Seriously? It's not as if our contemporary alliances' member forces standardize all of their culture and tradition. Things like standardization/compatibility of ammunition, ordnance and support/logistical systems are a lot more important than the styles or protocols governing salutes, uniforms, and the like. It's a lot more important for you to be able to chamber the same ammunition I'm carrying than it is for our salutes to look the same. It's a lot more important for weapon lugs and hardpoints to mate cleanly than for rank structures and courtesies to do so.
More at
http://usmilitary.ab...fo/a/salute.htm .
Also, as to the hybridization of infantry and naval terminology, as well as admixture of styles, I think we can go so far as to allow for some of that having happened when the Terran military structure was streamlined with planetary political unification and transformation into a spacefaring military. For instance, it might have become acceptable to refer to a spacefaring infantryman as a "trooper," "soldier" or "Marine" (the first two being acceptable generics after service mergers) with "sailor" being left by the wayside (too specifically oceanic, perhaps.) OTOH, some writers posit that military inertia and rivalry would be strong enough to carry the traditional service divisions to the stars--witness the plays on interservice rivlary that appear in
Starship Troopers or
Babylon 5, just to name two.
The OP's call for better versimilitude is appreciated even by a civvie like me, but at the same time I would expect some things to be different (though still grounded in familiar traditions) in a united Terran space force. Such as disappearance of certain details like a cover being required for utility dress. It occurs to me that submariners are probably the closest thing we have to spacers in military service today. Do they wear their covers while standing a watch on patrol? And if so, was it that way in the earlier days of the sumbarine service when everyone was covered in grease and sweat? Granted, the
Normandy is a lot closer to a nuclear boomer than a diesel WWI II boat. And what about their equipment operators who wear headsets of some kind? Can they salute w/o a cover? (Did I say all that right?) It seems like over time such details could easily be eroded/reshaped by the shift from planetary to space operations and the characterstics, patterns and exigencies of such operations.
Protocols governing combined operations would be anyone's guess, but ME doesn't really have to deal with that kind of neurotically detailed backstory unless they want to turn it into an MMO. In the current games, you operate as a SPECTRE or Cerberus operative--both essentially paramilitary operations (one hegemonic, one private) that operate outside of both Alliance and Council standard military hierarchies.
Modifié par Neotribe, 26 juin 2010 - 11:17 .
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