Rear Adm. (lower half) Mark I. Fox is being assigned as deputy to the deputy chief of staff for political, military and economic business, Multi-National Forces Iraq. Fox is currently serving as deputy assistant to the president and director, White House Military Office, Washington, D.C."Deputy to the Deputy"? As an Flag Officer? I'm sure RADM Fox is a fine officer, but c'mon... this should serve as a wake-up call to everyone who sees it that the Navy just has too many Admirals. Maybe NAVPERS can come up with a "Drawdown Game" for Flags -- but of course they won't. One of the most jealously-guarded items within each service, and for each community within the services, is the number of General and Flag Officer billets they get -- no one wants to give up a slot, because that would mean they'd be perceived as becoming less important. The Navy has well over 200 Flag Officers for a force of 282 deployable battle force ships -- most of which are commanded by O-5s. The Army has 25 General Officers for each division -- or about 1 per battalion/regiment, which are also commanded by O-5s. At least the Air Force is looking at cutting their numbers of Generals -- although I doubt it will actually happen, for the aforementioned reason.
And don't even get me started on the number of O-6s with no apparent function other than to keep people below them in the chain of command from working efficiently...
