Reducing Senior Officer Billet Bloat Requires Leadership

In December 1944, nearly a week into the Battle of the Bulge, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s utterly professional leadership succeeded – once he was granted the requisite authority by General Eisenhower – in making immediate tactical adjustments, getting hot food to freezing GIs, restoring morale and proper communications among the Western armies, and turning the tide of what had the makings of a disaster. Eighty years later, the United States (alongside Western allies) face another crisis, one that demands ruthlessly professional leadership of a different sort.

The most likely reductions, at the 3- and 4-star levels, arguably, are overdue, highlighted by a congressionally mandated Congressional Research Service (CRS) updated report earlier this year.

With respect to 4-star GFOs, however, the percentage increase has been much higher – a whopping 107 percent increase of TF. But 3-star officers increased at an even higher rate, a 129 percent increase. (2- and 1-star officers increased much less dramatically, a 17 percent increase of TF from 1965-2023).

The CRS impartially presents the basic opposing views. One side argues the increased proportion of GFOs is overly costly “and contributes to more bureaucratic decision [-] making processes.” The other argues the increased percentage “is linked to the military’s greater emphasis on joint and coalition operations,” and both technological and budgetary changes that require more senior-level oversight.

The research service notes that Congress has established “a statutory framework for GFOs” addressing their numbers by grade and requiring presidential determination of many 3- and 4-star positions. The framework provides “greater congressional control over the most senior GFO positions [3- and 4-star billets], while providing substantial latitude to the executive branch in the management of the remaining GFOs,” the 1- and 2-star jobs.

While the nuts-and-bolts of GFO billets are beyond the scope of this article, interested parties should be aware that the actual number of 4-star GFOs was higher in 2023 than in 1965 (37 versus 36); and the actual number of 3-stars also was higher last year than in 1965 (132 versus 119).

In stark contrast, during the past six decades the size of the TF “dropped by approximately 51.5%, from 2.66 million” in 1965, “. . . to 1.29 million on September 30, 2023.”

Think about it. Today’s defense department has only one-half the TF of 1965, but with more actual 4-/3-star billets. Combining the two most senior grades, in 2023 there were 169 billets compared with 155 during the Vietnam conflict.

Is this not shocking? To what end?

For trending context, consider these approximate comparisons over the past three-plus decades, up to 2023 (for statistics, see CRS study, pg. 14):

While the trend of GFOs as a percentage of the Total Force has decreased slightly-to-modestly since 2018, here’s the key point: the modest-to-significant increases among 4-/3-star officers during 1990-2010 as percentage of TF still leaves the Pentagon today with ample room for further reductions at the most senior grades (4-/3-stars) in order to remain within traditional Cold War percentages. 

In a 2010 address, then-Secretary of Defense Dr. Robert Gates stated:

Almost a decade ago, Secretary Rumsfeld lamented that there were 17 levels of staff between him and a line officer. The Defense Business Board recently estimated that in some cases the gap between me and an action officer may be as high as 30 layers. ... Consider that a request for a dog-handling team in Afghanistan . . . must go through no fewer than five four-star headquarters in order to be processed, validated, and eventually dealt with.   

Apart from potential reductions of GFO billets, it appears likely that Pentagon warrior or plucking boards will retire certain senior officers that supported or were complicit in readiness-degrading, morale-killing, diversity-equity programs or proved incompetent in their jobs.[iv] ]

For a single specific example in each category that should be included in the board’s work, I suggest under the former:

. . . any GFOs at Pacific Air Forces headquarters who, in 2022, risibly equated preferred pronoun usage with “lethality”; and, in the latter category, any GFOs that supported U.S. operational plans for the withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021.   

Perhaps President-elect Trump’s proposed Pentagon boards, in carrying out their most immediate task, could also support a secondary purpose of illuminating the efficacy of reducing the percentage of the most senior GFO billets within the Total Force of our armed forces.

To repair the damage of 2021-2025 and prepare for the potential military requirements of a world in flames, will require clear-eyed professional leadership.

The late President Reagan said of the nation’s servicemembers: “All gave some. Some gave all.” May official Washington judge these matters by one-and-the-same standard for all, based upon objectives and merit rather than various other interests, as many Americans have been pleading for – lest, in the end the country sustain more loss and pain in the latter, hallowed category – than ought to be.

Forrest L. Marion is a retired Department of the Air Force military historian. His most recent work is Standing Up Space Force: The Road to the Nation’s Sixth Armed Service (Naval Institute Press, 2023).

[i] “Executive Summary of the 2024 Index of U.S. Military Strength,” Heritage Foundation, Jan. 24, 2024, accessed at https://www.heritage.org/military-strength/executive-summary (Dec. 13, 2024). Overall assessment of U.S. Military Power: “WEAK.”

[ii] General and Flag Officers in the U.S. Armed Forces: Background and Considerations for Congress [R44389] (Washington, updated 8 March 2024), accessed at https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44389/9 (Nov. 23, 2024) [emphasis in original]. Unless cited otherwise, subsequent quotes are taken from this CRS report.

[iii] POGO Staff, “More Brass, More Bucks, Officer Inflation in Today’s Military,” Project On Government Oversight, Mar. 1, 1998.

[iv] John Noonan, “Trump Prepares a Pentagon Plucking Committee,” National Review, Nov. 12, 2024, accessed at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-prepares-a-pentagon-plucking-committee/ (Dec. 13, 2024).