Too Much of a Good Thing?
If you are a fan, or even a casual observer, of the various Star Trek shows; you may have noticed that the rank structure is just a trifle top heavy. The yeoman in the original series appeared to be the only enlisted person in the whole crew. Everyone else was at least an ensign.
Is this where our armed forces are heading?
Many of you have heard the apocryphal stories about how the Army has as many general officers as it had during WWII; with a force less than a quarter as large. I don't know how accurate that is, as I have never seen published figures for the numbers during that war or now. But I do know that the number of general officers in the Army is set by law at no more than ½ of one percent of the officer corps. I do know that there are currently 318 admirals in the Navy, 108 generals in the Marine Corps and 36 admirals in the Coast Guard, according to the May 1998 "Proceedings" magazine, Naval Review issue, published by the U. S. Naval Institute.
This is a lot of Flag Officers. More to the point, though, is the overall percentage of officers and non-commissioned officers to enlisted in each service. Assorted almanacs list the numbers of enlisted and officer in each service, making it easy to figure out overall percentages of officers. NCOs are more difficult, as they are not shown separate from enlisted.
Current officer ratios are in the vicinity of:
Army 10%
Navy 10%
Air Force 12%
Marines 8%
Coast Guard 20%
For NCO numbers, I'll have to rely for now on nineteen years of experience in the infantry. There will be a certain amount of variation between branches of the Army, of course, and between the different services. The numbers I use are for illustration only. I welcome discussion and clarification. Anyone who has information on manning levels in each service, please, let me hear from you. Include your sources so the rest of us can look into what you've found.
The percentage of officers is often pointed to when people talk about the service being "top heavy." I submit that if this is a problem; it isn't the only one. We also seem to have a surfeit of NCOs. Let's use an infantry platoon as an example.
A generic U.S. light infantry platoon has three rifle squads and a weapons squad. It's commanded by a lieutenant. His assistant is the platoon sergeant - usually a Sergeant First Class. Each squad is led by a Staff Sergeant. The rifle squads have two buck Sergeants each, to assist the squad leader by leading the fire teams. Reductions in manning have resulted in fire teams of only four men, including the team leader. The team leader is responsible for an automatic rifleman, a grenadier, and one lone rifleman, the only private. The AR and grenadier are both "specialist" positions.
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