DoD to Trim General and Flag Officers

The Department of Defense will trim it's senior ranks and freeze civilian staff levels.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said "The monetary savings from reductions in senior
personnel will be relatively modest, and mostly consist of the extra staff and amenities that,
by tradition, follow high rank."

"The primary purpose of reducing senior rank structure is to create fewer, flatter, more
agile-and thus more effective organizations," Gates said.

In August Gates said he would appoint a task force to asses the number of positions for general
and flag officers. As a result of that report the department will eliminate more than 100 of the
900 positions it now authorizes.

"Of those 28 billets that were created after 9/11, primarily for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan," Gates said. "They will be reduced as appropriate, as major troop deployments
wind down."

More than 80 general-officer of flag positions spread among the services, the Department
of Defense and the combatant commands "will be eliminated or downgraded," Gates said.

As DoD trims is senior staff, it will also freeze overall staff employees at the current
level for the next three years.

"The resulting review produced a number of opportunities to trim the size of the work force,
yielding more than $4 billion in savings over the next five years," he said "I will
recommend to the president that we hold to these limits in overall DOD staff levels
for the next three years."

I say a savings of $4 billion over 5 years would be more than enough to pay for a Cold
War Service Medal, which has been estimated to cost $25 million over ten years.

It is a medal that has been delayed and dismissed for too many years.

Recognize and honor our Cold War Veterans now.

Jerald Terwilliger
National Chairman
American Cold War Veterans
"We Remember" 

---------------- "And so the greatest of American triumphs... became a peculiarly joyless victory. We had won the Cold War, but there would be no parades." -- Robert M. Gates, 1996