Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., is pressing the Defense Department for justification of why the military has so many flag and general officers, ... In the case of flag and general officers, Webb said he wants an explanation why the number of senior officers continues to grow. He has not concluded there are too many, but is asking why there are so many, and what exactly they are all doing. Those kinds of questions began Glenn’s multi-year push to reduce the number of admirals and generals, which he based on the officer-to-enlisted ratio and termed “brass creep.”After recovering from his Iraq epic fail, unfortunate amnesia about strategic homeporting, and the fact that he no longer has to defend Murtha - I think Senator Webb (D-VA) may have found his grove.
Defense Department statistics show there were 38 four-stars, 149 three-stars, 299 two-stars and 464 one-stars on active duty at the end of March.
Webb also said he is not happy to have learned that there are officers taking part in fellowships at advocacy think tanks in the Washington, D.C., area, receiving full military pay and benefits, while the government is paying tuition to the think tanks. He has been trying for months to get details from the Defense Department about the number of officers involved, and an explanation of how the fellowships benefit the military more than the think tanks, but he said he has received only a small amount of information that did not answer his questions.
He warned that he might resort to holding up all Defense Department civilian nominations if he does not get the requested information. “The Department of Defense invented computer technology and the internet, despite what some other people might claim. This kind of information should not take three months to get. I should not be put in a situation where I have to put a hold on nominations to get it,” he said.
Senator - BZ - and keep digging. It gets nastier the deeper you go.
+1.
23 comments:
This did not happen accidently. I was at the Naval War College in 94-95. When I heard senior level officers actually planning to bump up flag numbers. At the same time there they were planning to reduce the number of ships and enlisted manning. Sadly the only losers in this gambit were enlisted folks who lost manning and advancement rates. At one time in the OS community it was easier to catch a STD than make OS1 or OSC.
I'm looking forward to the day Sen. Stuart Smalley Franken decides to get in Webb's face about something/anything. I'd pay good money to see that beat down.
I'm Good with this...
remember back in 96 when we were going to "season the force"... well the flags keep seasoning,,, the rest of us have to Perform to serve....
Ummm, Actually Webb got it right about Iraq-if you look at it from the standpoint of what is in America's interests and what does not break the force. FTI!
Skippy,
Read what Webb said about the surge et al. Look at what he said, not what you wish.
They don't know why, other than it's a nice group, they like each other, and don't want to see anyone leave and have to earn a paycheck on the outside. Those answers probably won't go over so well though.
Too many flags? I blame net-centric warfare which counterintuitively led to centralized decision making and the bloating of staffs which necessitated the herding of cats and protection of rice bowls. Captains can't be trusted to make decisions, but they make great adequate officers and herders of other, more capable action officers.
This is long overdue!! A couple of anecdotes to help fuel the arguement:
- We have more than 300 Admirals and less than 300 ships.
- The Navy or Army has more Flag Officers now that all the Flag Officers combined in WWII.
Finally - there are 38 four stars. Can you name them (not by name, but by position)?
Shawn,
That comments reflects as much on the dating habits of OS' as it does the advancement system. 8-)
You could get rid of 90% of the shore flags and staffs and it would be a decade before we'd notice.
Nope, you'd notice immediately as the request for silly metrics (for instance # of teeth pulled in a comrel visit) would end. The 8000 km screw driver would turn less and thus there'd be less screwing throughout the Fleet. Well, except for the coed ships, they always seems to have screwing.
and why does almost every Navy reserve flag (at least in some communities) find a way to get on active duty and stay there
At least get the number of flags below that of ships...The size of the officer corps as a whole needs shrinking, too. Greater responsibility (and thus satisfaction) for individuals at all levels, and greater institutional responsibility would result.
Webb may be on to something here. In his book, <span>Master of Seapower</span>, Thomas Buell praises FADM King for intentionally keeping the number of Flag Officers below 300 despite the massive expansion of the fleet during WW II. King's logic was that he didn't want to have less qualified people advanced to Flag and criticized the Army for the explosion of its General Officer community. Apologists for the current system will argue that we need to have the number of Flags we have today to "compete effectively in the Joint environment". I say BS. If we could operate a fleet of thousands of ships with less than 300 Flag Officers we should be able to get by with a fraction of that number today.
Am less impressed with his second action item. That Senator Webb is "shocked...shocked" that the services are assigning active duty officers to think tanks and research organizations is amusing since they've been doing it for several decades. The benefit to the services, at least during the Reagan Administration, was to keep an eye on the type of research being conducted and to coordinate the availability military speakers. In those days, the SECNAV's office took a personal interest in the Navy Fellows and their work. This involvement continued during Webb's tenure as SECNAV.
