Commissioned officers generally receive training as generalists in
leadership and in
management, in addition to training relating to their specific
military occupational specialty or function in the military. Many militaries typically require
university degrees as a prerequisite for commissioning, even when accessing candidates from the enlisted ranks. Others, including the
Australian Defence Force, the
British Armed Forces, the
Nepali Army, the
Pakistan Armed Forces (PAF), the
Swiss Armed Forces, the
Singapore Armed Forces, the
Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the
Swedish Armed Forces, and the
New Zealand Defence Force, are different in not requiring a university degree for commissioning, although a significant number of officers in these countries are graduates.
United Kingdom In the United Kingdom, there are three routes of entry for
British Armed Forces officers. The first, and primary route are those who receive their commission directly into the officer grades following completion at their relevant military academy. This is known as a Direct Entry (DE) officer scheme. officer training academy
Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth In the second method, individuals may gain a commission after first enlisting and serving in the junior ranks, and typically reaching one of the senior non-commissioned officer ranks (which start at
sergeant (Sgt), and above), as what are known as Service Entry (SE) officers (and are typically and informally known as "ex-rankers"). Service personnel who complete this process at or above the age of 30 are known as Late Entry (LE) officers. The third route is similar to the second, in that candidates convert from an enlisted rank to a commission; but these are only taken from the highest ranks of SNCOs (
warrant officers and equivalents). This route typically involves reduced training requirements in recognition of existing experience. Some examples of this scheme are the RAF's Commissioned Warrant Officer (CWO) course or the Royal Navy's Warrant Officers Commissioning Programme. In the
British Army, commissioning for DE officers occurs after a 44-week course at the
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. The course comprises three 14 weeks terms, focussing on
militarisation, leadership and exercises respectively.
Army Reserve officers will attend the Army Reserve Commissioning Course, which consists of four two-week modules (A-D). The first two modules may be undertaken over a year for each module at an
Officers' Training Corps; the last two must be undertaken at Sandhurst.
Royal Navy officer candidates must complete a 30-week Initial Navy Training (Officer) (INT(O)) course at
Britannia Royal Naval College. This comprises 15 weeks militarisation training, followed by 15 weeks professional training, before the candidate commences marinisation.
Royal Air Force (RAF) DE officer candidates must complete a 24-week Modular Initial Officer Training Course (MIOTC) at
RAF College Cranwell. This course is split into four 6-week modules covering: militarisation, leadership, management and assessment respectively. RAF Reserve Officers undertake the Reserve Basic Recruit Training Course (BRTC) at RAF Halton prior to attending Officer specific training at RAF Cranwell College (RAFCC). The RAF Reserve Officer Initial Training (ROIT) course at RAFCC is spread over a 4 month period and consists of pre-learning, a number of residential weekends, a 15 day intense and 5 day graduation period of residential activity at the College. A significant part of this training is done in collaboration with the Regular courses, often the Specialist Officer Initial Training (SOIT) course.
Royal Marines officers receive their training in the Command Wing of the
Commando Training Centre Royal Marines during a 15-month course. The courses consist not only of tactical and combat training, but also of leadership, management, etiquette, and international-affairs training. Until the
Cardwell Reforms of 1871, commissions in the
British Army were
purchased by officers. The Royal Navy, however, operated on a more
meritocratic, or at least
socially mobile, basis.
United States s into the air as part of the U.S. Naval Academy class of 2005 graduation and commissioning ceremony.
Types of officers Commissioned officers exist in all eight
uniformed services of the United States. All six
armed forces of the United States have both commissioned officer and non-commissioned officer (NCO) ranks, and all of them (except the
United States Space Force) have
warrant-officer ranks. The two
noncombatant uniformed services, the
United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps (NOAA Corps), have only commissioned officers, with no warrant-officer or enlisted personnel. Commissioned officers are considered
commanding officers under presidential authority. A
superior officer is an officer with a higher rank than another officer, who is a
subordinate officer relative to the superior. NCOs, including U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard petty officers and chief petty officers, in positions of
authority can be said to have control or charge rather than command
per se (although the word "command" is often used unofficially to describe any use of authority). These enlisted naval personnel with authority are officially referred to as 'officers-in-charge" rather than as "commanding officers".
