A Russian import we need

Looks like Russia is getting lean from the top down.

Russia's defense minister announced Tuesday a sweeping reform of the military that will cut hundreds of generals and disband nine of every ten army units, the defense minister said Tuesday.

Though downsized to 1.13 million from the 4 million-member Soviet Army, the military has done little to reduce its number of officers. It maintains almost the same number of military units as in the Soviet era, though many exist only on paper.

Serdyukov said the Russian military now has 355,000 officers – about one-third the total strength of the military. That's a far greater share than in other nations, he said.

Serdyukov said the number of generals will be cut to 900 from the current 1,100 by phasing them into retirement.

He said the armed forces will abolish the balky Soviet-era structure, disbanding divisions and regiments and forming brigades instead. The number of army units will be reduced from 1,890 to 172, Serdyukov said.

The number of Air Force units will be cut from 340 to 180 and the number in the navy will be cut from 240 to 123, he said.

The Defense Ministry will cut its Moscow headquarters' work force by 60 percent, to 8,500; the number of military academies will drop from 65 to just 10, he said.

At the same time, the military will boost the number of junior officers, such as lieutenants, by 10,000 to 60,000. Officials and military analysts long have pointed that the military is facing a shortage of junior officers because of low pay and meager conditions.

You can take my floor of 200-220 ships or Galrahn's number of 150-177 ships, but either way our Admiral to ship ration is an abomination.

It isn't just Admirals though. I'll just use my favorite example of Staff bloat just because everyone enjoys picking on the P-3 guys and they can't defend themselves on this issue.

In the Cold War, there were four P-3 Wings in the USA (Major Command at Sea, CAPT Commands) for two dozen squadrons roughly of VP, VPU and VQ(P). In addition, each VP squadron had many more aircraft and aircrew.

Here we find ourselves in 2008 with half the number of squadrons, more than half the number of aircraft and aircrew - yet still four Wings in Brunswick, ME Jacksonville, FL, Whidbey Island, WA, and Hawaii.

That is just one example of fat sucking O2 from the rest of the Navy.

Good for Russia and bad for us. We should want a top-heavy, inefficient Russian military.