The late Austro-Hungarian navy profesionnalism compared to the army

[gagenater]

It's been my experience that infantry officers are in general more professional, engaged, and intellectual than their navy counterparts. The expectations placed on those that will be leading men directly in harms way and getting out there in every clime and time are a little different than the ones for officers working regular shifts and living in a cabin on ship.

Which army or armies are you basing this comparison on? Obviously there are olnty of good professional armies where this is true.

However there are also a pretty large number of ‘police’ or ‘ceremonial’ armies, or just corrupt ones or poorly funded many of which haven’t seen real combat in decades, or perhaps ever since their country came to be. These ones often develop/decay into complete combat unreadiness.

The current bundeswher or the US army between the world wars are good examples of how dramatic underfunding in peacetime can leave a military hopelessly incapable. Recruits drilling with broomsticks who have only fired a few rounds in training to save on ammunition costs; 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 aircraft combat ready; critical shortages of spares and munitions; heavy equipment like tanks decrepit or never even ordered; the list goes on. Most of the force is people killing time and drawing a check for a little while before moving on to something else.

 

[The-Doc]

Which army or armies are you basing this comparison on? Obviously there are olnty of good professional armies where this is true.

Ok I'll admit this is a heavily biased experiential comparison of USMC infantry officers vs their navy peers. Though I still give plaudits to most of the Army officers I've worked with - as well as those of several foreign militaries, UK, Korean, and Australian in particular (especially their marine contingents).

 

[Eusebio]

Basically a navy if it does even the most basic of patrolling in peacetime for necessary purposes of smuggling interdiction and the like has to fight the elements in the form of storms, tidal changes, etc. figure out communications to carry out the same, and it also it ALWAYS has to keep an eye on logistics and industry, since ships don't fuel and build themselves. Even if no patrols of any kind are conducted, there is a lot of maintenance and effort required just to keep the ships and other equipment floating and workable. When in combat, battle is simply added on top of all those existing demands.

Well yeah, if you want to pay for that stuff. Plenty of navies don't bother and thus their professionalism degrades, see the current Argentine navy.