THE C R U S H E R

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Why not? The crusher trains and evaluates you on tactical military command skills. But BuPers, BuShip, BuWeap, etc don't rely on your personal tactical acumen. Neither do the medical or engineering tracks.
There are only about 4 people on a starship likely to directly need those skills, Captain, XO, and the top 2 in the tactical department. And even the XO sometimes hasn't yet attended if it's their first stint as an XO.

So I'd guess well under half of RMN officers are ever offered a slot at the Crusher, much less pass it, because even over their entire carreers most officers aren't in line to command a major warship.

You're right, dunce cap award for me. I'll wear it throughout the day. I was thinking that someone who really had a craving for hyper command wouldn't find anything else personally rewarding to them. And that the qualifications of someone who does have hyper command under his or her belt would be better qualified at BuShips, BuWeap or even BuPers. BuPers because you've commanded the bigger ships and are more aware of the internecine politics aboard a larger ship. Some fish just shouldn't be placed with others. I admit those thoughts to be those of someone wet behind the ears.

Honor could certainly have sought out a rewarding teaching position and still may end up doing that. But would it have been rewarding to her to do it full time as her all and all, end all be all?


****** *

In the Royal Navy you are given these powerful ships while you're in your 30's. Another thing to note is that an engineer transferred over to take on the Perisher after failing an engineering exam and he was ousted there. Which means in the Royal British Navy your career track doesn't equally mean all that much.

Under the Royal Navy's Perisher a failure to pass it means a career in ruins. There is no second chance. The administer of the course/exam carried these officer's future in their hands. A fail means the officer must leave the submarine service.

My question as it applies to the Honorverse is whether you may still elect to command a light cruiser or even less, a LAC, if you'd want to? A desk job isn't the only option in the RMN is it? At least it could place you where the action is, where your actions as a consequence may get you noticed on merit and accomplishment. As in if you saved the life of the Queen, e.g., as Honor saved Elizabeth and Benjamin with her runabout.

Jonathan_S wrote:But there are a ton of jobs that aren't warship command that also aren't desk jobs; aboard ship Engineering, Medical, Weapons, Communications, Flight Operations, pilot, etc. don't require ATC graduates - even for department heads.

cthia wrote:{snip - htm}
Courvoisier was Honor's classroom instructor. But was it given who actually administered the actual "exam?" If there are several, as it is implied of the Perisher, then the North Hollow files could have been used to influence said instructor to fail Honor. And policy would have it that she'd have been done, as far as a more prestigious hyper command is concerned. And that may have indeed spelled death for someone like Honor. Or perhaps even to the Star Kingdom. 'ouch'
{snip}

cthia wrote:I was thinking that someone who really had a craving for hyper command wouldn't find anything else personally rewarding to them. And that the qualifications of someone who does have hyper command under his or her belt would be better qualified at BuShips, BuWeap or even BuPers. BuPers because you've commanded the bigger ships and are more aware of the internecine politics aboard a larger ship. Some fish just shouldn't be placed with others. I admit those thoughts to be those of someone wet behind the ears.

kzt wrote:[
Your personal fulfillment ranks fairly low on the priorities of the military when determining what they want you to do. It's part of the the whole service thing.

Fox2! wrote:That's why they call it a "dream sheet." You dream, your career manager sends you where he wants to. If they match, buy a bunch of lottery tickets.

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:I was thinking that someone who really had a craving for hyper command wouldn't find anything else personally rewarding to them. And that the qualifications of someone who does have hyper command under his or her belt would be better qualified at BuShips, BuWeap or even BuPers. BuPers because you've commanded the bigger ships and are more aware of the internecine politics aboard a larger ship. Some fish just shouldn't be placed with others. I admit those thoughts to be those of someone wet behind the ears.

Your personal fulfillment ranks fairly low on the priorities of the military when determining what they want you to do. It's part of the the whole service thing.

cthia wrote:No doubt. Nonetheless, that is only true to a point isn't it? You do have control over your choice of whether to actually seek hyper command or not to seek hyper command and or your choice of specialization, no? You just don't have any control over how the powers that be choose to utilize your skills or where you get sent after completion of said specialization, no?

I get the feeling that being on track for the Crusher is much like being a professor on tenure track. Failing to achieve tenure gets you a one-way ticket off the campus.

There is a question trying to coalesce in my brain, but confusion hinders it from forming. I'll simply forge ahead and wade into hyper without a command, LOL ...

The Crusher prepares an officer for hyper command of the larger ships above a DD. No light (CL) or heavy cruisers (DL).

However, a DD is hyper capable. So it isn't the issue of being denied a hyper command or command of a DD wouldn't be possible. So what exactly does the Crusher prepare one for? The first thing that comes to mind before the neurons fire is that you're denied a ship capable of slotting in a 'wall of battle.' A capital ship. But that isn't it either, because CLs and DLs aren't capital ships either. Is it the ordnance that the Crusher better prepares one to wield? I'm not sure that adequately fingers the distinction either because I have a distinct feeling that the RMN would place Apollo missiles aboard a LAC if possible.

