For the lifetime of anyone around it has been really more a cliché catchphrase of the Enlisted class than an actual derision, the officers and NCOs know it comes from a different time.
Now, “what’s wrong with this year’s class of second lieutenants”, that does come under the heading of “things you don’t say with your voice or type into your WhatsApp”.
To become a commissioned officer requires a college degree. To learn how to fly a helicopter does not.
So, to bring this back to another movie, would the surgeons in MAS*H have been warrant officers rather than regular captains and majors?
Not as I recall, but I did mention I know very little about the WO program. When I was in and specific to the Navy, they had to be Chiefs (E7) or above. We also didn’t have W1s when I was in, but I understand they’ve been brought back. So some things have changed.
No, the Doctors & Nurses were all Commissioned Officers.
Licensed Physicians pretty much enter commissioned as Captains and Majors in fact. No Lieutenants or Ensigns for them.
Keeping in mind, Doctors and Nurses are generally degreed. Warrant Officer do not need a degree. I have no idea what training the Doctors & Nurses got before going to work as Military Doctors and Nurses. It is probably a modified OCS school, but that is just a guess.
OK, thanks!
It is, I think. The professional NCO class has an important administrative and technical role, but in my experience, the officers still run the show. I think it’s because Israeli officers are all raised from the ranks, generally without college degrees, which means that to outside military eyes they’re basically half-NCOs themselves.
To this old enlisted man, that sounds like a great system. My best officers were generally those that went through OCS rather than the Academy and the NROTC officers were generally the worst. Of course there were exceptions, but as a generalization, pretty much the reality in my experience.
Though I would want my Nuke Officers to actually be Engineers and Physicists, same with Doctors, Dentists and Nurses.
I got curious, it looks like Doctors go through a 7 week BOLCBasic Officer Leadership Course course to join the Army. It is a 7 week course geared specifically to Doctors.
Navy has Officer Development School which is 5 weeks long, Classroom topics include Naval Leadership, Naval Administration, Naval Organization, Sea Power, Military Law, Military Indoctrination, Naval Warfare and Damage Control and must pass a Physical Fitness Assessment. There is a 22% maximum body fat level for males and a 33% maximum for females. A test will include pullups, pushups, and a 1.5 miles run. It is recommended that you begin an exercise regimen before attending.
So if you’re a Doctor, entering the Navy is pretty quick and easy. Not too much harder for the Army.
For those that don’t know, Navy Doctors take care of the Marines also. The Marines don’t have their own Medical Personal. Navy Doctors, Nurses, Dentist and Corpsman.
The US Marines are basically the largest Special Forces in the world. The are/aren’t under the Navy. Basically they operate under the Dept of the Navy but independent of the Navy at the same time. They rely on the Navy (or Civilian contractors) for many if not most support jobs. Though they still have mechanics, MPS, Food service, clerks and the like, they have a small percentage than the other services.
The Navy is a tad different than the service I was in (Army), but as an Academy graduate, I feel a little compelled to respond to this barb, the thing is the service Academies are training the future higher command officers, they aren’t necessarily concerned about producing high quality junior officers. I wouldn’t say they are indifferent to it, but they are generally looking to produce 21-ish year old people who can be expected to at least make O-6 if they go full career. Graduates of the service academies frequently advance through the junior officer ranks fairly quickly, and typically have a mixture of character and academic traits that are fairly important for higher rank, but may not be as relevant to an O-1 or O-2 in a non-specialist/technical field. Frankly, a problem with the lowest officer ranks, particularly in war time in combat units, is some of the most important skills are really just gained from “being in the military” for a time and understanding cultural things and how things work, and the Academy (or college if someone is ROTC) isn’t an amazing preparation for that. The more academic and specialized leadership training tends to be important for higher commands, though.
Doctors in general are really barely in the Army in most senses. A lot of rules also just don’t exist or get enforced for them. One example is Doctors in the Army National Guard and Reserves frequently don’t go to the monthly mandatory drill, which missing that is a fairly big deal for most people. If you’re in as a doc it is very, very easy to get out of drill sometimes for months on end. Technically they have a “flex” drill schedule during medical school and residency but are supposed to have a full drill schedule afterward, but this often is not the case. Generally, if they say they are needed at the hospital they work at for example on a drill weekend, they can get out of drill.
