Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Sort of like it required the football coach at USNA to do what a three star was unable or unwilling to do.
Bingo! We have a Bingo!
John also notes that this problem is directly related to the number of GoFo’s currently collecting paychecks. I agree. I find it amazing that we have as many Admirals as we do warships. If we truly wanted to reduce the defense budget, we could start by eliminating a large chunk of those paygrades.
The next step would be firing 90% of all civil service employees working for the military and replacing them with enlisted men and women.
…thus coming full circle.
One of the reasons we have so many GS-types is because the Congers cut such big chunks out of the military in the ’90s — the jobs still needed doing, and hiring civilians allowed the uniformed folks to keep doing the pointy-endy things without turning 50% of the trigger-pullers into pencil-pushers.
Yup. What we’ve seen is a tendency to push what were military jobs into the Civil Service, push Civil Service jobs onto contractors.
Not to mention the effects of turning military, CS, and contractors into accountants of various sorts with endless metrics, data calls, and databases.
You don’t smite America’s enemies with a database.
You haven’t done enough with Oracle. It can smite anybody. Especially if Peoplesoft is connected to it.
I am reminded that Rome was not built in a day, nor was it built by holding meetings and showing presentations and hiring accountants.
It was built by killing all those opposed to it.
Which, as a business model really has some advantages when it comes to gaining market share. As a business plan, though, it’s probably not going to impress your local banker. You’re probably better off seeking a venture capitalist in that regard.
– Max
The long game is to cut headcount that leads to pensions and healthcare – like forever. Is the cost per white hat currently over $150K for the rest of their lives?
There’s no such financial burden with civvies. Nor was there such a burden when there was high turnover rates like back in my era. Remember the day when an E-4 was a more senior enlisted person in a division? I certainly do. Now E-5s are a step above cleaning toilets and messcooking.
A purely professional force (they were called “lifers” back in my day) has its costs – and please understand I do not deride these folks that serve for a career. I’m looking purely at costs.
A perfect example of both our societal paranoia, the mania for finger pointing, and the desire for keister covering. All that leads to micromanaging. And then the micromanaging capons whining about how hard they work and being plagued by having to make decisions on how far to fill the water glasses, but woe be unto the underling who fails to ask.
As I said in an earlier thread about the USNA Sup and deriliction of duty….
You accept a commission to make decisions. If you refuse to make decisions, then what use are you. A decision about a guy and a dog making it to the Secretary level is a symptom of a very serious, and most likely, fatal disease.
Too many chiefs, not enough injuns.
No, a good Chief would have made a decision, and then told his DivO what he did.
Perzactly! Spoken like a true, and good, NCO!
Robo-fly spies on the Gates’ evening meal:
Honey, how was your day?
Fine, sweetums, had to have a conference call with 5 4 stars to decide “should the dog come home or not”. I tell you, they don’t pay me enough to make these kind of gut-wrenching national security decisions. Sigh, why did I ever leave Aggie Land?
You didn’t dear, they kicked you out.
So the old tried and true working formula of “F**k-up and move up” is still valid, eh, G-man? Not good enough for the Aggies, but just perrrfect for SECDEF!
We are becoming the duchy of Grand Fenwick.
Hear us roar!
C. Northcoat Parkinson is smiling down from above…
Heh. Of course, full disclosure, I *are* a defense contractor… that said, replacing us with Civil Servants means you hire a whole new group of people, who, unlike us bad contractors, you can’t just dump at the stroke of a pen.
And I do like the cost comparisons – which take only the salary of the civil servant, and compare that to the contract cost of a contractor. Which, oddly enough, is comparing only the raw material cost of a Chevette against the entire lifecycle and infrastructure cost of a Focus, and declaring them equal in quality.
This isn’t to say that civil servants aren’t most of them fine folk (at least where I work) but if you don’t understand what your comparing, your analysis is meaningless.
Of course, I’ll agree that the Beltway is bloated. ‘Cuz I don’t work there.
I have been saying we are top-heavy since the 90s, wrote an article for Proceedings on it…
My cap would be 1 RADM per 30 commisioned vessels. ~10 ATT
3 VADM
1 ADM
Keep in mind that a CAPT is Commadore of an 8 ship Destroyer Squadron…
For USMC [and USA in comparable ratios]
1 MGen per Div – 3 active MARDIVs
1 LtGen
1 Gen
For USAF
1 MGen per 200 aircraft.
Limit the numbers of flags to the actual capabilities…
But then we won’t be able to have all those really cool departments have 4-star generals… like “Human Resources” or “Diversity”, or those cooky doctor-generals in charge of weapons procurement and R&D. I mean… think of the consequences!
