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A Warrior who is a danger to himself and others?
misterde3
Member Posts: 4,195 Arc User
Due to a debate in another thread I've wondered about something:
would the KDF ever let someone who is really incompetent serve on their ships?
Okay it's something that equally applies to the average Starfleet redshirt that doesn't know when to pull his gun...or not to pull his gun like in "Friday's Child".
But after someone brought up "Sons and Daughters" I thought about Alexander and...he drops a Bat'leth, doesn't know the first thing about fighting and locks himself in a corridor.
Shouldn't stuff like use of weapons on a certain level be covered in basic trainig same as how not to trip security lockdowns?
This is probably something folks with actual military experience can answer: if someone is so inept he drops his gun and locks himself in by accident it's probably not because he grew dumber since basic training. It's stuff that's probably noticed early on very easily.
So would any military let someone who is this dangerous pass basic training and let loose on the real world?
would the KDF ever let someone who is really incompetent serve on their ships?
Okay it's something that equally applies to the average Starfleet redshirt that doesn't know when to pull his gun...or not to pull his gun like in "Friday's Child".
But after someone brought up "Sons and Daughters" I thought about Alexander and...he drops a Bat'leth, doesn't know the first thing about fighting and locks himself in a corridor.
Shouldn't stuff like use of weapons on a certain level be covered in basic trainig same as how not to trip security lockdowns?
This is probably something folks with actual military experience can answer: if someone is so inept he drops his gun and locks himself in by accident it's probably not because he grew dumber since basic training. It's stuff that's probably noticed early on very easily.
So would any military let someone who is this dangerous pass basic training and let loose on the real world?
Post edited by misterde3 on
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Well, one of the regular Klingon DOFF missions is "Execution for incompetence", which always makes me giggle.
I guess it's possible that certain kinds of incompetence might not show up until there's a certain kind of context and stress. Also, there's nepotism, buying privilege, etc.
you routinely have, across a large country like the USA, people that choke. A couple of examples from the last year or so..
- police in NYC hit multiple bystanders firing at a fleeing suspect.
- police in CA shot up a vehicle like the one a suspect had. The vehicle had 2 women, the suspect was a single male. (I am simply observing here but it seems states where guns are not a hobby have more of these type issues as the training from childhood is lacking).
- police shot a guy playing with a water hose attachment like it was a gun in his own yard.
- policeman shot himself in the leg holstering his sidearm... for the second time (http://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2014/01/20/indiana-police-chief-accidentally-shoots-self-at-gun-shop/4666967/)
The same is true in the military, but less so -- the military spends more time on firearms training while the LEOs have to study investigations and rules and regulations and laws and a billion other things. I am friends with a LEO who trains their new recruits and he says many are not gun people, and can just barely qualify once a year as they do no practice between qualifications. Others hit the range couple of times a week.
Some of this is pressure and stress during a situation. Some of it is lack of training. Some of it is lack of practice. Sometimes things just slip. Sometimes you get an incompetent goober in any job.
Or like my wife, sometimes you do not realize you have something going on (she has MS) until you start dropping things.
Based on my "military experience" to some degree... Well the truth is in the middle. Kind of.
No, you wouldn't send someone without training into a combat area. Not at all.
But in practice the kind of gap is: not all training is successfull.
The thing is I was in the German military since we had general conscription until recently.
So we had that 3 month basic training and some special training and then we were sent to our assignments.
The thing is: we were sent there no matter how bad we failed at that basic training. Essentially: they showed us how to hold a weapon, that doesn't mean everybody learned how to do it. There was no real "test" or anything.
Usually that isn't that bad, since the conscripts do not get into any "real" assignments, I mean they were arround to waste tax money and their own time.
The real bad part is: I was among those few that had a "kind of" real assigment, we were tasked to guard the American barracks in Germany (which wasn't AS harmless as it sounds...).
So we did feel quiet ill prepared for that and made a lot of jokes how screwed we were if something would actually HAPPENED.... Until we trained with the us soldiers.
That was during the Iraq wars (2nd) and the barracks we were in were essentially stopovers for soldiers returning from the war, means the people we trained with actually FOUGHT in the war.
And it was embarrassing how incompetent they were, even compared to us.. One broke his shoulder attesting to fire a German mg3. Another one shoot his food. Most of them didn't get how the g36 worked. They couldn't aim. They came drunk to the training. And psychologically wasted like nothing.
I don't want to bash Americans here, and not ALL were like that. But the mere fact that the us send some of those guys into an actual war... Is beyond my understanding.
