Re: What are the Starflleet ranks? How many admirals are the
Alright. So, the Starfleet officer rank structure is based upon that of the United States Navy's. The USN system is, from lowest to highest:
Ensign
Lieutenant, Junior Grade
Lieutenant
Lieutenant Commander
Commander
Captain
Commodore (pre-1980s)/Rear Admiral, Lower Half
Rear Admiral, Upper Half
Vice Admiral
Admiral
Fleet Admiral
It's important to keep in mind the difference between a
rank and a
position, though the two may use over-lapping terminology.
Presumably the Starfleet rank system is like the USN's, though it's unclear if they still have Starfleet Commodores in the 24th Century.
USS Excelsior said:
Like in real life the President of the Federation would be a civilian, and head of a civilian government.
And this has been borne out by the fact that every Federation President we've yet seen -- from Hiram Roth in
Star Trek IV to Ra-ghoratreii in
Star Trek VI to Jaresh-Inyo in DS9 -- has been a civilian. (The names come from the novel
Articles of the Federation by Keith RA DeCandido. They're not canonical, but why not use 'em?)
The military would be headed by an equivalent civilian defense secretary, as well as a head of the military (starfleet) like the joint chief of staff in the U.S.
Well, we gotta pause here. Because the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a unit, the Chairman of the JCS, and the Chiefs themselves? They are not the heads of the military and are not a part of the chain of command. Rather, the JCS are the highest-ranking members of their individual forces and serve as the chief military advisors to the President and Secretary of Defense. They are
not empowered to issue orders to lower-ranking officers, though they may
transmit orders from the President or SecDef.
The US chain of command works like this:
President to Secretary of Defense to Commanders of the Unified Combatant Commands
The UCC commanders are the ones who are directly below the Secretary of Defense and who have the authority to issue orders to all officers from all the services within their UCC. The UCCs are areas of the world into which all the services are divided and whose Commander -- formerly referred to as the commander-in-chief of that region -- is responsible for US military operations in.
Basically, the JCS are advisors, not heads of the military. That would fall to the UCC commanders.
But beyond Admiral we haven't heard of any ranks like generals who would be in charge of a specific region and/or fleets in space or one top general who would be in charge of all of starfleet.
"General" is a rank found in non-Naval services. Since Starfleet is based on the USN, you'd never hear of a Starfleet General if the creators are being consistent with what has already been established.
It would seem in the 24th Century that Starfleet is by far the largest military organization where just about every race in the Federation and beyond joins, but there are ships from individual planets also that have been mentioned onscreen, such as Vulcan and Benzyte ships.
True. One imagines that those are either civilian ships registered to those specific Federation Member States, or that Federation Member States retain their own local defense force in the same way that US states still have their national guards.
As others have outlined, we don't know the exact chain of command for Starfleet. We know that the Federation President is the commander-in-chief from DS9's "Homefront"/"Paradise Lost." We know that in 2293, there was an officer referred to as the C-in-C (named William Smilie in the ST6 novelization) who may or may not have been the highest-ranking Starfleet officer and/or who may or may not have had the ability to issue orders to subordiantes; we don't know. We also know that there was an officer in 2285 referred to as "Commander, Starfleet" from ST3 who may or may not be the same position as the "C-in-C." Presuming that they're the same positions, it's possible that Commander, Starfleet, is an advisory/order transmission role like that of the USJCS, but we don't know for sure. We did see Admiral Smilie advising President Ra-ghoratreii in ST6 and never saw him issue direct orders, however.
We know from various TNG and DS9 episodes that admirals often work out of a given starbase and have authority over the ships that operate in the region of space (presumably the sector or neighboring sectors) that that starbase inhabits. We do not know if the Federation divides up the Milky Way or Alpha Quadrant into theatres of operation the way the US Armed Forces divides the world up into UCCs.
captcalhoun said:
If you read the A Time To series of novels, particularly AT To Kill and ATT Heal, they do a lot to establish the relationship between the Presidency, the Council and the Admiralty.
Basically, there's The President, then The Council, one of whom is the SECDEF (although IIRC, they're not called that), and they pass on assignments to the Admiralty.
I don't mean to be rude, but you are completely mis-remembering what David Mack's
A Time to Kill and
A Time to Heal established (which was, BTW, not a lot).
Basically,
A Time to Heal established that a committee of the Federation Council, called the Security Council, has the right to issue orders to Starfleet Command, and that it shares this right with the President. It did not go into detail -- so we don't know what happens if the President disagrees with the majority of the Security Council, nor do we know if the Security Council can only issue orders to Starfleet Command if they are unanimous or if it can issue orders if a majority or plurality of the Security Council votes for the order. Nor, for that matter, do we know if the Security Council actually exercises this right, or if it is an unexercised right (such as the Queen of the United Kingdom's theoretical right to deny Royal Assent to Acts of Parliament).
Most of the time in Mack's novels, we simply observe the Federation President issuing orders directly to Captain Picard, or see him issuing orders to the generically-termed "Admiralty," with no specifics established.
There was no reference at all to a Federation Secretary of Defense in
A Time to Kill or
A Time to Heal. A Federation Secretary of Defense
was established in the subsequent novel
Articles of the Federation by Keith RA DeCandido. However, in that novel, it is established that the Secretary of Defense is a member of the Presidential Cabinet,
not a member of the Federation Council. It was never established whether the Secretary of Defense is part of the Starfleet chain of command (with the legal right to issue orders to Starfleet officers) in the same way that the US Secretary of Defense is to the US Armed Forces. It was also never established whether or not Starfleet is part of the Federation Department of Defense. For all we know, Starfleet could be like the US Coast Guard, and fall under the umbrellas of both the Federation Department of Defense and the Federation Department of Science.
The role of the Security Council was depicted to be that of an advisory role to the President in
Articles; the President must confer with them or with senior Councillors in the committee, the committee has the right to hear about what's going on and debate policy and to advise the President, but the President is depicted as being the one making the decisions. However, we still don't know what happens when the Security Council and President truly disagree. I would tend to presume that the Security Council can pass legislation -- either non-binding resolutions or actual statutes -- opposing or banning an action undertaken by the President, though
A Time to Heal establishes that the full Federation Council would then have to pass that bill and that the President would have the right to veto it.
So I imagine that the relationship between the full Council, Security Council, and President is a bit of a cross between that of the US President and Congressional committees and that of a Prime Minister & Minister of Defense and Parliament and its respective committees.
Anyway, the point is, the Federation Secretary of Defense is not part of the Federation Council.
