Creating Military Culture From Scratch

[martinl]

Originally Posted by nondescript handle

We don't make doctors by promoting the best nurses, we don't make engineers by promoting the best mechanics, we don't make judges by promoting the best paralegals.

The reason there is a split between the career paths of NCOs and commissioned officers isn't just mindless tradition.
NCOs and officers have different roles and need different skill sets and training. An NCO isn't just "an officer, but less so" and an officer isn't just "an NCO, but better."

However, most organizations don't bin everyone into two official career paths and fudge the rest. The officer/enlisted split is not too narrow, it is too broad.

A synthetic military that was not trying to emulate historical models would probably have all sorts of distinct roles and advancement paths. Many of these exist now with very odd associated command ranks. A MD Major is not a mid ranking military commander, she's a highly trained specialist.

Our current military model is somewhat based on the idea of noble officers and commoner soldiers, higly filtered and modified over time. A new army model, built from scratch, would probably start out organized along similar lines to big orgs in the society that birthed it.

Now a new synthetically designed military organization will probably have all sorts of glaring flaws, some of which will be patched sensibly, some of which will be kludged inelegantly, and some of which will persist against all good sense, good intentions, and reason. Additionally, as time goes on and the situation changes, the system will have to adapt - again sometimes elegantly, sometimes inelegantly, and sometimes not adapting at all.

As a story or a setting, I can imagine an interesting and/or funny progression from a seemingly sensible synthetic military to a battle hardened and kludgily reformed but still understandable war machine to, five decades later, a reactionary anachronistic charlie foxtrot unable to fight the current war. Five centuries later, every GigaSwarm still has a medical specialist corps, despite the fact that the last known biological intelligence perished 9.765432 Gs ago.

[gjc8]

Originally Posted by nondescript handle

Is there any current military in which physicians and chaplains are true officers?
In most militaries I'm familiar with they get some special titles and are treated as officers in terms of pay grade and "perks" (e.g. officer mess). Or in GURPS terms Courtesy Rank.

So why make them nominal officers in the first place? You probably want to keep the pay grade and in some form the perks (that's pretty much why they're given the nominal rank, right?), but there's no reason they need to have the title/Courtesy Rank. And there's no reason for their perks and pay grade to be related in any particular way to the perks and pay grade of a true officer of any particular rank (or, indeed, for the perks and pay grade of a physician to be related to those of a chaplain).

And, if I can go out on a limb for a moment, that isn't the only additional division that might be made, merely the most obvious one (obvious because it's half-way there already). Just as an officer isn't "a NCO, but better" (and a master sergeant definitely isn't "a lieutenant, only not as good"), might it be the case that an admiral isn't "a captain, but better" (forgive mixing the services)? You'd definitely want your flag officers to have experience as regular officers, but that's not all that different from requiring your officers to have experience as enlisted. It certainly seems conceivable that commanding a fleet and commanding a ship are somewhat different skill sets.

In the extreme, you might have everything done based on job titles and a chart of command relationships, if you're designing a military based on civilian corporate structure. As martinl says, any such first attempt is likely to be full of problems, of course.

[Wolf]

You are also probably going to have a few people that were sheep dunked from the former traditional services. Being that you don't want people who are in combat arms who have zero experience.... so you are probably going to carry over some artifacts.

Look at some of the things the US Air Force has done. They are a majorly enlisted army... Much more so than our Army. They only "left" the army a short time ago (just over 50 years if I remember right, yes I have a computer but I'm being lazy...)

I'm former US Army Infantry, and talking to those AF guys, despite the fact that the AF grew out of us, how they actually function is totally beyond me.

And the Navy still have "normal ranks" but they have so many Sub-specialties... When you see their MOS/Rank written out it's like an alien language, SPF1-75A grgli, or at least that's the way it looks.

I know, rather fractured, but those are my thoughts.

-Woof

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by martinl

As a story or a setting, I can imagine an interesting and/or funny progression from a seemingly sensible synthetic military to a battle hardened and kludgily reformed but still understandable war machine to, five decades later, a reactionary anachronistic charlie foxtrot unable to fight the current war. Five centuries later, every GigaSwarm still has a medical specialist corps, despite the fact that the last known biological intelligence perished 9.765432 Gs ago.

