Does having a non-officer in the "Chief of Operations" position make sense?

[Citiprime]

O'Brien is effectively the chief engineer of both Deep Space Nine and the Defiant. Up until Deep Space Nine (and even after) that role is always fulfilled by a commissioned Starfleet officer .

Thinking about it, something I've wondered is whether it makes sense that Starfleet would allow an enlisted non-commissioned officer to keep that position as the importance of Deep Space Nine became apparent, and especially after sending the Defiant with Sisko?

While watching the pilot, I can understand it, since initially a posting at Deep Space Nine is kinda similar to a "second-contact" Lower Decks role, where maybe you can entrust a high-ranking enlisted member with the position and the experienced officers are more for the chief engineer roles of ships-of-the-line. But once Deep Space Nine has to be refit and made into a fortified position on the frontlines of a potential warzone, wouldn't you assign an experienced engineering officer to oversee that position?

I know Starfleet at various times tries to get Sisko to replace Odo with a Starfleet officer as his head of security. But that's usually written off as Starfleet's bias against Odo being both a changeling and non-Starfleet. I just wonder whether it would make sense for an enlisted person to be in charge of an entire department aboard a post like O'Brien is?

Has anyone with maybe experience in the Navy ever experienced this kind of setup where a Master Chief is given this level of responsibility, they have young ensigns and lieutenants answering to them in their department, and they only answer directly to the commanding officer and XO?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

With O'Brien's obvious experience and qualifications, I really could give a shit if he's an officer or not.

And I'm sure Starfleet feels the same. DS9 is a unique assignment, after all.

 

[Tosk]

This might be a naive question, but what would be gained by insisting that the role be filled with a commissioned officer?

 

[David cgc]

This might be a naive question, but what would be gained by insisting that the role be filled with a commissioned officer?

Starfleet doubtless has Tables of Organization and Equipment specifying how many people of what ranks in what positions are needed to crew a ship or station. An immediate practical concern would be that O'Brien would be outranked by any commissioned officer in his department. Granted, Starfleet is weird organizationally (a side-effect of Roddenberry's conception that, as astronauts, everyone on the crew of a starship would have a college degree, so there isn't a recognized officer/enlisted split), but it does come up when Nog graduates and they mention that now O'Brien has to call him "sir," so it's at least a theoretical issue even though for the rest of the series Nog works for O'Brien.

 

[Citiprime]

With O'Brien's obvious experience and qualifications, I really could give a shit if he's an officer or not.

And I'm sure Starfleet feels the same. DS9 is a unique assignment, after all.

I agree. But I could see someone like Admiral Nechayev arguing for someone else. Or a hardass like Jellico wanting the formality of having an officer in charge of a department instead of an enlisted member.

This might be a naive question, but what would be gained by insisting that the role be filled with a commissioned officer?

Honestly, nothing. But it just seems like an anomaly for O'Brien to be giving orders to officers and be in control of an entire department, given what we've seen in all the other shows, and it doesn't fit the traditional officer-enlisted relationship at all. I just could see someone at Starfleet Command saying: "Hey, we don't have an officer running engineering/operations out at Deep Space Nine or with the Defiant? We need to get someone out there to "help" the chief with his situation."

Since Deep Space Nine is technically a Bajoran station and has a mixed Starfleet-Bajoran crew, maybe that makes things different. Also, maybe Sisko was given carte blanche to bring the staff he wanted, and was able to get Starfleet to make an exception given his direct previous experience with the Cardassians.

 

[Tosk]

Surely it's not difficult to simply give O'Brien positional authority? (Which is presumably exactly what they have done.)
Bashir has positional authority over all officers regarding medical matters, even if they outrank him. (Not saying it's the same thing, but it's an example of how rank doesn't trump all else.)

 

[Guy Gardener]

Sisko's original crew was less than 20 starfleet personal?

It was a loser mission to a loser planet that had already been strip mined of every natural resource. They had to blow planets up to keep the lights on.

Allowing Bajor to join to the Federation was charity at best, but more likely a damn liability.

Rank is about management not specialty.