You mean like stating that , One of the biggest problems in the entire approach to the Iraq war is that this administration has never articulated a strategy that will show you an end point. If you can't tell this country when this war is going to be over in specific terms, then you don't have a strategy. ? Or when he said, "that {the Surge} would only become strategic in nature if there were significant political gains in terms of what people call reconciliation in Iraq. And that in 2010 we are still waiting for that. Any of those statements ring a bell? How many weeks since their elections (and how many bombings) and do they have a Prime Minister? Seems he was right on the mark.
How about the one he wrote before the war. " The issue before us is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to physically occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years. Those who are pushing for a unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit strategy if we invade and stay."
That's what he said-not what you wish he had said. And thanks to the ineptitude of the Arabs-he has been proven right on every count.
Besides-Webb hates Gen Order #1 and for that he's right on the mark too.
Ummmm, no. More like this from Jan '07 anti-war.com
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<p>In the official Democratic response to Bush's state of the union address, freshman Senator Jim Webb of Virginia focused more on strategy and tactics than the merits of the war itself.
</p><p>"We need a new direction," said Webb, whose son is currently deployed as a soldier in Iraq. "The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being fought, nor does the majority of our military."
</p><p>In his speech, Sen. Webb favored "regionally based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq's cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq."
</p></span>
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I believe that's the first time I've seen anyone on this blog use an anti-war.com quote to make his point.
Rather than rely on anti-war.com's interpretation outside the quotation marks, here's a transcript from the Feb 07 interview with Chris Wallace (three weeks after Bush gave his New Way Forward" speech):
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,250201,00.html
Herb,
Skippy and I like to tickle each other during our slap fights - let us play.
I gotta argue with this on several points:
Foremost, I ride this gravy train, and the more jobs that are available at the top, the better a chance I'll make it there. ;)
Second, just wondering, Senator, who approves the selection list for Colonels (Captains) Generals, and Admirals??
Third, If you think that staffs are too large, try to understand the complexity of the problems we face--the chutes 'n' ladders powerpoint slide of the war in Afghanistan? Each of those lines has a group of people dedicated to figuring their particular problem out. And each of those lines generates other lines.
You also can't blame this on net-centric war. The General Staff is a result of WWI--and we learned it from the other side. (Remember, we couldn't beat their military in WWI. The German Politicians quit before we could.) Regardless, the general staff was designed to track the wide-ranging factors that bear on decisions and can affect the lives of thousands of soldiers and sailors. It is a tool to be used by the commander to help him command and help him understand the environment.
Finally, I've never yet met a General Officer who was lazy, stupid, or who didn't work 18 hour days, six days a week. Admirals though....
Chuck
Too funny. You're on a roll, Phib!
Regardless of your source-Webb wasn't wrong about that one either-especially in 2007. Especially the idea of getting troops out of Iraq soon. Oops! Its three years later-96,000 troops are still there and the Iraqi government is still FUBAR. Situation normal.
When you dig through what he has said-he's been remarkably consistent. He was opposed to the war before it started for the reason that it was not in the nation's interest and would be a waste of resources, he stated that durng, and he is still stating that we are paying a huge price to keep troops there for a population that has proven itself unable to abandon its tired old ways of doing business. Seems pretty prescient to me.
Chuck just because a General works 18 hours a day doesnt make him smart.. it makes him tired... and I hate working for people that work harder and not smarter.
Your facts about the origins of the General staff are wrong. Go back to Fobbit ville and have fun with that.
Chuck, The reason that we have as many Flag Officers as we do has less to do with fighting a war or dealing with complex problems than it does in making sure that the Navy can compete with the other services for limited resources (read $$$) and political attention.
As for staffs, it's their nature to expand and to take on duties that are either being accomplished by someone else or to elevate a collateral function to primary duty. The DESRON staff I served on in the late '70s had 4 line officers, a doctor, a chaplain, and 5 enlisted. The one I commanded in the mid '90s had 8 line officers, a doctor, a chaplain, and 8 enlisted despite the fact that the latter organization had one less ship in it. The larger afloat and shore staffs were even worse. Not clear what "value added" was provided to the operators from this expansion. Once established staff billets and divisions don't go away. Over the years I watched the elimination of numerous staff organizations only to see them reappear under a different name a few months later.
Unlike you, I've met more than one stupid General Officer during my time in the service. They do like to work long hours 'though.
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