Update As Of 12/23/2013
The American Enterprise Institute just published “US Air Force pilots fly less than China's do”. Top Gun would have to spend more time chasing ladies.
An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “John Lehman: More Bureaucrats, Fewer Jets and Ships/More than half of our active-duty servicemen and women serve in offices on staffs.” (Subscription required) if true, makes this abundantly clear.
U.S. Military Is Anything But Lean And Mean
If the Pentagon were a private business it would be soon out of business.
Combat ready soldiers and weaponry were drastically reduced since the Iron Curtain fell, but not the pencil pushers in the Pentagon. Most of this reduction is well known.
“Instead of a 600-ship Navy, we now have a 280-ship Navy”
“The Air Force has fewer than half the number of fighters and bombers it had 30 years ago … fighter planes today average 28 years old. Although they have been upgraded to keep pace with the latest aircraft of their potential adversaries.”
“There are currently more than [1.5 million] full-time civilian employees in the Defense Department - 800,000 civil servants and 700,000 contract employees.” This compares to 1.4 million active duty personnel.
The claim that today’s weapons are more effective than those of 20 or 30 years ago according to this author is incorrect. Plus, he points out that the mere numerical or quantitative advantage is sometimes enough to make a potential adversary reconsider.
According to the author, the suffocating and bloated Pentagon bureaucracy causes significant runaway cost increases and enormous delays in several years in the procurement and deployment of new weapons systems.
Overdue Staff Reductions To Save Money
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is reported to have announced his intention to cut the bureaucracy of uniformed and civilian by at least 20%. A step in the right direction!
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