A US Navy guided-missile destroyer spent four days last month without working toilets, galley services and air conditioning in the blistering heat of the South China Sea after the warship lost power.
The incident was due to an engineering failure aboard the warship, the US 7th Fleet said in a statement to CNN, another setback as concerns mount over the heavy strain on the US Navy due to the Iran war and global commitments.
The USS Benfold, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, was on routine operations in the Indo-Pacific on July 24 when an “engineering casualty involving its generators” occurred, Navy Cmdr. Matthew Comer, spokesperson for the 7th Fleet, said.
The separation between officers and enlisted is actually a pretty good check against the Peter Principle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
How so?
No, cause both enlisted and officer tracks still experience the principle. It’s not like you don’t get promoted to leadership in the enlist track, it’s just limited how far those promotions can go.
This, plus I was being a bit more literal. As in the navy physically keeps enlisted and officers isolated from each other. They eat in different places, sleep in different places, and even use different stairwells. The average navy officer has significantly less face time around the people they command compared to other branches and they live on a ship.
Ship stratification makes it to where officers are generally unaware of the moral of the people the are in charge of and are more isolated from the negative consequences of their own actions.
As I understand it the big crossover here is the command master chief who works directly with the CO and XO as well as the senior enlisted ranks. Via them the officers would absolutely be aware.
The senior NCO can be just as out of the loop as the CO or NCO, especially if they are understaffed and overworked. This also requires the Co and XO to respect the opinions of senior NCO which is not a given, especially in the navy.
That limitation is the point.
The Peter Principle says that people keep getting promoted as long as they are doing a good job. Once they stop being good, they are stuc, and remain doing a job… poorly. So hierarchical organizations always end up with leadership being mostly shit.
Having a cap which says that enlisted men can never get promoted beyond a certain point means that good enlisted troops are “stuck”, and therefore remain at a job they are good at.
Yeah, this way they don’t have to get promoted to their level of incompetence, they can start off at their level of incompetence and get promoted from there!