Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXVIII

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Making your NCOs "from scratch" like this tends to have problems, though, so it's usually only happened when there's a shortage of people of such rank.

As far as I'm aware this is the rule rather than the exception in the current Dutch armed forces. There are separate training courses for corporals. Although I do believe they have been rebranded task specialists rather than "onderofficieren" (literally under/below/lower-officers, so NCO's). You don't get to be a proper NCO until you make sergeant. There are still internal ways to go from lower to higher ranks, including from enlisted to corporal and from sergeant/adjutant to officer, I just personally have no idea about what kind of percentages of people we're talking about there. Although honestly the requirements for regular enlisted person training aren't exactly bottom of the barrel either, so I suspect the step from soldier or sailor to corporal happens quite a bit. (Also any smallish standing peace time army is not necessarily the best model for any questions about military stuff, as it's usually the big wartime armies we're really trying to learn about.)

(Fun fact: the Netherlands has different types of junior high/high school education aimed at different types of followup. The type you want for a classic academic bachelor into master is called VWO and takes 6 years to complete, and that's what you need to become an officer. But the air force has made an exception. The physical requirements for being a pilot are so high that they needed a larger talent pool to scout from, figuring sometimes it's easier to drag a less academically inclined student through the hard physics than it is to teach an intelligent bookworm reflexes. So you can apply to be a pilot with a 5 year HAVO education. Did I say fun fact? I meant useless. Sorry.)