This retired Army officer would unequivocally say that we run the show, not the NCOs. Experienced NCOs are in many respects considered the heart of the Army and are incredibly important, but even when I was a fresh-faced Lieutenant, they never showed me anything less than complete respect to my face and in front of others, professional NCOs do not mock officers to their face–even if the officer deserves it (which they often do).
Also, when USAF was split from the Army, organizationally the WO flyer slots stayed with the Army. And in 1948 helicopters were seen as more like auxiliary spotter aircraft and flying trucks.
Is that an absolute requirement though? Do you have to have a degree to go into OCS?
It’s a little hinky, but in general in the modern military, if you’re active duty you basically do need a college degree to get commissioned.
I believe the National Guard and Reserve waive the requirement for people, selectively, who have either a 2-year associates degree or 90+ credit hours, and who are still enrolled in a degree program. I don’t believe it is common (it may not even be possible, I’m not 100% sure) to waive it for active duty.
There are however some programs designed to take you from enlisted to officer status, but they involve you getting your degree (so called “Green to Gold” programs.)
Good points and literally above my old pay grade. Everything you wrote makes sense and our senior officers were mostly Annapolis grads and generally good. So OCS grads were better on the Division/Company level but the future high ranking officers need to get their training also. While weeding out the not so good candidates for senior officers.
I did have a CHENG Chief Engineer that rose to Commander and may have made Captain just before retirement. He was an especially good senior officer and was an E5 or E6 Electrician’s Mate before OCS. He also had gotten a Masters in EE along the way. But I don’t think he had a prayer at getting command of a Ship and was probably best suited to be a Carrier CHENG anyway.
It isn’t 100% fair to generalize, but in my experience the lowest quality officers were generally ROTC guys. That isn’t to say no distinguished officers ever came through ROTC. The OCS guys have two origins–one is they are an enlisted person who has done some time in service and wants to advance, and has gotten a degree etc. These are usually driven people who care about/want a military career as a long term thing, and they also have a good understanding of the military. As former enlisted they also have a great understanding of the enlisted experience and the sort of jobs enlisted soldiers are doing. The other OCS candidate is someone who is out in the civilian workforce with a college degree already, and of their own free volition chooses to join and wants to become an officer. There is no real reason they “have to” do this other than desire, which usually has some correlation with performance.
ROTC on the other hand, are often college kids that a campus recruiter sold on the program for college money, who were usually hoping to skate through the service commitment with as little real effort required, and the result is fairly predictable.
Is that really true? What proportion of service academy graduates actually achieve O-6 versus ROTC or OCS?
It’s pretty much the only absolute requirement.
That I am not sure of, it’d be interesting to find the numbers. I do know that at the lowest officer ranks I think ROTC is actually the majority of all officers, but ROTC origin is less predominant at Flag level. My personal experience is West Pointers are significantly over-represented at O-6 and higher given the relatively small size of each year’s graduating class. But there have been some of our highest flag officers who have come through ROTC / OCS (Mark Milley for example is a ROTC guy!)
Best I could find was 41% of flag officers (Admirals) were from the Academy. But it looks like the Academy only accounts for about 25% of the officers.
—and this—
the Academy’s Director of Institutional Research, points out that, to produce 100 Navy captains, the Academy has to graduate 790 ensigns. By comparison, Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) programs have to produce 1,226 ensigns to generate 100 captains, and the Officer Candidate School (OCS) program has to commission 1,587 ensigns to yield 100 captains. In short, through a combination of aptitude, dedication, performance, and perhaps, as some would argue, a touch of favoritism, Academy graduates are more than twice as successful at reaching the coveted O-6 rank as their civilian-school counterparts.
The Navy’s Limited Duty Officer commission does not strictly require a degree, but for practical purposes in 2022 most of the kind of senior enlisted or WO members who qualify for it will have earned some degree already.