Education: Warrant Officers in British Forces

[Michael Dorosh]

This thread at BFC was mildly confusing: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=88105

Several minor points of order - I can give a pass to the developers since none of them are native to the UK.

Firstly, the plural of Sergeant Major is Sergeants Major - the 's' comes after 'Sergeant' not 'Major'.

Secondly, a Warrant Officer is not a "senior non-commissioned officer" as some (including self-professed Commonwealth military personnel) are alleging. Senior non-commissioned officers included the ranks of staff sergeant and sergeant. That's it. A warrant officer is a separate class of soldier in the British Army.

This exchange was interesting also

Cpl Steiner: Instead of having everything INCLUDING the kitchen sink in the TO&E, I've often thought BFC should have gone to the other extreme and just given us the building blocks of a TO&E. For the base game we could have had things like "M4 Rifleman", "M203 Rifleman", "M249 Automatic Rifleman", "Fireteam Leader", "Squad Leader", "Stryker ICV" etc. You would then build your TO&E from the bottom up, first putting together fireteams, then squads, then platoons, etc. It would have been more work for the scenario designer but greatly enhanced flexibility too - as you could have non-standard formations, or formations designed to fit into their accompanying vehicles. BCF could have provided some example formations in the editor - or just outlined them in the manual. What I miss more than anything about CMx1 is the ability to have squads short of a few men - which wouldn't be a problem with the bottom-up approach.

hcrof: Having that option would push CM even further into the relms of 'perfect game' for me. It would be an awesome feature!

ScubaSam: Sounds a bit more like what games such as ArmA do in their scenario editors. It doesn't take that long to build a few squads and a platoon HQ in that, with whatever mix of weaponry/soldiers you like.

However, that approach only really works for small amounts of units, and it also relies on the scenario builder knowing the ins and outs of every single formation they want to use. You also lose out on the automatic links between HQs, so the soldier wouldn't recognise he is part of 3rd squad, 2nd platoon, B company, or whatever. That makes the whole C2 simulation pretty much irrelevant.

While it'd be nice to tinker around with the formations now and again for one particular scenario, I think I much prefer the top down approach BFC use

Now, if TOEs were editable/moddable, that would be a different story

Battlefront.com: CM has always been, and will always be, a game which is fundamentally rooted in realism. Having people make up their own TO&E, which is completely unrealistic from real TO&E, is nothing we are interested in explicitly supporting.

Most people, I think, don't want to build their own TO&E because they don't want to have to figure out what works and what doesn't. Most of the TO&E you guys play with, especially in CM:SF, exists because the real military already did trial and error. So I think there's little value in allowing people to make their own TO&Es from the ground up.

Having pre-battle casualties is something we just haven't got around to doing. It will be done and there's no need to change the way TO&E works. Same thing with user created "task forces" (battle groups), which are higher level organizations of standard lower level TO&E elements. It's just that these things take time to implement and we've got some other stuff to get done first. But both will happen and probably soon.

Steve is still not "getting it" re: "pick and choose" forces but pre-battle casualties will be essential to Normandy if for no other reason than no one went into battle at full strength, and for the Commonwealth at least, the Left Out of Battle system was actually built-in so that they went in (often at 60% strength) to major attacks short-handed on purpose.

 

[dalem]

Can you start games with casualties in your units like in CMx1?

-dale

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Can you start games with casualties in your units like in CMx1?

-dale

Nope. According to Steve in that thread:

Having pre-battle casualties is something we just haven't got around to doing. It will be done and there's no need to change the way TO&E works. Same thing with user created "task forces" (battle groups), which are higher level organizations of standard lower level TO&E elements. It's just that these things take time to implement and we've got some other stuff to get done first. But both will happen and probably soon.

 

[dalem]

Seriously? Wow. Another step backwards I would have assumed they'd know not to take.

Still definitely questioning the use of the words "Combat Mission" in the title here.

-dale

 

[Mustang2.0]

What is the rank structure in the British Army?

 

[Michael Dorosh]

What is the rank structure in the British Army?

That is another important distinction - RSM is an appointment, not a rank. The two are very often confused. It used to be that Lance Corporal was an appointment as well, but my understanding is that it was finally made an actual rank in recent years?

