Imperial Navy Officer corps

[OIT]

They're not? What are they part of, then?

This may be a linguistic misunderstanding. In American Navy parlance `the fleet' refers only to operational units: ships, subs, aircraft, and deployable Marines.

Anything not in the operational chain of command (admin staffs, hospitals, bases, shipyards, etc) are not technically part of the fleet, only part of the Navy as a whole.

If said theater is what is covered by one fleet, yes. (And that would be a subsector).

A theater, a fleet, and a subsector are seperate entities and may or may not coincide. For example, consider Dingir subsector during the Solomani Rim War. There may have been many fleets in the Dingir subsector at any given time, all assigned to the Solomani Rim theater. The Solomani Rim theater of war would have been much larger than simply Dingir subsector. Contrarily, a given subsector in the interior of the Imperium may not have had a whole fleet within its' borders.

I thought I'd explained that I used the USN primarily as a source of a guesstimate for the number of officers you need to run a military organization roughly analogous to a wet navy navy with about 300,000 employees. Nothing more. I don't, for example, think a star navy squadron is a direct equivalent of a 21st Century aircraft carrier group.

Yes, but an imperial fleet is only a slice of a much larger organization, whereas the US Navy is a whole. There are several organizational functions which exist only at the HQ level and do not need to be duplicated at the operational level.

So if we were to decide that cruisers with crews of 200 are commanders' commands, where would you put the dividing line between ships captained by commanders and ships captained by captains, in terms of crew size?

It's a force structure question. It depends on the number of O6 billets the IN needs to fill, the retirement rate of O5s, and the desired `neck-down'. If, for example, one-third of any given year group of officers tend to retire at the O5 level, and the IN wants only the top-half of remaining O5s to make O6, then there should be one-third the number of O6 commands as O5 commands. If no one retires as an O5 and the IN only wants the absolute best officers to be O6s, then a 10:1 or 8:1 ratio of O5 commands to O6 commands would be more appropriate.

Taking your notional fleet referenced in the first post of this thread, and assuming a similiar force structure on the admin side, a crew size of 500-1000 seems like an appropriate range, with maybe seven to eight hundred being the best number.

That does not seem to be the way the Imperial Navy does things. If there are two or more fleets gathered together, the senior admiral gives the orders. In that respect, the IN is more 18th Century than 21st Century.

The US Navy uses seniority at the tactical level, but it does not trump the chain of command. For example, at the Battle of Midway, Rear Admiral Ray Spruance was the senior officer present afloat (SOPA), despite having never commanded a carrier force before, and therefore had tactical control of both his Task Force 16 and Rear Admiral Jack Fletcher's (despite the fact that Fletcher had recently fought at the Battle of the Coral Sea and had extensive carrier experience) Task Force 17, but they both still worked for the theater commander, Admiral Chester Nimitz, who was COMPACFLT (called CINCPACFLT at the time).

In 1943, as US industrial producation made such a change worthwhile, the US Navy added `number fleets' to the chain of command. For example, CINCPACFLT (a name fleet), had three subordinate number fleets (3rd, 5th, 7th) assigned. Each of the number fleets had up to 300-550 ships and were comprised of numerous subordinate Task Forces and Task Groups.

Hope this helps,
OIT

 

[david.wendelken]

In the US military, retirement pay is usually based on "highest rank achieved", not on "rank when retired".

In the Imperial military, pensions are based on terms of service, not rank when retired.

In other words, a private who serves the Imperium 28 years is thanked with the same pension that a Grand Admiral is. I kind of like that.

The "extra" retirement rolls for high rank reflect a higher pay or savings due to command perks while serving. And, of course, if someone becomes a member of the nobility, they'll get extra remuneration that way, so it's not totally egalitarian.

 

[david.wendelken]

There is a perfectly good reason why the top of the fleet rank scale appears "flattened out".

It's supposed to be.

All the analysis so far has been military in nature, not political.

Very few generals are in a position to threaten the Emperor's rule. You can bet they are thoroughly vetted and monitored.

Admirals are in such a position. Top level admirals are intentionally kept equal to one another in rank order to minimize their ability to do what Plankwell did.

In addition, the Emperor often has no way of knowing whether the admirals in the top positions can actually wage a large war effectively until after the fighting starts. The government needs a way to easily replace an ineffective admiral with one that can do the job. If they are all O10s, it's easier to do that.

 

[rancke]

There is a perfectly good reason why the top of the fleet rank scale appears "flattened out".

