Role of the Non-Commissioned Officer - Assignment Example

One of such indispensable figures in the implementation of military structures is the non-commissioned officer. The non-commissioned officer, however, does not work untamed: for the non-commissioned officer to succeed in his role as a leader, he needs to be guided by basic military principles. This is to say that the non-commissioned officer cannot rule within his own discretion but needs to be guided by principles such as the application of the FM 6-22, counseling and the seven Army Values.A non-commissioned officer is a military officer who is given authority through a commissioned officer, but he or she is not technically considered to be in command.

Non-commissioned officers rise up through the enlisted ranks, generally with several years of experience to their names before they reach positions of nominal power. The rank an officer has to reach to be accorded the position of a non-commissioned officer varies from country to country and from military force to military force. Also among the ranks, there divisions such as Junior NCOs and Senior NCOs depending on which nation is in question and which military force, be it the Navy, Army or Air Force.

In the United States, for instance, all ranks of Sergeant in the United States Army, United States Air Force and the United States Marine Corps are termed Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) as are Corporals in the Army and Marine Corps. However, the rank of Corporal in the US Army is known to be a junior NCOs whereas Corporals in the grades are referred to as senior noncommissioned officers. The non-commissioned officer can, however, be generalized to be ‘an enlisted member of the armed forces, such as a corporal, sergeant, or petty officer, appointed to a rank conferring leadership over other enlisted personnel’.