Frankly, my good man, that’s still overly bloated. Consider a force of similar size in 1941 when Nimitz was head of BuNav (now BuPers, Bureau of personnel for those not familiar with NavySpeak) he was an O-6, and got stars not long after. he was then bumped to CINCPAC and CINCPOA right after Pearl Harbor, with 4 stars.
We have a very seriously bloated senior officer Corps. A retired O-6 I was talking with this AM said it was probably to keep good people, but I poo-pooed that very quickly as the Military will always be under paid relative to the civilian world. It’s the nature of the beast. I’d give 1 Soldier/Sailor/Marine for any 10 NFL/NBA/MLB players in terms of value to the country, but we don’t make money from war, and people are a bit leery about sitting in the stands to watch Tarawa, Iwo Jima, or Normandy live.
So, in the end, his idea really begs the question of why so many GOFOs.
In the end, it boils down to politics and how well they are played. People like Patton and MacArthur fell through the cracks. Petraeus may be a very good officer, but in the military today, stars means you are a politician and not necessarily a good officer. The good officers I’ve known have had no desire to become a GOFO. Frankly, if you like the idea of being one so much you game the system to get those stars, you are most likely not qualified, and likely never will be qualified. But being qualified is not all that important. How you play the game is. And, as a result, such a system will yield a Flag Corps with its numbers equal to the number of ships. Such a system is quite sick and is not stable.
Dear Mr. Secretary:
I propose that you write the following on a piece of paper and tape it to the wall that you will be looking at when you pick up your phone. Read it off at least 10 times a day over the phone. Be sure to hang up immediately after you read it off.
“Figure it out yourself. And if you ever call me up to make a decision like this again I’ll have your stars and give them to someone who can make it themselves.”
Actually, it needs to go on the phone of every flag officer and SES…and probably most O-6s and GS-15s as well.
I’m confused.
Isn’t the SecDef the senior DoD civilian and adviser to the president? Or is he the seniorest decision maker in the chain?
Cheers, Mitch
He is the senior decision maker. But most decisions are not proper to pass to him. If Specialist Joe Lager had a bit too much lager on pass, and shows up late for morning formation, his Platoon Sergeant is the one to deal with the problem first, not the Platoon Leader, Company Commander, BC, or the Division CG. Certainly not SecDef. Frankly, if the problem reached the BC, the man should be in so much trouble Leavenworth should feel like a vacation by the time he gets there (assuming he survives the trip down the Company street).
Oh NO! Moderation H3ll!
I used to live next door to an Apple exec.
He didn’t have a pager, and he didn’t take business calls after hours.
If it were an emergency he expected his people to solve it without him.
If it wasn’t he didn’t need to know about it until Monday.
A bright young jr. exc. found my neighbor’s unlisted home number and called him about a serious problem that couldn’t wait. The guy was replaced before the ‘problem’ was even considered.
Why can’t Gates get rid of everyone from the dog on up who failed to make a decision?
That’s kind of funny, Joel. I once worked for an exec who, while I was solving problems, insisted on hovering around my desk and interrupting me with questions. While I didn’t completely ignore him, eventually the conversation always ended with, “I can answer your questions or I can fix the problem and e-mail you the after-action report. Which would you prefer?”
He wasn’t around long.
My present employer admits he knows squat about what I do, how I do it, and really doesn’t care. All he wants to know is if we’re dead in the water and I need him to buy us some help, and he’ll know that because after things are once again operational he’ll find a reimbursement form on his desk.
You couldn’t pry me out of this job with a crowbar.
I dare say the Navy could once again use officers who knew a little about a lot, NCO’s who knew a whole lot about a bit less, and staff officers who knew they didn’t know and trusted their sailors to make the right call.
– Max
Hey, Joel – leave the dog out of this. He and his handler are probably the only ones who should be free of criticism!
Collateral damage man, gotta limit that in this COIN COE.
I worked for a MAJ one time that summed it up perfectly. He said “I can’t wait to get a battalion command, so I can actually run a company”.
The sarcasm was dripping off the walls.
The tendency is everywhere. Donald Trump once said: “We spend a million dollars worth of head-hunting fees to pick the ‘best and the brightest,’ then ask ‘em a billion questions over multiple interviews over six-months, then hire the creme of the crop only to micro-manage ‘em like they were the village idiot.”
While there is bloat, one reason not yet mentioned is that we have modern departments or branches that didn’t exist in WW2. Now we have electronics, aviation (nearly everyone’s based on aviators now), aerospace, computers. The USAF didn’t exist; now it needs its very own tail, including GOFOs
Harking back to a recent thread, I wonder if the requirement that fixed-wing aviators be officers has contributed to this?