Why do we still divide between the enlisted men and the officers in an Armed Forces where position is not based on bloodlines? It made sense to have classes of soldier in the feudal system of hereditary estates, but now any schlub from Arkansas can (and has) become Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces (technically a civilian position, but you get my drift). Is it really guaranteed that all officers are college-educated leaders anymore?
Well I interpet your question to mean “why do we make a social distinction between the two”. which would imply that officers are treated in a more venerated manner than enlisted personell. Which is fairly true, but it has a lot to do with the responsibilities of an officer. To understand that you need to know that an officer’s job is to make orders and to give orders primarily. The officer is the one who is ultimately responsible to the next level in the chain of command. Enlisted persons break down into two categories:
Enlisted person :E-1 up to E-4, with the noted exception of Corporal. I don’t know how the Marines or Air Force or Navy works, but I suspect it is similar.
An elnisted persons job is to do what someone with more shit on their sleve tells them to do without disobeying any of the general rules. Pretty much a peon, but you have almost no responsibilities so it isn’t all bad.
Then you have Non-Comission Officers:E-4(Corporal) up to E-10 (Command Seargant Major of the Army)
An NCO’s job is to make sure that the orders of the officers placed above him are carried out and to report to those officers. Also the be liason and to take care of the needs of the enlisted persons reporting to him or her.
Now I know that does not answer your question but i think it’s important to preface this with a bit of data concerning the differences between the classes of soldier.
So now lets see how they are treated differently:
Officers are saluted and paid more and have a special club to drink at.
NCOs’: Are paid a bit more but that has mainly to do with time in service. They also have a special club where they drink.
Enlisted persons: They have a place to drink at that anyone can go to.
Officers are saluted and called “Sir” as a token of respect and to adknowledge the burden of responsibility. People used to call their dads’ “Sir” too, probably for the same reason.
They get paid more for pretty much the same reasons too but also because to be an officer you have to have a certain level of ability and education and it used to be that officer rank had social obligations as well so there is a certain amount of tradition there as well. Officer’s get their own drinking club so they don’t have to maintain the uptight front at all times. Officers have to maintain a certain image and you can’t relax and do that at the same time thus you get your own drinking haus.
NCO’s like I said make a bit more money primarily due to time in service (a specific requirement for promotion is time in service and time in grade). They get their own club for pretty much the same reasons as Officers do. They kind of have it worst of all because they answer to bot regular enlisted people and the officers. NCO’s are often referred to as you “mother”. They have to take care of the kids and they answer to “daddy” (in the form of the officers).
Enlisted people: Well they have a bar. It’s not much of a bar, and the only reason I can see for having one at all is to keep them out of town and out of fights with the locals. The only advantage to being a private or PFC is you don’t have much responsibility compared to the others.
I hope that answers your question. If you meant something else or I glossed over something you are specifically interested in, let me know and I’ll try to answer in detail for you.
Basically, officers are managers and enlisted are technicians and operators. Thus, when you want to physically get something done, you go to a senior enlisted person. When you want authorization to do it, you go to an officer. I speak very generally of course, but this is to draw a correlation to the non-military world.
Pilots are now all officers because of the cost of the equipment and the consequences of making a major error with it. They are technically trained to operate the equipment (aircraft) and to make the “executive” decisions about operating them. But it’d be a danmed rare thing to see a mid-ranking or senior officer turning wrenches in the maintenance spaces. But even with pilots, the more junior people are doing more of the operations (executing tasks), and the more senior are making decisions about the nature of those operations (managing tasks).
For those who don’t understand what the remark about Corporal is, it has to do with the E-4 grade. In the Army and Air Force (and I assume the Navy & Marines), when you first get promoted to E-4, you are not an NCO. In the Army, you are called a Spec-4 (I think) and in the Air Force, a Senior Airman. After a year in grade and successful passing of a class on how to be an NCO, a Senior Airman can be made a Sergeant and is now an NCO. This step is necessary for promotion to E-5.
