Pentagon to cut stars
Stars & Stripes reports that the Defense Department says it’s serious about cutting the number of flag officers in their ranks.
The Navy announced late Tuesday that Navy Secretary Ray Mabus had approved a plan to “reduce, eliminate or consolidate a net of 35 Navy flag officer positions” at the one-, two- and three-star ranks. The Navy said it also plans to eliminate 6 more top officer positions in the 2015 budget.
And last week, a memo from Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno and Army Secretary John McHugh declared that a plan to cut Army headquarters at the two-star level and above by 25 percent was priority No. 1 for headquarters staff.
The announcements follow an order from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last month to reduce spending on military headquarters by 20 percent over five years, with corresponding staff cuts.
Yeah, well, it’s a good start, but they can do better. I’ll bet they could save even more money by reducing enlisted ranks by every sergeant major and master sergeant who has never served in a leadership slot and doesn’t have a rotation to combat in the last twelve years.
In fact, they can start offering command slots to those people and start booting them when they turn the slots down. If the military is all about leadership like they tell us incessantly, why would they want to retain enlisted people who don’t want to lead?
Yeah, I know, I go off on a rant about this every time this subject comes up.
Category: Big Army
Dead on John.
Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.
I returned from Germany shortly after Desert Storm (Jan 92) to Ft. Stewart. Made me want to vomit when hearing the stories of all of the “leaders”, officer and NCO, but especially NCO’s, who boasted of how they got out of deploying to the gilf. Bunch of assholes.
It’s gonna hurt like hell for a few and feel so much better for so many!
The Generals and Colonels are kicking and screaming…knives are being sharpened! Watch your backs and screw the troops…careers are officially being sliced and diced. Every CAREER man for him/herself!
The Army guy in charge of implementing this is a LTG in the Office of Business Transformation. As I said at my blog, anything named “Office of Business Transformation” should be the first thing cut.
If it doesn’t fit in G-1, G-2, G-3, or G-4, you’re adding complication, without sophistication.
In all fairness, I haven’t encountered an active duty CSM today that hasnt had a combat patch of some sort. That being said, I HAVE met a handful that have nothing but Kuwait, Qatar, and Djbouti time. With the downsize of the military the old emphasis of numerous staff positions & schooling is now precident. There are numerous other factors that play in but combat not as much.
If you cannot bench one rep of 225, hit the showers.
Quite simple, actually.
Sadly, it’s going to be mostly warfighters who get the axe. The ones who have been tripping over themselves to spread the current adminstration’s politically correct policies into place will be retained, while the true commanders and leaders are forced out.
In all honesty, how many people could really have dodged deployment with everything that’s been going on these last 12 years. Never being full time active outside of a deployment it’s hard for me to grasp how any real population could never go anywhere.
Found out yesterday, the Marine Corps is planning to cut 175 Sergeants Major. That’s nearly half. Most of them are being culled from recruiting commands and the like.
My last year before I retired (31 July 2013), I was forced to be the HHT 1SG because we had 3 different MSGs come in and refuse to take over an HHT or they didn’t want to be a 1SG again. I feel that you should pay a price for turning down a leadership position. Funny thing is, only 8 19 series made the MSG list. That tells me that there are a lot of MSGs out in the force who are not 1SGs. Bottom line, you turn down PSG, 1SG, or CSM it’s time for you to go. I didn’t want to be a 1SG, so I decided to retire as opposed to just hanging out like many SRNCOs.
There’s a big difference between cutting dead weight and cutting entire positions from the force structure. If you get rid of those weak leaders, then someone will take their place. To affect the budget, they need to eliminate the entire position which the Navy seems ready to do. The Army leaving it up to the 2-star and above commands to reduce their budgets could mean they fire more civilians and eliminate soldiers from their staffs but leave the generals intact. Can you imagine a 2 or 3 star telling Odierno that their position is no longer valid?
Let’s see . . . I retired in ’93.
Seems I recall a “Reduction Of Stars” and “Consolidation and Closure Of Bases, Ships, and Missile Sites” at least 3 times during my career.
Just like I recall changes in PT and Weight Standards, the integration of WACs into the force with no – repeat no – lowering of physical training requirements, and “Better Care for Families and for Vets because WE Owe Them”.
I also recall that in every case, the Perfumed Princes and their Sugar Daddy Politicians lied. To the troops and to the American Public.
DoD announces they will cut FOGO every year at this time, just after the threats to further hose down the vets and retirees causes Congress to fluffle like a yard of hens reacts to a loose puppy.
Watch for them to add DoD Senior Executives to replace the Generals, as they planned last time.
It’ll cost more, without any real experience.
Heh! I’ve often said that cutting the Flag and O-6 ranks along with their toadies, baggage-handlers and brown-nosers would save huge amount of scarce funds.
@9 – Thank God for that. I can name about 17 of them, just off the top of my head that need to go.
Geeze, don’t get me started. We went through WWII with what, less than 50 General Officers in what was the combined Army/Air Corp fighting on 3 continents? Now we have over 400+ in the Army alone? Cut them and their bloated staffs.
Even after we cut everything evenly by 25%, we’ll still have the current proportion of GOs to troops… today, the military’s got as many GO/FO officers as during World War II (when 11% of the population served) with only 1% of the population serving now.
@16- You and me both brother. The unintended side effect of this though, promotions are going to slow waaaaaaayyyyy down. That whole pyramid effect and all.