"YA COMMANDER I LIKE TOTALLY TOOK CARE OF IT"

The post-revolution Nuguan officer corps went through a long and tumultuous period of many restructurings before the Alliance Wars, but by the time of their entry into the war they'd settled on the two-track arrangement we know today. On one side, specially trained administrative officers handle planning, logistics, and generally directing the unit, while on the other side, tactical officers promoted directly from NCOs handle the execution of plans and management of personnel.

During the war, the two (sometimes more in the Navy) positions held equal authority and thus required mutual agreement to proceed. This could and did cause operational gridlock at times when combined with other frictions in the young nation's military bureaucracy, hence the emergence of the political officer as an informal tiebreaker, later replaced by a shared 2IC/head of staff after military political officers were no longer deemed necessary. Also unlike today, tactical officers during the war extended all the way up to the general staff, whereas now the two tracks converge into one above the level of manoeuvre units.

Overall, this system loosely emulates the officer-SNCO dynamic found in nations like Kaphalodia, however it better fits the ideological goals of the modern Nuguan state, allowing the common woman without magical training to fit in equitably with the magocratic elites of urban academies. The tactical officer has much more effective power than a conventional staff NCO, partly done so that they could serve as a sort of check against the influence of pre-revolution leaders retained under the new regime; either way, their presence reduces the administrative officer's task load significantly and provides some extra redundancy to a unit's command staff.

(Originally drawn March 2024 for Hamasah, my dieselpunk space opera/fantasy worldbuilding project)