Hello furballs

Now THERE's a question for an m-word thread... Why?

Programmer's oversight/muckup or intentional "no, we didn't just lift them, SEE?" thing?
 
Designers', or manual-writers' oversight, if anyone's. Personally, I like to think that somebody simply decided that Major General outranking Lieutenant General makes sense :). Because it sure makes perfect sense to me ;).

[Edited by Quarto on 05-18-2001 at 12:49]
 
Well, actually...

Lieutenant, means basically something like adjutant, aspiring, just about but not quite yet, You know?

So LT Commander is just before Commander, LT Colonel is just before Colonel, and so LT General is right before General, You know?

Yes, Major outranks Lieutenant any day, but lieutenant means something completely different and the logic of this entire system is toppled by LT Gen bing placed away from Gen... In that case it should be named sopmething like the preposterous name of Liutenant Major General...
 
In that case, perhaps Major General should have originally been Sub-Lieutenant General. And Brigadier General... err, just Brigadier? :)
 
Well where I come from, we only call them Brigadiers, and I know the Brits do as well...

As for the Major general, I never saw the sense in that same, however think about it this way...

Brigadier General
Major General (as in Sergeant Major being more than Sergeant)

THen LT and finally pure General. It makes a little bit of sense, although it too has been warped out of sight...
 
Also, keep in mind that militaries other than British/American have differant systems for their generals. The Russians, for one, have a very differant system. The reversal of "Major General" and "Lieutenant General" may have been a concession to one of them when Earth's militaries were integrated.

Best, Raptor
 
In Australia I believe a Brigadier General is just a Brigadier.

I wonder what other systems there are...

We could always scrap the whole current ranking systems and go back to the Roman style...HAIL CENTURION! :)
 
As far as I know, all Commonwealth countries use the British system. Army and Navy ranks are just about identical to the American, with only a couple of differances. The Air Force uses a totally differant rank system, and includes the rank of Wing Commander. :D

Best, Raptor
 
I would like some kind of comparative chart on international ranks, here in Sweden we have "shifted" the ranks one step, so a Swedish Liutenant is like an American Captain and so on... I don't think we have four star generals (I've only seen two at the most)... but then again I am no expert on the tiny little army of this godforsaken place...
 
Of course, Sweden has a navy. :D

"The international submarine races are over. Sewden won".

"SWEDEN!?! THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE A COASTLINE!!!"

"You're thinking of Switzerland".

"Oh, yeah."
 
Sweden has an Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and National Guard... We even have Special Forces trained by the United States... of course, none of this matters since we only have some 200 aircraft and not very many troops, so if anyone larger than Botswana chooses to attack we're screwed...

Actually, some neutrality convention prevents Sweden from having offensive armament... So we call out newest fighter JAS Gripen... JAS standing for Fighter/Attack/Reconnaisance, and argue that it is the reconnaisance we're after *lol*
 
Basically the idea is to provide the initial repelling wave until United Nations reinforcements come in... So we have a strong defensive posture, a sort of doctronal Maginot Line, around the borders of the country, ready to focus on any point the attacker may choose, in theory... In practise we're screwed.
 
The Rafale Mk1 is finished now and the first squadron will be operational very soon.4 of the naval version are currently participating an exercice in meaditeranean see with italy, uk and other countries.
 
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