In December 1944, nearly a week into the Battle of the Bulge, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s utterly professional leadership succeeded – once he was granted the requisite authority by General Eisenhower – in making immediate tactical adjustments, getting hot food to freezing GIs, restoring morale and proper communications among the Western armies, and turning the tide of what had the makings of a disaster. Eighty years later, the United States (alongside Western allies) face another crisis, one that demands ruthlessly professional leadership of a different sort.

President-elect Trump has stated one of his top priorities is to conduct military boards to identify those senior officers most complicit in the last four years of the wokeness-induced degrading of the recruiting-crisis plagued U.S. military.[i] One tangential area not receiving much attention thus far is this: the matter of reducing general/flag officer billets in the armed forces.

The most likely reductions, at the 3- and 4-star levels, arguably, are overdue, highlighted by a congressionally mandated Congressional Research Service (CRS) updated report earlier this year.

Addressing General and Flag Officers (GFOs) in the armed forces, for the benefit of Congress – which under the U.S. Constitution  is charged with the governing of “important aspects of military officer personnel management” including the most senior military officers – CRS observes that the GFO corps “has increased as a percentage of the total force over the past five decades.” In 1965, GFOs made up about one-twentieth of one percent of the Total Force (TF). As of September 2023, GFOs comprised about one-sixteenth of one percent of TF, a 31 percent increase.[ii]