So ultimately... To answer the question.... Don't know about ships but dangerously incompetents serving in critical situations is simply happening on massive scale.
The curriculum, training... the "system" is of course supposed to fix these issues or weed them out before they get to the actual operating forces. However, just like anything else, things slip through the cracks sometimes.
As for Star Trek, you see it here and there. First thing that comes to mind are the two fools who were captains on an Excelsior-class. The first captain we see for the USS Excelsior in Star Trek III. Arrogant, sure of himself, utterly befuddled at the first sign of an issue, and not figuring out that the escaping Kirk's former Chief Engineer is his own ship's Chief Engineer... Then there's the incompetent fool that was the captain of the USS Enterprise-B from Generations, who clearly was not ready for the Captain's Chair, but Starfleet somehow saw something in him to make him Captain of the fleet's "flagship."
It is not known if he is the actual ship's captain. All we know is that he is put in charge of driving the ship during a beta test run, in which half the systems won't be installed until Tuesday. He could very well have specifically been a captain without a ship and thus put into this job specifically because he has nothing else to be doing. He may have held the rank of a captain without actually BEING a ship captain.
I miss that fella though. Always giggled when I ended up beaming to somewhere else. "What the frack? Where the feck I am?"
He reminded me an alzheimered version of Doc Brown.
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
You don't want to dishonour a mighty house and give them reason to call for your head now, do you? :P
If memory serves, Martok wasn't terribly impressed by any of them. Alexander was just the "runt of the litter".
And no drill instructor or officer is ever terribly impressed by a new flock of green recruits. Steve Rogers aside, they passed their physicals or they wouldn't be there.
If they can squeak through Basic without embarrassing their drill instructor too much or becoming a discipline problem, they're probably not going to be disqualified at that point.
Every military organization needs warm bodies for hard labor and cannon fodder. Even the Klingons.
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Ever heard of "combat fatigue", also known as combat stress reaction? When you see your buddies have their arms or legs blown off, it affects you.
I'm sorry that some American G.I. seemed to misbehave, but I guarantee you that KATUSAs (Korean Augmentee to the United States Army) preferred being assigned to American units rather than be grunts on the DMZ.
Excuse me, but isn't this a bit at odds with what you said here:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=16107741&postcount=19
because "squeak through Basic without embarrassing" and "something closer to what an astronaut would need" are not exactly at the same end of the spectrum.;)
Well yeah but that's not the case with Alexander in that episode:
WORF: Who offers their life for the Empire?
N'GAREN: N'Garen, daughter of Tse'Dek!
KATOGH: Katogh, son of Ch'Pok!
KOTH: Koth, son of Larna!
DORAN: Doran, daughter of W'Mar!
ALEXANDER: Alexander Rozhenko.
WORF: Alexander.
MARTOK: Rozhenko? Of what house is Rozhenko?
ALEXANDER: Of no House, sir. My honour will be my own.
so he got through it without the backing of any house somehow.
Thanks. That's...insightful and a bit scary.
Yeah, but how did he get to this point...alive no less?
One would almost believe theystuck hom into a uniform and sent him to the ship without any sort of training. But on the other hand he was trained well enough to seal a plasma leak.
There's something incongruous about this whole thing.
I think the question is very rhetorical given he described what he saw and expressed his confusion instead of assuming it was combat fatigue.
I've seen what long lasting effects combat can have on people with my grandfather.
He was a German paratrooper in WW2 and came back with a 3-4 inch hole in his back and metal splinters in his lung. The Russains used time-delayed explosive bullets and one exploded inside his body. And he was one of the lucky ones.
[But he never had any bad thing to say about the Russians because of this. They were defending their homeland and used whatever they had available. Which was not much early on in the war.]
So I read up on this early on and continue to read about what kinds of effects combat has on troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But not everyone has. And I seriously doubt it was advertised to folks fresh out of basic training what kinds of effects combat can have on people either.
If course I know about stress combat reactions. And there were, no question, some people affected by this kind of thing in that barracks.
But thats not the factor during the joint training.
They really didn't know basic stuff. And not all of them were in critical situations.
Again, we knew some of those guys (and girls^^) and were befriended to them. So we had a general Idea about what was going on with whom.
And I think some Soldiers misbehave wherever they come from. Thats certainly not a US exclusive trait. Some of our ppl were real TRIBBLE****, but we had superiors to keep them in check^^
I don't really blame THEM, more that they were put in that situation.
