Rank Stupidity - Why the UK should not reduce senior military officer numbers

 

Britain has too many senior military officers and we need to get rid of them for ‘reasons’. We don’t quite know what those reasons are or why we need to get rid of them but we need less apparently. This appears to be the consensus of editorial writers and armchair illuminati combined who feel that the fact that the British Armed Forces have just under 500 senior officers at 1* level and above is, apparently, a bad thing. There is, it seems, a school of thought in the UK that says that senior ranks are bad and that they are probably inept drunks who have no idea what is really going on. More Melchett than Mastermind, these old duffers are the reason everything is going to the dogs these days. The fact that the Armed Forces have been going to the dogs since, well, forever, is neither here nor there...

The subject of numbers of officers in certain rank billets seems to be one of those subjects that triggers a great deal of existential angst by some. People seem genuinely affronted at the idea that the rank makes a difference and that its
existence is a sign of a nation in denial as to its reduced state of influence in the world. Such a view is, in the authors opinion, somewhat hyperbolic.

To start with lets look at the facts. Currently the UK has 330 officers at the 1* level, a further 97  two stars, 27 three stars and 7 four stars for 461 posts in total . This number has consistently reduced year upon year – in 1991 the Royal Navy alone had no less than 4 x four star officers in permanent roles in its own chain of command (1SL, 2SL, CINCFLEET, CINCNAVHOME) – today there is just one permanent RN 4* billet – that of First Sea Lord. That means a 75% reduction in 4* jobs in just one service in 30 years. Similar reductions have been made across all three services as roles change in scope and importance. They are not set in stone and are regularly downgraded as required by the service (for example two of the 1991 roles merged to become the single 3* post of Second Sea Lord).  Over the last 10 years the total number of 2* and above posts in the military has remained largely unchanged, fluctuating between 122 and 132 officers at different times.

These posts occupy a variety of roles – at the top level they provide service leadership, advice to Ministers and provide the day to day functional leadership of the armed forces. They are responsible for commanding formations and forces as well as operational headquarters. Some will be responsible for managing large training establishments, while others will lead complex procurement projects worth billions of pounds of public money. Yet more will be responsible for specialist advice like legal, medical and dental services. All of them have more than one ‘hat’ in that they are expected to take on multiple additional leadership roles well beyond their main responsibility ranging being Regimental Colonel through to chairing sports committees and specialist interest groups – all of which try to get senior leadership and support.

It is a thankless task that requires long hours, hard work and massive responsibility for which the reward is, compared to their peers in the civilian world, not particularly competitive. It also comes with enormous job insecurity -anyone at the OF5 (Captain, Colonel level) or above is employed on a ‘posting basis’ which means unless they have a job to go to at their end of their current one, their career in the military comes to an end. Many very good senior officers have left early, due to there not being a role for them to fill at the right time. There is a very high level of employment insecurity for a workforce who has spent decades in the armed forces and who face potentially leaving their role when well over 85% of their number are in their 50s – not an ideal time to start a second career, but too early to retire. This is not a cushy life of comfortable offices, long lunches and gin – its punishingly long hours, weekends lost to work and often away from home. The rewards are not as good as one may think for this level of commitment, and the perks & privileges vanishingly few. The Senior Salary Review board paper on 2* salaries is well worth a read to understand these issues in more detail – it makes good use of data to show how complex the situation really is.

The argument to downgrade roles seems to be made on various reasons like ‘we don’t have enough troops to justify it’ – yet nowhere is there any formal definition of how many troops a nation needs to justify having a certain number of military officers at each rank. Other arguments involves citing the US case, ignoring that US 1* numbers and above are politically capped and their appointment requires confirmation hearings, which in turn means the OF5 in the US system is an exceptionally important and powerful rank to hold – arguably far out of proportion to any other NATO military. Finally others argue that we should compare the UK to the USMC, a similarly sized force, but then forget to remember that the USMC is part of the US Navy and draws heavily on this for enabling assets – it isn’t a stand alone military in isolation, rendering such comparisons a bit pointless.

The reasons why a rank structure exists is to provide a meaningful chain of command putting appropriately empowered and experienced people in posts that they can exercise their delegated command and authority from. As personnel progress through the system they are career managed to fill both posts in their chosen branch, e.g. a Royal Navy warfare officer would be managed into a well established path of courses, time at sea and increasing exposure to warfighting and leadership responsibility, culminating in time in command of a warship. These posts provide both generalists, so officers filling roles that keep the armed forces going in staff headquarters and also specialists – so roles that require deep engineering or medical knowledge and many years of experience. The role of Weapons Engineering Officer onboard a major warship requires a Commander with years of experience and training behind them to credibly do the job.