Yeah taking a synthetic military culture and adding some age to it would be interesting. You could also have the current military culture be a synthetic culture inspired more by the last synthetic culture than traditional militaries

Originally Posted by Wolf

You are also probably going to have a few people that were sheep dunked from the former traditional services. Being that you don't want people who are in combat arms who have zero experience.... so you are probably going to carry over some artifacts.

Well this depends on how it's formed. Sometimes the ancestor organization is suddenly thrust into combat without much time to prepare and once it's all over with you have people with experience but without training in the traditional services. It is true that between conscious borrowing and former members of traditional militaries joining up it won't be without artifacts.

[Curmudgeon]

As far as chaplains and doctors who are "real" officers as opposed to mere courtesy ranks, the CF still has them as full officers. There are obviously differences even between modern miltary cultures.

The CF uses both ranks and appointments. A chaplain or doctor holds a different appointment than a platoon commander but that's true even between infantry officers, the Adjutant, the Transport Officer, the Platoon Commander and the Quartermaster may all be infantry captains but they erach hold a different appointment (position in the organizational chart).

The "perks" and "ranks" for chaplains and doctors are necessary to their function and making them NCOs would change the nature by which they perform their duties. They are currently officers so that their professional advice and recommendations cannot be shrugged off by the line officer. The Medical Officer (doctor) is responsible for getting troops back into battle-ready health and the Chaplain is responsible for the morale of the troops. They usually carry the rank of captain (or higher as they climb the ladder within the Medical Corps or Chaplain Corps) so that it takes a Company Commander or Deputy Commanding Officer to over-ride their recommendations. Most militaries don't want young inexperienced officers bucking the opinions of their expert staff and combat officers of captain rank and below are young. A peace-time "combat arms" captain might have as much as eight years experience but a lieutenant likely has no more than four and a second lieutenant two.

Other points to consider, Warrant Officers are not universal to all militaries. I can't think of a military outside of those with a U.S. military tradition that does make use of them. Warrant Officers do exist as a rank in the CF and in other British-influenced military but they are replacement rank titles as follows (approximately):

Warrant Officer = Staff Sergeant
Master Warrant Officer = Sergeant Major
Chief Warrant Officer = Regimental Sergeant Major

The U.S. raised its militaries for short term service during the Viet-Nam War period. It was said outside the U.S. that the U.S. Army did not fight the war for fourteen years but that fourteen armies fought the war for a year each.

In a science-fiction campaign, a future society with cyberpunk-style skill chips might employ a similar draft policy. "All right, we're now at war and require 200,000 soldiers. All workplaces will conduct a lottery draw today, with a requirement of 5% of the total paper strength of the workforce to be inducted. Inductees will report to their local armouries for chip allocation." As long as the military remains successful, the chips are unlikely to be upgraded and when an upgrade to deal with new enemy behaviours is needed, it may be months or years before a new skill set with an appropriate response is available for issue.

Dropping a separate military code of justice is unlikely unless you want your troops mutinying, being insubordinate, deserting or behaving with cowardice in the presence of the enemy. There are behaviours that are of no or little consequence in civilian life that are potentially deadly in a combat environment. Being late for work at the office might get you a reprimand or possibly fired. Being late to the battle when you're driving the ammunition vehicle could lose the battle.

One current trend in militaries is turning support functions such as cooks over to civilian contractors. It's probably not a good idea since the British commissary system and the old artillery train (gun teamsters) worked on similar principles and were eventually abolished because the civilians would sometimes refuse to enter the combat area. For the artillery train there was a period when they were accompanied by infantry units whose function was to repel attacks on the train. (Those units survive as the various fusilier regiments, so-called because the personal weapon they were issued for protection of the train was a fusil.)

Paramilitary and police-sourced militaries would likely look something like their modern counter-parts: the Texas Rangers, the RCMP, the Soviet era NKVD/KGB border units and possibly the South African Constabulary.

Corporate societies in space might not have permanent militaries as such but hire mercenary units and issue letters of marque to private individuals/small corporations to recover damages to commercial shipping as privateers. They might instead have a navy that was strongly oriented to commerce raiding but avoid being drawn into battle against more conventional space forces.

You might also find that civilian titles are both wordier and less clear as to actual authority than traditional military ranks. The Assistant Deputy Vice-Director for Comptrol is a civil service appointment title born by a Brigadier General in the Finance Branch (formerly Pay Corps).

