Ultimate Ratio Reg and CDR Salamander are banging hard on the number of Admirals in the Navy. I'm sure URR will come back (he said he would) and take a serious look at the number of Generals in the Marine Corps.
I want to beat him to it.
My simplistic view of the appropriate number goes like this.
2 four star Generals. The Commandant and Assistant Commandant.
4 three star Generals. They would be in charge of each of the Marine Corps Divisions.
4 two star Generals. They would take care of Marine Expeditionary Brigades and serve as Asst Division Commanders.
20 one star Generals. They would fill out all joint billets. If the number of joint billets is greater than this number (and it most assuredly is) then it would be filled with a Colonel that is given a temporary promotion to the flag rank until his assignment is over.
Colonels and below would be as currently assigned with the exception that billets that are deemed more appropriate to the rank of Major will go to that rank and by this method we will also reduce the number of Colonels.
This is just off the top of my head but I was tweaked by URR and Sal on this issue.
I want to beat him to it.
My simplistic view of the appropriate number goes like this.
2 four star Generals. The Commandant and Assistant Commandant.
4 three star Generals. They would be in charge of each of the Marine Corps Divisions.
4 two star Generals. They would take care of Marine Expeditionary Brigades and serve as Asst Division Commanders.
20 one star Generals. They would fill out all joint billets. If the number of joint billets is greater than this number (and it most assuredly is) then it would be filled with a Colonel that is given a temporary promotion to the flag rank until his assignment is over.
Colonels and below would be as currently assigned with the exception that billets that are deemed more appropriate to the rank of Major will go to that rank and by this method we will also reduce the number of Colonels.
This is just off the top of my head but I was tweaked by URR and Sal on this issue.
I've been toying with this issue ever since I saw a simplistic analysis of flag officer numbers vis a vis numbers of people, (actually the first thing that drew my attention to Ben Freeman at POGO) I've been considering analyzing "why?" I've been only toying with it in my spare time, but so far three factors seem the biggest drivers: Force downsizing post cold-war and Aspin's (spit) Bottom up Review without a commensurate decrease in responsibilities, Purple Suit 'jointness' billet increases post-Goldwater Nichols , and the relative importance of once minor functions increasing in a now 'everyboy's expeditionary' military. I think nearlty all of the perceived 'bloat' in the upper ranks would disappear if we just manned to a modern equivalent of Powell's Base Force. But the 'Reformers' wouldn't like that solution either.
ReplyDeleteThe numbers of General Officers is governed by Federal law. There are also various exceptions including joint commands so those don't count against the services hard limits. While I don't know the current number of USMC generals the cap is 60 plus exceptions.
ReplyDeleteThe best way to cut them would be to have Congress reduce the number. If it was up to me I'd just cut the limit 5% a year for 5 years and review afterwards if more cuts were required.
Another thing we could do is stop the USAF from requiring every single pilot, including UAV pilots, to be officers. They actually wanted to sharply cut the number of UAV's they were buying because they can't find enough pilots when the Army, who uses enlisted, has no problems whatsoever finding pilots for the same aircraft. We've got too many officers as well.
Thanks Solomon for beautiful blog :)
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