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Comment by bbctol | Hacker News Reader

In general, I think the linking of good with heroism is a net negative for society. Articles like these are a reminder of how much space there is to redefine heroism, or abandon it altogether, and how important it is to remember the good that is done that is not dramatic, individual, and quick.

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This is a bigger issue in the whole society. People who do a good, steady, useful job without much fuzz don't get appreciated. It's like the focus on "job creators" but they also need people who buy their stuff and work for them. A society where everybody needs to be a "hero" will go under quickly.

In Australia, the ratio of officers to sailors on ships has changed from:

1960s - DDG ‐ a ratio of 1 officer to 15.65 crew

1980s - FFG ‐ a ratio of 1 officer to 7.5 crew

modern - Armidale - a ratio of 1 officer to 2.5 crew

I've heard that other nation's services are seeing commensurate changes.

[0]: http://www.defence.gov.au/Whitepaper/docs/036-O'Keefe.pdf

Perhaps due to automation?

Reading through the article I can't help but notice some shortcomings in the analysis. The "similar size" ship dropped from 333 crew to 221 crew. Is this perhaps due to an increase in automation? The article does mention that GPS navigation has eliminated some work for officers, but what about all the tasks that used to be manual but are now mechanized?

Without an analysis of which roles have expanded or been eliminated over time, it's hard to take gross numbers seriously.

(The Armidale is not a comparable ship, it has only 21.)

The US Navy has gone back to having navigators manually calculate positions using sextants as a backup to GPS so I doubt there is any manning savings there. They expect that in any major conflict the GPS satellites could be jammed or destroyed.

http://www.npr.org/2016/02/22/467210492/u-s-navy-brings-back...

That makes a lot of sense. These kind of discussions come up whenever people complain about how crazy military procurement is, when you can get a Raspberry Pi for $10. The military wants to get its job done in worst-case scenarios that most of us have the luxury of not thinking about.

>The "similar size" ship dropped from 333 crew to 221 crew.

The ratio of enlisted to officers on a specific ship class can be misleading because there will always be a certain number of positions on any warship which will require officers: 1 commanding officer, 1 executive officer, 1 chief engineer, 2 or more other department heads, etc. In effect, there is a "floor" on the wardroom size.

For an example going the other direction, U.S. aircraft carriers have a total ship's company of around 3,200, with about 80 of those being officers, for a 40:1 ratio.

JSYK, Nimitz-class carriers have at least 200 officers, which gives a 16:1 ratio, but as far as I know this doesn't include officers from the air wings (which makes sense, since they have less of a "managerial / college graduate" type job. The math surrounding the 40:1 ratio obviously doesn't work out though, because an aircraft carrier is definitely at least 4x bigger and more complex than a DDG, which has around that number of officers.

Source: was on DDG. Looked up Nimitz-class numbers 'cause it seemed low (I know you weren't referring specifically to that type of ship)

Others have mentioned the automation factor, but let me add another one. Those of us outside the military probably equate "officer" to "management", but a more apt comparison might be to "college graduate." Now, how many different ways can we think of that a state-of-the-art surface vessel might need a higher proportion of educated crew vs. maintenance staff who are mostly high-school grads who have received maybe a year or two of ship-specific vocational training?

In most navies the majority of complex maintenance work is performed by senior NCOs (chiefs) and warrant officers, not by commissioned officers. Those chiefs have a lot more than 2 years of vocational training.

Nobody wants to get sorted into Hufflepuff.

You'd be surprised to find out how many people proudly see themselves as Hufflepuff.

Heroism is easy to observe compared to the more mundane yet more impactful day to day work.

My perspective is we need to track better metrics for seeing the latter.

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