Commissioning programs Commissioned officers in the armed forces of the United States come from a variety of accessions sources:
Service academies •
United States Military Academy (USMA) (commissions
second lieutenants in the
U.S. Army) •
United States Naval Academy (USNA) (commissions both ensigns in the
U.S. Navy and second lieutenants in the
U.S. Marine Corps) •
United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) (commissions second lieutenants in the
U.S. Air Force and
U.S. Space Force) •
United States Coast Guard Academy (USCGA) (commissions
ensigns in the
U.S. Coast Guard and provides basic officer-training classes for NOAA Corps officer candidates) •
United States Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) (commissions ensigns in the
U.S. Navy Reserve; graduates may apply for active or reserve duty in any of the eight
uniformed services of the United States) Graduates of the
United States service academies attend their institutions for no less than four years and, with the exception of the USMMA, are granted active-duty regular commissions immediately upon completion of their training. They make up approximately 20% of the U.S. armed forces officer corps.
Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) Officers in the U.S. Armed Forces may also be commissioned through the
Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). •
Army ROTC •
Naval ROTC (commissions both ensigns in the U.S. Navy and second lieutenants in the U.S. Marine Corps) •
Air Force ROTC (commissions second lieutenants in the U.S. Air Force and
U.S. Space Force) The ROTC is composed of small training programs at several hundred American colleges and universities. There is no Marine Corps ROTC program
per se, but there exists a Marine Corps option for selected midshipmen in the Naval ROTC programs at civilian colleges and universities or at non-Federal military colleges such as
The Citadel and the
Virginia Military Institute. The Coast Guard has no ROTC program, but does have a Direct Commission Selected School Program for military colleges such as The Citadel and
VMI. Army ROTC graduates of the United States' four
junior military colleges can also be commissioned in the U.S. Army with only a two-year associate degree through its
Early Commissioning Program, conditioned on subsequently completing a four-year bachelor's degree from an accredited four-year institution within a defined time.
Federal officer candidate schools College-graduate candidates (initial or prior-service) may also be commissioned in the U.S. uniformed services via an officer candidate school, officer training school, or other programs: •
Army OCS •
Navy OCS •
Marine Corps OCS •
Air Force Officer Training School (OTS) • Coast Guard OCS • USPHS Officer Basic Course (OBC) • NOAA Corps Basic Officer Training Class (BOTC)
Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Class (PLC) A smaller number of Marine Corps officers may be commissioned via the Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Class (PLC) program during summers while attending college. PLC is a sub-element of Marine Corps OCS and college and university students enrolled in PLC undergo military training at Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in two segments: the first of six weeks between their sophomore and junior year and the second of seven weeks between their junior and senior year. There is no routine military training during the academic year for PLC students as is the case for ROTC cadets and midshipmen, but PLC students are routinely visited and their physical fitness periodically tested by Marine Corps officer-selection officers (OSOs) from the nearest Marine Corps officer-recruiting activity. PLC students are placed in one of three general tracks: PLC-Air for prospective marine
naval aviators and marine
naval flight officers; PLC-Ground for prospective marine infantry, armor, artillery and combat-support officers; and PLC-Law, for prospective Marine Corps judge advocate general officers. Upon graduation from college, PLC students are commissioned as active-duty second lieutenants in the U.S. Marine Corps.
National Guard OCS In addition to the ROTC,
Army National Guard (ARNG) officers may also be commissioned through state-based officer-candidate schools. These schools train and commission college graduates, prior-servicemembers, and enlisted guard soldiers specifically for the National Guard.
Air National Guard officers without prior active duty commissioned service attend the same active-duty OTS at
Maxwell AFB, Alabama, as do prospective active duty USAF officers and prospective direct entry
Air Force Reserve officers not commissioned via
USAFA or
AFROTC.