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Other points to consider, Warrant Officers are not universal to all militaries. I can't think of a military outside of those with a U.S. military tradition that does make use of them. Warrant Officers do exist as a rank in the CF and in other British-influenced military but they are replacement rank titles as follows (approximately):

Warrant Officer = Staff Sergeant
Master Warrant Officer = Sergeant Major
Chief Warrant Officer = Regimental Sergeant Major

The British Army has two warrant officer ranks. The junior rank of the two is a rank senior to Staff Sergeant.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Many SF space militaries aren't directly descended from traditional militaries either because they develop from another organization or because they are created from scratch. Now naturally they do take inspiration from traditional militaries in organization and other matters but they can also differ so how could such a military differ in terms of it's culture from one that is directly descended from modern militaries? What sort of changes might be an improvement if you are going to redesign everything anyway? What sort of changes would people without actual military experience try that actually are bad ideas? What sort of organizations make good candidates for the ancestor of a space military? What happens when you take a survey organization, space police, space customs officials or space postal workers and turn them into a military?

Read Crevald's The Culture of War, and Keegan's The History of Warfare.

One idea is to add quirks that sound "tribalistic" rather then "militaristic" into a military culture. These make for a handy way to bring more color. Think about what type of weapons are revered and how they decorate them or refrain from doing so. What kind of ceremonies they go through and so on. What kind of message they are trying to bring across and why? For instance I once said that captured starships are ceremonially renamed and go through a rather bizarre rechristening ceremony. Other ideas can be thought of. In Honor Harrington one Havenite captain used Ride of the Valkyries for general quarters, and all Manticorans revere Captain Saganami. In Traveller Imperial Marines have a fetish for bagpipes and especially for cutlasses.

One thing to remember is that all modern regular forces are in effect a recycling of the Roman Army(that is true precisely by the way; the modern system was designed by Latinophile generals and monarchs and spread throughout the world because it proved successful). The fact that a space military is also a when you first construct it need not daunt you. It will probably always be a recycling. What you need is to think of how you will overlay it. Kipling's Army was not Dayan's Army was not Rommel's Army but all were Scipio's army for the reasons I have given. It is the quirks that enliven it. The quirks should reflect the culture the army represents. If they are mercenaries then the quirks should reflect both the home culture and quirks they picked up from employer(s) culture.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

In Æthereal Sun's Justicariate, the Zemplari Troops ('military') was formed not out of the standing army meant to protect against external threat, but rather from an internal troops equivalent merging with surveying/scouting organisations. Thus there is no clear line between police and the military, and this 'military' is trained to properly handle conflicts involving civilians, and is generally less ruthless than standing armies. On the other hand, they're more expensive for the state to maintain due to all the extra training and biomods installed.

Another trait would be lack of hazing. I heard that in this sense the Gurkha trainings and in-group relationships are harsh but fair, completely unlike that depicted in, say, FMJ.

Different treatment of mixed-sex units and/or non-mainstream sexuality: civilian people are usually totally okay working in a mixed-sex office or studying at a university; a military formed out of people with such mentality are unlikely to develop the sex-related forms of bigotry that are so common in modern militaries.

Why not? A military is not an office. Soldiers fortify their psychology by esoteric practices that civilians do not need. No office has heroes, poetry, or sacred icons either.

In any case the assumption that bigotry will disappear but war not is eccentric to start with.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Are the Zemplari troops normally assigned to police or military duties at any one time or do they handle both at the same time?



These both seem likely.



No.



Useful list. I get why elections for officers would have difficulty lasting long but why do you think the same of continuity between officers and NCOs?

Most if not all societies large enough to field institutionalized military organizations are oligarchies and military reflects culture.

Furthermore, NCOs and officers have to be taught different though overlapping skills. Keeping an army functioning is different then using an army. Just as a horse doctor is different from a jockey.

Finally allowing the split, allows someone to do the dirty work of discipline while keeping the officers in pristine in their godlike purity. It is an old psychological game.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The biggest change I can think of is it likely wouldn't have the commissioned vs non-commissioned split.

You'd still have a difference between small-unit tactical leaders, battlefield operational commanders, and theater strategic commanders. I have trouble conceiving of a way to do that without an ascending chain of command between them.