Eliminating the separation of Officer / Non-Coms

[J.T.B.]

I actually think that Roddenberry had the right idea originally and it was a shame that it wasn't followed through. To me it would make more sense if there wasn't officer/enlisted divide, and it was all just one continuous rank structure. Most of the time Trek does seem to forget that the enlisted exist anyway. To me it would make sense that everyone was an highly trained 'astronaut'; less like navy, more like NASA.

Agreed, it's a genuinely futuristic idea. But no one, GR included, really did anything about exploring it onscreen. When non-officers were considered at all, which was rare, they were apparently about the same as they were in the late 20th century.

In all honesty, when you're dealing with ships with crews of hundreds, you'd need an officer/enlisted divide simply to get the work done. Such a divide does exist in all ocean vessel services today, regardless if they're military or civilian. And since Starfleet is very much in the mold of an ocean vessel service, I don't see why they would do away with that.

This assumes a lot about what would change (or not) in 300+ years. As technology increases, the skill level to use it goes up, too. A hundred years ago a battleship was crewed overwhelmingly by unskilled or semi-skilled labor: about 5% officers, 15% petty officers or skilled craftsmen, and 80% seamen and stokers. There is no way that ratio could work today, the systems are too complex. It took four officers and seven enlisted to crew a B-29 in WW2, ten years later it was five officers and one enlisted on a B-52. Yet a faster-than-light spaceship centuries from now would have a personnel organization basically the same as a seagoing vessel today? Personally, I don't picture that a lot of starship jobs could be filled by a kid straight out of high school, Yeoman Lawton notwithstanding.

I don't think anyone is saying that there wouldn't be levels of lower responsibility who would focus on getting their own job done. Just that it doesn't require division into two castes.

The officers decide what needs to be done, the NCO's ensure it get's done. And a career NCO is an invaluable resource to a new young Ensign or Second Lieutenant - while an Ensign may outrank and CPO, a smart ensign will listen to the advice/guidance of a CPO who may have as much time in the service as the ensign has been alive.

But an outside observer could still reasonably ask: Why does the ensign on his/her first day in uniform outrank the CPO at all? In the US there are 19 grades (not counting warrants which I'd class as parallel officers), why does the ensign start out at level 10 and the chief spend 15 years getting to level 7? Why does the ensign eat dinner with the department heads and "management," while the chief, though she works as closely or more closely with them day-to-day as the ensign, is not welcome? The answer is, when the system was developing, those in authority considered that someone with the right parents could be a leader of men at age 20, and someone from the other side of the tracks never could, even with year after year of skill development and experience.

IMO as the skill level required for every job continues to go up, the harder it will be to justify why Wesley Crusher is the boss of Chief O'Brien right out of the gate. Why not have everyone start out more or less together, and pick the managers/commanders/executives from the entire pool as they prove themselves? If you sign up with a college degree, it gets you maybe two or three rungs up the ladder, but not half way up.

 

[Tenacity]

A enlist person is trained in a specific technical skill, a officer is trained in leadership and management.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

In MY head canon, the equivalent to the US Army / US Marines are integrated Soldier Forces and share the same Rank Structure as StarFleet. No need for memorizing Dual Rank Systems.

I don't agree.

IMHO, ground forces should have ground ranks, and ship crews should have naval ranks. That's why such ranks exist in the first place.

(Don't believe me? Ask anyone in the Canadian Forces who remembers the '68 unification. For awhile after that, they only had one rank system, so you'd have, for example, guys in green camo commanding aircraft carriers and having the rank of Colonel. They quickly realized this was bad for morale and thus the old rank systems were brought back.)

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I don't agree.

IMHO, ground forces should have ground ranks, and ship crews should have naval ranks. That's why such ranks exist in the first place.

(Don't believe me? Ask anyone in the Canadian Forces who remembers the '68 unification. For awhile after that, they only had one rank system, so you'd have, for example, guys in green camo commanding aircraft carriers and having the rank of Colonel. They quickly realized this was bad for morale and thus the old rank systems were brought back.)

So their main issue back then was morale? Granted 1968 was before I was born, and I'm not Candian. So I wouldn't recall any of that.