A Sergeant is still an E-4 (and the pay is the same) but the insignia changes slightly. Both Senior Airman and Sergeant have 3 stripes, but the Sergeant has a silver star in the middle. Non-NCOs in the Air Force have a blue star in the middle of their stripes that is the same color as the background (you have to look carefully to see it). For NCOs, the star is silver (green on fatigues insignia).
Basically, the idea of Spec-4 and Senior Airman is to reduce the number of NCOs and, hopefully, weed out a few people that shouldn’t be given that much responsibility.
An E-4 in the Nav is a Petty Officer Third Class: The most junior (actually, by definition, so is a Corporal) NCO. In the Nav, PO3’s are considered competent skilled workers. E-1 and E-2 are recruit and and apprentice, respectively, and E-3 is an experienced junior enlisted sailor. E-5, or Petty Officer Second Class (PO2), is considered a leader and trainer of junior sailors, and is expected to be highly competent in their rating. E-6, (PO1) is an expert in their rating, and is expected to be a skilled leader and a decent administrator. Chiefs (E-7 and above) are expected to masters of their rating, as well as highly skilled leaders and administrators.
Please note: This is the “supposed-to-be”, it sometimes differs considerably IRL.
To answer the intitial post: Officers make policy, Enlisted carry it out. What would get an Enlisted thrown out of the service can get an Officer executed. Officers have to be able to send soldiers out to die, and so should not be too close to them, so as to maintain good order and discipline. In the end, it’s the Officer who’s responsible for the actions of everyone, including his/her own, and will be held accountable. THATS why the distinction between Officers and Enlisted (of course, others already said that…)
While we’re on the subject, exactly what types of jobs in the service equate to officer status, besides the obvious traditional ones such as doctor or lawyer? And are the nurses still all officers, as seen in MASH*?
I thought one surefire indicator was a college education, that is, if you had to have some sort of degree to qualify for the job in question, you would be a commissioned officer if practicing that job in the service. Yet, I once heard something on NPR about the Army’s Historical Battalion, which consisted of just three members–one commissioned officer and two noncoms, even though all had university degrees in history. Indeed, if memory serves, they all had
advanced degrees.
Suppose in civilian life you work in a field, like IT, where practitioners predominantly have some sort of degree in a related field, yet many others either have no degree at all, or only one in a completely unrelated discipline, while managing to perform their jobs up to the same standards as those who have computer science degrees? What rank could you hope to be placed in if you were to join the service as a computer specialist?
To deal with the first part: Nurses, MD’s, lawyers, etc. are all officers – if they are serving as such. I know of professionals who are Enlisted Men in some of my hometown Reserve units.
There is however a distinction here, since some doctors, lawyers and such may be given “direct commissions” which involve only minimal military training, and thus you may have a mix in the same specialty of people who are combat- and command-trained, and others who are not. (e.g. the difference in TV’s MASH between Hawk/BJ/Frank on one side, and Col. Potter on the other)
The “rank equation” essentially has to do with the degree of responsibility and, realistically, to what salary/perks level would it take to attract (or retain!) certain persons. For instance, in the Army someone who enters off the street to be a helicopter pilot will likely become a Warrant Officer (a classification beteen NCOs and commissioned officers); while AF, USN and USMC pilots are all commissioned officers; so are the Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion Engineers, but the technicians are Enlisted.
For duties that don’t require a college degree, the services prefer to grow their own: take a kid fresh out of High School, make her a computer tech, and hope that by the time her term’s up she likes the military life and the promotion prospects.
Today, the officer’s commission requires a college degree; except as stated above, they come thru 4-year college programs (at the academies or ROTC) that include coursework in command management; or, after graduation, they take an intensive, semester-long OCS of nothing but those courses.
In regards to senior NCOs, if you’re joining today, you are expected (maybe required… any current servicepeople here?)to have a BA/BS by the time you make E7. But many, many senior NCOs have advanced degrees both in their service specialty and in management, without necessarily seeking a commission. A highly educated NCO, with his/her extensive real-world experience, is a valuable asset the military will seek to do what it takes to retain.
