Infanteer said:
Agree. I worked on this with my graduate degree - staff sizes (in the Army at least) remained fairly constant to the 1980s - they even made it through unification with only cosmetic changes. It was the 1984 institution of the Continental System that led to an amazing amount of growth. This, I believe, is due to two reasons. First, the bureau structure of the continental system promotes "equality" - so, the Int guy, the CIMIC guy, and the Fin guy all occupy branches and are this equal to the Ops guy and the Admin Guy (who really drive the ship). So that means more guys at higher ranks. When something new is developed, it can be given it's own branch (along with rank and staff responsibility) instead of being subordinated to Ops or Admin as in our old model. Some staffs have J1 through 14.
The second is the "keeping up with the Jones" factor - NATO adopted a U.S. staff model which came with U.S. rank conventions. The Americans have always had staff out rank command. Majors were staff and Captains were commanders (as opposed to the opposite at the lowest levels of the Commonwealth system). When we graft it onto our system, it doesn't fit right, because now we have Majors in staff and Majors in Command and a bunch of Captains to work for them all. Apply that at every level, and the growth occurs.
I should go on search and find an old post of mine where I explain this in some detail but our "old" system was:
At unit level, the sub-unit commanders were majors and the principal staff officers (Adjutant, Ops O and QM) were captains;
At brigade level, the unit COs were lieutenant colonels while the principal staff officers (BM and DAA&QMG) were majors;
At division level, the brigade commanders were brigadiers while the principal staff officers were lieutenant colonels, later colonels;
At corps, the main subordinate commanders were major generals while the principal staff officers were brigadiers.
Do you see the pattern? The principal subordinate
commanders always outrank the principal staff officers. This accomplishes two things:
1. It simplifies and clarifies the chain of
command; no one can doubt that a brigadier outranks the lieutenant colonel GSO1 Ops at Div HQ; but
2. It
strengthens the staff ~ the staff must, always and clearly, understand their commander's intentions, the staff must be on top of the situation, it must have a firm grasp of all the details and exercise sound military judgement.
In our "old" system the brigade major for example, was able to
control the brigade, hour by hour and day by day on the brigade commander's behalf because the COs knew he had the brigadier's confidence ~ that was clear because he hadn't been fired ~ and the COs knew that he was a smart, hard working officer. It was a good sound,
economical system.
We need
reform of the C2
superstructure as a matter of urgency, in my
opinion.