PROF ANDREW DORMAN*, PROF MATTHEW UTTLEY, & DR BENEDICT WILKINSON
In December 2017, General Sir Nicholas Carter, Chief of the General Staff (CGS) exchanged ‘Letters to the Editor’ in The Times with Frank Ledwidge, one of our King’s Department of War Studies colleagues.[1] At issue was the size of the senior officer corps compared to the rest of the armed forces.
Contestation surrounding the number of generals, admirals, and air marshals in the UK’s armed forces is not new. During 2009 and 2010, Paul Cornish and Andrew Dorman highlighted the post-Cold War upward trend in the relative proportion of senior officers, arguing that this seemed counter-intuitive for an organisation seeking to manage its resources more efficiently.[2] This thesis was subsequently echoed by the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, during the three-way leadership debate prior to the 2010 General Election. In response, the subsequent Coalition government’s first Secretary of State for Defence, Liam Fox, pledged to cut senior officer numbers by 20 per cent. General Carter’s recent letter to The Times suggests this initiative has succeeded to the extent that the number of brigadiers and generals under his command had fallen by nearly 40 per cent.
The financial challenge before defence
Since the exchange of letters in The Times, CGS and the Secretary of State for Defence, Gavin Williamson, have made a series of speeches setting out the case for increasing the UK defence budget.[3] As a consequence, the Defence element has now been detached from the government’s ongoing National Security Capability Review and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is now embarking on the ‘Modernizing Defence Programme’. In parallel, rumours about the potential scale of the financial challenges currently confronting the MoD have steadily leaked out since 2017 suggesting several scenarios involving future cuts to the armed forces. More tangible insights into the scale of the funding challenge confronting the MoD are provided in headline finding of the National Audit Office report on the MoD’s 2017-2027 Equipment Plan, namely that:
The Equipment Plan is not affordable. After assuming that the £6 billion of contingency funds set aside in the Plan to supplement budgets will be utilised, the Department is facing a minimum affordability gap of £4.9 billion. There is an additional affordability gap of £15.9 billion if all identified financial risks of cost growth materialise and the Department does not achieve any of the savings assumed in the Plan. Overall, the potential affordability gap is £20.8 billion.[4]
While many are now campaigning for additional resources to be allocated to defence,[5] the issue of whether the MoD is spending its budget efficiently remains open to debate. In particular, the MoD’s most recent personnel statistics raise questions regarding its drive towards greater efficiency.
Firstly, as the Table 1 below shows, there has been an increase in the proportion of officers compared to other ranks over recent years, with cuts in the numbers of other ranks occurring at more than three times the rate of their officer counterparts.
Table 1 – UK Regular Forces
| 1 April 2012 | 1 April 2017 | % change | |
| Officers | 30704 | 28991 | -6% |
| Other Ranks | 149100 | 120375 | -19% |
| UK Regular Forces | 179804 | 149366 | -17% |
Source: Ministry of Defence, ‘UK armed forces monthly service personnel statistics: October 2017’, Table 11a, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-armed-forces-monthly-service-personnel-statistics-2017 accessed 7 February 2018.
Second, it is clear that the pledge to reduce the numbers of generals and their equivalents by 20 per cent has not been achieved (see Table 2).
Table 2 – UK Officer numbers by rank
| 1 April 2012 | 1 April 2017 | % change | |
| OF-9 General or equivalent | 10 | 8 | -20% |
| OF- 8 Lieutenant-General or equivalent | 25 | 26 | 4% |
| OF-7 Major General or equivalent | 101 | 94 | -17% |
| OF-6 Brigadier or equivalent | 330 | 303 | -8% |
| Total for the General Rank (OF-6 – OF-9) | 466 | 431 | -8% |
| OF-5 or Colonel or equivalent | 1143 | 1069 | -6% |
| OF-4 or Lieutenant-Colonel or equivalent | 3920 | 3681 | -6% |
| OF-3 or Major or equivalent | 9051 | 8181 | -10% |
| OF-2 or Captain or equivalent | 12032 | 9169 | -24% |
| OF-1/OF(0) or Lieutenant/Sub-Lieutenant or equivalent | 4092 | 4460 | 9% |
Source: Ministry of Defence, ‘UK armed forces monthly service personnel statistics: October 2017’, Table 11a, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-armed-forces-monthly-service-personnel-statistics-2017 accessed 7 February 2018.
Third, given General Carter’s claim to have reduced the number of senior officers under his command by nearly 40 per cent it would suggest that the other Top Level Budget Holders are responsible for the overall rise in the proportion of general officer ranks across the UK armed forces. This raises questions about the criteria employed by the other services and elements of defence in creating their respective organisational structures.
Fourth, CGS’s language in his letter was also interesting. In the armed forces of other countries, the Brigadier-General rank and its equivalent is a general officer rank. In the British Army, the title has long been Brigadier as a means of separating this 1* rank out from the overall numbers of generals thus implying the overall number of British generals is smaller compared to their foreign counterparts.
Fifth, a further point of note is that the British Army is at variance with many of its European and US counterparts in terms of ranks and roles. In contrast to the British Army, in many European countries and the US the situation is that brigades are commanded by colonels and not brigadiers, whilst at a more junior level infantry companies, tank squadrons and so forth are commanded by captains rather than majors. The observation here is important because in pyramidic military structures, as each post is enhanced those below it are also enhanced. So a full General has a number of Lieutenant-Generals working to him/her and so forth. The Royal Air Force now follows the Army’s example with flights being commanded by Squadron Leaders, squadrons commanded by Wing Commanders and Groups commanded by Air Vice-Marshals.
So why does this matter? The answer is that the MoD confronts acute financial challenges and rank inflation results in higher personnel costs, which can only be offset either through reductions in overall personnel numbers or cuts to other elements of the defence budget such as equipment.
