Senator Jim Webb of Virginia started the discussion a few months back when he pointed out that our military is increasingly “top heavy”: we have lots of admirals and generals. They call is “star creep”–the fact that we have an increase in flag and general officers while the military overall is shrinking in size. A researcher now confirms that Webb may be on to something.
“The average general and admiral has nearly 500 fewer uniformed personnel under command today than in 1991,” Ben Freeman of the Project on Government Oversight, told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday. Not only does this make the military more bureaucratic and bloated, it also gives us less bang for the buck. “The cost of officers increases markedly with their rank, so taxpayers are overpaying whenever a general or flag officer is in a position that could be filled by a lower-ranking officer,” he notes. There are 964 flag and general officers in the military today, down from 1,017 at the end of the cold war. But the total force is down by 600,000. (You can read Freeman’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee here.)
Another problem, says Freeman, is the growing number of senior civilians on the payroll at the Pentagon. Senator Lindsey Graham wants to know why their are so many senior civilians, part of the Senior Executive Service, at the Pentagon.