91A program. Not very long at all. A few posts before Enterprise, he could be as young as 20 or 21.
The 68Q course which seems to be about the same length as the 91A course, so Tarses was probably about 19 when he qualified so that part's plausible.
It's the "several outposts" thing that I think is more suggestive. That would suggest a minimum of three, but more likely four or five. For him to be only 20, then his assignments would be an average of only three to five months, 21 would average at six to ten months. The second is just about plausible, the first seems extremely unlikely. If he's been in 5 years, then he's spent between 1 & 2 years depending on how many postings he's had, which seems rather more plausible as a minimum.
Based on USN PO minimums at 21 then he's looking at PO2, by 24 he's potentially a PO1. Army progressions are a little slower as they typically promote to E2 to E3 after 'school', at least one rank lower than the USN as I understand it (tho this is probably dependent on MOS/rating).
Although I think it's possible, I agree that given that Petty Officer exists as least a single rank and/or role (per Field of Fire, implied by Chief Petty Officer), then it's unlikely that Crewman 1st Class is equivalent to Petty Officer first class. However, given that the minimum rate for an Independent Duty Corpsman or Green Berets Medical Sergeant is E5 then I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that Crewman First Class, (Specialism) is broadly equivalent to E4-E5 and that his progression went something like:
Technician School: Recruit (E1)
First Assignment (Outpost): Trainee (E2) promoted to Crewman Medical Technician (E3)
Second Assignment (Outpost): Crewman Medical Technician (E3)
Third Assignment (Outpost): Crewman Medical Technician (E3), promoted to Crewman First Class, Medical Technician (E4-E5).
Fourth Assignment (Enterprise-D): Crewman First Class, Medical Technician (E4-E5). Begins training for promotion to Petty Officer, unlikely to progress after the events of The Drumhead.
I can't see any real weaknesses with the above other than it being more "RN-style" than "USN-style" as it makes NCO status much higher and rarer, but I think that is consistent (rightly or wrongly) with what we've seen on screen.
That isn't the only time I've seen the issue of rank be a little sloppier than it should be when it comes to Star Trek. Yar all but ordering Riker to inform LaForge that the Enterprise-C's tactical systems were below minimum and Riker simply responded with, "acknowledged."
Then again, maybe I'm the only one who found that irksome.
I can't specifically recall that on the show however, there are certain aspects of a person's job (position ) that permits leeway between ranks that surprise people.
I was a low rank enlisted person working in a supply capacity in an Army medical facility pharmacy. I took numerous bottles of expired aspirine and threw them away.
The next day the same aspirine were back on the shelf.
Per my position I could 'order' the captain, a mid/low range officer to get the items out of the area.
As it transpired, I went wacky nuts and told him the bottles mysteriously got back on the shelf !!!!! Crazy young broad going wacky at him.
Anyway he was okay with that and agreed with me.
Turns out it was a really stupid NCO that was the one 'in charge' that always screwed up ordering.
But I was in my right to go above the captains head and to insist that the items be removed from stock even though he out ranked me by a week and a day.
Thing is, O'Brien was confirmed to have gone to Starfleet Academy and everyone who goes to the Academy (after the rigorous testing and application process) comes out an officer. O'Brien was retroactively made an NCO, because RDM thought it would cool for O'Brien and Sergey Rozhenko to be NCOs and banter about their status. In TNG, O'Brien was called "Chief" because he was the Transporter Chief. Just like LT. Kyle was a transporter chief in TOS.
Just the writers playing around and trying to make O'Brien a John Everyman. Berman and Braga did the same thing with Trip in the finale of Enterprise. Trip held the rank of Commander on Enterprise and was the 2nd officer on the ship. Meaning he went to Starfleet Academy, studied, worked hard and got a commission. B&B revealed in TATV that Trip never went to school for engineering and instead learned about warp engines by working on boat engines. The gulf between a matter/anti-matter reactor and a gas and motor boat engine is huge! But hey, he never went to college and is just like John Doe. That's so engaging and not silly.
Just the writers playing around and trying to make O'Brien a John Everyman. Berman and Braga did the same thing with Trip in the finale of Enterprise. Trip held the rank of Commander on Enterprise and was the 2nd officer on the ship. Meaning he went to Starfleet Academy, studied, worked hard and got a commission. B&B revealed in TATV that Trip never went to school for engineering and instead learned about warp engines by working on boat engines. The gulf between a matter/anti-matter reactor and a gas and motor boat engine is huge! But hey, he never went to college and is just like John Doe. That's so engaging and not silly.
@Shamrock Holmes --- It seems to me that you're suggesting a simplified enlisted corps with only three (four) ranks. You have Recruits who are in Boot Camp / Tech School and don't really count, and then you have Crewmen (75%), Petty Officers (20%) and Chief Petty Officers (5%). Gone are all the ranks/titles of Able Crewman, Crewman First Class, PO Third/Second/First Class, as well as Senior/Master Chief.
Are you talking about this scene:
If so, Tasha doesn't seem out of line there. Maybe she could have said "please" but otherwise she's within the boundaries of protocol.
Actually, the first reference to O'Brien having been to the Academy is in DS9, Trials and Tribble-Ations to be exact, well after he was established as an NCO.
Well, no, no one went to the Academy in Enterprise, as it hadn't existed yet. Indeed, they are very careful throughout the series never to make an reference to the Academy, just unspecified "Starfleet training." They did slip up once and showed a Starfleet Academy diploma in someone's quarters on the NX-01, but the one who made up the diploma admitted their mistake, saying they weren't aware the Academy didn't exist in the series.
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