Far East Cynic

I’ll believe it when I actually see it.

Seems we have heard this song played before:

JACKSONVILLE, FLA. — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday he has ordered 20 percent “across the top” budget cuts for his Pentagon staff and that of his top brass.

The reductions, which he did not spell out in detail, are for the 2015-19 period. They will apply to his office, that of the Joint Chief’s chairman and also the Pentagon headquarters offices of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

It is one element of a broader effort by the Pentagon to adjust to forced spending reductions that already have resulted in the furloughing of civilian workers. Hagel said he believed Pentagon headquarters staff must share in the sacrifices.

Long time readers here no that I have no love for the fact that the Navy has more flag officers than ships. In fact I got into a bit of a dust up with a current active duty type who felt compelled to defend the current bloat of flag officers. I stand by my conclusions then and now.

The problem is that the flags get pretty defensive-and every flag officer believes that his billet is important, and could not be possibly filled by a non flag of a lower pay grade. Flag Officers also like their perks-they travel at will, not bothered by reductions in TAD money ( they simply screw the people working for them out of the money), and they like status and prestige. They will dig in , having their staffs generate a 100 PPT slides showing how the position has to be a flag officer, for "parity" with the other services.

I know this from first hand experience watching our own little , well functioning staff subsumed into the hoary monster that is a P-3 flag staff. Not that the P-3 guys need a flag in Japan, but "all the other task forces are flag officers" was the rage back in 2003. It will happen again.

I am with those that believe that our staff overhead is far too great. And much as it might pain me personally, the time has come for DOD to mercilessly go after staffs-starting with the COCOMS. Because you have to start at the top, bigger 4 star staffs make for bigger three star staffs and so on, and so forth. I am of a mind set that even the COCOM model has out lived it's usefulness-and that it might be better to fold them into a stateside reorganized Joint Staff. Just have forward deployed Joint Task Forces under the command of an already existing three star. This serves two effects :1) it holds numbers down and 2) In theory ( not necessarily in fact) would force a better coordination and understanding of issues at the Joint Staff level.

Can't be any worse than what we have now.

  1. Skippy;

    Did you "love" your ship?

    I was watching the long, very long, series on WW2 by the BBC. In it there was a survivor  of the HMS Hood who, despite the fact that the Hood was too top heavy and poorly built, really had a deep, still, affection for the Hood these MANY years later.

    Your thoughts?