The U.S. Navy has under 300 ships and under 300 admirals. The ratio of one admiral to one ship seems absurd but of the hundreds of admirals in the Navy, few actually command ships.
This from frontpagemag.com.
Recall Rick ‘Rachel’ Levine, the transgender health secretary who was commissioned a four-star admiral by The Obiden Regime? Yes, Levine’s admiralty was absurd, however, there are four rear admirals commanding the Navy medical corps, including a rear admiral in command of the U.S. Navy Dental Corps and another rear admiral who serves as the chief of the nursing corps along with four more rear admirals in the reserves. (Not counting the president’s doctor who is also a rear admiral.) Top heavy, indeed!
Not to be out done, the Navy JAG corps has four rear admirals.
The Army had 267 various generals (as of 2023, these numbers fluctuate) to 10 divisions. That’s 26 generals to a division. That’s nearly double what it was during WWII. The Marines have 85.
The Air Force has 241 making for a ratio of approximately 1 general to 22 aircraft.
Even the relatively newly spun off Space Force has 24 general officers. The Space Force has less than 10,000 ‘Guardians’ across six bases making for a ratio of one general officer to 416 Space Force ‘Guardians’ and four general officers to a base.
These all are reasons why Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has suggested cuts are badly needed. Hegseth has proposed cutting 20% of the 37 four-star officers and 10% of the over 800 flag and general officers. As he and others have pointed out, there are more than twice as many four-stars today as there were during WWII even as the force size shrank by over 80%.
This is not a new idea.
Recall, SecDef Robert Gates proposed similar steps under Obama with limited results. In fact, proposals to trim down the upper ranks surface from time to time and go nowhere. The people at the top got there by building political relationships with elected officials, higher ranks, lobbyists and industry figures.
Critics of Hegseth’s planned cuts claim we need growing administrative overhead to function, but the military functions far worse with this level of overhead than it once did. Apart from the financial burden, the chain of command has become diluted, the power of ranks have diminished and so have individual responsibility and accountability for military failures.
From 9/11 to Benghazi to the retreat from Afghanistan, no one has paid the price for military setbacks, and efforts to understand what went wrong have run into a wall of brass who all followed orders and none of whom are willing to take responsibility for initiating anything.
Administrative bloat is not just the military’s problem: It is America’s problem.
To wit:
– Newly enlisted soldiers live on food stamps while the ranks of generals and admirals keep swelling;
– Men die in the desert while earning less than they would working in an Amazon warehouse while the brass socialize in D.C. and try to figure out why they have a recruitment problem;
– The number of college administrators shot up 452% from the seventies to today. Top schools have 1 faculty member to 11 students and 1 administrator to 4 students; and
– Healthcare administrative bloat has turned medical institutions into bureaucracies while driving away doctors. There are now an estimated 10 bureaucrats to every doctor and most of our health care spending goes to service that perpetually expanding health care bureaucracy.
Veterans voted for Trump by a massive margin because they knew reforms were needed.
SecDef Hegseth is implementing the reforms the military desperately needs, and veterans and active-duty personnel want. His mission is to secure our future national defense.
