IRL Picard would have called *his *commanding officer and asked him to tell the Admiral to stop messing with his crew.
Part of a commanding officer’s job is to protect his people from other officers.
What matters is the rank of the Captian.
If Captian Jones is in command of an air craft carrier, he is refered by either Captian or Captian Jones.
If Commander Smith is in command of an Destroyer he is refered by either Captian or Commander Smith.
If Chief Roberts is in command of the tug or small boat he is refered by either Captian of Chief Roberts.
Being a captian of a ship is not a rank but a duty position. The exception would be on a Merchant Ship. To be a Captian you would have to have a Masters licience.
Okay, now you guys are just messing with me: first “cheif”, and now “captian”? Stop, already.
if you salute someone who does not rate it, all you get is embarrassed.
if you neglect to salute someone who Should be saluted, you can have BIG trouble.
hence, the Ted Nugent theory is the way to go; even if it confuses Manhattan doormen 
No. In the USN, “commodore” is now solely an informal title for the Commanding Officer (CO) of a squadron of ships or submarines. A squadron commodore usually has the rank of Captain (O-6). The commanding officers of the individual ships (say for a submarine squadron) are likely all Commanders (O-5).
After the commodore moves on to a new job, he/she is no longer referred to as such.
Same with the CO of a ship. After turning over command of a ship to his relief, the former CO is no longer referred to as a captain (unless he/she actually has the rank of Captain (O-6).) Confused yet? 
Again, “[Squadron] Commodore” and “[Ship’s] Captain” are billets (i.e. jobs), not ranks. They’re not even the formal titles for the billets. The formal titles are “Commanding Officer, Submarine/Destroyer Squadron [Number]” and “Commanding Officer, USS Ustafish.”
This was definitely my experience as an E-6 in the Coast Guard in the 1980s. On those occasions when I was on another service’s base in uniform, you would get puzzled looks and occasional salutes. I once had a Navy Chaplain, a Lieutenant, approach me in an airport and ask what service I was in, saying he had never seen a USCG service dress blue uniform (the more formal one, with jacket, necktie, etc) as opposed to the work uniform (dark-blue "Ralph Kramden bus driver as we called it) I wore 98% of the time.
Some services require that you salute indoors, in others you don’t. The Coast Guard was the latter.
The thing you have to keep in mind if you feel saluting is a pain, is the officer is
required to return it. There are a lot more of us than them and it’s a pain to them too. I knew one GM who loved to harass an officer who hated this and would go out of his way to “bump into him”, salute and get him to return it. The officer accused him of doing this to him and he gave the “what, little ol’ me? I’m just showing proper military respect, Sir” act.
I wasn’t in long enough to have a tour on ship but I believe there are special requirements that you salute an officer the first time you see him that day and not at all for the rest of the day. Except for the Commanding Officer.
In my experience, officers who are in charge of a station or ship who are not Captains (“four stripers”) do not want to be called Captain. I had CWO4, LT, and a Commander at different stations.
The dark-blue work uniform I mentioned earlier could be a source of trouble. I was at two stations which didn’t have housing on base. One of the stations, Coast Guard Yard, Curtiss Bay, MD, the requirement of its CO was you could not travel to or from work dressed in work uniform. Meanwhile there were two other commands on the base (Group Baltimore and Station Curtiss Bay) who had COs who allowed it. So base security was required to stop you if you were CGY and “dressed out of uniform”.
Getting back to the OP, while it may have beeen better to have one-ranking system, it really isn’t necessary. People, especially in the military, get attached to their traditions and IMO it won’t be worthwhile to change everything to one system.
It’s been ages since I watched the unvarnished, gritty, raw truth that is
“Gomer Pyle USMC” but my feeling is Pyle was doing his job. As guard, he was the direct representative of the commanding officer, faithfully carrying out his orders. There is also the matter of accessibility and “need-to-know” of restricted material.
Just because you are an officer or have a Top Secret clearance, you don’t have to right to use or see everything.
True enough. I was a REACT Team Leader when I was an E-5 and deployed to Guam. Our job when on duty was to defend the camp’s armory. When the alarm went off, anybody near the compound was in danger of being shot, regardless of rank. I put the OOD (a LTJG) down on his face in the dirt one night, as he was within the restricted zone without authorization. He ordered me to stand down my team (who were all toting loaded riot guns), and I refused the order. He ended up calling in the XO, who chewed HIS ass for questioning my authority in that situation.
This old thread that started with a question about the difference between captain’s duties in Star Trek and real world wet navies, and how NASA’s chain of command compared, is very relevant to this discussion:
They let a new guy play mini-boss? I was a badass-ninja-warrior type and even I always had enough sense to kowtow to the MP’s… at least as long as I was on their playing field.
In the U.S. the ranks of the Army, Marines, and Air Force are all the same, while the Coast Guard and Navy’s ranks are mutually the same, but different from the other three. These two have substantially different historic origins, not least because of the way the work that needed to be done on ships is so different from what terrestrial soldiers do. For one thing, a huge amount of work goes not into actual fighting, but into the maintaining and monitoring of ships and shipboard equipment. This unavoidably resulted in duties being assigned and organized differently than on land, which naturally led to a different rank structure. I was tempted to ask why the USMC didn’t follow the naval ranking system, but then it makes perfect sense that they don’t: The Marines never caulked the rigging, paid the devil, or ran up the yardarms; instead they mostly did MP work on board until they got to where they were supposed to land. At least, that’s the impression I get from 19th century sea memoirs and novels.
