Cadet
an under training military or police officer
A cadet is a student or trainee within various organisations, primarily in military contexts where individuals undergo training to become commissioned officers. However, several civilian organisations, including civil aviation groups, maritime organisations, and police services, also designate their auxiliary members and trainees as cadets.
Armed forces
In several military services, cadets, flight cadets, officer cadets, and gentleman/lady cadets may refer to recruits and students that are undergoing military training to become commissioned officers. The specific rank structure and responsibilities of cadets can vary among different military organisations.
Australia
In Australia, a cadet is an officer in training. The official rank is Officer Cadet (OCDT for members of the Australian Regular Army and OFFCDT for members of the Royal Australian Air Force), but OCDTs in the Royal Military College, Duntroon are referred to as staff cadet (Scdt) for historical reasons.
Austria-Hungary
In Austria-Hungary, the cadets of the Austro-Hungarian Army (1867–1918) wore the Feldwebel rank insignia on the gorget patch. The characteristic of the cadet ranks was the so-called distinction-galloon on the sleeve ends. It was similar to the feldwebel-galloon, however, from gold colour instead of emperor-yellow. The particular rank was added as well.
“Cadet” enters the record as an under training military or police officer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cadet, training and military can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Cadet” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Cadet, training and military provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q316498. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1867 and 1918.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Cadet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.