If someone in the military wanted to choose a specialty that would put a premium on being smart, what would it be?

Logistics.

Yep, what @BarnacleBill said. Logistics.

Which is soon going to be run by civilians…

One of the smartest people I know has been working in this field as @BarnacleBill and @YoBob said. But I guess it would matter if it was during some sort of emergency war time, or during peacetime.

In addition to logistics, the self-evident option of intelligence.

Nuclear engineering. (On a submarine, most likely)

what about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconnaissance

Nuclear engineering is done by contract scientists. They may train ‘engineers’ that later take over for maintenance, but there are no on board nuclear engineers that I can imagine.

Missileer. Absolutely no chance of being sent any where near a war zone as well as a job where you can read a lot while wearing your pyjamas. Remember – Death wears bunny slippers.

Fluency in languages spoken in hostile countries;

Arabic, Farsi, dialects of the sub-continent, Korean, Mandarin, Vietnamese, etc.

@Lightlyseared Missileer….. again… private contractor these days. http://www.kongsberg.com/en/KDS/Products/Missile%20Systems.aspx
No smarts to just press the button, but smart people make that stuff. ( but I have no idea about their preferred footwear)

@cazzie your link doesn’t work. Having said that if the American military are stupid enough to contract out the launching of their nuclear arsenal to non-military personal then there is no way anyone in the US military would be able to convince anyone they were smart no matter what job they do.

@cazzie… so would you say now is war or peace?

@Lightlyseared sorry about the link, but oh well. not what I meant. I mean that the people who make the missiles and the guidance systems are not US military but multinational corps with smart people who make the stuff.

and… @6rant6 I have no idea. It depends on where you live, I guess.

Computer Programming, the EDPT test is one of the hardest tests in the military to be considered for a job.

@cazzie a Missileer is the guy with his finger on the button (or in actual fact the 2 guys with their fingers on the 4 buttons) of the a single ICBM. They sit in the bottom of the silo for 24 hour shifts and once they are sealed in the dress code is thrown out the window (if there was a window). One of their patches has the motto “death wears bunny slippers”.

The (lightlyseared) thinking was if you’re smart you’d choose a job well away from anything resembling danger.

@cazzie, not a contractor

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Ok… I get you, but again, they probably act as the engineers. ( 2) A master’s degree is desirable but not essential.) They are not the ones holding the doctorates in the private sector doing the actual developmental and engineering work but the know a great deal about it to liaise. They are very important and it would be an excellent position for someone with smarts. Drama could ensue with the liaising between the private contractors and his/her chain of command.

and @Lightlyseared yes… that’s what I corrected myself on. the man with the finger on the button needs not ‘smarts’ so the suggestion seemed illogical to me.

specialty for enlisted or officer?
Officers often come in ready for pre-med, pre-law, advanced engineering, computer science etc education or ready to begin work in these fields.

Enlisted options might revolve around IT, communications, intelligence, codebreaking, to name a few. They might bring less education to the table and start out with “A schools” or specific military training. Important to pick a field that will work well in civilian life and pursue further education on GI bill.
“Jonesy” in Red October was a sonar specialist, and in later Clancy books was a civilian sonar engineer.

If you’re an officer, signal is responsible for communications, satellite links, computers and IT for a regiment or above. At the regiment level, it’s a quick route to Captain if you can hack the learning curve. Military intelligence requires brainiacs despite all the ribbing it gets about being an oxymoron.

All around, the most intellectually demanding jobs in the military involve leadership roles. The most physically and emotionally demanding jobs are in special operations. Put the two together and you have one of the most difficult jobs you’ll ever love: commander of a special operations detachment or team. : ))

My first thought is my old school; NNPTC (Naval Nuclear Power Training Command).

When I went in, to even be considered to be offered the NFQT (the entrance exam for the Naval nuclear power program) you need to have an 80+ on your ASVAB, and then you have to have a raw score of 54+ on an 80-question test that covers things like trig, calculus, physics, and other such stuff. Do all that and they offer you Nuke School; second in the world only to Harvard Law on the list of “Schools that are hard to pass unless you have your shit together”. I refer to strictly academic schools here, and not stuff like SEALS training that has a prominent physical element.

It seems to me that that qualifies as “put[ting] a premium on smarts” and “military”.

@cazzie You are partly correct, but not entirely. I have too many ex-Navy Nuclear Engineer friends who required no further education to cross over for me to agree.