Why is the British aristocratic hierarchy of commissioned officers and enlisted personnel still in use in all modern militaries? Why not have a linear rank structure based on experience and merit?
Why is the British aristocratic hierarchy of commissioned officers and enlisted personnel still in use in all modern militaries?
bad idea
Soviets tried it. Also I'm glad you're attributing that idea to the Anglo-Saxon.
didnt they themselves get that from the Roman's?
Prussians, dumbfrick.
Because you really want to keep your expertise on the frontline with senior NCOs. Yes, a fresh from the academy lieutenant can ignore a Master Sergeant. No, he's not gonna if he knows what's good for him.
Wasn't the Red Army incredibly top heavy and awkwards?
To say your ranking system is "meritocratic" is to state the obvious. EVERY ranking system is meant to be meritocratic. They just have to come to their own conclusions about what is deserving of merit, what is the best indicator of future competence, judgement, and loyalty.
If you merely say your system is "meritocratic" without expanding further on HOW you decide the measure of merit, it's a dead giveaway for a system based on greased ladders and informal connections. For example, , the Red Army, which most certainly did not do a good job of promoting the best suited to leadership into leadership roles and almost threw WW2 largely because of it.
Why are all of them n....rs?
>Irrelevant time wasting question
>Outrage provoking image
At least, that was the clear intention. /k/ is holding up admirably so far, giving mostly substantive answers.
You have to put black people in advertisements or else they won't understand it's targeting them. For example, black people never thought about going to McDonald's because they never saw any black people in McDonald's commercials. That's why every modern advertisement has a black person in it.
>we could have had natural self-segregation
n-avy office-rs?
because war is complicated, so it requires dedicated study. experience alone will not give you this.
>Why is the British aristocratic hierarchy of commissioned officers and enlisted personnel
>British
yeah
>that pic
once again the japs do a better job of appreciating western culture than modern westerners. Im going to have fun reading this manga.
>Why not have a linear rank structure based on experience and merit?
because the peter principle will come into play and very hard
allowing SGTs to move out of NCO position and into an officer position would mean pulling their experience in the field out and putting them into increasingly desk-heavy work
so your combat positions will constantly bleed out trained men to non-combat positions, while your men at the top will be putting tactical experience into play at the operational level
If it's such a problem to take people with experience out of a job and their familiar level of management and giving them a different job at a higher level they aren't use to, then why is "up or out" a thing? Why can't a O3 stay at that level instead of becoming an O4 and manage something different, or more importantly, why can't an O6 stay at his position and has to become a flag officer?
the system thats in place is already fairly effective at ensuring people stay within their competency zone but also allowing more experienced people to lead larger groups
Up-and-out's sole purpose is to provide a quickly available pool of junior officers in the civilian population in case an actual world war starts and you leaders for your ten million draftees. The other theoretical object in the US, to ensure a meritocracy, doesn't actually work since in practice promotion happens within a strict pre-defined time window, so it's based on seniority instead of ability. While the promotion process to major does weed out a small amount of morons like Armchair Copelord, most of the officers kicked out are competent at their jobs but just don't see themselves as lifers in the ass-kissing culture that exists in the ranks above up-or-out. But anyways, the giant reserve pool of officers is an excellent enough reason to continue the system in the richest country in the world where money "wasted" on officers is not an issue. The financial world at Wall Street works in a similar fashion.
>SGTs to move out of NCO position and into an officer position would mean pulling their experience in the field out and putting them into increasingly desk-heavy work
That already happens. Once you get to E-7/E-8 chances are very low you'll ever see combat compared to an E-5/E-6.
>Once you get to E-7/E-8 chances are very low you'll ever see combat compared to an E-5/E-6.
Its still operational vs organizational. Senior NCOs have the experience and wherewithal to keep a unit functioning smoothly, they know which drawer has the left handed screwdrivers and who's sucking dick on Tuesdays vs Wednesdays, but the officers are the ones that shuffle the paperwork and communicate more abstract needs like resource management up and down the chain.
a senior NCO is not less capable or less intelligent than an officer, he just has a prediliction and experience base in a different aspect of management, which is why smart officers rely on competent NCOs and do not try to micromanage them or overrule them
>First Sergeants and Platoon Sergeants don't see combat
You must be on crack
>compared
The chances are pretty much the same.
If a squad is in contact, they aren't just out there alone. The whole Platoon, Company, and even Battalion are nearby somewhere. Your whole premise is moronic. I'd argue that anyone O-5 and below has a similar chance of being in combat because even a BC has to be somewhat near the front to make informed decisions on how to use his men.