De-enriching posts and downgrading them is a challenge because it causes a jolt throughout the entire system. Lets say the UK chose to de-rank each senior role by 1 level, keeping a nominal 4* as CDS (not dissimilar to the Canadian model). The impact would be felt immediately throughout the system due to its hierarchical nature –you’d need to reduce ranks of people in postings below to ensure the principle of a chain of command (the armed forcers do not play nicely when it comes to the concept of ‘primus inter pares’). This reduces career prospects in two ways – firstly it means that those at more senior levels will find a vastly reduced number of roles for them to fill, increasing likelihood of experienced people leaving. Secondly it lengthens the time people spend in more junior ranks as they are moved about different posts to gain the experience needed to be more credible as a senior appointment – with reduced posts available to fill and longer time at the same level (and pay band), this could also be retention negative. Such a move would play havoc with the military career structure and likely lead to an exodus of skilled people who felt they had no future career.

While some may see rank as a symbol of power and authority, it is worth thinking of it as a visual way of recognising effort and commitment. Rank tabs and titles are cheap to make and cost little in the greater scheme of things. The power they hold in terms of retention is incredible. If you offer someone acting higher rank or the chance of promotion then this will be taken as both a sign that the system is investing in them, and also that they have a career future. Much like people in civvy street like job title changes to reflect responsibility growth, the military like promotion as a chance to be recognised for their work. Take the carrot of promotion away and what can you offer people who are working hard – dangling the prospect of promotion to SO1 / OF5 in 2-4 years is a very different motivator to an officer in their late 30s toying with going outside than it is saying ‘you’re very very good, total top upper third material and you’re on track to promote to OF5 in 10 years if you keep doing what you’re doing’. People who not recognised by their employer will find another employer who will recognise them.

Given the inability of the military to be willing to recruit laterally, every officer lost before their natural departure point represents decades of investment wasted. While an element of natural wastage is always factored into recruiting plans, too much unplanned attrition leaves gaps that cannot be filled by people with the correct experience. Reducing rank levels will not magically provide more experienced people – they will still need to do the same courses, training and work as before, but this time the thrusting SO2 will lack the motivation of a promotion to SO1 in the same time frame to drive them – instead they’ll face years of slog at the same level and with no guarantee of success. It is likely that such a move would generate a retention crisis across the armed forces.

The other question to ask is ‘what is the problem we are trying to solve by reducing military rank numbers’? The work still needs to be done regardless of if it is done by a Lieutenant General or Major General – this will not remove the legacy of paperwork, responsibilities and requirements that come with this sort of post. It will not remove the need for an outer office, as you’ll still need staff to support your work and ensure you can take the decisions you need to take. It won’t make it easier to engage with peers and partners if you’re the most junior officer in the room – in fact it will make it harder in international negotiations because the perception is that the UK isn’t taking talks seriously. This is particularly key in areas like procurement where projects will usually have a Senior Responsible Officer leading on them. If you took the SRO concept and downgraded it, making a 2* into a 1*, you’ve appointed a less experienced officer to take leadership of a multi-billion pound project. You won’t have the same career structure in place to grow military professionals who can drive the requirement and assist in procurement -instead it creates problems down the line as people will be appointed to roles in too junior a capacity, lacking experience to do it properly at the lower rank to ensure a chain of command exists. Simply put it is hard to imagine any credible scenario where dropping a rank solves a military problem and plenty of problems that it would create.

One also can’t escape the sense that if every senior officer dropped a rank, the critics would continue to find fault with the structure and demand more reductions. It is difficult to find a sense of where they would be happy because whatever suggestion was proposed, they’d demand yet more cuts to ranks to meet their demands. Lets instead try to inject a note of relative proportionality here. The UK employs roughly 250,000 people across all three services, the reserves, the Civil Service and supporting elements in Defence. It operates on every continent and from the depths of the sea to the far reaches of outer space. It requires very senior officers to manage a budget of almost £50bn of public money and take responsibility for everything from managing training of engineers to being religious leaders to providing healthcare support to policy advice to managing military operations abroad, representing the UK diplomatically and ultimately being able to safely operate and use a force of nuclear weapons.

This diverse force requires multiple career paths and a hierarchy of roles to be carried out to ensure those at the top charged with these responsibilities are best equipped to do so. The total pay bill for all 470 odd officers is around £17.5 million per year for the 2*’s and above and a further £36m for the 1*s – a total pay bill of about £55m for the 460 most experienced senior military officers in the country. This sounds a lot of money until you realise that the MOD budgets a total of over £11 billion per year for military personnel pay costs, so its roughly 0.5% of the entire military pay bill.  If you de-ranked each 2* and above by one level you’d save about £2.3m per year – enough to pay for 100 private soldiers at the most junior entry level or 44 Warrant Officers. This is roughly 26 minutes of annual defence spending for the MOD saved.

Is all of the damage such a move would do, the disruption to careers, the risks to national security and the huge negative impact on the armed forces really worth less than the average salary of a Premier League football player? Perhaps this is once again a reminder that at times the debate on the military in the UK can descend into rank stupidity…