Taken as a whole this is a reasonable question. The navy has struggled for years with the tension between technical and tactical prowess in an officer and, in my humble opinion, has gotten a great deal of OK. In the old days it was sail vs ship fitter, then mariner vs steam engineer, and so on. Even naval aviation got into the mess when it (rightfully) determined that only aviators could command an aircraft carrier thus taking a certain kind of professional out of their profession to make them a different kind of professional. Only a few years ago the House version of the NDAA proposed directing the Navy to “establish two career paths for surface warfare officers. . . . one career path in ship engineering systems and another in ship operations and combat systems.” That didn’t happen…but was it a good idea?Of the engineering majors, how many can actually graduate in 4 years while taking ROTC?
And, why does the Navy have such a hard on for engineering majors anyway? I mean if you're a pilot, SEAL, shipdriver, or bubbleheard, are you really going to put an engineering degree to use in any of these jobs?
The British use a primary warfare officer model with an engineer model. In short, you are either a warfighter or a fixer. Both have critical responsibilities, but only one can command. In the end, I be,I’ve that your civilian education (including engineering) means very little in the course of your career because the service is going to train you to their standard. Now, if you want to pick a specific career path like Test Pilot or AMDO then an engineering degree is really, really matter. Same for nukes, of course. Some might argue that studying engineering makes learning other career skills easier and that may be right - but I have my doubts.
Still, when I was in primary, a buddy of mine used to joke that “Mechanical Engineering to Mach 1 and History to helicopters.” In our specific examples…he was spot on as he went jets (and on to F-14’s) and I went helicopters. Even then, I knew lots of engineers in the HT and even a few history types in jets.