Acting secretary of the Air Force Eric K. Fanning says the zoomies will be forcing some 25,000 enlisted airmen into early retirement in the next few years. Downsizing the force could also eliminate 550 aircraft from the hangers and runways.
I realize that remotely-piloted drones are taking over some of the missions previously flown by manned aircraft, and so downsizing makes a certain sense, even if it’s most likely only the Democrats shoring up their growing welfare spending by cutting back on the military they hate so much.
But how about cutting back on some of the senior officers, especially the generals, whose salaries eat up a lot more of the personnel budget than the enlisted do. But, then, it’s always the little people who bear the burden, isn’t it?
Via Michael Yon.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
Yeah, the zoomies have always had a tendency to be more chiefs than Indians. That’s the way they, uh, roll.
The Army, too, in my experience.
Generals should die in the field, in all glory. Give each a gun, ammo and food supply for a few days and frog march them to Baghdad.
Concur. The way officers are handled is different from enlisted in terms of personnel management. I forget the exact particulars (I wasn’t an office poag, just an occasional victim), but when there is movement to “right-size” the services, you can know that a bunch of officers are being shuffled out the back door. In times of RIFs (reduction in force), then you have the problems of retaining the regular commission officers (like academy graduates, who essentially are guaranteed a military career out of high school) as opposed to some really qualified officers who are in on reserve commisions..
The Air Force has always been top-heavy in officers, which contributes to the nickname of “IBM in blue”. My brother was a hotshot fighter jock and a cousin was a flight surgeon (aerospace); both at one point told me that only about 12% of the officers in the USAF had anything whatsoever to do with flying.
That’s true, and if you hope to make full colonel, you have to stop flying. I grew up in the AF and I remember that particular little requirement.
True. My brother, a LtCol & top USAF test pilot for the F-16, faced that threat. He instead retired & became the top General Dynamics test pilot for the F-16.