February 17, 2026: Navies are still trying to find the optimum combination of technical and command skills needed to effectively run a warship. As ships are equipped with more technology, the officers' jobs and responsibilities must evolve. One of the most rapidly evolving areas is engineering. Every member of the crew is assigned to a department. The most important ones are Engineering, Weapons, Operations, Navigation, Supply, and Communications. There are ten or more other departments handling things such as medical training, aviation, safety and so on.

Officers traditionally work in a number of key departments on a ship in order to get promoted. For a long time, navies did not allow engineering officers to command ships. That has slowly changed, but there is still an attitude that engineers are too focused on technical issues to develop the array of skills ship commanders and admirals require. During the first century of steam-powered ships, most nations did not allow engineers to eventually command ships. As the ships became more complex, this restriction fell away. Now there is a trend towards selecting officers to command ships who have the most engineering experience. That means the more engineering skills an officer obtains, the more capable they would be in commanding increasingly more complex vessels.