Most Officers have frick all training as Engineers, but any lt Commander is allowed to tell thirty engineers, when to work and when to sleep, even if they don't know how to change a light bulb.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Navy "nukes"--nuclear technicians--probably get more intensive engineering training than officers who go to Annapolis or in ROTC. They get hefty signing bonuses and two years of engineering credits that are largely transferable upon enrolling at a university. Moreover, there are some unique officer paths open not available to other enlisted. There are a lot of benefits, and they learn a lot, but it is an unforgiving job, from what I understand.

I'm pretty sure the heads of a nuclear department will be officers. However, only subs and aircraft carriers have nuclear power. If it's a situation where the warp technology is ubiquitous, I can imagine that it might more often fall under the oversight of NCOs.

 

[kkt]

This might be a naive question, but what would be gained by insisting that the role be filled with a commissioned officer?

They might get somebody who could do for Engineering what Eddington did for Security.

 

[kkt]

Sisko's original crew was less than 20 starfleet personal?

It was a loser mission to a loser planet that had already been strip mined of every natural resource. They had to blow planets on to keep the lights on.

Allowing Bajor to join to the Federation was charity at best, but more likely a damn liability.

Rank is about management not specialty.

Most Officers have frick all training as Engineers, but any lt Commander is allowed to tell thirty engineers, when to work and when to sleep, even if they don't know how to change a light bulb.

I knew some of the ROTC students at my college, and in every branch of the service they emphasized engineering. (Maybe it's different in the service academies rather than ROTC?)

Back the sailing navy days, what made an officer was celestrial navigation. They knew how to measure the angle of the sun or a star above the horizon, use mathematical tables, and calculate courses that would get them home from wherever they were. If you couldn't hack the math to do that, you'd probably stay an NCO or if you were were well enough connected get a desk job somewhere.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I knew some of the ROTC students at my college, and in every branch of the service they emphasized engineering. (Maybe it's different in the service academies rather than ROTC?)

Back the sailing navy days, what made an officer was celestrial navigation. They knew how to measure the angle of the sun or a star above the horizon, use mathematical tables, and calculate courses that would get them home from wherever they were. If you couldn't hack the math to do that, you'd probably stay an NCO or if you were were well enough connected get a desk job somewhere.

Was Geordi an engineer or a pilot?

He may have been both.

In his heart, he was one more than the other, but eventually he abandoned both jobs to become Captain, in one timeline at least.

More likely one of those divisions was his specialty, and the other just got him on the Enterprise, or a slightly bigger room on Enterprise, while he was waiting to get his own ship.

Obviously an officer is more useful if you have extensive training in the division you are going to be working in or leading, but all those buggers in red don't tell us that they specialized in a specific avenue of science, as it applies to their job, their field is "Command" which is management, which is human resources.

"O'Brien, you've been transferred to Earth, like your wife wanted, but the only spot available to some one with your rank is triangle in the marching band."

"But I don't know how to play the triangle!?"

"Don't worry about it, you're in charge of hiring and firing, and as Chief of Marching Band Operations you're not exactly going to demote or transfer yourself?"

In such a situation, O'Brien would have made himself third alternate triangle, so that the Federation would have to be falling a-fucking-part before he had to play in front of an audience, but Miles did have the prerequisite skills to write up the band roster and write reports on the band, that would account towards the quarterly crew evaluation, which is what a head of department does.

Miles on DS9 Season one however was a on man corps of engineers.

Starfleet said to itself, can we just give one guy 15 years to fix a Cardassian station? There's no rush. It's a bullshit piece of space that no one wants and the only major power near by just abandoned it, after Bajor ran out of space coal.

Did the chief even have a staff to begin with?

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Was Geordi an engineer or a pilot?

He may have been both.

IDK that there's any may about it. While he went all-in on engineering activities once he got the ChEng billet, he was still acknowledged as one of the E-Ds most skilled pilots through most of the series.

Obviously an officer is more useful if you have extensive training in the division you are going to be working in or leading, but all those buggers in red don't tell us that they specialized in a specific avenue of science, as it applies to their job, their field is "Command" which is management, which is human resources.

Pretty much.

Did the chief even have a staff to begin with?

