Re: Creating a realistic crew manifest for a Starship. Ideas & comment
Another way to organize a Star Base / Base Station would be like the modern USAF Air Base Wing. The "wing king" is a full-bird O-6 or a one-star O-7, and of course he has his support staff consisting of a vice-commander, command chief, exec officers, and admin clerks. He'd have a small A-staff, as per above.
Below the Wing level, there are Groups. On a typical air base, you'll have the Operations Group, Mission Support Group, Medical Group, Legal Group, and possibly others that escape me right now.
The medical and legal groups are pretty much self-explanatory. The Operations Group is broken down into several Flying Squadrons, plus the Operations Support Squadron for all the things needed to run the airfield (Base Ops to file flight plans and such, Air Traffic Control, and the weather station).
Most everything else falls under the Mission Support Group: security forces / military police, communications & computers, civil engineers, supply & logistics, etc., etc., and the Mission Support Squadron that has the base personnel & finance offices (what used to be called the Consolidated Base Personnel Office, and you still hear the old guys say they "need to stop by CBPO on the way back from lunch", which confuses the younger kids to no end). Oh yeah, I think aircraft maintenance is a separate group.
Again, a future Star Fleet would modify this model to fit the mission and technology. The basic point is, the military has spent hundreds of years going back the Greeks and Romans figuring out the best way to build a cohesive command structure, and while there will be tweaks around the edges there will be no good reason for Star Fleet to dump it.
The big problem with DS9 and Babylon 5 is the writers failed to understand this, or simply chose to ignore it. For DS9, it does make some sense, for as I said above it was obvious to me that the Federation had a hot potato they didn't want, so they put a washed-up O-5 in command with little support staff is hopes that the whole project would fail, and they could wash their hands of Bajor once and for all. There's no excuse for B5 to not have a proper command structure.
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Darkwing: I know that the Navy has a Defense Legal Service that is separate from JAG, just as the Air Force has the Area Defense Counsel as a separate entity. The local JAG office does work for the wing-king, but the ADC does not. I asked my wife (she's retired Navy), and she said the Navy didn't have the DLS when she joined back in the early 80's. So, perhaps the TV show did actually get it right for the times.
Going a bit off-topic: Something the USAF and Navy both added recently is a third legal office as the Victim's Legal Counsel. It's such a great idea. If a case goes to trial, you have the JAG on one side, the ADC / DLS on the other, but there wasn't anyone to walk the victim of a violent crime (such as sexual assault) thru the process. Now she has that legal advice.