You're conflating the latter stages of Afghanistan and Iraq with an actual open front war. Currently in Ukraine, and even during in the early stages of Iraq and Afghanistan it is and was very common for Sergeants Major and Lieutenant Colonels to be on the front. They might not be actively firing their weapons, but they are still actively managing the battle while under fire.
pic related, first sausage in Fallujah 04 after recusing some guys and killing some dudes.
Tbf he was (quietly) criticized for being involved because it was “too hands-on” for a 1st Sgt. But it is a good example of how E-8s still get in gunfights. Picrel is another.
He actually put himself up that building providing overwatch for Marines who were evacuating the area, by himself and they had to come back to get him, which delayed the withdraw even longer. Brad Kasal spoke to my company at SOI, IIRC he was the senior enlisted at the time. I had a positive impression, but at the time I really didn't know shit about infantry tactics.
Basically, he had no business being where he was , did very little when he was there besides get shot, but it made for a badass photo, and Marines are great at exploiting badass photos that weren't badass in real life.
Ngl, Man was a bonfied prick. Cool that he did that, one time he called a formation for our entire barracks to watch him yell at duty for having bad handwriting.. not even in our command, the dude just walked into our barracks and started picking at shit. I was honestly suprised because seeing that pic and highschool motivated me to join... guess it's true for "dont meet your heroes" tbh
My uncle worked with him when they were both sporting four rockers and he said pretty much the same thing. Dude got high on his own supply.
the old homosexual just misses war.
>a company level NCO doesn't see as much combat as a squad leader
You don't fricking say? Most E-8's are too old to be running around on patrol anyway.
I agree more XP =/= higher rank.
Some people are more suited to field work than others. An operations manager should have knowledge of field work, but excel in human resource management, logistics, and assigning people to areas where they shine best.
The Black Baron (Michael Wittmann) would've served better as a low-level team leader with a hand-picked crew of tankers, than whatever the frick he was when he got smoked. He was pretty much using his rank to continue operating like he did when he was commanding a StuG III early in his career.
So the natural progression of age?
if you keep getting promoted for excellence, then the only time you stop being promoted is when you suck at your job
>promoted for excellence, then the only time you stop being promoted
Right around E-7 and O-6 office politics start to dictate your promotion rate instead of performance, which is why motivated NCOs go mustang, and a lot of majors retire on their 20
1. Officers have different duties and different habits to develop and I’ve personally seen what can go wrong when a mustang LT fails to drop his old NCO habits and gets stuck up in the NCO world as an officer (not saying mustangs are bad though a lot are great).
2. Officers are generalists who need to know a little bit of everything while enlisted are typically specialists who know the deep nuances for a specific platform. A U.S. armor officer is qualified to use Bradleys and abrams as well as do scout work out the gate while each of these is a specific job title for enlisted men who know how to push those vehicles further than the officer might.
3. If you exclusively draw officers from the NCO population you’ll run into a lot of officers leaving the military early as well as the fact NCO skill sets don’t translate well to senior level officer positions
Look at all the morons you've drawn out anon.
>Why is the British aristocratic hierarchy of commissioned officers and enlisted personnel still in use in all modern militaries?
because it works
>Why not have a linear rank structure based on experience and merit?
because it doesn't work.
see
for a very mechanical reason for why it doesn't work
Based Ninjaman poster
Ninjaman Murda dem
One issue which other anons haven't mentioned is time
In the british army (my area of expertise, can't comment on anyone else) it takes the better part of a decade for a private to become a corporal and about 12 years to even become a sergeant. Assuming in your system you go straight from a sarge to an LT, you're still looking at 15 years of time elapsed before someone even becomes the lowest level officer. Assuming promotions take as long from this point on as they do IRL, your officers will be dying of heart disease, crippled knees and dementia before a single one even makes colonel. The only solution to this would be to speed up promotions; there is a case to be made for this in individual, wartime cases, but at the institutional level you'd just end up with shitty NCOs and shittier Officers.
But the truth is what other anons have pointed out: officers and enlisted men are good at different things and occupy equally important roles. Any competent officer knows that just because an LT outranks most NCOs on paper doesn't mean you can go round telling the screws what to do on day one out of sandhurst; I'll be a 2LT when I leave sandhurst and I intend to treat my platoon sergeant as someone to learn from, not someone to boss around.
