![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/27C3BqP:
Ha ha well. I will rant at the slightest provocation, so if you’re actually interested– Well, hold onto your butts.
Caveat: I have never served, myself. But my father joined the Army in 1967 and retired in uh like ‘07 I think, and my sister joined up in 1995(?) (ROTC, which is where they send you to college and then own you) and is still active, and so between the two of their careers and some research of my own, I think I have a pretty decent ground in how rank structures work. So I mean. Given that I don’t really know anything in depth, here’s a kind of approximate overview of what’s what, ish?
So I’m just going with the US military, with which I’m most familiar; it’s also the biggest, and has exerted A Lot of influence on other militaries throughout the world, to put it mildly. So.
It’s divided into three main branches. The Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. (There’s also the Coast Guard, but, I’m not going to address them here; just know they exist. There’s a good overview of actual facts on Wikipedia, actually.) Until after the end of WWII the Air Force was a subdivision of the Army, so there were really only the two branches, historically. Wait, you may ask, what about the Marines? They’re part of the Navy. But they’re foot soldiers, you may say. Yes, but they’re the Navy. (They’re listed separately but if you look, they’re under the purview of the Navy.) There are also pilots who fly aircraft in the Navy, as well, and they are not affiliated with the Air Force and don’t even really have the same ranks. And I honestly have no idea if the militaries of other countries follow the same division of command as the US. So. Keep that in mind. If you’re extrapolating this to fiction, you may similarly have weird little territorial divisions, or you may choose better integration and have them all serve one command.
(Like, your storm troopers are all sort of like the Army, and then the staff attached directly to the ships are Navy, even if they have similar specialties, and so they’d have different uniforms and rank structures and promotion schedules, and answer to different people and work together… uneasily. It’s a reasonable premise to work from.)
I did look a little bit on Wookieepedia and apparently under the Empire there WAS some kind of division, and like, the Army was ground troups and in-atmo fighter craft, and then the Navy(?) was responsible for space fighting, so like, there were two classes of pilots and a bitter rivalry and such? So there’s some precedent for this in the SW verse.
Anyway: To rank structure.
There are probably two main types of person in your military. You are going to have an entire structure of command– commissioned officers, starting with the little baby officers and going on up to the big generals. The little baby officers (in the Army, they’re lieutenants– a 2LT is brand-new, usually fresh out of college, and gets promoted to 1LT after a year or two, and thence to Captain) are going to be well-educated in some ways, but not experienced. That is overwhelmingly how it works. Your officers do not start out as grunts. They come in with specialized training, and they don’t know anything, but they are already in charge of tiny little areas. Their specialized training is not in guns, it is in administration and in theory and so on. They will have done the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree, or expect to be trained on the job; their training will be book-heavy. They’ve shot guns and run a lot and done shitloads of push-ups and maybe jumped out of planes or something, but mostly, they’ve written a lot of papers. A lot, a lot, a lot. They are undisputed masters of PowerPoint and they absolutely can run the fuck out of a meeting.
Pilots, BTW, would be commissioned officers. Gunners, though, not.
The second type of person in your military is the enlisted soldiers, who will be promoted with aptitude and experience and training– on a separate track. These become your non-commissioned officers. They will possibly receive specialized training in academic things, but the vast majority of their expertise will be technical. This where your high school grads or GED kids desperate to get out of the ghetto or off the farm wind up. They can rise to very high ranks, and be very well-respected, and very powerful. But they will not then jump into the commissioned officer command structure. That’s not how it works. It happens very rarely in any military I’m aware of, that you’d make that jump. (It CAN happen, but it is exceptional. My dad did it the other direction because he is Special, and let me tell you, it was awkward and weird. Going the other direction is also awkward and weird. There is a very bizarre class tension that most American society Does Not Admit To. This may or may not translate, fictionally; American society is really fuckin’ weird about this and I doubt that would happen independently. I blame Baron Von fuckin’ Steuben.)
Technically, your babiest baby lieutenant outranks your most senior master sergeant.
In practice, there is never going to be a time when the two of them would be called upon to conflict with one another. No sane lieutenant is ever going to question a master sergeant. No sane master sergeant is ever going to stick their nose into something that’s a lieutenant’s business.
An enormous amount of the structure of the military is in place to ensure that people do their own jobs, and not others. The lieutenant worries about the hour, the day. The captain worries about tomorrow. The major worries about the day after. The colonel is worrying about next week. The general is planning next month. And as for the noncoms: The sergeant is making sure there will be someone still alive to worry about the moment, in a moment. The corporal is making sure someone is worrying about the moment, now. The private is fucking worrying about the fucking moment right fucking now all right.
A lot of this is because when shit hits the fan, if everyone knows instinctively what they’re supposed to be doing, then they do it, instead of panicking and dying. The vast majority of military victories come down to which side panics more productively when circumstances get real adverse. This holds true for the entire history of humanity.
And like. Noncoms get shit done. Officers write or read reports. That’s just. Kind of how it works. Because there’s a big picture and it’s important, but there are also people shooting at you.
So, anyway, to bring this glorious rant back around, Phasma absolutely should be a high-ranking non-commissioned officer, given the description of her duties and concerns, and especially given the way her uniform makes it obvious that she has come up from being a Stormtrooper.
YMMV; she could also be Army while the upper echelons we see are all Navy, or somesuch. I just want to know who wears helmets and who wears dumb little hats, and why.
