Command Slots

Rose&Heather started a POV thread that got me thinking.

In ART, there were a lot of junior officers in command of cruisers, or acting as squadron commanders. (Also, in SoSag, with Eleanor Hope had a Star Knight, which should have been a senior grade captain's slot. That had to be a politcal appointment).

We see Scotty Tremaine get a plum cruiser division, but what about other deserving characters? Andrea Jaruwalski (sp?) never even had a destroyer command. She has the rank to command a heavy cruiser or a DD/CL flotilla; if she doesn't get a command slot somewhere, her career will stall again. And she is a bit senior for a light warship (unless its a Roland).

With Samuel Webster already a rear admiral, and working at BuWeaps, we won't get to see him doing anything interesting.

It is too soon for Abigail, or Helen. But what about that junior assistant tac officer from Bellerophon in SVW? She ought to be a commander, by now; and she wasn't important enough to publicly kill off, like Dame Beatrice.

And after his action at Nolan, shouldn't Pang be a CPT, jg?

It's time for Honor to break in a new staff, with officers from different Navies. Her beloved husband had an Erewhonese Ops officer--shouldn't she try to make Grand Fleet a joint effort by adding some Havenites to her staff?

Her flag captain (Cardones) ought to be up for a cruiser squadron of his own, also. Her staffers should have the opportunity to share what they learned from Herself, and She should have the chance to train some new people.


What do you think?

Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:Rose&Heather started a POV thread that got me thinking.

In ART, there were a lot of junior officers in command of cruisers, or acting as squadron commanders. (Also, in SoSag, with Eleanor Hope had a Star Knight, which should have been a senior grade captain's slot. That had to be a politcal appointment).

Rapidly expanding navy; secondary command area; old ship - you could easily find someone of a rank unusually low for the slot in an ideal universe there. Not that I'm necessarily disagreeing; I'm just bringing it up as a possibility.

We see Scotty Tremaine get a plum cruiser division, but what about other deserving characters? Andrea Jaruwalski (sp?) never even had a destroyer command. She has the rank to command a heavy cruiser or a DD/CL flotilla; if she doesn't get a command slot somewhere, her career will stall again. And she is a bit senior for a light warship (unless its a Roland).

It sounded like Captain Jaruwalski's career had been more-or-less shunted onto the staff side already, at least after Icarus, without it looking like Honor would be able to help her back onto the command track. That at least was the sound of the conversation in which Honor tapped her for her staff position at the ATC after the return from Hades.

She's clearly not in danger of being overlooked or underrated for staff-side appointments at this point, at least, even if they don't support the rate of advancement command track positions do.

With Samuel Webster already a rear admiral, and working at BuWeaps, we won't get to see him doing anything interesting.

It is too soon for Abigail, or Helen. But what about that junior assistant tac officer from Bellerophon in SVW? She ought to be a commander, by now; and she wasn't important enough to publicly kill off, like Dame Beatrice.

And after his action at Nolan, shouldn't Pang be a CPT, jg?

It's time for Honor to break in a new staff, with officers from different Navies. Her beloved husband had an Erewhonese Ops officer--shouldn't she try to make Grand Fleet a joint effort by adding some Havenites to her staff?

Her flag captain (Cardones) ought to be up for a cruiser squadron of his own, also. Her staffers should have the opportunity to share what they learned from Herself, and She should have the chance to train some new people.


What do you think?

Rob

Well, the Havenites she knows already tend to be dead, Graysons, or mightily important in the Republic's Navy right now. So while I wouldn't mind fresh faces and letting familiar ones go onward, upward, and off to get killed and jerk our hearts around, I don't think we're likely to see Havenites take their places if you're not counting those Graysons. (Warner Caslett on her staff would make me go squee.)

I think a large part of the reason you're seeing such relatively junior officers in relatively senior slots has to do with the carnage of First Manticore. A lot of young talent was killed in that battle, along with huge names like Sebastian D'Orville, Theodosia Kuzak (*sob!*), etc. Granted, new construction has stalled until Bolthole gets up and running, but there are still a lot of ships running around and not a lot of officers to crew them. The Star Knight-class, remember, is an older class - they're going to hand older construction to more junior officers (remember Lieutenant Commander Denton and Reprise?) so the new stuff can be crewed by the more experienced commanders who can use the new tech to maximum advantage.

That said, I think you make an excellent point about bringing back characters we haven't seen in awhile - Avshari and Wolversham from Bellerophon being prime examples.

As far as Honor's command staff goes, there is an excellent argument for keeping it exactly the way it is: namely, results. I could see the Admiralty being disinclined to tinker with something that has proven so effective so many times.

That said, there's also an excellent argument for mixing things up, particularly as far as nationalities go. Yes, let's get some Havenites on Honor's command staff! Let's hand Jaruwalski (who afaik has never been through the Crusher and therefore can't command) to Tourville for awhile. Let's have Honor snag Anita Eisenberg from Tourville. Let's get Abigail Hearns into a flag lieutenant's billet when Tenth Fleet is done squashing Mesa like a bug, or an ops officer's, and see how she functions as a staff officer, because it'll be a huge advantage to her as she heads for a ship of her own. With the Grand Alliance enjoying such a huge technological advantage, let's mix things up now so the maximum benefit can be had when more serious bug-squashing commences. And for God's sake, let's get Allen Higgins into a major fleet command and give him the chance to soothe his poor, battered soul by winning for once!

