History Fridge / SpaceAboveAndBeyond

** As noted above, this is mainly because McQueen is a fanatic who insists that Marine aviators, or at least those in the 58th, be the best both in the air and on the ground, which is why he keeps volunteering them for ground missions.

* How bad must the casualties be if the Marines are using officers who are trained for flying space fighters for ground combat that any enlisted grunt can and should be doing in their place?

** How bad must the casualties be if the Marines are using officers who are trained for flying space fighters for ground combat that any enlisted grunt can and should be doing in their place?
*** It's stated that for the first half of the series, the war is going ''very'' badly for Earth forces, hence the above. By the second half, things are going much better thanks in no small part to the 58th, who have become somewhat legendary, so it's possible they continued to be given ground combat missions both for their proven combat effectiveness and the high impact on overall morale.
*** The war hasn't really begun in earnest by the time the Wild Cards receive their training. Bizarre as it may seem, Marine starfighter pilots are trained to also do infantry duty. What sort of theater of war requirements or ideology behind ''that'' decision is left unexplained but WordOfGod is they just wanted to tell more kinds of war stories.
*** You can justify a lot with a SpaceWar as getting into space and to other planets is the primary issue for every soldier. The costs for getting a soldier to a planet or enemy spacecraft are probably comparable for training a soldier to fly both a spacecraft and building one with greater operational freedom.

* FridgeBrilliance: Assuming that the practice of deferring convictions in exchange for military service is brought back into practice in the future (in RealLife, this has been specifically outlawed in the United States for several decades), it seems unlikely that someone would be sentenced to become a commissioned military officer and a SpaceFighter pilot, as opposed to some kind of enlisted footsoldier or laborer. It's possible that the judge was manipulating the law to get Cooper Hawkes into a far better situation than the one he originated in (homeless and nearly murdered in an alleyway, only to be arrested by the cops afterwards).
* FridgeLogic: Expensively trained pilots do not get used as footsoldiers. The makers were [[{{Lampshading}} obviously aware of this]] as there's one scene where [=McQueen=] chews them out for complaining about taking on this role, saying it's their job to do whatever task they're given, and citing the old Marine Corps chestnut "Every marine is first and foremost a rifleman".
* FridgeHorror: How bad must the casualties be if the Marines are using officers who are trained for flying space fighters for ground combat that any enlisted grunt can and should be doing in their place?
** It's stated that for the first half of the series, the war is going ''very'' badly for Earth forces, hence the above. By the second half, things are going much better thanks in no small part to the 58th, who have become somewhat legendary, so it's possible they continued to be given ground combat missions both for their proven combat effectiveness and the high impact on overall morale.

* FridgeHorror: How bad must the casualties be if the Marines are using officers who are trained for flying space fighters for ground combat that any enlisted grunt can and should be doing in their place?

* FridgeLogic: Expensively trained pilots do not get used as footsoldiers. The makers were [[{{Lampshading}} obviously aware of this]] as there's one scene where [=McQueen=] chews them out for complaining about taking on this role, saying it's their job to do whatever task they're given.