There were certainly Bajoran Militia engineering and/or operations technicians from the outset, IIRC the first Starfleet engineer that we see on the station is Ensign DeCurtis in S2's Whispers who may have been brought in as a temp specifically because of O'Brien being replaced by a replicant rather than being a permanent member of the crew (particularly if we include his apocryphal history as a member of the Office of the Federation President).

Given the above, O'Brien being the ranking Engineering Officer for Starfleet on the station pre-war and/or the Defiant make sense to me, but we really should have seen a Fleet Chief Engineer (at least a Commander, if not a Captain) once the Ninth (?) Fleet began to base out of the Bajoran system.

 

[Tosk]

IIRC the first Starfleet engineer that we see on the station is Ensign DeCurtis in S2's Whispers

We see a Starfleet engineer working under O'Brien in Babel.

There are also other yellow-shouldered crew who at least seem to be non-security (but hard to be sure with background crew, of course) in other early eps, such as in Emissary and Dax. They could be enlisted though, naturally.

 

[Guy Gardener]

We see a Starfleet engineer working under O'Brien in Babel.

There are also other yellow-shouldered crew who at least seem to be non-security (but hard to be sure with background crew, of course) in other early eps, such as in Emissary and Dax. They could be enlisted though, naturally.

Not the question that was asked.

Before they found the Wormhole Starfleet could have sent a tight sprinkle of extras past the just the main cast to transition Bajor into the Federation, then after they found the Wormhole, Sisko had 20 starfleet under him, and multiply that by ten after the Dominion destroyed the Odyssey, and multiply that by ten again after the Dominion war actually started, what with dozens of star ships coming and going every day.

Sisko's mission was revised several times by circumstances, but his original crew, for the pilot, must have been slim pickings.

Honestly if Sisko had not turned out to be God, Starfleet would have moved him along after the pilot and brought in an Admiral, which would have been a very different show.

So the question was "How big was Mile's (Starfleet) staff in the pilot?"

(Specifically, I don't think he had a (Starfleet) staff, which is how a petty officer can be a surrogate Chief Engineer for a space station 15 times larger than Picard's Enterprise?)

 

[Markonian]

The outranking situation is not unique to DS9. We have Lieutenant Ayala serving under and reporting to Ensign Kim aboard USS Voyager.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

(Specifically, I don't think he had a (Starfleet) staff, which is how a petty officer can be a surrogate Chief Engineer for a space station 15 times larger than Picard's Enterprise?)

Well, BTS sources suggest -- and on-screen evidence doesn't refute -- that the total initial Starfleet contingent was as little as fifty people, so the Starfleet engineering team was probably no more than twenty or thirty at most, which is perhaps little big for an American NCO (warrant officer or junior officer would be more typical), but is less so for a Commonwealth NCO as they don't have a separate WO cadre.

 

[Tosk]

Not the question that was asked.

Not a question I was answering.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Well, BTS sources suggest -- and on-screen evidence doesn't refute -- that the total initial Starfleet contingent was as little as fifty people, so the Starfleet engineering team was probably no more than twenty or thirty at most, which is perhaps little big for an American NCO (warrant officer or junior officer would be more typical), but is less so for a Commonwealth NCO as they don't have a separate WO cadre.

DS9 Bible says 50 starfleet crewmen and officers by episode 3, and that 200 Bajorans live there, but probably without being station crew, so there will be more of them too.

3 shifts per day, means you probably only got around 10 subordinates to share between Command, operations and Medical per every irregular shift.

26 hours isn't divisible by 3 as whole numbers. Duh. Of course they changed it to four shifts, I just don't know why it took them 5 years?

 

[Guy Gardener]

The outranking situation is not unique to DS9. We have Lieutenant Ayala serving under and reporting to Ensign Kim aboard USS Voyager.

Department head means you're in charge of the department.

Ensign Kim is in charge of maybe ten operations offers, and only one of them is ever on duty at the same time.

Depending on what season we are talking about Chief Petty officer O'Brien is in charge of as many as 300 engineers at the same time.

This procedure was explained when they told us how Miles was tactical officer on the Rutledge.

 

[somebuddyX]

Fifty Starfleet people on DS9? Now that I think about it, whenever they evacuated it makes sense I guess, but for some reason I assumed it was about a thousand people if not more. Wow.