So is it distinctly the ability to fight a ship in a wall of battle that distinguishes the Crushers from the rest of the pack? Because a captain with lots of DD experience could fight her ship as well as any other larger ships. You only have to look to Harrington's efforts in the War Games with Hawkwing, a lowly DD for that. Although she had already completed the Crusher, I will go out on a limb and say she could have accomplished the same thing on raw talent alone. 'Course I'm rather partial to Lady Harrington and could be embellishing her tactical acumen before the Crusher.

On Basilisk Station Chapter 1 wrote:That grin was a violation of her normally severe "professional expression," but she was entitled. Indeed, she felt more than mildly virtuous for holding herself to a grin when what she really wanted to do was spin on her toes, fling her arms wide, and carol her delight to her no-doubt shocked fellow passengers. But she was almost twenty-four years old—over forty Terran standard years—and it would never, never have done for a commander of the Royal Manticoran Navy to be so undignified, even if she was about to assume command of her first cruiser.
She smothered another chuckle, luxuriating in the unusual sense of complete and simple joy, and pressed a hand to the front of her tunic. The folded sheaf of archaic paper crackled at her touch—a curiously sensual, exciting sound—and she closed her eyes to savor it even as she savored the moment she'd worked so hard to reach.
Fifteen years—twenty-five T-years—since that first exciting, terrifying day on the Saganami campus. Two and a half years of Academy classes and running till she dropped. Four years working her way without patronage or court interest from ensign to lieutenant. Eleven months as sailing master aboard the frigate Osprey, and then her first command, a dinky little intrasystem LAC. It had massed barely ten thousand tons, with only a hull number and not even the dignity of a name, but God how she'd loved that tiny ship! Then more time as executive officer, a turn as tactical officer on a massive superdreadnought. And then—finally!—the coveted commanding officer's course after eleven grueling years. She'd thought she'd died and gone to heaven when they gave her Hawkwing, for the middle-aged destroyer had been her very first hyper-capable command, and the thirty-three months she'd spent in command had been pure, unalloyed joy, capped by the coveted Fleet "E" award for tactics in last year's war games. But this—!

***Snip***

She frowned a bit at that thought while she punched up a tube capsule. All the scramble to get her here seemed out of character for a navy that preferred to do things in an orderly fashion. When she'd been given Hawkwing, she'd known two months in advance; this time, she'd been literally snatched out of the ATC graduation ceremonies and hustled off to Admiral Courvosier's office with no warning at all.
The capsule arrived, and she stepped into it, still frowning and rubbing gently at the tip of her nose. Nimitz roused to lift his chin from the top of her beret and nipped her ear with the scolding tug he saved for the unfortunately frequent moments when his companion worried. Honor clicked her teeth gently at him and reached up to scratch his chest, but she didn't stop worrying, and he sighed in exasperation.
Now why, she wondered, was she so certain Courvosier had deliberately bustled her out of his office and off to her new assignment? The admiral was a bland-faced, cherubic little gnome of a man with a bent for creating demonic tac problems, and she'd known him for years. He'd been her Fourth Form Tactics instructor at the Academy, the one who'd recognized an inborn instinct and honed it into something she could command at will, not something that came and went. He'd spent hours working with her in private when other instructors worried about her basic math scores and, in a very real sense, had saved her career before it had actually begun, yet this time there'd been something almost evasive about him. She knew his congratulations and satisfied pride in her had been real, but she couldn't shake the impression that there'd been something else, as well. Ostensibly, the rush was all because of the need to get her to Hephaestus to shepherd her new ship through its refit in time for the upcoming Fleet exercise, yet HMS Fearless was only a single light cruiser, when all was said. It seemed unlikely her absence would critically shift the balance in maneuvers planned to exercise the entire Home Fleet!

Vince wrote:

cthia wrote:No doubt. Nonetheless, that is only true to a point isn't it? You do have control over your choice of whether to actually seek hyper command or not to seek hyper command and or your choice of specialization, no? You just don't have any control over how the powers that be choose to utilize your skills or where you get sent after completion of said specialization, no?

I get the feeling that being on track for the Crusher is much like being a professor on tenure track. Failing to achieve tenure gets you a one-way ticket off the campus.

There is a question trying to coalesce in my brain, but confusion hinders it from forming. I'll simply forge ahead and wade into hyper without a command, LOL ...

The Crusher prepares an officer for hyper command of the larger ships above a DD. No light (CL) or heavy cruisers (DL).