Only for the commissioned officers. The enlisted grades for the Army, Marines, and Air Force are all different. The enlisted grades for the Navy and Coast Guard are basically identical, though.
Captain. Captain.
Carry on.
Great example. Civilians often have this erroneous notion that military personnel can go around ordering everyone junior to them around. However, regardless of one’s rank, you don’t interfere with someone doing their job, even if you outrank them.
Back when I was standing watch as Engineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW) on a submarine, I stood watch in “Maneuvering,” the central control room for the reactor and the engine room. There was a chain across the entrance to the room that nobody on the ship crossed without my permission (with two exceptions, which I’ll get to). If someone wanted to enter Manuevering, they asked the EOOW, “Request permission to enter Maneuvering.” I’d reply, “Enter.” They’d reply, “Enter, aye” and could then take the chain off the hook and enter the room.
It didn’t matter if the person requesting permission to enter outranked me or not. That was my engineroom at the time, and I was in charge. OK–the two exceptions were the ship’s Engineering Officer and the CO. All they had to was to say, “Entering” and they could step right in. 
Similarly, when I later qualified and stood watch as Officer of the Deck (OOD) up in the submarine’s control room, nothing happened on the ship without my permission. If the Chief Engineer wanted the EOOW to charge the main battery, they had to first get my permission, even if the Engineer and the EOOW outranked me. If the Navigator wanted to run a test on the sonar system, he had to get my permission, even though he also outranked me.
The only exception in this case was the CO. If the CO walked into the sub’s control room and gave a rudder order for some reason, I (as the OOD) would immediately announce loudly, “Captain has the conn!” so that the Quartermaster could log this in the logbook. The CO then legally had the conn (i.e. command of rudder and depth control orders) until he gave it back to me.
…which meant if the CO’s orders then caused the submarine to bank hard into a tuna net or something, the record showed that it wasn’t your fault.
[quote=“robby, post:113, topic:551549”]
Ok now I am going to mess with you.
On a merchant ship my old man watched the 2nd assistant engineer pick up the captian of the ship and toss him out of the machine shop. He did not have permission from the Chief engineer to be in engineering spaces. Il was on one ship where the captian wanted to get into port early to make a show. He had the bridge call for 130 turns appro 16.5 knotts. As we were in the middle of a storm the speed was beating up the ship and engoneroom. The captian refused to slow down after hte Chief Engineer explained the danger. The Chief Engineer went into the engineroom and because of the possable damage set Full ahead as not to exceed 110 turns. Man was the captian mad but there was nothing he could do. Also a captian cannot get underway without the Chief Engineer’s permission.
As a Third Asistant Engineer the captian could not order me around.
Navy people always have a problem with this. But deck officers have no idea what goes on in a engine room. But a Naval Officer is supposed to understand how his ship works.
[quote=“Snnipe_70E, post:115, topic:551549”]
CAPTAIN, NOT “CAPTIAN”!
:dubious: I can see why Navy people would have a problem with this.
The U.S. Navy isn’t run that way, to say the least. If the CO of a Navy vessel orders something, it’ll damn well happen (or you’ll find yourself in a Caine Mutiny-type situation). If the CO damages his ship, he’ll answer to his superiors (starting with the squadron Commodore), but the Chief Engineer is certainly not going to countermand the CO unless he wants to find himself on the beach permanently. If the Chief Engineer truly had a concern, he would be expected to convey those concerns to the CO, but he cannot countermand an order from the CO.
A U.S. Navy Captain of a ship at sea is the closest thing there is to a god on Earth. Nobody under a captain’s command countermands his orders–to do so is mutiny.
There is good reason for this–someone needs to be in charge, and the tactical situation may outweigh any possible damage to a given vessel.
Exactly–which is why I never knew a CO of a submarine who was not a qualified nuclear-power trained officer, and who had not previously served as the Chief Engineer on a submarine.
He would basically never be referred to as “Commander Smith” while on board - it would nearly always be “Captain”, and sometimes (possibly) “Skipper”; “the Old Man” might be used outside his hearing.
There was an Army Reserve Captain at my old church, and being only an O-3, he was only about 29. When he went to Port Hueneme for the PX, he was greeted with wide eyes, as he was apparently the youngest O-6 in the last 100 years (“Captain” is three grades and 15 years or more beyond in the US Navy).
That is the major difference between Navy and Merchant marine. If a captian had to qualify as a Chief Engineer first the quality would go down. When I did reserve duty the Chief Engineer on the destroyer hardly knew anything about a steam plant. Infact it was the first steam ship he had worked on. The captian a Lt Commander or Commander I think knew what an engine room was but very little about what went on there. This was the non nuke Navy.
In the marchine marine normally it takes at least 3 years to get a 3rds ticket. Then you lhave to be under articles for at least 365 days before you can take the test for a 2nds ticket. The same to get to 1st assistant engineer. And again the same before taking the Chief’s test. The 365 days under articles normally takes over a year to get depending on the job market. The to become a Captian would take the same to get through the 3, 2, chief mates tests before taking the Captians test.