Promotion takes longer for the Brits because your military is smaller so there's fewer openings. Our smallest branch (US Marine Corps) is larger than your largest branch (British Army). Part of the reason the US has Up or Out is because there's a long line of people waiting for billets they qualify for but waiting for an opening from someone leaving their position either due to promotion or leaving service
This isn't exactly true. It's very much true for our branches and trades which are particularly small such as the Royal Marines where every promotion is just a case of dead man's shoes. However, promotion times can vary massively between branches for a lot of reasons. In some you'd be perfectly average if you were promoted to corporal or equivalent rank within 2/3 years and then to sergeant or equivalent within another 2/3 years. There are some examples of people becoming Warrant Officers in under 15 years depending on the branch.
Some people are book smart and some people are street smart. It's like asking why there are separate hierarchies of engineers and mechanics.
This anon is a fricking moron
An officer without street smarts will be an ineffective, out of touch leader. Are many officers ineffective and out of touch? Of course, but the role requires street smarts for success.
>t. can't be fricked with this "officers are incompetent pansies" bullshit because it makes for less competent armies
nta, but you're reading into it way too literally. Officers are responsible for developing the mission, enlisted are responsible for executing it. The two are very different skillsets. Knowing how to tardwrangle an infantry company to be able to do a thing isn't the same as determine what the thing to do is.
if I had to make an analogy, I'd use a racecar.
The junior enlisted are the car
The NCOs are the mechanics
The officers are the driver
The mechanics are responsible for making sure that the car is in good condition so that the officers can do with it what they want. Being a good mechanic isn't going to make you a good racecar driver.
The skill set to manage the logistics and the operational art (really mostly what officers do) is completely different to actually executing it at the small unit level.
Every position bellow Company-Commander for officers is basically an apprenticeship to get the officer to that level.
It's two different skillsets, so naturally it leads to two different career paths.
You are not a gentleman, sir?!!
>I am not a sir! I work for a living, you moron!
People just copy whoever is the premier power of the time. With the military, the cost of trying out an untested theory is huge.
That's hilarious considering that diversity will be the death of western militaries
That's the problem with not having a peer for 70+ years. No one to copy anymore.
Because company level leadership is very different from field level leadership is very different from general staff level leadership.
The best way to train fgos is to have them be cgos, but even that role can do a lot of damage, which is why cgo responsibilities are mostly carried by nco babysitters. Having ncos actually fill the cgo slots will irreperavly damage the officer pipeline as well as cgo level functions
People aren't born nor raised equal. They have different roles to fill in a society, and this applies to the military.
In Squad, have you compared playing as squad leader vs playing the commander? Two entirely different games.
99% of fighting a war is tard wrangling
Thanks, Ike
Because you need highly educated people making the complex decisions, and the les highly educated but experienced people taking those instructions and figuring out how to enact them.
Also the more significant a role, the more time must be expended to gain usable experience, and the less one can afford to develop skill by experience alone, as this necessitates greater extents of time, wherein failure is to be expected.
Also quality pic. That photographer really knew their shit.
>Highly educated
Education =/= Intelligence and no amount of education trumps experience
Yes it absolutely does. Education is just hundreds/thousands of years of culminated experience being told in brief in a short time frame.
Cope and seethe. Get a Bach degree and come speak to me.
Your typical college campus is all the proof I need that no amount of education makes one intelligent.
>Your typical college campus is all the proof I need that no amount of education makes one intelligent.
80% of the people in college now dont belong there, period
if you wiped out the 80% that done belong, the cohort left is actually "learning" something
You don’t have to buy into social causes to get an education, moron.
Do you want to post about shepards on hills being the sources of all knowledge in the universe anon?
Every technological advancement in the last 100 years has been developed by college educated engineers and technicians. Without colleges you would not have an internet to complain on.
Don't like education? Fight the next war without tanks or planes.
The soviets tried a military with no officer ranks and it didn't go very well and barely lasted a few months
Technically they tried a military in which officers and NCOs were elected to their positions. This was thought to both be more egalitarian and also thought to ensure that leaders would be more ideologically compatible with the new regime. The practice ended because it turned leadership into a popularity contest and led to ineffective units. The Bolsheviks were forced to cave and allow (read: compel) former tsarist officers to serve again to have functioning battalions for their civil war.
Mostly because if you work your way up from grunt you don't want to send thousands to their deaths.
Sometimes the only way to win a war is to accept huge casualties so having people willing to order that is a necessary evil but you need to be careful you don't end up with psychopaths in that possition.
Probably because every time a military has tried to
>have a linear rank structure based on experience and merit
it has utterly failed every single time.
Also , which is another reason why nobody cares much about enlisted-enlisted fraternization, but enlisted-officer is a huge no-no.
