Vince wrote:Bluesqueak wrote:Why do you think all the middies are planning full careers in the Navy? Admittedly most of our viewpoint characters are career Navy, but that's normal for military SF.
There's a war on; patriotic young Manties are signing up for Saganami Island. Doesn't mean they don't plan to become lawyers, foreign office wonks, diplomats, merchant spacers after the war is over.
Apart from Terenkhov, who was enjoying a career in the Foreign Office before his Reserve rank got reactivated, there's also Chief Wanderman, who was definitely aware that his naval training would allow him to slot into a civilian engineering job after the war, plus at least one Marine Lieutenant who was studying law in his spare time.
I dunno what the service obligation is after Saganami, but I'd suggest that while the Island is aimed at producing career officers in peacetime, they may well be currently accepting middies who are primarily in the navy 'for the duration'.
Remember that Saganami Island is the Honorverse equivalent of the US Navy Academy at Annapolis (4 years of college with a heavy emphasis on military science, before serving in the Navy or Marines). I would expect the path that Wanderman or Ginger Lewis took would be much more common--first enlisted, and then promoted to higher rank, either as enlisted or to warrant or commissioned officer.
I realise that Saganami is a US style military academy, rather than the Sandhurst type. But even at Annapolis, only about 60% of graduates stay in the USN/Marines for a full career.
I also get the strong impression to date that Saganami is the primary means of training direct-entry officers. All the OTC people we hear of were promoted from the ranks.
Wanderman seems to explain why this is so: the technical training he gets in the navy is just as good as he would have got in college. So, rather than running OTC's in colleges, the Navy simply gives college-level training to its enlisted - and can select potential officers from their ranks.
Plus, bluntly, you simply don't need as many commanders and captains as you do junior officers. And a highly technical navy does need a lot of junior officers.