In short, I think you've brought up some excellent points, and I very much look forward to what is bound to come out of this thread.

I have always wanted to see a short story that follows a character through the Crusher. Jaruwalski might make an interesting star for such a story.

If there isn't any reason to mix something new, why we should do that? Better would be for that staff if only some officers would come as liaisons from other navies, cus they have better knowledge about capabilities of their navies.
I won't be surprised if Jaruwalski get a squadron commander, she was umpire in a lot of simulations and she was helping with designing and planning new operations, so she has a lot of experience in tactics and strategy.

Draken wrote:If there isn't any reason to mix something new, why we should do that? Better would be for that staff if only some officers would come as liaisons from other navies, cus they have better knowledge about capabilities of their navies.
I won't be surprised if Jaruwalski get a squadron commander, she was umpire in a lot of simulations and she was helping with designing and planning new operations, so she has a lot of experience in tactics and strategy.

Squadron command in the RMN does seem to require a few tours as ship commander first, and Jaruwalski's career was more focussed on the staff track for the past decade. It may simply be the case that she's so good at her job as Operations officer that to give her a shipboard command of her own would be a misuse of her talents.

Roguevictory wrote:I have always wanted to see a short story that follows a character through the Crusher. Jaruwalski might make an interesting star for such a story.

Jaruwalski's an interesting case. Can an officer really go through the Crusher when she's already helped to run the Crusher?

The E wrote:

Draken wrote:If there isn't any reason to mix something new, why we should do that? Better would be for that staff if only some officers would come as liaisons from other navies, cus they have better knowledge about capabilities of their navies.
I won't be surprised if Jaruwalski get a squadron commander, she was umpire in a lot of simulations and she was helping with designing and planning new operations, so she has a lot of experience in tactics and strategy.

Squadron command in the RMN does seem to require a few tours as ship commander first, and Jaruwalski's career was more focussed on the staff track for the past decade. It may simply be the case that she's so good at her job as Operations officer that to give her a shipboard command of her own would be a misuse of her talents.

I think she would prefer to stay with Honor as her Fleet Operations Officer than to become someone else's Squadron Operations Officer

Thanks for the interest! I thought Rose would like the idea of Havenite participation, heh.

One of the reasons I brought up Jaruwalski in particular, (and this thread at all) goes back to the comment of Jim Webster in SVW--that the RMN rotated its officers from staff or admin slots back to command slots to the Fleet.

Not only did they rotate Hemphill to the fleet in HoS, she was the CO at Grendelbane at the start of the war. Which might be one reason why so much construction was on-going there. (Or, she got the slot because of the construction there?)

While Honor took the lead in Jaruwalski's rehabilitation and the restoration of her reputation, she also got kudos from Caparelli for doing it. And Andrea's CO prior to Santino ought to also be one of her supporters. So, I would think Adm. Cortez would be looking at her with some interest, as he has already told Honor of her positive effect on officers under her command.

And Andrea was her aide from her return from Cerberus --long enough too really cement the fact of her basic competence to the rest of the Navy, even if Janacek wouldn't give her a command.

Rose: a DD command is a traditional Lt Cdr slot; so Denton is exactly where he ought to be. (I also think he's due for a cruiser.) Honor was promoted to Cdr when she got the cruiser command in OBS; and jumped two grades to senior grade captain when she got the Star Knight. She would have been promoted to junior grade based on winning the fight, but in preserving control of Basilisk (and to stick a pencil in Young's eye) they jumped her two grades.

An armored cruiser or battlecruiser seemed to always have Captains in the first part of the war; DD or CL flotillas had junior grade captains (outrank their subordinates by 2 grades). It was never explicit, but I never saw anything else in the novels.

Jeff Engel: you brought up a valid point about a rapidly expanding Navy, and maybe Eleanor Hope got her command when Terekhov got Hexapuma. I had the impression that she had had it a bit longer though, with her disagreement with the other woman, over Terekhov's plan to go to Monica.

While the Navy began a rapid expansion in the final months of Janacek's tenure, he'd spent years downsizing it as much as possible--stalling careers for many (like Tristram's com officer, whose name I just don't want to recall). Eleanor Hope strikes me as one of those types; she may have gotten the Vigilant based on the sudden expansion due to her seniority, though, so you may be right.

She just strikes me as a stand in for a Janacek-type, with her desperate refusal to look facts in the face.

I agree that the older Star Knights ought to be getting the less experienced officers-- but there was a full commodore in the squadron that caught the spider ships' data transmission. But no flag officer--not even a junior grade captain--for the ad hoc Sag-C squadron sent to Nolan? Which is why I thought Pang must be pretty senior for a commander, and might see a promotion to go with the ship.

I don't think any commanders getting DDM cruisers are going to be at the bottom of the promotion list, either in terms of seniority, or ability. Cdr Kaplan got a promotion along with Tristram, I think--I need to go back and look, though.

I'd like to think the best will get commands. But that may also be my rose-colored glasses, and weak eyes.

Regards,

Rob

What I was thinking about Jaruwalski, was that she should get a Rear Admiral promotion and be one of Honor squadrons commanders. Also Scotty Tremaine should get his promotion relatively soon, so why don't give him new CLAC division. He would be best choice for that position, he was COLAC for something like 10 years?