 

[valkyrie013]

A enlist person is trained in a specific technical skill, a officer is trained in leadership and management.

In a nutshell, yep!
Being a former marine, I can attest to this. Even in the future there will be paperwork and management, while there are people (me included) that just want to go to work, repair a jet engine (as I did) and go home.. no paperwork, no people to coral...
So, lets take Engineering for example, a breakdown in rank structure, Enterprise D..
Chief Engineer, Laforge..
Overall engineering Shift supervisors, Lt or Lt jg..
Department supervisors: Ensign, or chief
Department heads: Chief or high enlisted
Workers: Enlisted
Now this breakdown depends on the size of ship and size of the crew, a small ship may have only a few enlisted and a greater number of ensigns, Lt's..

Can you have an all 1 thing crew, sure.. but enlisted "in my head cannon" sort of way.. is someone who wants to join, but doesn't want to go to any academy, Retintion is another, a good 60 70 % of people who join, just do 4-5 years, then get out, or as they say, 1 and done.. I imagine that would still be true in 300 years, an enlisted would join, do a boot camp, then do a technical school, then go to a ship, base etc for a few years, then decide if he wanted to re sign on..

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

A enlist person is trained in a specific technical skill, a officer is trained in leadership and management.

Actually, I'd expand on that as "enlisted = specialist", "officer = generalist". For instance, an enlisted pilot/helmsman/flight control officer would be trained to fly the ship (potentially including navigation), but a commissioned Navigator/Bridge Duty Officer would not only know about piloting (both helm and navigation), but also communications, weapons, damage control, resource allocation...), maybe even a little operation and maintenance for the thrusters, impulse engines and warp drive (certainly all fIVE former conn officer/navigators in TNG - LaForge, Worf, Riker, Crusher and Ro - plus O'Brien, Dax and Paris appear to)

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

So, choosing to be a "Specialist" in a specifc section vs being a "Generalist" who knows a lot, dabbles in much, but probably only has one speciality.

Basically, everybody starts off with 1 or 2 Specialities, then as time goes on; you as an officer will learn more, learn outside your speciality or train in tangential Specialities to expand your knowledge base.

Then you keep growing until you can be a Generalist in a Field with a high proficiency in certain sub specialities?

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Pretty much.

Specialists know how to do their thing, Generalists know why and when different specialists need to do their thing.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Here's what I envisioned in my Head Cannon for organizational Ranks & Groupings taken from my 577 page In-Universe Writers Guide:

My Version of Integrated StarFleet Ranks
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1h6iuQ-MWWXlubUR4z3vZLdZr-N08yVCv

Soldier / LISUS Force Groupings:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FsHE_paisH8WnYq7iHup9hXO61ATSJET

Aviator / Flight Force Groupings:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hD7tx-izrAPxSHpBnweG37XFqdS-ddaR

 

[Mysterion]

But an outside observer could still reasonably ask: Why does the ensign on his/her first day in uniform outrank the CPO at all? In the US there are 19 grades (not counting warrants which I'd class as parallel officers), why does the ensign start out at level 10 and the chief spend 15 years getting to level 7? Why does the ensign eat dinner with the department heads and "management," while the chief, though she works as closely or more closely with them day-to-day as the ensign, is not welcome?

Commissioned officers a broadly trained "generalists". Enlisted personnel are more narrowly trained in a specific specialty. And I'm ignoring the second part of your post about the heinous class struggles of the poor enlisted class, I was an enlisted solider, and later an NCO in the US Army and rarely if ever felt I was being "discriminated" against by officers. I had my place in the system, and they had theirs (and they were more than welcome to it, IMO). And pretty much everyone respected that.

 

[Infern0]

I belive in real life to become an officer requires an appropriate degree and going through officer training.

Being enlisted doesn't require that, although you get appropriate training.