It's supposed to be.

All the analysis so far has been military in nature, not political.

Actually, my main line of reasoning is at least partly based on social politics. The propensity man has for taking offense when he feels slighted would make Grand Admirals very unlikely to relish being lumped together with mere four-star generals. Rankings aren't usually imposed from above. They're regularized from above, but they arise from existing conditions.

For instance, colonels arose when armies grew big enough to be subdivided into columns. The Germanic equivalent, oberst, came about when you had a bunch of captains and one of them became 'oberste capitan' (chief captain).

Very few generals are in a position to threaten the Emperor's rule. You can bet they are thoroughly vetted and monitored.

Admirals are in such a position. Top level admirals are intentionally kept equal to one another in rank order to minimize their ability to do what Plankwell did.

The way the Alkhalikoi emperors handled that problem was to not appoint Grand Admirals of the Marches and the Rim.

EDIT: BTW, my main objection to the canonical system isn't that grand admirals aren't O13 (though I think that would be an excellent way to fix my main problem), it's that fleet admirals are only O8. If the list ran 'rear admiral = O8, vice adimiral = O9, admiral, system admiral, sector admiral, grand admiral, all = O10', well, I'd suspect that some O10 admirals would be more equal to four star generals than others[*], but it wouldn't be totally unbelievable.


Hans

[*] I still think Grand Admirals would want more stars on their shoulders or buttons on their hats than army generals.

 

[aramis]

But there is only one canonical source I've seen for Imperial ranks of Rear Admiral and Vice Admiral: 5FW. Everything else I've seen shows instead Fleet Admiral, Sector Admiral, and Grand Admiral. It's far easier to assume that there are no intermediate grades between commodore and Fleet Admiral and drop the USN/RN modality.

 

[rancke]

But there is only one canonical source I've seen for Imperial ranks of Rear Admiral and Vice Admiral: 5FW. Everything else I've seen shows instead Fleet Admiral, Sector Admiral, and Grand Admiral. It's far easier to assume that there are no intermediate grades between commodore and Fleet Admiral and drop the USN/RN modality.

They show up several times in TNS newsbriefs (also in GT material; I know you don't count that, but I do), and always holding positions that are consistent with being analogs of 20th Century rear and vice admirals. However, what I'm saying here is not that there are rear and vice admirals, but that if there were no rear and vice and just plain admirals, then there just wouldn't be any O8 and O9 admirals (as has been mentioned before, there are historical examples of a rank level simply not being used).

Introducing rear and vice admirals (and possibly just plain admirals) explicitly would be one simple way to fix the problem with the added advantage of legitimizing those scattered reference to them, but it's only incidental to my main point: That the commander of all fleet assets in an entire subsector is NOT the equivalent of the commander of a single army division. Not the military equivalent and not the social equivalent either.


Hans

 

[aramis]

I have severe doubts that they would leave the 08/09 ranks both empty.

I think it is just a case of sloppy editing. (perhaps even an in-house argument.)

 

[rancke]

I have severe doubts that they would leave the 08/09 ranks both empty.

So have I, which is why I think that retconning rear and vice admiral (and possibly admiral) into the rank list would be a good way to fix the problem. But the other way would work too. Or 'Commodore' could be expanded into the two 'empty' slots.

But if, as has been argued, there is no need for distinct ranks between commodore and fleet admiral, then leaving the unneeded ranks empty is a perfectly viable solution too. Denmark doesn't use one-star rank at the moment.


Hans

 

[aramis]

The command size is commensurate with the army ranks and scout administrator ranks as well, tho. you'r creating a problem where none exists.

 

[rancke]

The command size is commensurate with the army ranks and scout administrator ranks as well, tho. you'r creating a problem where none exists.

"...my main objection to the canonical system is [...] that fleet admirals are only O8. "

"...my main point: That the commander of all fleet assets in an entire subsector is NOT the equivalent of the commander of a single army division. Not the military equivalent and not the social equivalent either."

"[*] I still think Grand Admirals would want more stars on their shoulders or buttons on their hats than army generals."

<String of characters to make message long enough to please the software.>

Hans

 

[david.wendelken]

To be precise, other than a small amount of territory where there is a naval base, the sector admiral commands a vast expanse of nothing at all.

To my mind, this topic is much ado about nothing. :rofl:

 

[rancke]

To be precise, other than a small amount of territory where there is a naval base, the sector admiral commands a vast expanse of nothing at all.

And 150 squadrons of cruisers and battleships.


Hans