There are a lot of things that.... lets just say... I don't understand about how the "structures" there work.
Nah, wasn't thinking about someone executing him.;)
[Funny thing is that in the novels it's made clear that shooting someone on the spot is usually only done to trigger-happy gunners who don't obey the order to disable an enemy ship]
I was thinking that Alexander would've managed to trip and impale himself with his own or someone else's weapon during exercise or stick his finger in a light socket.
Or annoy his comrades to the point where he happens to have some "accidents".
Serious question: His first posting was the Rotarren and on the bridge no less.
Isn't that precisely the kind of important and critical assignment that should be marked in his file with the words "Do not put him there; avoid at all costs" ?
Well, they're less "annoyed" and more "amused", apparently. Rather than being annoyed by him, they laugh at him.
Apparently not THAT important. Didn't they post him to what amounted to the graveyard shift in the middle of nowhere?
This, basically. Klingons are a rough bunch, but they are not fools nor orcs. And in the end, not all Klingons are warriors. Alexander wasn't a warrior and never wanted to be one. He might be more on the tech ors cience side of things. It's true that the KDF is a militay first and foremost and other operations are secondary (other than Starfleet whre the priorities are reversed, no matter how much some people want it to be otherwise) but they still need personell that just can handle other things than fighting. Also, the Klingon Empire is a feudal society. I think the whole draft process isn't from a very high quality - he is a commoner who probably was shown that the pointy end hurts and was sent off to his ship.
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The fact that the training is more demanding does not preclude individuals who just barely qualify.
Does a military get more or less picky about personnel in a state of war? I don't have an answer for that.
My experiences, in a military that was not involved in any real military conflicts at the time, was that they were more concerned about weeding out the discipline problems in Basic. If a person was able to conform to military behavior and pass their physical fitness tests, they got in. Only people who demonstrate that they are unfit for duty are dismissed.
Alexander was apparently able to complete his basic training without his instructor or fellow recruits killing him, so he clearly was not a discipline problem. Martok's comments certainly suggested that the KDF had an issue with a personnel shortage and somebody certified Alexander as fit for duty.
One would presume that he was not required to qualify with a bat'leth. Shoot a disruptor in the general direction of his target, and basic familiarity with ship systems and damage control -- Pass, next recruit.
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So if Alexander showed he could pass the rest of the minimums and could serve as a crewman he could pass. He is just not expected to be a rifleman (or batlethman?).
As to incompetence in officers. I recall that once upon a time all you needed to get a basic officer berth was a college degree. That got harder when enlisted started getting degrees and not becoming officers. So just because someone got a bachelor's degree in pottery does not mean he is a leader of soldiers. So historically very justified.
Now look at the battle of DS9 from Way of a Warrior. Two cardassians standing in the middle of a cooridor with pistols. Klingons kept running around the same corner and getting cut down. So competence is a low bar here.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
I'm actually guessing they were Guard or Reserve that had been activated. A lot of those guys are little more skilled than conscripts, and tend to get similar assignments.
Not all mind you. Some Guard and Reserve are pretty squared away. But yeah, some are pretty bad.
While that might be true of most of the Klingons in that scene, it is NOT the case for Alexander. He VOLUNTEERED for service in the KDF. Later in the episode, Worf ask about his adoptive parents who raised Alexander and what they thought about him enlisting in the KDF. The fact that he joined without Worf's knowledge tells me that Alexander return to Earth and stayed with his grandparents again after the destruction of the Enterprise-D. As a Federation citizen, he could have joined Starfleet, but instead joined the KDF.
Within the more specialized and "elite" groups of a military, no.
R.I.P
In TV & Movies, proficiency only goes so far as the plot allows. Great example? Stormtroopers from Star Wars.
In the movies, whenever you get a chance of scenes showing Stormtroopers fighting Rebel or whatever infantry, they perform well. In particular the boarding action in ANH for the Tantive IV. The Stormtroopers' boarding location is well known and prepared for. The Rebels are in position so that the Imperials are coming through a narrow opening into a small corridor with no room to maneuver, no cover. Yet they still get through and blast the Rebels with accurate fire despite coming through a very nasty killzone, and the Rebels break and run.
But when against the main characters, they're incompetent.
It's an open question why exactly they chose to run amok on the Promenade, an area that lacks military significance, however. I dunno about you, but when planning a boarding action, I don't think the Promenade is a high-priority place for landing troops into. I'm sure it looked cool having a bunch of guys running amok there, but I'm not sure what they were trying to accomplish.