Navigator wrote:Based on what I've seen, though, it's a rarity. From Wiki:
Quote:
Churchill is the only U.S. Navy vessel to have a Royal Navy Officer assigned to the ship's company. The U.S. Navy had a permanent U.S. Navy Officer on the Royal Navy ship, HMS Marlborough. Churchill is also the only U.S. Naval vessel to fly a foreign ensign. The Royal Navy's white ensign is flown as well as the stars and stripes. The Churchill has a simulated pub counter on board, complete with beer taps; but due to Navy regulations there is no beer there
Therefore, it seems like an exception to the rule, doesn't it? Could it have something to do with the name of the ship, and Churchill's importance?
OK, I'm back from mowing the yard and a few other things.
Very much an exception. However, there have been "exchange officer" tours at the junior officer level among most of the NATO navies. More at shore activities than afloat. You guys really changed the topic while I was gone. This was a real pizza and beer discussion.
Off topic as this may be, I think the food exports is interesting. I have this vision of a Vulcan in blue jeans buying tons of rice in Arkansas.
I just joined this discussion (seeming as how I was mentioned in the original question, I felt compelled to chime in
). I quoted the above passage because it was the first mention of something I was going to say hadn't been mentioned which was the commonality of exchange programs, particularly between the British Royal Marines and the USMC. It's not exactly on the same level as a foreign officer acting as XO, but there was a point made which I felt was strong, but was disputed - and that's NORAD. I wasn't aware there had been a strong Canadian presence in leadership at NORAD, but just the fact that it's designed to cover North America should not underscore in any way the reality of the fact that it
does constitute a significant modern example of a foreign general/adjudant-general level officer (like T'Pol) serving in an allied power's military at a somewhat high-ranking position. And, we can debate the real political orientations of Vulcan and Earth all day, because different situations that we saw on screen DO present different realities, but on screen they are portrayed as allies and therefore I believe that we should accept them as allies and then judge accordingly the legitimacy of an officer exchange agreement between them, given that as an assumption. The Vulcans may be a little dictatorial about certain Earth operations but... if that's disqualifying for the relationship to be termed "alliance", then we don't have a single alliance on the planet, because the United States doesn't yield one ounce of defensive sovereignty to any nation, we dictate terms, so I think it's a moot argument. I think the best we can do is call them "allies with occasionally strained relations". I don't think we're given sufficient cause via on screen evidence to substantiate claims that Vulcan treats Earth with a colonial mentality - this sounds a lot more like what Earth did to Vulcan in the MU. Not to mention, despite the fact that Vulcan is a desert planet, they certainly would not have become a race technologically superior to humans some 1500 years earlier than we did if they weren't perfectly capable of growing their own food or procurring their own natural resources in ample supply. I don't think the relationship is so adversarial as to make officer-exchange programs untenable - I think the fact that Vulcans never HAVE served with humans for any appreciable amount of time in the past could be attributed to the fact that simply don't want to because we're so smelly and emotional.
This got off topic in regard to T'Pol (as it started out on enlistment) but I felt compelled to defend that T'Pol was made XO because of the fact that I think the NORAD example is relevant, and that even though they aren't XO's of vessels, that the USMC/BRM exchange examples are valid as well as others of which I am unaware. A particularly significant example is that of a Marine rotary pilot that was recently honored with the Distinguised Flying Cross by the Queen for actions in combat while serving with the BRM in Iraq as a squadron commander, so it certainly can happen that an ally officer can serve in a command-level position. What I think makes sense, and what they should have done on screen in order to more firmly legitimize T'Pol's presence (ESPECIALLY in season 3) was for Archer to have specifically requested or gone through some kind of process with Starfleet to make T'Pol an exchange officer, there should have at least been some kind of recognition of that fact after the first mission. I don't see a contradiction in that the Vulcans wanted her on the first mission real bad and then wanted her off, because the first mission was in order to debunk Archer's command ability and the crew's competence, whereas, once the mission went off successfully, for her to remain as an exchange officer would have lent credence to the humans' warp five program which the Vulcans weren't yet ready to give.