Other commissioning programs In the
United States Armed Forces, enlisted military personnel without a four-year university degree at the bachelor's level can, under certain circumstances, also be commissioned in the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard
limited duty officer (LDO) program. Officers in this category constitute less than 2% of all officers in those services. Another category in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard are
warrant officers / chief warrant officers (WO/CWO). These are specialist officers who do not require a bachelor's degree and are exclusively selected from experienced mid- to senior-level enlisted ranks (e.g., E-5 with eight years' time in service for the Marine Corps, E-7 and above for Navy and Coast Guard). The rank of warrant officer (WO1, also known as W-1) is an appointed rank by warrant from the respective branch secretary until promotion to chief warrant officer (CWO2, also known as W-2) by presidential commission, and holders are entitled to the same customs and courtesies as commissioned officers. Their difference from line and staff corps officers is their focus as single specialty/military occupational field subject-matter experts, though under certain circumstances they can fill command positions. The Air Force has discontinued its warrant-officer program and has no LDO program. Similarly, the Space Force was created with no warrant-officer or LDO programs; both services require all commissioned officers to possess a bachelor's degree prior to commissioning. The U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and NOAA Corps have no warrant officers or enlisted personnel, and all personnel must enter those services via commissioning.
Direct commission Direct commission is another route to becoming a commissioned officer. Credentialed civilian professionals such as scientists, pharmacists, physicians, nurses, clergy, and
attorneys are directly commissioned upon entry into the military or another federal
uniformed service. However, these officers generally do not exercise command authority outside of their job-specific support corps (e.g., U.S. Army
Medical Corps; U.S. Navy
Judge Advocate General's Corps, etc.).
The United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps almost exclusively use direct commission to commission their officers, although NOAA will occasionally accept commissioned officers from the U.S. Navy, primarily Naval Aviators, via interservice transfer. During the U.S. participation in
World War II (1941–1945), civilians with expertise in industrial management also received direct commissions to stand up
materiel production for the U.S. armed forces.
Discontinued U.S. officer-commissioning programs Although significantly represented in the retired senior commissioned officer ranks of the U.S. Navy, a much smaller cohort of current active-duty and active-reserve officers (all of the latter being captains or flag officers as of 2017) were commissioned via the Navy's since discontinued Aviation Officer Candidate School (AOCS) program for college graduates. The AOCS focused on producing line officers for
naval aviation who would become
Naval Aviators and
Naval Flight Officers upon completion of flight training, followed by a smaller cohort who would become Naval Air Intelligence officers and Aviation Maintenance Duty Officers. Designated as "aviation officer candidates" (AOCs), individuals in the AOCS program were primarily non-prior military service college graduates, augmented by a smaller cohort of college-educated active duty, reserve or former enlisted personnel. In the late 1970s, a number of
Air Force ROTC cadets and graduates originally slated for undergraduate pilot training (UPT) or undergraduate navigator training (UNT) lost their flight training slots either immediately prior to or subsequent to graduation, but prior to going on active duty, due to a post-
Vietnam reduction in force (RIF) that reduced the number of flight training slots for
AFROTC graduates by approximately 75% in order to retain flight-training slots for
USAFA cadets and graduates during the same time period. Many of these individuals, at the time all male, declined or resigned their inactive USAF commissions and also attended AOCS for follow-on naval flight-training. AOCs were active-duty personnel in pay grade E-5 (unless having previously held a higher active duty or reserve enlisted grade in any of the U.S. armed forces) for the duration of their 14-week program. Upon graduation, they were commissioned as ensigns in the then-
U.S. Naval Reserve on active duty, with the option to augment their commissions to the Regular Navy after four to six years of commissioned service. The AOCS also included the embedded Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate (AVROC) and
Naval Aviation Cadet (NAVCAD) programs. AVROC was composed of college students who would attend AOCS training in two segments similar to Marine Corps PLC but would do so between their junior and senior years of college and again following college graduation, receiving their commission upon completion of the second segment. The NAVCAD program operated from 1935 through 1968 and again from 1986 through 1993. NAVCADs were enlisted or civilian personnel who had completed two years of college but lacked bachelor's degrees. NAVCADs would complete the entire AOCS program but would not be commissioned until completion of flight training and receiving their wings. After their initial operational tour, they could be assigned to a college or university full-time for no more than two years in order to complete their bachelor's degree. AVROC and NAVCAD were discontinued when AOCS was merged into OCS in the mid-1990s. Similar to NAVCAD was the Marine Aviation Cadet (MarCad) program, created in July 1959 to access enlisted Marines and civilians with at least two years of college. Many, but not all, MarCads attended enlisted "boot camp" at
Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island or
Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, as well as the School of Infantry, before entering naval flight-training. MarCads would then complete their entire flight-training syllabus as cadets. Graduates were designated Naval Aviators and commissioned as 2nd Lieutenants on active duty in the Marine Corps Reserve. They would then report to
The Basic School (TBS) for newly commissioned USMC officers at
Marine Corps Base Quantico prior to reporting to a replacement air group (RAG)/fleet replacement squadron (FRS) and then to operational Fleet Marine Force (FMF) squadrons. Like their NAVCAD graduate counterparts, officers commissioned via MarCad had the option to augment to the Regular Marine Corps following four to six years of commissioned service. The MarCad program closed to new applicants in 1967 and the last trainee graduated in 1968. Another discontinued commissioning program was the Air Force's
aviation cadet program. Originally created by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1907 to train pilots for its then-fledgling aviation program, it was later used by the subsequent
U.S. Army Air Service,
U.S. Army Air Corps and
U.S. Army Air Forces to train pilots, navigators, bombardiers and observers through World War I, the interwar period, World War II, and the immediate postwar period between September 1945 and September 1947. With the establishment of the
U.S. Air Force as an independent service in September 1947, it then became a source for USAF pilots and navigators. Cadets had to be between the ages of 19 and 25 and to possess either at least two years of college/university-level education or three years of a scientific or technical education. In its final iteration, cadets received the pay of enlisted pay grade E-5 and were required to complete all pre-commissioning training and flight training before receiving their wings as pilots or navigators and their commissions as 2nd lieutenants on active duty in the U.S. Air Force Reserve on the same day. Aviation cadets were later offered the opportunity to apply for a commission in the regular Air Force and to attend a college or university to complete a four-year degree. As the Air Force's AFROTC and OTS programs began to grow, and with the Air Force's desire for a 100% college-graduate officer corps, the aviation cadet program was slowly phased out. The last aviation cadet pilot graduated in October 1961 and the last aviation cadet navigators in 1965. By the 1990s, the last of these officers had retired from the active duty Regular Air Force, the
Air Force Reserve and the
Air National Guard. The
Academy of Military Science (AMS) is a discontinued commissioning program for the Air Force, designed to train and commission officers for the
Air National Guard. The curriculum of AMS was very similar to OTS, but it was a six-week (and later eight-week) course instead of the traditional nine-week OTS course. The primary reason for the shorter course length is because 85 percent of AMS candidates had prior military service, when they arrived at the AMS course, compared to about 40 percent of OTS students having had the prior military experience.
Commonwealth of Nations from the Australian
29th Battalion being addressed by their officer commanding in August 1918|alt= A line of soldiers in battle equipment face another soldier who is addressing them on a gentle slope. Behind them, smoke or fog obscures the rest of the terrain. In countries whose ranking systems are based upon the models of the
British Armed Forces (BAF), officers from the rank of
second lieutenant (army),
sub-lieutenant (navy) or
pilot officer (air force) to the rank of
general,
admiral or
air chief marshal respectively, are holders of a commission granted to them by the appropriate awarding authority. In United Kingdom (UK) and other
Commonwealth realms, the awarding authority is the
monarch (or a
governor general representing the monarch) as
head of state. The head of state often has the power to award commissions, or has commissions awarded in their name. In Commonwealth nations, commissioned officers are given
commissioning scrolls (also known as commissioning scripts) signed by the
sovereign or the governor general acting on the monarch's behalf. Upon receipt, this is an official legal document that binds the mentioned officer to the commitment stated on the scroll. Non-commissioned members rise from the lowest ranks in most nations. Education standards for non-commissioned members are typically lower than for officers (with the exception of specialized military and highly-technical trades; such as aircraft, weapons or electronics engineers). Enlisted members only receive leadership training after
promotion to positions of responsibility, or as a prerequisite for such. In the past (and in some countries today but to a lesser extent), non-commissioned members were almost exclusively
conscripts, whereas officers were volunteers. In certain Commonwealth nations, commissioned officers are made
commissioners of oaths by virtue of their office and can thus administer
oaths or take
affidavits or
declarations, limited in certain cases by rank or by appointment, and generally limited to activities or personnel related to their employment. == Warrant officers ==