Hi CDR. Can you give us a run down of prior Pentagon GOFO reductions? I recall there was supposed to be a 100 personnel cut (Gates?) to identify unnecessary positions and shorten the chain of command. How many were really cut?
No go. The hyperlink takes me to SECDEF memo saying to do it and a DoD table of GOFO by services and total for 2025. There's no comparison reference to show GOFO say in 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020. I was looking for Gates' big post-GOFO cut budgets. So, being a Navy/OSD budget geek I went looking at DoD Comptroller website budget materials. Was also looking for some old budgets for POW/MIA budgets after I read article today on the lack of funding. As I looked back across different fiscal years, it looks like the old budget books have been scrubbed clean to all look alike. Lots of same program descriptions across different years. Lots of missing information in original formats. I know because I wrote a lot of them, including the POW/MIA budget which cites a specific law requiring the budget show both the requirement and the requested budget and explain any difference. (That was the only Pentagon budget out of 10,000 line items required to show its requirements.) That POW/MIA budget exhibit looks standardized and is missing that legal citation. I'm thinking Elon's infamous DOGE boys played with historical data, probably because they had nothing better to do (except how to write code) and/or had no idea how to evaluate Pentagon budgets!
Clicked "align" before I submitted above reply. Just a bunch of individual firings (similar to your article on Russian purges). But I'm really asking a bigger U.S. question. Need a big picture of U.S. totals and why (Navy) has more admirals than combat ships, (carriers, cruisers, destroyers, submarines)!
We too often refuse to learn from our own experiences, paid for in blood. It's hard to expect us to learn from external experiences. We should do both, of course.
CDR Sal, interesting quote at the end of your article: "Russian military culture is very different from the American military culture, but there is a not-insignificant degree of overlap to the point that there is value in reading about it. If nothing, they are closer to the U.S. than the PRC." All can agree senior Russian military leaders have performed badly. In many cases paid very publicly and...at times...very harshly career wise, freedom wise, and, well, with their lives. I think it's fair to say, the Russian military completely understands their situation and the price they will pay for poor performance...and if your patron / sponsor goes down, you are likely going down with him. Perhaps in a less harsh way, but...Contrast that with our relative lack of accountability for poor performance (20 years in AFG, the withdrawal, acquisition disasters like LCS, etc, etc). Our "senior military culture" has had little to no accountability for so long, f**k up and move up has become institutionalized. The fact that there have been early retirements has generated wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments not seen since...well, Donald Rumsfeld refused to sign early retirement waivers at current grade held in the early 2000s. Now, if you want to get "results oriented", take look back at Marshall's "Plucking" of incompetent senior officers which actually began before WWII. Turns out Marshall read the situation perfectly, and probably saved us during the early days after Pearl Harbor. IMO, YMMV.
"Our "senior military culture" has had little to no accountability for so long, f**k up and move up has become institutionalized." Yes, and no one in the military is standing up to fix this.
Hegseth is trying to catch up but has a way to go. It would be helpful to be more specific about the reasons for removal. Ike sent bunches of generals home for operational failure but that was a long time ago.
Hegseth himself played a central role in the most incompetent military operation in living memory. If he wants to restore a culture of responsibility, then he should resign. If he wants to restore a warrior ethos, then he should commit seppuku.
How long have you been alive? Because if you're older than 50, your claim that this mess in Iran is "the most incompetent military operation in living memory" is definitely not true.
100% that considerations on the Midterms now affect every decision being made by Team Trump. Fingers crossed that the Democrats/Communists/DSA do not take control of Congress. I am still grinning about Hung being nominated to the Senate. Such a great choice.
"It would be real interesting to see a U.S. version of this chart for GOFO since 2001"
Yes. But.. a U.S. version should reverse the comparison and focus on the positive consequences of abandoning the job to focus on politically correct action instead. Remember Obama? dismissal for success, promotion for shutting up while sucking up? I'm Canadian, that's how we've done it since the 1970s and now? the entire CAF would fall to a well trained rifle squad.
Sal, I did a go on it six years ago that you liked (1).
Maybe someone can re-run the numbers on how many flag AND "FLAG EQUIVALENT" folks we have in DON today vs January 1945, then show the number of ships and airplanes then vs now.
My guess is the cuts we're hearing about are no where near what's needed.
"This cadre of 661 flags and 'flag equivalents' lords over a force comprised of approximately 275 significant ships and something in the neighborhood of 3,111 combat aircraft.
That's three times the number of senior 'leaders' attempting to manage a force one thirteenth the size of the Navy that successfully fought a global war."
