Refusing a Direct Order from Your Supervisor

Factual Questions
1

Suppose a direct order from your Supervisor is made and you think that it is ridiculous and for various reasons there is no ability to question it

How much trouble would you be in if it was refused.

To give you an example, an Admiral gives a Captain an order to sacrifice his ship in order to slow down an enemy vessel to give the rest of the fleet time to catch up.

Or another example is if there is an order to launch a missile at a plane and it is clear that it is a civilian plane and not a military target.

I suspect that it would have to do with the specific situation and circumstances

Thanks for any responses

2

To use a pop culture example using Star Wars, suppose the commander of the Death Star refused to fire on Alderaan?

I suppose they would find someone else who could fire but suppose only the commander had the code to fire the weapon.

3

All evidence points to him/her getting force-choked to death by vader and someone else being promoted to their previous post.

4

Why did I feel that that was going to be someone’s answer.:o

However, force chocking the only one with the ability to fire the weapon is not going to get it fired

5

Since we’re in the realm of fiction now, why couldn’t vader just use the force to fire the weapon? Hell, why couldn’t he just force-choke the whole planet?

Back to your original, real life question, I think you answered it yourself. It would depend on the situation/details.

6

Are you only talking about military situations? In military situations, disobeying a lawful order is a serious offense and can result in a court martial and imprisonment.

In a civilian job, one can expect that the most severe consequences would generally be termination. Though one can come up with scenarios in which disobeying a superior may result in criminal or civil liability (like maybe an air traffic controller telling a plane to turn left instead of right, creating a serious hazard to other peoples’ lives).

ETA: in some cases, there are laws to protect whistleblowers who bring malfeasance to light. One particularly interesting example is that if the corporation you work for isn’t paying its required taxes, and you tell the IRS, you are eligible to receive a very hefty portion of the taxes that the business is then required to repay. There are cases where this reward is literally tens of millions of dollars or more.

7

An SSgenious is asking us about disobeying orders?

There’s gotta’ be some irony there, somewhere.

8

In this case according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice you would be compelled *not *to obey such an order from a superior, as it is made clear that you only obey lawful orders;

Bolding mine.

9

Thanks for the answer. What I was trying to get at is the grey area where the local commander has a closer view of the situation and counteracts his superior’s orders because he thinks they are wrong

10

This. And the emphasis on lawful for the military. In the examples in the OP the ship sacrifice is probably a legal order depending on exactly how its worded (the sailors could man rafts and escape in theory with just volunteers left behind) but shooting down an unarmed civilian airliner or plane is a lot tougher. The person issuing the order would have to be able to prove that the plane (or truck or whatever) was a clear and identified threat and no other option was available. Based on the USA-CMJ as of 1978 and accepting that things like the definitions of clear and identified threat could have changed after 9/11.
(The first example, in a manner of speaking, actually came up in an ROTC class; could you be ordered to a basically suicidal attack or defense)

11

I think even Vader would have troubles force choking an entire planet. Otherwise why build this station

12

That brings up a good point, during 9/11 the 2 fighter jets following United 93 were strongly considering ramming their planes into United 93 but it crashed before they had the chance

I think they were going to ram because they were sent up for observation and didn’t have any missiles

13

This sounds a lot less GQ and more GD territory…though I’m sure we all know too well how Great the Debates about The Star Wars go…and I choose not to run!

14

I will stay out of Star Wars. It was just to use a common example that many would refer to

Thanks

15

Are recruits given any training on how to distinguish a lawful order from an unlawful order?

16

An unlawful order is one that violates the laws they’re required to obey, so knowing the difference comes down to knowing the laws. The UCMJ gets taught in bootcamp and copies are posted all over the place, my friends who were deployed in the marines and national guard talked about getting the basics of the laws of war explained to them, and I would hope officers would get instruction on the entire text of it. There’s also local laws to contend with. If you can point to a specific law (that applies to the situation) that prohibits the action you’re being ordered to do, it’s an unlawful order and you have a duty not to obey.

But fundamentally, there is still room to interpret laws in different ways, and sometimes it takes a judgement call when to refuse an order if it isn’t entirely clear whether it is lawful or not. At that point, you go with what you think is the right choice, even if you get court martialed as a result.

17

An order to sacrifice a ship to slow down pursuing enemy vessels (say, by ramming them) would probably be lawful, and disobeying such an order could result in very harsh consequences.

18

Pre-emptive Godwin strike!

19

Training occurs during initial entry.
Law of war is a mandatory annual training requirement in the Army.
Required Officer Education System courses include blocks on Law of War.
There’s a pre-deployment training requirement.
There’s a pre-deployment training requirement on the Rules of Engagement (law of war based usually with additional constraints based on SOFA, mission, etc.)
ROE training bleeds over in to tactical training, in some cases with scenarios specifically designed to test decision making within the ROE.
Law of War can come up in locally based leader development programs. That can as a specific topic for the class. It can also be a point of discussion related to something like a historical review or decision making vignette.

20

OK, this gets into fine points discussed in a class lots of years ago, and from the standpoint of the Army, but ----

Legal or not would depend on survivability. If your superior has plans for rescue and there is a chance for rescue, it is legal. If it is flat-out a “suicide mission and everyone will be considered dead” it’s not legal. You can volunteer for something like that, but you can’t be ordered to do it.