Ha ha well. I will rant at the slightest provocation, so if you’re actually interested– Well, hold onto your butts.
Caveat: I have never served, myself. But my father joined the Army in 1967 and retired in uh like ‘07 I think, and my sister joined up in 1995(?) (ROTC, which is where they send you to college and then own you) and is still active, and so between the two of their careers and some research of my own, I think I have a pretty decent ground in how rank structures work. So I mean. Given that I don’t really know anything in depth, here’s a kind of approximate overview of what’s what, ish?
So I’m just going with the US military, with which I’m most familiar; it’s also the biggest, and has exerted A Lot of influence on other militaries throughout the world, to put it mildly. So.
It’s divided into three main branches. The Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. (There’s also the Coast Guard, but, I’m not going to address them here; just know they exist. There’s a good overview of actual facts on Wikipedia, actually.) Until after the end of WWII the Air Force was a subdivision of the Army, so there were really only the two branches, historically. Wait, you may ask, what about the Marines? They’re part of the Navy. But they’re foot soldiers, you may say. Yes, but they’re the Navy. (They’re listed separately but if you look, they’re under the purview of the Navy.) There are also pilots who fly aircraft in the Navy, as well, and they are not affiliated with the Air Force and don’t even really have the same ranks. And I honestly have no idea if the militaries of other countries follow the same division of command as the US. So. Keep that in mind. If you’re extrapolating this to fiction, you may similarly have weird little territorial divisions, or you may choose better integration and have them all serve one command.
(Like, your storm troopers are all sort of like the Army, and then the staff attached directly to the ships are Navy, even if they have similar specialties, and so they’d have different uniforms and rank structures and promotion schedules, and answer to different people and work together… uneasily. It’s a reasonable premise to work from.)
I did look a little bit on Wookieepedia and apparently under the Empire there WAS some kind of division, and like, the Army was ground troups and in-atmo fighter craft, and then the Navy(?) was responsible for space fighting, so like, there were two classes of pilots and a bitter rivalry and such? So there’s some precedent for this in the SW verse.
Anyway: To rank structure.
There are probably two main types of person in your military. You are going to have an entire structure of command– commissioned officers, starting with the little baby officers and going on up to the big generals. The little baby officers (in the Army, they’re lieutenants– a 2LT is brand-new, usually fresh out of college, and gets promoted to 1LT after a year or two, and thence to Captain) are going to be well-educated in some ways, but not experienced. That is overwhelmingly how it works. Your officers do not start out as grunts. They come in with specialized training, and they don’t know anything, but they are already in charge of tiny little areas. Their specialized training is not in guns, it is in administration and in theory and so on. They will have done the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree, or expect to be trained on the job; their training will be book-heavy. They’ve shot guns and run a lot and done shitloads of push-ups and maybe jumped out of planes or something, but mostly, they’ve written a lot of papers. A lot, a lot, a lot. They are undisputed masters of PowerPoint and they absolutely can run the fuck out of a meeting.
Pilots, BTW, would be commissioned officers. Gunners, though, not.
The second type of person in your military is the enlisted soldiers, who will be promoted with aptitude and experience and training– on a separate track. These become your non-commissioned officers. They will possibly receive specialized training in academic things, but the vast majority of their expertise will be technical. This where your high school grads or GED kids desperate to get out of the ghetto or off the farm wind up. They can rise to very high ranks, and be very well-respected, and very powerful. But they will not then jump into the commissioned officer command structure. That’s not how it works. It happens very rarely in any military I’m aware of, that you’d make that jump. (It CAN happen, but it is exceptional. My dad did it the other direction because he is Special, and let me tell you, it was awkward and weird. Going the other direction is also awkward and weird. There is a very bizarre class tension that most American society Does Not Admit To. This may or may not translate, fictionally; American society is really fuckin’ weird about this and I doubt that would happen independently. I blame Baron Von fuckin’ Steuben.)
Technically, your babiest baby lieutenant outranks your most senior master sergeant.
In practice, there is never going to be a time when the two of them would be called upon to conflict with one another. No sane lieutenant is ever going to question a master sergeant. No sane master sergeant is ever going to stick their nose into something that’s a lieutenant’s business.
An enormous amount of the structure of the military is in place to ensure that people do their own jobs, and not others. The lieutenant worries about the hour, the day. The captain worries about tomorrow. The major worries about the day after. The colonel is worrying about next week. The general is planning next month. And as for the noncoms: The sergeant is making sure there will be someone still alive to worry about the moment, in a moment. The corporal is making sure someone is worrying about the moment, now. The private is fucking worrying about the fucking moment right fucking now all right.
A lot of this is because when shit hits the fan, if everyone knows instinctively what they’re supposed to be doing, then they do it, instead of panicking and dying. The vast majority of military victories come down to which side panics more productively when circumstances get real adverse. This holds true for the entire history of humanity.
And like. Noncoms get shit done. Officers write or read reports. That’s just. Kind of how it works. Because there’s a big picture and it’s important, but there are also people shooting at you.
So, anyway, to bring this glorious rant back around, Phasma absolutely should be a high-ranking non-commissioned officer, given the description of her duties and concerns, and especially given the way her uniform makes it obvious that she has come up from being a Stormtrooper.
YMMV; she could also be Army while the upper echelons we see are all Navy, or somesuch. I just want to know who wears helmets and who wears dumb little hats, and why.