We sure have. When I worked civil service for the Air Force in the 2000s and 2010s, I worked at a depot where there was a block of 72 buildings that did supply support and administration for the depot and housed program offices for half a dozen aircraft. Each building had about 150 people (mixed military and civilian) and every single building had a bird-colonel in the front-office. That's pretty damn top-heavy when you consider that this part of the base had the same number of people as approximately two CVNs. From my experience, a CVN has typically 4-5 bird O-6s (the C.O., Senior Medical Officer, a couple of O-6 squadron commanders, and the Reactor Officer is usually an O-6). My number may be off but I'm damn sure there weren't 36 O-6 captains on any carrier that I was on in the Navy. For any building that I served in, I have no doubt that an O-4 could've run it just fine. (In fact, I was in an organization where the colonel pretty much lived his life TAD and an O-4 did run the organization 80% of the time. When that colonel retired, one of my coworkers printed the poster for the movie "Anywhere But Here" on 11"x17" paper and pasted that colonel's face over Susan Sarandon's face.)
What's funny is every one of those colonels that I ever worked under was just positive that he was going to make brigadier general and I've seen the utter bafflement when they didn't make it (statistically only 2-3% of AF bird colonels make general). One idiot thought he'd make it when he was fired from his last post, WTF?
Was Zukhov the general (marshall) that set up a couple miles around a bend down stream of a wounded soldier and shot every officer who tried to drive past until somebody showed up with the wounded man? Probably apocryphal, but an excellent story regardless.
"Rapid replacement of leaders may harm military effectiveness."
Not too sure about that one. We had sufficient churn in the 8th Air Force that there literally dozens of Majors, LTC, and Colonels running commands in their early to mid-'20's.
\churning\ My dad was a 1st LT in the USAAF there. Ex-Enlisted with no college. He was riffed back to Sergeant after the war. He got called back up as a Captain in Korea and had a former USAAF Colonel who had also been riffed back to Sergeant who was working for him, a real leadership challenge, Dad said. Then, that guy got recalled as a Colonel and gave dad fits for several weeks until he was transferred. There are also people who resist assignments that they consider a dead end for promotion. The Assistant EWO billet at CincPacFlt had been unfilled for a long time because it was considered a dead end career-wise for some LCDR SWO asked to fill it. So, through no wheeling and dealing on my part I got offered the job as an EWCS(SW) at loose ends after quitting OCS. Served there for 9 months until I promoted to W-2 and got sent to a Frigate, where I rightfully belong. I was replaced by another E-8 EW.
Always preferable to visit The Conservative Wahoo first before snarking about. "I am not asking anyone to become a Democrat. I am asking whether the thing you now defend would have been recognizable to the man you once claimed as the patron saint of your politics. Here are ten places where the distance is not subtle." -Bryan McGrath 9-2-26
Full disclosure: My meeting with him was only a private meeting for 1 hour with a few other students at Cal State University Fullerton in the late 1960's when he was governor.
My last year in the Marines saw a steady inflow and outflow of Captains and Lt's.
This was in CLNC. Mid seventies. I saw good men come and bad men come too, and they all rotated out fast. End of the Vietnam war was near.
It caused major disruptions in an already troubled Bn.
One Major was removed for somehow on a big training exercise with the 82d at fort Bragg for accidently attacking and over running his own HQ. That was a Recon FUBAR. Back at the base it would have been fine but in front of God and the Army?
A Russian diplomat, when asked about the Communists political system, explained that the Communists have a system of checks and balances. The Party, the Secret Police and the Army. Purges are always made by one group to check the other.
Hi CDR. Can you give us a run down of prior Pentagon GOFO reductions? I recall there was supposed to be a 100 personnel cut (Gates?) to identify unnecessary positions and shorten the chain of command. How many were really cut?
Read the hyper links provided in my post.
No go. The hyperlink takes me to SECDEF memo saying to do it and a DoD table of GOFO by services and total for 2025. There's no comparison reference to show GOFO say in 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020. I was looking for Gates' big post-GOFO cut budgets. So, being a Navy/OSD budget geek I went looking at DoD Comptroller website budget materials. Was also looking for some old budgets for POW/MIA budgets after I read article today on the lack of funding. As I looked back across different fiscal years, it looks like the old budget books have been scrubbed clean to all look alike. Lots of same program descriptions across different years. Lots of missing information in original formats. I know because I wrote a lot of them, including the POW/MIA budget which cites a specific law requiring the budget show both the requirement and the requested budget and explain any difference. (That was the only Pentagon budget out of 10,000 line items required to show its requirements.) That POW/MIA budget exhibit looks standardized and is missing that legal citation. I'm thinking Elon's infamous DOGE boys played with historical data, probably because they had nothing better to do (except how to write code) and/or had no idea how to evaluate Pentagon budgets!
