Command Branch
The Command Branch is the corps of officers within Starfleet who specialize in command and control functions on starbases, aboard starships, and at Starfleet Command. Members of the command division are trained in leadership and have tactical training allowing them to decisively take action in organizing and mobilizing Starfleet crews to perform missions. Command officers include most all of the admiralty, captains, executive officers, adjutants, pilots and flight controller (or helmsman). Command branch personnel also fill posts as tactical officers and sometimes in ordnance departments.
An officer who belongs to the command branch sometimes wears the division color of another department which they specialized in if said command officer were to become a security chief, engineer, or command a science department.
In the Earth's Starfleet of the 2140s and 2150s, line officers of command branch wore gold division stripes on their uniforms.
Gold was still the color of the command branch throughout the 2250s and 2260s, worn by line officers and flag officers of this division. Officers in the command division wore a five-pointed star with a lengthened upper point as an insignia on their assignment patch.
By the 2270s, new uniforms showed different division colors, the command branchwas signified by white backing their Starfleet badge, and also on uniform bands and epaulets. This continued onto the 2280s uniforms, and the insignia used gave the officer the option of wearing command division white uniform insignia, with another department color banded across, or the opposite, with department color insignia with command white banded across.
By the uniforms used from 2350s onward, red had become the command branch color, and this has continued through several uniform styles.
Individuals from several possible futures, and some that have been proven to be alternate timelines have continued to wear red when in the command branch, but by the 29th century, several timelines have the command color switched to blue.
