SFOD-D ("Delta Force") template (critique?)

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

It does. My father was a CWO4 in the Navy, and the understanding (as near as I could tell) was that the Warrants agreed to follow whatever orders even the most junior of officers gave, so long as the junior officers agreed not to give any. To put it another way, if an Ensign gave a Chief Warrant an order that the Warrant wasn't already planning to do, the Warrant would follow it... and a little while later, the Ensign would be having a private meeting with one of his senior officers about the different between authority and wisdom.

This, yes.

My understanding of GURPS Rank isn't that it is really hierarchical amongst those with the Rank. Rather it is a measure of their authority, or perhaps how many people work under them. It's quite abstract. This is why both very senior NCOs and very junior officers can be Rank 3, according to Basic Set, and why I thought I could justify some overlap there.

A CW5 certainly does have a lot of authority...

I could easily justify abstracting warrant grades even more, perhaps just to two grades- "Warrant Officer" and "Chief Warrant Officer" or something. I'm pretty sure that the USAF doesn't have warrant officers at all, and the USCG only uses three grades rather than the five the Army uses, etc., so this would be justifiable.

But, no, no warrant officer would ever be placed in a position of command over a commissioned officer, unless there are some very bizarre circumstances involved. However, as I mentioned, I have seen warrant officers in command positions. Usually these are maintenance or support units, like the maintenance platoon in an independent MI company, or the maintenance detachment in a Combat Support Hospital, etc. And even then it is usually because there are no commissioned officers available.

But occasional bizarre circumstances do pop up. As a major I have been the commander of a bird colonel. But the medical corps is just bizarre in many ways...

Explanation: the colonel was PROFIS to a Forward Surgical Team that I was commanding during a deployment. Doctors are sort of considered swappable modules in the medical corps, and it just happened to be the colonel's turn for an FST tour. He couldn't realistically assume command since he was only going to be there four months, and such individuals usually treasure the opportunity to be "just" a surgeon for a while, anyway. I had to have the TF-MED DCCS write his OER, though. But I could give him legal orders. Again- I'd have been stupid to make an issue of it if he resisted, but I could have.