My brother in Christ…did you click more than one? Click “align.”
Clicked "align" before I submitted above reply. Just a bunch of individual firings (similar to your article on Russian purges). But I'm really asking a bigger U.S. question. Need a big picture of U.S. totals and why (Navy) has more admirals than combat ships, (carriers, cruisers, destroyers, submarines)!
'Tis a foolish nation that refuses to learn from it's enemy.
WRT China, consider that right now, the PLA in all it's forms is just building up, and everyone is a bureaucrat.
The PLA officer corps are party functionaries.
Yes, bureaucrats
We too often refuse to learn from our own experiences, paid for in blood. It's hard to expect us to learn from external experiences. We should do both, of course.
CDR Sal, interesting quote at the end of your article: "Russian military culture is very different from the American military culture, but there is a not-insignificant degree of overlap to the point that there is value in reading about it. If nothing, they are closer to the U.S. than the PRC." All can agree senior Russian military leaders have performed badly. In many cases paid very publicly and...at times...very harshly career wise, freedom wise, and, well, with their lives. I think it's fair to say, the Russian military completely understands their situation and the price they will pay for poor performance...and if your patron / sponsor goes down, you are likely going down with him. Perhaps in a less harsh way, but...Contrast that with our relative lack of accountability for poor performance (20 years in AFG, the withdrawal, acquisition disasters like LCS, etc, etc). Our "senior military culture" has had little to no accountability for so long, f**k up and move up has become institutionalized. The fact that there have been early retirements has generated wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments not seen since...well, Donald Rumsfeld refused to sign early retirement waivers at current grade held in the early 2000s. Now, if you want to get "results oriented", take look back at Marshall's "Plucking" of incompetent senior officers which actually began before WWII. Turns out Marshall read the situation perfectly, and probably saved us during the early days after Pearl Harbor. IMO, YMMV.
"Our "senior military culture" has had little to no accountability for so long, f**k up and move up has become institutionalized." Yes, and no one in the military is standing up to fix this.
None of their civilian heads of departments are either.
Great point. I often forget to mention the SES, et al. My bad. Thanks for the correction.
I was thinking of SECNAV, SECAF, etc., but SES are a part of the overall problem as well.
Hegseth is trying to catch up but has a way to go. It would be helpful to be more specific about the reasons for removal. Ike sent bunches of generals home for operational failure but that was a long time ago.
Hegseth himself played a central role in the most incompetent military operation in living memory. If he wants to restore a culture of responsibility, then he should resign. If he wants to restore a warrior ethos, then he should commit seppuku.
How long have you been alive? Because if you're older than 50, your claim that this mess in Iran is "the most incompetent military operation in living memory" is definitely not true.
What is pointing at the squirrels in Moscow and Beijing while Hegseth runs amok on the military side of the U.S. profit machine……..
Cut deep, cut often, until the problem is solved.
Hegseth had basically promised to do this at the GOFO level back in March of 2025. Yet, here we are.
I will admit I'm somewhat dismayed by that. Perhaps he's found that some of them have patrons too powerful to buck.
Be interesting to see what happens after mid terms. We can only hope the chopping block will come back out.
100% that considerations on the Midterms now affect every decision being made by Team Trump. Fingers crossed that the Democrats/Communists/DSA do not take control of Congress. I am still grinning about Hung being nominated to the Senate. Such a great choice.
"It would be real interesting to see a U.S. version of this chart for GOFO since 2001"
Yes. But.. a U.S. version should reverse the comparison and focus on the positive consequences of abandoning the job to focus on politically correct action instead. Remember Obama? dismissal for success, promotion for shutting up while sucking up? I'm Canadian, that's how we've done it since the 1970s and now? the entire CAF would fall to a well trained rifle squad.
"the entire CAF would fall to a well trained rifle squad"
to be fair, they would be outnumbered
Sal, I did a go on it six years ago that you liked (1).
Maybe someone can re-run the numbers on how many flag AND "FLAG EQUIVALENT" folks we have in DON today vs January 1945, then show the number of ships and airplanes then vs now.
My guess is the cuts we're hearing about are no where near what's needed.
1. https://nexttobagend.blogspot.com/2020/08/death-by-bloat.html
Ye-ow!
"This cadre of 661 flags and 'flag equivalents' lords over a force comprised of approximately 275 significant ships and something in the neighborhood of 3,111 combat aircraft.
