This does not matter. Waters was a Cadet, not a commissioned officer, thus he did not have the authority even to obey orders which were beyond his pervue to obey as a Cadet. Otherwise, why bother with the whole distinction of Cadet and Officer? There is a reason we make such a distinction in the first place, and that's to train people to assume responsibilities that are greater than they expect, because it's tough to translate directly into words what is expected of an officer.While this doesn't contradict your point about the lack of professionalism in Starfleet, it's worth pointing that Waters was tenuously following orders up until the decision to go blow up the battlecruiser himself. Starfleet knew that they had a battleship behind enemy lines and assumed that the training officers were still alive and crewing the ship. I'm assuming this means Valiant was able to receive long-range communications but could not reply for fear of giving away their position and Waters was unable to inform Starfleet about the crew's condition.
If they are, they're morons, and psychotic. Moreover, they're incompetent. The leadership that allows this kind of thing needs swift public execution, due to gross incompetence and to serve as a deterrent against such incompetence again!Starfleet is still happy to use a ship crewed mainly by cadets performing a high-risk covert mission.
I can't stress how bad this is. This is like giving a Zumwalt-class ship to a bunch of Midshipmen in the hopes they'll take on the Russians! What lunacy!
By virtue of the fact he wants to do this, means that there is no indoctrination going on at Starfleet Academy. That is a gigantic problem. Lord knows why more officers haven't had delusions of godhood and decided to take over the Federation by now!He wants the glory of blowing something up at the end of his mission because that's how the story should end.