As far as Tucker out-ranking T'Pol in time im service, isn't it possible that, once T'Pol were legitimately considered an exchange officer and then later left that service to join ours, had there been convened a panel or a board to decide where to assign her, or whether to leave her assigned to Enterprise, that her time-in-service in the Vulcan Space Service would have been considered pertinent? That's like 40 years. And if, prior to deciding she would retain her rank of XO, they decided FIRST whether to keep her on Enterprise, and decided in the affirmative, it seems most sensible to me NOT to bump her down and put Tucker above her. Sure, on paper, Tucker has "more experience in Starfleet". But to me that sounds like kind of a robotic decision. If it were me on that board, assuming I trusted a Vulcan with that position (because that's a different question than competence as a function of time-in-service) I would keep T'Pol on as XO 1. because she'd demonstrated she could do the job and 2. because the real life implications of dropping Tucker below T'Pol after she had once been his superior would HAVE to be considered. Yes, they're officers, and both would go along with it and I haven't a doubt that T'Pol would take orders from Tucker. But that's exactly the kind of thing that in today's military would look rediculous. It's like those seniority deals at the workplace where someone gets laid off because they have the least seniority, so they knock down somebody else and take their job, but suddenly they work FOR someone who used to work for them. I've seen it happen, as ridiculous as that sounds, and it has the potential to create problems. It's a command level decision that IMO, would not be chosen given T'Pol's record of service despite the fact that Tucker has more years in Starfleet. There'd be plenty of arguments to go around the table at the inquiry to suggest that T'Pol's more qualified than he.
As for enlistment, all I can say is to echo what's been said before... that there's a term of service you contract for and often it can be split between active duty service and reserve, and they should have reflected that more in Star Trek, because there were obviously enlisted personnel (crewmen). Of course they didn't get the screen time they should have.
I have my own ideas about how Trip got to be where he is, age/rank-wise. It's currently an operating point of a fic I'm writing, but I'll spill it. He says in 'Unexpected' that he's been in Starfleet for 12 years, and at that time he's either 29 or 30 years old, which puts his entrance at age 17/18. Next-to-impossible for a commissioning, unless they REALLY do things more advanced in the educational system at that time... and I have a hard time believing it's THAT accelerated. More likely, I think he enlisted at 18, used a Starfleet version of the GI bill to go to college or an officer candidate school as a prior enlisted and got his commission, possibly even as a full grade LT, skipping past LTJG. A buddy of mine who's a SSgt in the Marines claims he'll come out of OCS as a 1Lt instead of 2Lt, so that would be an analogous Starfleet scenario. The point at which he's a LT and probably fresh out of college or OCS (presuming there's no Starfleet Academy yet) would probably be around the time we saw him in 'First Flight', working on Captain Jeffries' engineering team and meeting Archer/Robinson/Forrest.
Officers also sign on for contract periods, like
CX was saying... so I can't help but wonder what some of the junior officers' periods are. Since Hoshi was out of Starfleet, she'd have to have already served hers... and she was what, 23, 24? at the start of Broken Bow. That means it is likely that the minimum term of service is probably similar to ours, ~4 years. But maybe even 2.... It's difficult to speculate given that we know little-to-nothing about the path to officership at this time... ok yeah I just looked it up to be sure, Starfleet Academy wasn't founded until 2161. Soo... was there some kind of OCS type course? Did entrants still come from a variety of the Naval and Air Force academies? (assuming a global version of the US ones exist at this time). I would tend to believe myself that people go to college out of highschool, study a field that's pertinent to what they want to do in Starfleet, and then go to a specific qualification course for it, sort of like Army ROTC, NROTC, or Marine OCS. That makes sense to me because if Starfleet Academy is founded
later, it suggests that the foundation of it was an unprecedented unification of the training of Starfleet recruits, suggesting that prior to that, they had come from varied educational backgrounds.
