A salute is usually a formal hand gesture or other action used to display respect in military situations. Salutes are primarily associated with the military and law enforcement, but many civilian organizations, such as Girl Guides, Boy Scouts and the Salvation Army use formal salutes. Ordinary civilians also salute informally to greet or acknowledge the presence of another person, such as a tip of the hat or a hand wave to a friend or neighbor.
The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht was the supreme military command and control office of Nazi Germany during World War II. Created in 1938, the OKW replaced the Reich Ministry of War and had oversight over the individual high commands of the country's armed forces: the army, navy, and air force.
Military ranks are a system of hierarchical relationships, within armed forces, police, intelligence agencies or other institutions organized along military lines. The military rank system defines dominance, authority, and responsibility in a military hierarchy. It incorporates the principles of exercising power and authority into the military chain of command—the succession of commanders superior to subordinates through which command is exercised. The military chain of command constructs an important component for organized collective action.
In modern use, the order of battle of an armed force participating in a military operation or campaign shows the hierarchical organization, command structure, strength, disposition of personnel, and equipment of units and formations of the armed force. Various abbreviations are in use, including OOB, O/B, or OB, while ORBAT remains the most common in the United Kingdom. An order of battle is distinct from a table of organisation, which is the intended composition of a given unit or formation according to the military doctrine of its armed force. Historically, an order of battle was the order in which troops were positioned relative to the position of the army commander or the chronological order in which ships were deployed in naval situations.
A non-commissioned officer (NCO) is a military officer who does not hold a commission. Non-commissioned officers usually earn their position of authority by promotion through the enlisted ranks. In contrast, commissioned officers usually enter directly from a military academy, officer training corps (OTC) or reserve officer training corps (ROTC), or officer candidate school (OCS) or officer training school (OTS), after receiving a post-secondary degree.
Military justice is the body of laws and procedures governing members of the armed forces. Many nation-states have separate and distinct bodies of law that govern the conduct of members of their armed forces. Some states use special judicial and other arrangements to enforce those laws, while others use civilian judicial systems. Legal issues unique to military justice include the preservation of good order and discipline, the legality of orders, and appropriate conduct for members of the military. Some states enable their military justice systems to deal with civil offenses committed by their armed forces in some circumstances.
In a hierarchy or tree structure of any kind, a superior is an individual or position at a higher level in the hierarchy than another, and thus closer to the apex.
The equites constituted the second of the property-based classes of ancient Rome, ranking below the senatorial class. A member of the equestrian order was known as an eques.
Insubordination is the act of willfully disobeying a lawful order of one's superior. It is generally a punishable offense in hierarchical organizations such as the armed forces, which depend on people lower in the chain of command obeying orders.
A military staff or general staff is a group of officers, enlisted and civilian staff who serve the commander of a division or other large military unit in their command and control role through planning, analysis, and information gathering, as well as by relaying, coordinating, and supervising the execution of their plans and orders, especially in case of multiple simultaneous and rapidly changing complex operations. They are organised into functional groups such as administration, logistics, operations, intelligence, training, etc. They provide multi-directional flow of information between a commanding officer, subordinate military units and other stakeholders. A centralised general staff results in tighter top-down control but requires larger staff at headquarters (HQ) and reduces accuracy of orientation of field operations, whereas a decentralised general staff results in enhanced situational focus, personal initiative, speed of localised action, OODA loop, and improved accuracy of orientation.
Mission-type tactics is a method of command and delegation where the military commander gives subordinate leaders a clearly-defined objective, high-level details such as a timeframe, and the forces needed to accomplish that objective. The subordinate leaders are given the planning initiative and freedom of execution: they decide on the methods to achieve the objective independently. This allows a high degree of flexibility at the operational and tactical levels of command, which allows for faster decision-making on the ground and frees the higher leadership from managing the tactical details to concentrate on the strategic picture. This may be contrasted with "Befehlstaktik" or command-type tactics.
Civil control of the military is a doctrine in military and political science that places ultimate responsibility for a country's strategic decision-making in the hands of the state's civil authority, rather than completely with professional military leadership itself. As such, a "fundamental requirement of any nation is to ensure that the activities of its armed forces are subordinated to the political purposes of constitutional government; hence, the armed forces must be under civil control". The concept of civil control falls within the overarching concept of civil-military relations representing the "societal imperative that the military remain subordinate to civil authority and that it reflect, to an appropriate degree, societal values and norms".
Organizing or organising is the establishment of effective authority-relationships among selected works, which often improves efficiency.
Law enforcement in Bolivia is reliant on the 40,000-member Cuerpo de Policía Nacional responsible for internal security and maintaining law and order. Unlike many South American countries, the Bolivian police force always has been accountable to the national government rather than to state or local officials. The 1950 Organic Law of Police and Carabiniers officially separated the police from the military. Frequently, however, the national police call upon the military for assistance in quelling riots and civil protests.
Military organization (AE) or military organisation (BE) is the structuring of the armed forces of a state so as to offer such military capability as a national defense policy may require. Formal military organization tends to use hierarchical forms.
The Feldgendarmerie were a type of military police units of the armies of the Kingdom of Saxony, the German Empire and Nazi Germany until the conclusion of World War II in Europe.
Superior orders, also known as the Nuremberg defense or just following orders, is a plea in a court of law that a person, whether a member of the military, law enforcement, or the civilian population, should not be considered guilty of committing crimes that were ordered by a superior officer or official.
Units and commands of the Schutzstaffel were organizational titles used by the SS to describe the many groups, forces, and formations that existed within the SS from its inception in 1923 to the eventual fall of Nazi Germany in 1945.
The principle of command and obedience in the Bundeswehr, along with the concept of "citizens in uniform", was central to the 1953 idea of "leadership development and civic education". The revised definition of military orders and obedience, as well as superior–subordinate relations by the former "Amt Blank", was a 1950s result of Nazi German excesses. Central aims were the reduction of power to command by superiors and a shared responsibility for obedience by subordinates.
A military command or order is a binding instruction given by a senior rank to a junior rank in a military context. Not all senior ranks in all military forces have the right to give an order to all lower ranks.