However, a DD is hyper capable. So it isn't the issue of being denied a hyper command or command of a DD wouldn't be possible. So what exactly does the Crusher prepare one for? The first thing that comes to mind before the neurons fire is that you're denied a ship capable of slotting in a 'wall of battle.' A capital ship. But that isn't it either, because CLs and DLs aren't capital ships either. Is it the ordnance that the Crusher better prepares one to wield? I'm not sure that adequately fingers the distinction either because I have a distinct feeling that the RMN would place Apollo missiles aboard a LAC if possible.

So is it distinctly the ability to fight a ship in a wall of battle that distinguishes the Crushers from the rest of the pack? Because a captain with lots of DD experience could fight her ship as well as any other larger ships. You only have to look to Harrington's efforts in the War Games with Hawkwing, a lowly DD for that. Although she had already completed the Crusher, I will go out on a limb and say she could have accomplished the same thing on raw talent alone. 'Course I'm rather partial to Lady Harrington and could be embellishing her tactical acumen before the Crusher.

Clearing up a couple points of where you appear to be confused:

1) The RMN uses CL (light cruiser) and CA (heavy cruiser) for the class designations of the next two larger hyper combatants larger than a DD (destroyer).

2) Honor finished the Crusher immediately before taking command of HMS Fearless (CL) in:

On Basilisk Station Chapter 1 wrote:That grin was a violation of her normally severe "professional expression," but she was entitled. Indeed, she felt more than mildly virtuous for holding herself to a grin when what she really wanted to do was spin on her toes, fling her arms wide, and carol her delight to her no-doubt shocked fellow passengers. But she was almost twenty-four years old—over forty Terran standard years—and it would never, never have done for a commander of the Royal Manticoran Navy to be so undignified, even if she was about to assume command of her first cruiser.
She smothered another chuckle, luxuriating in the unusual sense of complete and simple joy, and pressed a hand to the front of her tunic. The folded sheaf of archaic paper crackled at her touch—a curiously sensual, exciting sound—and she closed her eyes to savor it even as she savored the moment she'd worked so hard to reach.
Fifteen years—twenty-five T-years—since that first exciting, terrifying day on the Saganami campus. Two and a half years of Academy classes and running till she dropped. Four years working her way without patronage or court interest from ensign to lieutenant. Eleven months as sailing master aboard the frigate Osprey, and then her first command, a dinky little intrasystem LAC. It had massed barely ten thousand tons, with only a hull number and not even the dignity of a name, but God how she'd loved that tiny ship! Then more time as executive officer, a turn as tactical officer on a massive superdreadnought. And then—finally!—the coveted commanding officer's course after eleven grueling years. She'd thought she'd died and gone to heaven when they gave her Hawkwing, for the middle-aged destroyer had been her very first hyper-capable command, and the thirty-three months she'd spent in command had been pure, unalloyed joy, capped by the coveted Fleet "E" award for tactics in last year's war games. But this—!

***Snip***

She frowned a bit at that thought while she punched up a tube capsule. All the scramble to get her here seemed out of character for a navy that preferred to do things in an orderly fashion. When she'd been given Hawkwing, she'd known two months in advance; this time, she'd been literally snatched out of the ATC graduation ceremonies and hustled off to Admiral Courvosier's office with no warning at all.
The capsule arrived, and she stepped into it, still frowning and rubbing gently at the tip of her nose. Nimitz roused to lift his chin from the top of her beret and nipped her ear with the scolding tug he saved for the unfortunately frequent moments when his companion worried. Honor clicked her teeth gently at him and reached up to scratch his chest, but she didn't stop worrying, and he sighed in exasperation.
Now why, she wondered, was she so certain Courvosier had deliberately bustled her out of his office and off to her new assignment? The admiral was a bland-faced, cherubic little gnome of a man with a bent for creating demonic tac problems, and she'd known him for years. He'd been her Fourth Form Tactics instructor at the Academy, the one who'd recognized an inborn instinct and honed it into something she could command at will, not something that came and went. He'd spent hours working with her in private when other instructors worried about her basic math scores and, in a very real sense, had saved her career before it had actually begun, yet this time there'd been something almost evasive about him. She knew his congratulations and satisfied pride in her had been real, but she couldn't shake the impression that there'd been something else, as well. Ostensibly, the rush was all because of the need to get her to Hephaestus to shepherd her new ship through its refit in time for the upcoming Fleet exercise, yet HMS Fearless was only a single light cruiser, when all was said. It seemed unlikely her absence would critically shift the balance in maneuvers planned to exercise the entire Home Fleet!

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

cthia wrote:1) No, I actually understood this, as a consequence my question begs to know the difference between being allowed to command a DD and not a CL or DL, in light of neither being a capital ship? IOW, cutting non-hyper capable command (non Crusher certified) off at a DD seems arbitrary to me without further input. Sorry my question wasn't clear, because it isn't in my head either.

2) I'm glad that is the case because it makes my point even more poignant. Honor accomplished her amazing feat in the War-games by popping D'Orville w/o Crusher credentials, though she'd probably completed the lion's share of the course by then. Even so.