Anyone really that surprised?

Armed Forces chiefs dodge redundancies - Telegraph

Disappointed rather than surprised. But the good bit is that the MoD us on the case.

Loved the comment from one poster that leadership has been replaced by management. His whole comment on
the article says it all for me.

Jobs for the boys - no surprises there, really. Before long there'll be more chiefs than injuns.

I find this very surprising, I thought with the changes to CEA/entertainment allowance they would all be wanting out to pile into the highly paid jobs they could just walk into.

Interesting - I suspect the problem is that these things take time to filter through the system. In the RN for instance, the first round of redundancies targeted junior ranks because SDSR had left a surplus of them in the system with no jobs to do. So far we've not seen the disestablishment of the top level organisation at which you'd expect to see 1* and above targeted.

I've heard that the RAF will massively reduce 2*'s soon - but its taking time to put the new structural arrangements in place to work out how many you need, ahead of setting your manning requirement at that level. I suspect we'll see reductions over the next year or two, as the wider Force 2020 arrangements and structures are implemented. The problem is the medias desire to sacrifically kill off senior officers at all costs.

As remarked elsewhere, I imagine it is still 'up or out' for star ranks (correct me please if that is not so these days?) so by merely decreasing promotions the numbers can presumably be reduced without 'redundancies'. Over the last few years the RN at least has already reduced the star ratings of various jobs ( for instance RM, Submarines, FAA, and medics and dentists) and combined jobs (e.g.2SL and CinC Home which once upon a time was spread over at least four four stars), a process which will no doubt continue, watched with interest by those who see their own promotion opportunities disappearing. Similarly, for instance, as the RN has closed shore establishments the 1* and Captains' jobs associated with them have disappeared. To say nothing of the Flag representation in our overseas stations which are now history. On the other hand we have new processes (such as 'diversity') visited on the Armed Forces and presumably these soak up senior representation without, perhaps, contributing to killing the Queen's enemies.

Never understimate our esteemed leaders' ability to continue to create 1* and above jobs as the cuts start to bite! As seaweed intimated above, various diversity, human resources, accommodation and real estate studies all need the power of at least a 1* at the tiller! In my humble opinion (from a position relatively close to where it was happening in a 4* HQ), some of the recent "studies" headed up by senior Army officers could easily have had their small teams led by a Colonel or even a Lt Col.

You should never trim organisations from the bottom up.. always from the top down

If you do, all the rats run upwards, biting all that get in their way on the way up....

...just my opinion mind!

The other day I was told that the Army has 180 Brigadiers (OF6) and 600 Full Colonels (OF5) which I found quite surprising. Fortunately the MoD handily provides a tool that displays manpower by rank:


OK, its a little out of date (July 10), but only a handful of Brigadiers and 30(?) Colonels have been made redundant. My understanding is that the latter were immediately replaced by promotions so a net loss of zero!

For a rapidly reducing Army, this seems like an awful lot to me!