So, how might the MoD respond to these developments? Our main observations and recommendations are that:
- The MoD needs to recognise that rank inflation is both a cost but also an opportunity for modernisation. With such an experienced officer cohort the potential for modernization, at least in theory, is quite significant.
- The MoD should consider moving away from the metric of personnel numbers to one of overall cost. Such an approach might incentivise the various military commands to consider altering their staffing base towards a flatter, more worker orientated focus.
- The MoD might also consider reviewing the potential merits of adopting the European/US model of having captains command infantry companies and their equivalents, and colonels and their equivalent commanding brigades.
- Given the pyramidic nature of the armed forces, the relative apexes of commands could be reduced as means of reducing the overall cost of personnel. For example, given the overall personnel reduction in the UK’s armed forces since the end of the Cold War, the question of whether the single-service Chiefs still need to be full Generals, Admirals and Air Chief Marshals might usefully be addressed, if only to confirm a continued utility in an era of austerity.
Image: Troops trooping the colour, July 2007, via wikimedia commons.
* For Prof Dorman’s previous interpretation of this issue see Andrew M Dorman, ‘Rank nonsense’, Parliamentary Brief, vol.12, no.8, April 2010, pp.15-6.
[1] ‘Letters to the Editor’, Dr Frank Ledwidge and General Sir Nick Carter, The Times, 29 December 2017, p.30.
[2] Paul N Cornish and Andrew M Dorman, ‘National defence in the age of austerity’, International Affairs, vol.85, no.4, July 2009, pp.733-53.; Andrew M Dorman, ‘Rank nonsense’, Parliamentary Brief, vol.12, no.8, April 2010, pp.15-6.
[3] General Sir Nicholas Carter, ‘Dynamic Security threats and the British Army’, speech made at RUSI, 22 January 2018, https://rusi.org/event/dynamic-security-threats-and-british-army accessed 7 February 2018; Gavin Williamson, ‘Modernising Defence Programme’, Hansard, 25 January 2018.
[4] In bold in original. National Audit Office, ‘Ministry of Defence – The Equipment Plan 2017 to 2027’, HC.717, session 2017-18, (London: TSO, 2018), p.6, https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/The-Equipment-Plan-2017-to-2027.pdf accessed 7 February 2018.
[5] See questions and answer to Gavin Williamson, ‘Modernising Defence Programme’, Hansard, 25 January 2018.
Defence-In-Depth 
As the UK forces become smaller, they will inevitably become less cost-effective as they lose economies of scale. This is true of senior ranks. The same management functions still have to be performed pretty much irrespective of the size of frontline forces underneath, and they still require the same level of experience and qualifications. The only way to bring senior head-counts down is to ‘de-enrich’ posts – which means in effect getting people to do the same jobs for less money – which in turn means the best people leave as their career prospects reduce without any commensurate reduction in workload or responsibility.
The suggestion that the MoD concentrates on manpower budgets rather than manpower totals is very sensible. No other large organisation would decide, once every 5 years, how many people it’s going to have and then stick to it irrespective of changing circumstances. The focus on numbers also tends to inflate the rank structure – what would you rather have, a private or a brigadier?
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Whilst there may well be an opportunity to de-enrich a number of posts filled by senior officers, we would be wise not to underestimate the effect that promotion prospects has on the retention of personnel at all levels. Until the advent of AFPS 15, key personnel at or around OR7 and OF3 level would often stay in the Services so that they qualified for an immediate pension or early departure payment. That incentive is no longer there under APFS 15. The prospect of being promoted is an important incentive to keep people in at the time they have the best opportunity for finding fulfilling employment outside (their 30s). Reduce their prospects of promotion and the consequences will be an increase in outflow at a time when recruitment and retention is proving extremely challenging. A further point: paying people a little extra in a lower rank or rate will never be as attractive or retention-positive as promoting them and paying them the same increase with an additional stripe or star on their shoulder. It is human nature to aspire to increased status and promotion is seen as the key indicator of success. Mess with it at your peril.
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When considering an army’s rank structure it is useful to go back to basics. in over-simplified terms:
– Captains commanded companies, assisted by a lieutenant (and later a ‘second lieutenant).
– Colonels commanded regiments, later assisted by lieutenant-colonels to command the component battalions (the British and some other armies confuse this by calling battalions of some arms regiments).
– Brigadier was a temporary appointment (like Commodore in the RN) of a colonel commanding several battalions ‘brigaded’ together for a particular operation, perhaps with attached artillery.
Translating that into today’s terms, we should look at:
– 2nd Lts lead platoons (no one ‘commands’ at that level; that is self-delusion; platoon leading is on-the-job training for future company commanders, where the officer’s work really starts).
– 1st Lts lead independent or weapons platoons or serve as company 2iC or in the battalion HQ.
– Captains command companies (this became a major’s post in the British Army as a means of increasing salaries.
– Majors are mainly staff officers, with some commanding independent companies.
– Lieutenant-Colonels command battalions.
– Colonels are senior staff officers or might command independent combat groups of battalion+ strength.
– Brigadiers/Brigadier-Generals command brigades.
and so on.
The point at the brigade level is that the brigade is a combined arms formation and thus prima facie a ‘general officer’s’ command. In the US and some armies brigades were for long (still are in some) just an element of a division, with no real independent role, thus equating to the the ‘regiment’ in for instance the old German Army, i.e. a grouping of battalions of the same corps. In that role they can quite reasonably be a colonel’s command.
Where one can really save is by making the bulk of senior staff posts throughout the Army colonel posts, with very few general officers in the higher staffs and MoD. Senior, long-serving colonels have all of the required experience for those posts, and can be paid appropriately without creating additional generals with no formations to command.
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