Personally I like how Peter The Great originally wanted his military to function: everyone starts off as a private to know what it's like to know what the men from the bottom go through, then go from there as ability and merit demonstrate themselves. Heinland also had a decent showcase in that infantry officers had to show ability before actually receiving their commission but they made sure to look for the young and promising junior NCOs to ensure a long officer career
Because most complex organizations have are nonlinear in obligations despite some roles superior than others in a hierarchy.
>Officers lead
>NCOs direct
Yes, in some instances a SNCO can do an 0-1/2s job, it actually happens a lot if the officer is fresh off the leash to leading a group. But when you get into company and battalion levels of command, its preferable to have someone be properly groomed for the position rather than concerned how long they've been in.
I think it's important to note as well that SNCOs, particularly at the highest ranks, are awarded a certain level of respect by officers. They're recognised as being subject matter experts and while they don't make the decision, what they say will often heavily influence decisions and junior officers typically defer to them but just not publicly.
This allows officers access to experience they wouldn't get unless they had spent 15-20 years doing an enlisted role. Which is useful because this experience becomes useless for officers as they ascend further up the hierarchy and manage completely different tasks.
>Why is the British aristocratic hierarchy of commissioned officers and enlisted personnel still in use in all modern militaries? Why not have a linear rank structure based on experience and merit?
Because british social structure is replicated in america, the officer is the (politically) trusted retainer, and the enlisted are low iq disposable grunts.
>Because british social structure is replicated in america,
But it's really not
Can an E8/9 refuse to salute a pleb O1?
No they can't and shouldn't refuse because it's unprofessional of an NCO not to salute an officer. However, most O-1s have the common sense not to go around demanding salutes from crusty SNCOs if they don't get one.
Crust NCO’s are frequently the only people enforcing salutes for Jr Officers since they feel they don’t have the credibility to demand it. It would be very atypical for an SNCO to shirk that responsibility
A related question: why everyone is so afraid to change the officer rank system? Even Soviets backed down after their militsry experiments of civil war - 30’s and went back to boring old-style ideas.
1. Because we have yet to find an objectively better way to do it, and
2. Because military organizations are inherently conservative, risk-averse and stubbornly resist change.
>why are you so afraid to change something that works fine and doesn’t need to be changed?
There could be a benefit to separating pay, authority, and specialization. Being an excellent machine-gunner or aircraft maintainer has very little to do with organizing a platoon or company, yet an NCO who stays in long enough will change jobs for some reason.
Matchlocks worked fine, why did anyone bother trying to invent something more efficient?
The Armies that frick with it (early Red Army, Spanish Republicans, some of the shitter Chinese armies of history) tend to lose wars which rather weakens the argument for fricking with it.
Being good at a job doesn't automatically make you good at managing the people and logistics to do that job.
Another day, another 1SG getting chewed out by 2Lt. Hernandez fresh out of OCS
KWAB
Officers are planners and NCOs are executors. They are 2 fundamentally different levels of military lifestyle, I've noticed that green to golds really struggle in the staff world as CPTs and usually get out at major.
Enlisted loves them some mustangs, but more than once, I’ve found a mustang cleaning weapons and shooting the shit with privates when they were supposed to be working on more important stuff.
>Enlisted loves them some mustangs
cuz they get them 2 weeks after basic at 31% APR
Yeah it sucks, they are good people most of the time. My CO was a mustang, joes loved him, always out with them. But the staff hated him because he was always behind on his due outs and a shitty OER when the time came.
>usually get out at major.
Also not coincidentally about the same time your pension is coming fully vested (depending on when you dropped your packet)
I think there is something to be said for removing some of the privileges officers receive, ie better food, better and less crowded quarters, less onerous duty rotations, etc. I also wouldn't be opposed to officer candidates having to come from the ranks, rather than because their dad knows a senator who got them an appointment to West Point or Annapolis.
>removing some of the privileges officers receive
I agree with this to some extent, but especially once you get past captain the sheer amount of men you're responsible for merits better benefits, just as a sergeant is gonna get better treatment than a private
>I also wouldn't be opposed to officer candidates having to come from the ranks, rather than because their dad knows a senator who got them an appointment to West Point or Annapolis.
