Our top-brass heavy military is a national scandal

As the Government throws about 30,000 poorly-paid soldiers, sailors and airmen on the scrap heap, one could wonder why there are so many highly-paid officers and levels of officers in our shrinking armed forces.

In the Navy, for example, there are two admirals, six vice admirals and thirty three rear admirals – so forty one big cheeses in all. Plus eighty Commodores and three hundred Captains. That’s 421 officers for less than forty fighting ships and submarines. How do all these officers fill their working days when so few of them have ships, submarines or other big boys’ toys to occupy their time and efforts? When criticised for having so many admirals, the Navy claimed it actually had a couple more ships than were reported as the newspaper article didn’t include two landing craft. In the RAF, we have twenty six Air Vice Marshals, ninety Air Commodores and 330 Group Captains for around 820 planes, included in which are only twelve fast-jet squadrons.

So, our navy hasn’t enough ships for all its top brass and the RAF has about two planes per senior officer. This makes it look as if we have too many officers at too many different levels. (Tomorrow, our military officers’ luxury lifestyles)