Can there possibly be two officers of the same rank serving on the same vessel? And if so who is in charge? (I.e two lieutenant junior grade officers on the same ship)
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How can there be officers of the same rank in any unit? For one if an issue arises regarding who is above whom, for people of the same rank seniority ultimately places you above the other one so that solves that. But that is rarely something anyone has to resort to.
In reality rank isn’t as important as people think. Yes it does hold power and some people choose to abuse that but for the most part service members just communicate like people do and get their job done as you do in any other professional setting. Everyone has a rank yes but everyone also has a specific job. One officer may be responsible for the armory and one may be responsible for the mess and that’s each officer’s job and what they should stick to, they don’t get to tell the other one how to do their job. As far as combat duties go each officer is responsible for their own platoon so again neither of them gets to tell the other how to do their job, they both answer to the same commander but are otherwise free to run their duties as they see fit.
That’s basically how it goes for anything. People are assigned jobs and roles and they carry them out.
It’s the same sort of thing in private business. A company might have 5 departments, and the CEO could then have 5 people reporting to him – each of which is titled Department Manager.
None of these Managers are above the other – but that doesn’t matter, as they all report to the CEO, who resolves work delegation and political problems.
The best example of this is the shop floor worker. Which do they not have conflicts with other shop floor workers. They are managed by Team Managers, who also don’t have problems managing each other because they are managed by dept managers.
Just replace those titles with whatever hierarchical system you are looking at in any military. That’s the formal power structure.
Of course, lots of people look for promotions and that can cause conflict and same-titled people trying to gain power and control over these people. But that’s the informal power structure.
Outside of a naval vessel, on aircraft you can have an officer of a lesser rank be the commander over others with higher rank. This happens frequently in multi-crew aircraft, especially when an officer has done a non-flying assignment and comes back with a higher rank, but not to a command assignment in the aircraft.
Also, at least for the Army. Who is in charge isn’t necessarily even the highest rank (though 99% of the time it is). I had a rear detachment with a Lieutenant Commander in charge and a crusty old Colonel mobilized to fill a doctor position under him.
Similarly on a base with multiple organizations, someone is designated the Senior Commander of the installation. They aren’t necessarily the highest ranking commander, and do get to make some decisions that are binding on those higher ranking commanders (such as health and safety, like the bases COVID restrictions a few years ago).
There are usually multiple offices of several ranks on board all but really small vessels. Even small creed like submarines have enough officers for they’re to be more than one of several ranks. The XO is a LCDR, as is the ENG. The other settlement heads are usually LT, although I did have a NAV that was a LCDR. The division officers are somewhere between O1 and O3. As for who’s in charge, there’s a chain of command The CO is at the top, the most junior is at the bottom. Two junior officers of equal rank both holding division officer billets it would depend on what the need for seniority is. If it’s due to a maintenance item that belongs to one of them, that’s the one with authority. If it’s something to do with the operation of the ship, if one of them is on watch as the OOD, that’s the one in charge. Of its an emergency like a fire, whoever got there first is in charge.
This is tangential, but one of my favorite Navy / Marine Corps trivia. Bear with me as I set this up.
Officer rank titles across the services differ, but the government designation is “O” then a number. So an O2 outranks an O1 regardless of branch.
Now, the Navy has a rank called Captain that’s an O6. Please done confuse this with the title of captain, which applies when you are given command of a vessel. A Navy O5, which is the rank Commander, can be a ship’s captain. And you sometimes refer to that person as Captain So-and-So (despite being Commander So-and-So).
In the Marine Corps, a Captain is an O3. A Major is an O4. Marines can be assigned to a ship, either as a security detail or as part of a deployment unit, taxied around by our sister service, the Navy.
Most nights, on a ship, all officers not on duty have an Officers Dinner with the ships captain. Now, you cannot have two captains on a ship, especially when one is a lowly Marine Captain. So, during these dinners, a Marine Captain is “promoted” to Major so as to avoid confusing the Navy personnel in attendance.
Don’t confuse the Captain “Majors” with the Major Majors. And certainly don’t confuse the either Major for the Major General.
And first fuck sake, don’t ask about the Rear Admiral . . .
Oh, and Petty Officers . . . but that’s a different story.
People are making this more complicated than it is.
If they are in the same chain (work for the same boss) and report to one another Their boss tells them who is in charge. If they’re in the same chain and don’t work for each other they have different responsibilities and there’s no conflict they just have different jobs.
I’ve in units where there are people who outrank the Commanding Officer. However; the Commanding Officer is a designation, not just a rank. They are delegated powers of command for operational reasons of a body of men. They may have people of the same rank or grade within their unit but they are normally subordinate to the Commanding Officer outside of their professional competency.
An example; My Medical Regiment has a Lt Col as their CO but their Chief Medical Officer is also a Lt Col. The CO has delegated powers of command over the unit. They can’t deal summarily with the CMO but the CMO will not (publicly) undermine the COs power. They will however have primacy when it comes to medical matters.
Additionally, at least in the Air Wing of the Navy, qualification for the job being performed matters. I, as an E-3 Plane Captain Airman, (PFC army, Lance Corporal, Marine Corps, no one cares about the Air Farce lol) trained and was in charge of E-4’s, (Army and Marine Corps Corporals, still don’t care about the Air Farce) NCO’s, Petty officers 3rd class on 2 separate occasions, while training for Plane Captain’s qualifications. However on working parties, barracks clean up, ship movement (loading the squadron equipment to load aboard the ship) the NCO was in charge due to rank. So it can be a little convoluted.
There’s a general order of precedence. It can vary slightly from service to service, but it typically goes:
Assignment > Rank > Date of Rank > Date of Commission (for officers) > Date of entry into service
The most important assignment is “command.” If you’re the Captain of the ship, or the Colonel commanding a Regiment, you’re in charge. But “Assignment” can also mean other roles. For example, if you’re a staff officer, and another officer from a different section comes into yours, they don’t get to run your staff section even if they outrank you. This can extend to temporary assignments, too: if you’re put in charge of a formation for group physical fitness, you could be a junior enlisted and still be “in charge” of officers for that specific action. There’s also authority extended through other means: the chief enlisted of any command directly reports to the commander, and has a lot of authority delegated (often informally) by that commander, no matter how many other officers there may be.
In practical terms, it’s rare for the issue to extend even as far as Date of Rank, let alone beyond. For any important roles, there will be a formal accession plan to delegate/transfer authority, to ensure an orderly transition if the person in charge is unable to exercise their authority for any reason. In the active components, promotions are usually done by a sequence number, which spaces them out through the year, while in reserve components, it’s more common for people to be promoted in one big batch (especially officers). And in practical terms, if you’re doing the “dick-measuring contest” of comparing dates of rank or beyond, you’ve likely got bigger problems.
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