This mentality is why you will definitely never be an officer, cretin. I will not elaborate
>Cretin
This mentality is why I am in favor of knocking officers off their high horse. In my experience, the academies turn out either very competent or entirely incompetent officers. Either way, they often lack empathy for the men under their command and have a superiority complex. I'm not saying there's a Marshall's button in every private's ruck, but it would be better to send the top 2% of enlisted to OCS than to continue to perpetuate the aristocratic character of the academies.
marshall's baton*
how do you identify the top 2% of enlisted consistently in a way that doesn't end up favoring soldiers from well-connected families as much as OCS currently, allegedly, does
In addition to evals and letters of recommendation from their officers, a system to measure aptitude and fitness should be instituted. I would envision it as a combination PRT, shooting qual, and written exam on the enlisted member's specialization as well as military topics and management more broadly. Perhaps it comes with a reading list so that motivated enlisted can study for it.
As a counter, what if anything makes the children of the wealthy and well connected fit, or more fit, to be officers? Why do they deserve those academy slots?
What makes you think that Academy spots are solely legacy? More to the point why are you ignoring OCS from Colleges which is where the vast majority of officers come from? Even more importantly what makes you think any wealthy people are sending their children into the military? The military receives very few from rich family joiners. The few that do do it still join at a max level of O1.
has standardized testing ever worked as an anti-elite connections measure? even the gaokao ended up broadly favoring such.
my point: you are not the first person to think of this. history is full to bursting of people who pointed at obvious problems (i am taking for granted that your opinion on OCS is correct) and then implemented a good-hearted idea that failed to resolve them or, very often, made them worse. very often, flawed systems are accepted not because everybody thinks they're great but because implementing a better one is much more difficult than it seems and there's a long history of people trying, failing, and making things much worse in the process. for military practices and customs this has an extra edge to it due to the uniquely pointed nature of military outcomes. look down, young zoomer - you are standing on the shoulders of giants.
i call you a zoomer because answering the question of "how will you implement this system rigorously" with "why do the beneficiaries of the current system deserve it" is a very gay and zoomer-brained practice.
Millennial, actually, with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. My stance is informed by my experience in the service. I made E-6, so this isn't just lower enlisted b***hing either. I think perhaps you are the one peering at the problem from the great height of ignorance and deciding nothing can or should be done. No offense, but you don't strike me as someone who did his time, officer or enlisted, which makes you a homosexual armchair general.
>In addition to evals and letters of recommendation from their officers, a system to measure aptitude and fitness should be instituted
please stop posting now. You don't even know there are already a huge list of requirements, training, milestones etc and a review board before anyone gets to OCS
the amount of fricking home/paper/legwork you have to do before you drop your packet is non-trivial just to start with
I might actually be out of my field here as I'm familiar with british officer training, not american. Over here we are drilled repeatedly on the importance of empathy and care for our men. The motto is "serve to lead", and officers/NCOs I've met during training have repeatedly stressed the importance of this. Perhaps it's different in america?
That's what an officer should be, so I suppose we don't disagree there. I also won't disagree that a lot of officers are pricks. That said for every jackass officer there's a moron enlisted. I just want competent, empathetic motherfrickers to do good work with.
American version of that phrase is "leadership as service", but no, it's the same way of thinking. A great example of this is how, despite nominally and functionally being the king of the ship, even the captain will knock and wait to be acknowledged if he needs to go get someone from the SCNO's mess in the Navy. It's drilled into you that your job as an officer is to enable your sailors to do their job, and while sometimes that takes the stick instead of the carrot, most people understand that. The prick officers who don't treat their enlisted with respect typically aren't well viewed by their fellow officers who do have that sense of empathy and duty. For example, technically a gate guard is supposed to salute officers when they're done checking their IDs, but if you lose your shit about them not doing, especially when it's busy and they're trying to get people through, you're the one who everyone is gonna view as the bad guy in the situation and be the subject of gossip.
Ah well that gives me a lot of optimism for the state of our cousins to the west. I yearn for a day where the army is rid of shitheels, both officer and enlisted, but I know that that is merely a dream.
I find that what sums up the culture of intra-military relationships best is the art of knowing your place, not in a self-dimishing sense but more in terms of having the humility needed to do your job best and to enable others around you to do theirs. Military rank hierarchy is to me more about different, equally valuable roles rather than one rank being inherently more valuable than another (within reason obviously).
>I just want competent, empathetic motherfrickers to do good work with
A-fricking-men, and so for every profession.
>aristocratic character of the academies
Barely any rich sons/daughters actively seeks out military service. The current "Aristocracy" gives 2 shits about military service and does not advance them in anyway in current times.
>aristocratic system in place = whole world subjugated for 300 glorious years
>plebs allowed to commission and, worse still, vote = the empire collapses within my lifetime.
"Meritocracy" and its consequences have been a disaster for the English race.