That's three times the number of senior 'leaders' attempting to manage a force one thirteenth the size of the Navy that successfully fought a global war."
We’ve had that “over-abundance” for several decades.
We sure have. When I worked civil service for the Air Force in the 2000s and 2010s, I worked at a depot where there was a block of 72 buildings that did supply support and administration for the depot and housed program offices for half a dozen aircraft. Each building had about 150 people (mixed military and civilian) and every single building had a bird-colonel in the front-office. That's pretty damn top-heavy when you consider that this part of the base had the same number of people as approximately two CVNs. From my experience, a CVN has typically 4-5 bird O-6s (the C.O., Senior Medical Officer, a couple of O-6 squadron commanders, and the Reactor Officer is usually an O-6). My number may be off but I'm damn sure there weren't 36 O-6 captains on any carrier that I was on in the Navy. For any building that I served in, I have no doubt that an O-4 could've run it just fine. (In fact, I was in an organization where the colonel pretty much lived his life TAD and an O-4 did run the organization 80% of the time. When that colonel retired, one of my coworkers printed the poster for the movie "Anywhere But Here" on 11"x17" paper and pasted that colonel's face over Susan Sarandon's face.)
What's funny is every one of those colonels that I ever worked under was just positive that he was going to make brigadier general and I've seen the utter bafflement when they didn't make it (statistically only 2-3% of AF bird colonels make general). One idiot thought he'd make it when he was fired from his last post, WTF?
Stalin would have had them shot.
Contrary to Trotskyite propaganda, Comrade Stalin had many good qualities.
On a forum elsewhere, a former East German had the following in his sig:
"The Soviet Union had the one redeeming feature that, occasionally, f*wits got shot."
(Not censored in the original.)
Was Zukhov the general (marshall) that set up a couple miles around a bend down stream of a wounded soldier and shot every officer who tried to drive past until somebody showed up with the wounded man? Probably apocryphal, but an excellent story regardless.
I never heard the story.
Better than the Gulag.
Thank you Tovarisch !
Yep. Read it a few days ago. Very interesting. Thanks for the update, CDR Sal.
Well, at least we are doing something right...
"Rapid replacement of leaders may harm military effectiveness."
Not too sure about that one. We had sufficient churn in the 8th Air Force that there literally dozens of Majors, LTC, and Colonels running commands in their early to mid-'20's.
\churning\ My dad was a 1st LT in the USAAF there. Ex-Enlisted with no college. He was riffed back to Sergeant after the war. He got called back up as a Captain in Korea and had a former USAAF Colonel who had also been riffed back to Sergeant who was working for him, a real leadership challenge, Dad said. Then, that guy got recalled as a Colonel and gave dad fits for several weeks until he was transferred. There are also people who resist assignments that they consider a dead end for promotion. The Assistant EWO billet at CincPacFlt had been unfilled for a long time because it was considered a dead end career-wise for some LCDR SWO asked to fill it. So, through no wheeling and dealing on my part I got offered the job as an EWCS(SW) at loose ends after quitting OCS. Served there for 9 months until I promoted to W-2 and got sent to a Frigate, where I rightfully belong. I was replaced by another E-8 EW.
That’s how you really find out who’s worth promoting.
Always preferable to visit The Conservative Wahoo first before snarking about. "I am not asking anyone to become a Democrat. I am asking whether the thing you now defend would have been recognizable to the man you once claimed as the patron saint of your politics. Here are ten places where the distance is not subtle." -Bryan McGrath 9-2-26
#1 Character Was Not A Luxury Good
One and done.
https://conservativewahoo.substack.com/p/the-city-still-has-doors?r=fvsci&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
I'm not sure what this has to do with DJT or Ronaldus Magnus.
Exactly. Although you are probably to young to have served under Reagan or ever had a discussion with him during his career.
My commission was signed by Ronald Reagan.
Full disclosure: My meeting with him was only a private meeting for 1 hour with a few other students at Cal State University Fullerton in the late 1960's when he was governor.
My last year in the Marines saw a steady inflow and outflow of Captains and Lt's.
This was in CLNC. Mid seventies. I saw good men come and bad men come too, and they all rotated out fast. End of the Vietnam war was near.
It caused major disruptions in an already troubled Bn.
One Major was removed for somehow on a big training exercise with the 82d at fort Bragg for accidently attacking and over running his own HQ. That was a Recon FUBAR. Back at the base it would have been fine but in front of God and the Army?
A Russian diplomat, when asked about the Communists political system, explained that the Communists have a system of checks and balances. The Party, the Secret Police and the Army. Purges are always made by one group to check the other.