Page "Brazilian Armed Forces" Paragraph 58

The noncommissioned officer ( NCO ) corps is not well developed.

NCOs have virtually no autonomy or authority.

Emphasis on training and professional development is for officers only.

The NCOs account for slightly more than one-third of the total army strength.

About half of the NCOs are sergeants, who serve as command links between officers and ranks.

Some also serve as middle-level technicians.

In the early 1990s, the army began to undergo a generational change.

The generals of the early 1990s had been junior officers in the early 1960s and had witnessed the military coup in 1964.

Their worldview was shaped and influenced by the anticommunism of that time.

These generals were being replaced by colonels who had entered the army in the early 1970s and whose view of the world had been shaped less by ideology and more by pragmatism.

The United States, particularly through its counterinsurgency doctrines of the early 1960s, was more influential with the older group of officers.