09-14-2013, 04:04 PM | #18 | ||
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Flat Black
Well, it seems to me that the US system of warrant officers, and the old Royal Navy system on which is is based but which the Poms phased out between 1843 and 1998, originally made a lot of sense in a world in which ships needed men as motive engines—to turn capstans, haul on haliards and sheets, manhandle big guns and their ammunition, and later to shovel coal. If you got a man with valuable skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, and carpentry, coopering, gunsmithing, or so forth—or a promising apprentice apt to learn those things—it didn't make sense to start him off as a draught animal. You made him a chaplain or a surgeon or a purser or whatever, or mate to the warrant officer you already had to learn the trade by apprenticeship—and you paid him accordingly. The warrant officers of a Royal Navy sailing ship were the master, the purser, the surgeon, the chaplain, the boatswain, the carpenter, the gunner, the roper, the caulker, the sailmaker, the armourer and the master-at-arms: all people who managed stores and therefore needed to be able to read, write, and figure.
The system continues to make sense in the US armed services because of the coming-together of a number of features that seem designed to prevent the formation of a highly-skilled long-service army or navy. US enlisted personnel are recruited very young, given only basic training, employed at fairly routine tasks, underpaid to discourage retention, given veteran benefits after separation to further discourage retention, and finally afflicted with an up-or-out policy that has them fired if they are only good at their jobs. In such a context the US forces need a special program to retain the highly-skilled tradesmen that they need for non-routine tasks. Hence, the US type (old RN type) of warrant officers. But the Imperial Navy and the Imperial Marines aren't like that. It's TL10 and there are automatics and robots and self-cleaning materials. There are virtually no routine tasks for semi-skilled enlisted folk to perform. The only people that the Navy needs in ships are the command officers and the highly-skilled tradesmen. (A commando is a highly-skilled tradesman.) The Empire isn't afraid of the political ramifications of building a long-service professional armed force of career military folk, and it has no political or economic interest in producing a steady supply of short-service veterans for future mobilisation or whatever. So the Imperial Navy is a long service professional organisation of highly-skilled tradesmen intent on a naval career. IN ratings do the work of, and enjoy the pay of, USN warrant officers. Robots and machines do the work of USN enlisted men. Quote:
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 09-14-2013 at 10:47 PM. |
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Tags |
flat black, planetary romance, sci-fi |
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