 

[Michael Dorosh]

From lowest to highest, not including specialized regimental ranks as in Rifle Regiments, etc:

Private
Lance Corporal
Corporal
Sergeant
Staff Sergeant (Colour Sergeant in infantry and Royal Marine units)
Warrant Officer Class II
Warrant Officer Class I
2nd Lieutenant
Lieutenant
Captain
Major
Lieutenant Colonel
Colonel
Brigadier
Major General
Lieutenant General
General
Field Marshal (wartime only)

 

[Mustang2.0]

Thank you,
So, there are only 3 NCO ranks? Corporal to Staff Sergeant?
Or..is Warrant Officer considered an NCO...or is it like a US Army WO (between NCO and Officer)

 

[Geordie]

The British Army isnt a homnogenous organisation like the US Army. Its basically a collection of Regiments all thrown together over the years with their own traditions and in some cases, ranks.

So in a Cavalry regiment a Corporal of Horse will actually be a Sergeant. Likewise, some units have Lance Sergeants, who are actually Cpl's. You get the gist.

A Warrant Officer, is a non commisioned rank and is given a Royal Warrant. They would live in the Warrant Officers and Sergeants' Mess. Unlike US WO's they are not saluted, which often leads to a bit of confusion when working together. US WO's are a very different beast altogether.

Also, British NCO's tend to be given a lot more responsibility than their US and NATO counterparts, tend to be more long serving and thus should have more knowledge of their speciality etc.

So, there are only 3 NCO ranks? Corporal to Staff Sergeant?

In the Army there is Lance Cpl, Cpl, Sergeant and Staff Sergeant. The Air Force has Cpl, Sergeant and Flight Sergeant. The Marines take Army ranks and the Navy is a mad affair of Leading Hands, POs CPOs and WOs.

It often seems complicated but is soon picked up when you get there....

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Thank you,
So, there are only 3 NCO ranks? Corporal to Staff Sergeant?
Or..is Warrant Officer considered an NCO...or is it like a US Army WO (between NCO and Officer)

To add to what Geordie said, the WOs are sometimes referred to as "senior NCOs" but technically, this is wrong.

The best way to look at it is to study what ranks are held by which appointments - i.e. who does what job. I don't believe in "equivalent ranks" between armies because they almost never, ever match up. Which is why I laugh when I see tables of equivalent ranks in the appendices of most histories.

A Warrant Officer Class I in an infantry battalion would be a lonely man - there is only one, and he is the Regimental Sergeant Major. He is the senior non-commissioned soldier. Often, he is the longest serving soldier in the battalion, officers included. He is the repository of many of the regiment's traditions. His role in garrison is to enforce discipline, dress and deportment. In the field, he manages the flow of prisoners, ammunition, water, rations, salvage, POL, supplies, by directing the other senior warrant officers and colour sergeants tasked in quartermaster and sergeant major roles. These include the Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant, each Company Quartermaster Sergeant, and the Company Sergeants Major. The CSM is to each company what the RSM is to the battalion, with an emphasis on administration and discipline. The CQMS' emphasis is on logistics.

You wouldn't expect to see any of these represented in your average tactical shooter, and you didn't often see them in the firing line. In a battalion action, they were usually setting up dumps and points for the various consumables and collectibles, and overseeing the work of the men tasked for duties. It would not be unheard of to see a WO or C/Sgt take over command of a platoon or company in time of emergency. The rolls of the Military Cross, DCM, and even the VC would probably reveal some notable examples of same.

I don't know if the Americans treat their senior sergeants with the same "mystique" that a CSM or RSM attains in the British Army. The U.S. Army has/had a First Sergeant and "Field First" that had roughly the same powers and duties as the British sergeant major, and the German Army has/had the Hauptfeldwebel - whose mystique is betrayed by the number of nicknames applied to it (der Spiess/die Mütter die Kompanie) - though in the German Army, there was no regimental sergeant major as the British knew it, just a senior sergeant in each company. They did, however, in the 1939-45 war have a Stabsfeldwebel, a special rank created for the pre-war career regulars who enlisted for 12-year enlistments and managed to qualify. They wore an extra star on the shoulderboard - but that was their rank, not their appointment, and was no guarantee that they would be "der Spiess" in any given company.

 

[Geordie]

I don't know if the Americans treat their senior sergeants with the same "mystique" that a CSM or RSM attains in the British Army.

Also - there is the GSM or Garrison Sergeant Major, who outranks the RSM on a base where more than one unit lives, this man is God and answers only to the Base CO. In the RAF the equivalent is the SWO or Station Warrant Officer. No man, Officer or OR is safe from their wrath.....