The Newest Branch of the Military Has one officer per enlisted person
Was reading up on Space Force, which was established to respond to threats posed by Russia and China from space. And to protect the vital stores of swiss cheese available on the moon. Or something like that.
While clearly this is an important initiative, I don’t take much comfort in it. There are 4,000 enlisted personnel. There are (wait for it) 4,000 officers. So you can imagine the bureaucracy involved. Does every officer have ONE person to order around? Or do many officers have NO direct reports? The absurdity of this is beyond belief, except of course as it is a part of the US government. Where huge wasteful bureaucracies are the GOAL and reason for being. Results…not so much. Remember this ratio: officers/enlisted 1:1.
Now lets contrast this easy target of mockery with a serious organization. That would be the US Marines. Which has 174,000 actives and 30,000 reserves. It has 21,500 officers, or 12.3% of the total personnel. That’s a 7:1 officer to enlisted ratio. Space force has….1:1. See for yourself.
So while you are trimming your pear trees, or watching Tik Tok influencers committing suicide riding subway trains, don’t be too sanguine about the safety that our Space Force may be affording us. When the Chinese space lasers are eviscerating your rear deck, the officers of the space force will be ordering the troops (one by one) to man the defenses. Consisting of the ineffective defensive weapons used to protect the Death Star, (right before it was blown up by Luke Skywalker).
About 200 of these missed Skywalker flying by. Unimpressive.
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