In the Army if you have an associate degree, you get to skip the E1 grade; if you have a BS/BA and enter as an enlisted man, you enter as E3 and step up to E4 after training. I’m unfamiliar with the Navy’s structure, IIRC that service had traditionally greater flexibility in achieving a rating based on what skills you already bring in.
Technical specialties that don’t fit neatly in the trade/profession or enlisted/commissioned officer dichotomy are often found in the Warrant Officers’ ranks of the Army and Navy. As for your example, well, the services have computer specialist billets in all “social classes” (Jr. Enlisted, NCO, WO, Commissioned)
Some more comments: (US Army-oriented)
As some have alluded to, years ago, degrees were a more significant distinction between officers and enlisted. About 15 years ago, the Army changed from more of a time-in-service promotion system (for NCOs) to more of an degree-based system. Therefore, those with AA/ASs, BA/BSs and advanced degrees could get promoted much more quickly than their peers and superiors. A large number of the E8s and above have advanced degrees since that is the easiest way to get to the higher NCO ranks.
Many NCOs with degrees do not wish to be officers since they would be doing a “different” job (more paperwork, less leading of soldiers; more planning, less solving or executing). In the US Army, NCOs and officers are both considered professionals. Each must be addressed by his proper rank.
More importantly, anyone can be an officer if he wants to. West Point and ROTC cadets get their degrees while training with Army personnel. OCS candidates may become officers without degrees, but must earn them within four years of their commissions or they we be “let go”.
SP4, SP5 and SP6 were invented to allow soldiers to advance in technical jobs even if they were not supervisors of other soldiers. SP5 and SP6 have disappeared. In general, the E4 job is a CPL job if the soldier leads personnel (is a supervisor), if not, it is a SP4 job. The infantry is CPL heavy. The Medical Service Corps is SP4 heavy.
Most military posts no longer have separate clubs.
Doctors and lawyers are officers historically (due to the needed degrees), but it makes sense since they require more money to compete with civilian salaries (still a lot less, though) and since we need soldiers to obey their instructions. Nurses are officers for the same reasons. Clergy are officers historically, but it also makes them more accessible to all military ranks. Doctors and lawyers, once schooled, start out as captains. Clergy and nurses start out as lieutenants. Physicians Assistants may be warrant officers.
Civilian jobs and military jobs often have no correlation; except in the case of those jobs mentioned above. As in the Doonesbury cartoons in 1990-91, you could have a lieutenant colonel in a reserve military police battalion who is a florist the rest of the year.
JRD: In the US Navy, a college degree is not required for either Chief Warrant Officer (CWO2 through CWO4; the Navy doesn’t have anyone in WO1 or CW5 paygrades) or Limited Duty Officer (O1 through O6; LDOs used to be able to only go up to O5).
BTW, I held the following ranks/rates: PV1, PV2, PFC, SP4, SP5, SGT, SN, PN2 and PN1.
Speaking as a vetran of the Israeli Army -
I think a lot of the class difference in the US Armed Forces is a holdover from a more “aristocratic” past. In my infantry days, we never bothered with salutes and “sirs” (at least, not after Basic Training), only with doing our jobs properly. We followed officers not because they were some special class of soldiers, but because they knew what they were doing, and because that’s how a team works. They had their job - to command - and we had ours - to fight. Any perks they got (and those were very few) were because of seniority.
Admittedly, the IDF functions differently from the U.S. Army. There is no equivalent to West Point, and ROTCs are never assigned to combat roles, so all infantry, armor and artillary officers have to “rise through the ranks” - starting as riflemen, being trained and serving as NCOs, and finally going through OCS. That, and the fact that a professional combat NCO class does not really exist, leads to the fact that the best soldiers in any unit - from the standpoint of combat ability and physical fitness - are almost always the lieutenants and captains.
Officers are sent to college between the rank of major and lietenant colonel, I believe. Before that it’s considered a waste of time.