I don't know who needs to hear this but dividing the military into "Officer" and "Enlisted" classes is an antiquated holdover of aristocracy and has little actual relevance for the practice of contemporary warfare.

Particularly as knowledge and technical work become the primary realm of military activity as the digital age progresses, we need to modernize recruitment, training, pay, and benefits for the military professionals who we'll need to perform these missions.

This doesn't mean a lack of accountability or holding people responsible, it doesn't even mean doing away with rank structures. It's just that the idea of separate classes of soldiers is decidedly outdated, even obsolete.

Imagine how wasteful our 'separate but equal' human resources, training and education, and career management pipelines are today. Also, good luck getting a 22-year-old with a degree in artificial intelligence or general computer science to enlist as an E-4 specialist.

We're trapped in a romantic paradigm of leadership that still draws upon the Napoleonic idea of gallant officers & mechanistic maneuvers where plans are drawn on the green table and executed by subordinates. Which is weird, especially for the service that coined "Mission Command"