I hate this one specifically because I've been an advocate for cutting high ranking officers. We have nearly 6x as many flag officers per regular sailor than we did in WW2, for example. We've been overburdened at the top levels of command ever since the post-Cold War draw down.
But doing it via blatant loyalty testing is dictator shit.
Not trying to start too much of an argument with you, but 6X?? The ratio of enlisted to officers is roughly 4 to 1. Also, there is a limit (by law) of how many general officers there can be total and the Navy has about 150 flag officers total. Hardly 6x the number of sailors. There is a glut of O-5's for sure, but that has always been the case. This is where literally 90% of officers end their careers. Why? Because less than 5% of eligible O-5's are selected for O-6. The 'checklist' of items you have to have completed for selection to O-6 is extremely difficult to achieve. Now, for those who DO promote to O-6, well, Colonels/Captains make up about 5% total of the entire officer corps and less than 1% of the entire military.
I retired at 32 years of active duty at O-8 and let me tell you, it was NOT an easy thing to achieve. There are only a limited number of assignments available to flag officers and if those officers do not retire or are selected for the next available rank, then that creates a 'dam' that prevents others from moving on up. Most officers retire at O-5 at 20-24 years. O-6's will retire at 30 (mandatory) if not selected for O-7. Failure to be selected for O-7-O-10 twice equals immediate retirement.
Compare senior officers O-7 through O-10 (800-900 total) to senior NCO's E-7 through E-9 (124,000) and I think you'll see that enlisted logjams are far, far, worse.
They were talking about the ratio of O-7+ to enlisted. The ratio is 6x higher than in WW2.
Not sure why WW2 is the comparison, though. I think one could argue that was contingency staffing and the current ratio is correct. And I’m sure one could argue that the WW2 ratio was too high and we need to cut even more senior leadership than planned. What’s the correct ratio? I don’t know. I don’t really care. I’m one of those O-5s working hard to get my promotion to Mr.
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u/Glossed-Lam 7h ago
I hate this one specifically because I've been an advocate for cutting high ranking officers. We have nearly 6x as many flag officers per regular sailor than we did in WW2, for example. We've been overburdened at the top levels of command ever since the post-Cold War draw down.
But doing it via blatant loyalty testing is dictator shit.