Operations insignia from Enterprise
The operations division is the corps of officers and crewmen within Starfleet who specialize in services and military functions on starbases, aboard starships, and at Starfleet Command. Members of the operations division may specialize in a ship or base service, staff officers, administration, or military operations. Operations officers include engineers, security and tactical, and some service specializations such as communications. Operations division personnel also fill administrative posts as yeomen, personnel officers and portmasters. By the 24th century, this division had new postings established on ships, such as operations managers (aka chiefs of operations).
The operations division, command division and sciences division usually are denoted by Starfleet uniform insignia, most often color coded.
Officers who belong to the operations division sometimes wear the division color of another department than that which they specialize in, if said ops officer were to become a department head, they might wear the colors of command division, or if they have a dual specialty is a sciences division department, an alternate color might be worn.
In the Earth's Starfleet of the 2140s and 2150s, line officers of ops division wore red division stripes on their uniforms.
The red color had been replaced by the uniforms of the 2250s and early 2260s, as beige uniforms and work gear were worn by ops division personnel.
Red was again the color of the ops division throughout the later 2260s, worn by line officers and flag officers of this division.
By the 2270s, new uniforms showed different division colors, the operations division was signified by two differing colors, with red backing the Starfleet badge, and also on uniform bands and epaulets, for engineering and maintenance staff. Security and services crew now wore gray badge backings and bands.
The operations division was changed again with the 2280s uniforms, with gray representing both security and services, but also sciences. Engineering and maintenance wore gold colors, which also represent some conn divisions like pilots and navigators. The insignia used gave the officer the option of wearing command division white uniform insignia, with another department color like operations' banded across, or the opposite, with department color insignia with command white banded across.
In an alternate future, Lt. Gaines wears operations gold
By the uniforms used from 2350s onward, gold had become the operations division color, and this has continued through several Starfleet uniform styles, including the current style, and even several styles observed in alternate futures.
- During The Original Star Trek, red (or beige in the pilot episodes) was regularly worn by the security, engineering, maintenance, yeomen, communications and staff officers. Communications Officer Uhura normally wore ops red, as did Chief Engineer Scott and Yeoman Rand.
- In the movie era, Star Trek: The Motion Picture featured operations crew Uhura and Chekov wearing grey color bands, and engineers and maintenance in red bands. By the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan uniforms, Scotty wore gold, but Chekov and Uhura continued to wear gray. The schemes and insignia of the later Star Trek Movies era uniforms were designed by Robert Fletcher.
- The purpose of the colors was only obvious through inference, but in "Trials and Tribble-ations," (DS9) red was established in dialogue as the "old" style OPS color (and gold as the "new" OPS color). The decision to switch the meaning of the colors between the TOS and TNG uniform styles was made in pre-production of "Encounter at Farpoint." (TNG)
- Most often, in the Federation Starfleet, all captains and admirals wear command division colors, however there are exceptions which prove that this is not a requirement. In TOS, two commodores, Stone and Stocker, wore red operations division uniforms. In the movie era, Scotty switched back and forth from command white to engineering yellow after recieving his captain's bars. In TNG era productions, "The Die is Cast" (DS9) had an admiral named Toddman wore operations division gold, despite every other Starfleet captain and admiral ever seen in this era wearing command colors.
- See also: List of Starfleet command division personnel