Someone like O'Brian may not want to be an officer because he doesn't want to do the paperwork and prefers hands on

 

[Mysterion]

Someone like O'Brian may not want to be an officer because he doesn't want to do the paperwork and prefers hands on

I met some folks like that in the Army. There was one guy who had a four-year degree, was very capable/intelligent, and could have gone the ROTC route and gotten a commission, but instead enlisted in the Infantry because he wanted the challenge.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Someone like O'Brian may not want to be an officer because he doesn't want to do the paperwork and prefers hands on

His specifically stated reason to avoid becoming an officer is so that he can get out of attending formal receptions and the like, but he does seem to favor "hands on" work as much as possible.

Also, given that he holds an equivalent billet to Harry Kim, clearly the only true barrier that being an NCO put on him is that he couldn't command a starship (tho potentially he could - like technical branch CWOs/LDOs in the RW - command an engineering equivalent of the Pasteur or a small dockyard).

 

[The Wormhole]

I belive in real life to become an officer requires an appropriate degree and going through officer training.

With the right kind of university education, one can enlist as an officer. My mother says that an Army recruiter told her when she was in university that with her education she could enlist as a captain. She didn't do it.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

I'm not sure enlist is exactly the right word there, though the KT!Starfleet does use it, however you are correct that professions aligning with the "Navy Staff Corps" (medical/dental, nursing, vetinary (?), medical admin, legal) definately do in most services (O2-3 for the most part, but O4 is possible for Masters and above), and degrees in highly technical fields are likely to promote faster within dedicated units.

 

[Longinus]

I don't agree.

IMHO, ground forces should have ground ranks, and ship crews should have naval ranks. That's why such ranks exist in the first place.

(Don't believe me? Ask anyone in the Canadian Forces who remembers the '68 unification. For awhile after that, they only had one rank system, so you'd have, for example, guys in green camo commanding aircraft carriers and having the rank of Colonel. They quickly realized this was bad for morale and thus the old rank systems were brought back.)

That's nonsense. They're just words. Sure, there are traditions attached to them, but traditions change. If ranks were unified when MACOs were disbanded (so 2150s) no one will find it weird at all in TOS or TNG era century or two later. Besides, to all non-human Federation members the Earth traditions attached to these ranks mean jack shit anyway. And there doesn't even seem to be dedicated ground forces. Sure some Starfleet personnel get sometimes posted on ground positions, like O'Brien, but it isn't some separate service.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

That is true, most aliens will probably not care about the name of the title attached to that rank.

O-## with it's name being called ____ is just something to remember.

 

[J.T.B.]

IMHO, ground forces should have ground ranks, and ship crews should have naval ranks. That's why such ranks exist in the first place.

Not really, they just evolved separately. It doesn't bother a Seabee to have chief petty officers and lieutenant commanders in their ground organization, nor flying officers and flight lieutenants in the RAF Regiment.

Commissioned officers a broadly trained "generalists". Enlisted personnel are more narrowly trained in a specific specialty.

That's a generalization. The higher they go, the more NCOs and POs supervise outside their own specialty. Junior officer nurses focus on patient care, not managing. Most US Army helicopter pilots enter directly as warrant officers and just fly, commissioned pilots split their time flying and running the unit.

And I'm ignoring the second part of your post about the heinous class struggles of the poor enlisted class, I was an enlisted solider, and later an NCO in the US Army and rarely if ever felt I was being "discriminated" against by officers.

Neither did I, but that's not what I was talking about nor does it address the questions I raised. Unless the answer is "Because we've always done it that way."

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

The higher they go, the more NCOs and POs supervise outside their own specialty. Junior officer nurses focus on patient care, not managing.

NCOs (including POs) still stick mostly to their own "community", the 'deck chief' wouldn't stick to just his own rating (likely AB or AC) but would stick to the "aviation" ratings and wouldn't get involved in the Medical, Admin, Deck Department, Weps, Engineering etc unless ordered. In the Seebees Senior Chief Constructionmen supervise builders, engineering aides (draftsmen) and steelworkers, but not electricians and utilitiesman (under UTCMs) or mechanics and equipment operators (under EQMCs).

 

[Tenacity]

officer = generalist

I'm sure that the majority of officers couldn't do the jobs of all the specialist technician enlisted under their commands.

A naval officer in charge of a aircraft maintenance unit on a aircraft carrier probably couldn't fix a fighters engine or radar unit if his (and others) lives depended on it.

But a skilled enlist man could.