Thanks.
I was only familiar with the military accommodations in another country. And there the senior officers housing and food was on a different universe than enlisted.
Supposedly nurses were made officers for similar reasons. Another version is that they were made officers so male officers could date them. In both cases the real reason was because rgdy had to spend multiple years in education and training just start working in their professions.
Speaking of WWII; them the women’s services were started up (WACs, WAVES, etc) the women leading them were granted direct commissions out of necessity. They came from a variety of fields, but alot were from teaching and college administrators.
DOD and individual branches employ hundreds of thousands (if not a million) civilians and plenty of consultants and contractors. Briefly, examples of folks I know include civilians managing logistics or working in IT or managing research programs. Consultants I know are contractors either working for a larger company or as an S corp of one providing short term expertise. Although sometimes that spills into staff augmentation “butts in seats”.
I and others can flesh that out but I’m checking if @Czarcasm would prefer that occur elsewhere.
I recall a former DARPA PM (a civilian position) telling me he was given some sort of “rank equivalent” when visiting a base to facilitate getting whatever it was he needed from people there. But it was high enough that it triggered excitement amongst the protocol droids when he arrived, who dragged out the officer managing the facility to meet him unnecessarily. I’m probably mangling the story, and this guy struck me as someone who didn’t care much to let facts get in the way.
My dad was a senior VP of a very large defense contractor. When he visited the Pentagon or other military facilities, he had the highest possible civilian “rank”. It was equivalent to some level of general below four stars. It meant that a full colonel was his escort and people paid attention.
I’ve got a buddy who does pretty much VIP IT and PC support for the Air Force in San Antonio. He’s an ex-Army officer, so he knows the landscape and lingo well enough.
From what I understand, the military puts a fair amount of effort into making sure that soldiers/airmen/sailors/marines are doing stuff that’s pertinent to their branch’s roles, not doing everyday support work like mowing or serving lunch that they can easily and cheaply contract out on base.
I suspect this is a result of the all-volunteer force; if they’ve got someone willing to sign up to be a soldier, they’re going to make them a soldier, not someone who does grunt work. When they had the draft, they had a lot of manpower, so it wasn’t a big deal to detail some low level people to mow the lawns, cook the potatoes, or do whatever sort of menial labor like that, because they were already getting paid, and they weren’t so worried about retention.
Right, it was probably not an honorary military rank— the civil service has its own pay grades, of course, and there is a Senior Executive classification that would be equivalent to general officer rank.
There was this one guy who was promoted from private to Colonel, just for selling fried chicken.
There’s a little Mom’n’Pop fried chicken place near me. Been there unchanged since the 1960s. Their chicken is GRRRRE-E-E-E-A-A-A-T (to mix our marketing metaphors 
).
Anyhow they have a big grease-encrusted sign on the wall:
If the Colonel had our recipe, he’d be a General by now.
I’m not sure I’m following. Are you saying that she would be clandestinely working against the aims of the group to which she is a spokesperson?
Then she’s essentially a spy. Spy’s break all sorts of rules while trying not to get caught.
She was originally a spy, yes. She was the famous daughter of a top government official while secretly working for The Front. Then she got in trouble and had to flee the state, ended up taking refuge in the state to which she has allegiance, became more publicly aligned with this burgeoning revolution, and now that she’s been “outted" they want to use her public persona to further their goals. At this stage the revolutionary military is pretty ad-hoc, and they’re trying to gain credibility on the public stage. The way that resistance movements strategically shape public narratives is a recurring theme in the book.
When I say she’d be breaking rules, I mean that she’s not doing great at taking orders from the Front, and as the story progresses she becomes more and more disillusioned with the movement she once blindly followed. Ultimately she’s going to split with them, working with them but on her own terms.
It’s just easier if she’s not somewhere in the military hierarchy. She was basically a little side project of the revolution’s founder and did not have a military background or training. She was just young and earnest and uniquely positioned to gather intelligence because of who she was.
Well, at least no Honorary Colonel in Canada enriched himself by starting a Canadian Fried Chicken company….
Samuel Colt was made an honorary aide-de-camp to the Lt Governor of the state, and on that basis evrt afterwards styled himself ‘Colonel ‘ Colt. He’d already been doing that for years anyway without any justification.
The KGB, for instance, was a military service and had military ranks. Kim Philby was a “real” KGB general.
What does it matter? They are presumably acting as advisors based on their civilian career experience as CTOs, not commanding a mechanized battalion in combat.
Maybe someone can correct me, but it’s my understanding that people who join the military directly from civilian life for jobs like surgeons or JAG lawyers go through a bit of a watered down basic training (if at all)?
I guess maybe I don’t understand why the military would bring them in as commissioned officers as opposed to civilian military contractors. Maybe so they don’t have to pay them as much?
Officers in general don’t go through “basic training” in the same way enlisted recruits do. All the stuff you see in movies & TV is all about enlisted training, not officer training.
Initial officer training varies by era and by service and by method of entry, but there’s a lot more emphasis on academic learning and leadership and a lot less emphasis on de-civilianizing the trainees.
Having said that, compared to standard officer training of the era and service, the medical and JAG programs were/are very short in time and as such very light on all things military other than the bare minimum to navigate the “company culture” you’re about to be embedded in as a perpetual semi-outsider.
The habit of incorporating doctors, lawyers, (and chaplains) into the real military, albeit in a sorta separate way, long predates DoD interest in using military contractors. Hell, it long predates the existence of the DoD.
I would not be surprised to see further motion in the direction of military contractors for those roles. But that’s not how we got here, and you can certainly see how self-preservation for everybody under the current system would encourage them to push back against any bureaucratic maneuvers to shrink the e.g. Medical Corps and bring in hired civilians.
Congress could wield their mighty budget sword and force it so. But there’d be a lot of screaming and some service auxiliary organizations are quite adept at lobbying. Could happen, but my bet is not.
So you can order them to work 18-hour days, work weekends, go to combat zones, risk their lives, and whatever else you want them to do, and if they refuse you can court martial them.
My buddy was a JAG in the Air Force and went through basic training in the late 80s. The JAGs went through basic with the Chaplains. He said it was like a camping trip but they did get to shoot rifles. They and the medical doctors still need to pass the same physical fitness standards as the regular officers.
I was referring specifically to these tech executives. Sorry if I was unclear. Doctors and lawyers etc makes sense as they are long-term jobs embedded within and supporting the military organization. These CTO roles sounded more like the equivalent of…I don’t know…hiring Accenture or Booz Allen partners to advise the DoD on tech strategy. Unless maybe they are meant to be in long-term CTO type roles within the military.
William Wyler was a major and filmed war documentaries.
Wyler filmed The Memphis Belle at great personal risk, flying over enemy territory on actual bombing missions in 1943.
Just speculation, but the rank would make it easier to do his filming. He didn’t have as many obstacles in getting access to planes and bases.
The rank also afforded the protection of the Geneva Convention, back when it mattered. A non-uniformed professional on a battlefield is eligible to be shot as a spy if captured.
If Wyler’s plane had been shot down and he were captured, he’d have been held in a Luftwaffe POW camp (stalag luft) and given the correct treatment accorded officers in in that treaty.