A Lean, Mean Machine
L., E.N.
A Lean, Mean Machine The most successful military organization of our day, the Israel Defense Forces, has a much lower proportion of middle-ranking and senior officers than the American...
...The Pentagon could not posssibly function with only ten times as many generals and admirals as the IDF...
...Under the Israeli single-service system, there is no independent air force or navy, but instead the the air corps and sea corps of the army...
...The Pentagon also needs senior officers for alliance commands in Europe and beyond...
...The U.S...
...To be fair, American military forces are more than ten times as large...
...The chief of staff is always a ground-force officer...
...Actually there are 30 times as many...
...As for the ground forces, which have three times as many tanks as the British Army in 11 well-equipped armored divisions, their command structure is run by four major generals...
...Army has 140...
...total is 362...
...Five more two-stars head the entire IDF-wide support structure for manpower, logistics, training, intelligence, and planning...
...So any direct comparison would be foolish...
...Though a very large force by any standards, with almost as many combat aircraft as the Royal Air Force, the Israeli air corps is commanded by a single major general...
...Many American military responsibilities, such as our nuclear forces, are totally unknown to the Israelis and demand a significant number of senior officers...
...They are distributed on three continents and serve worldwide at sea...
...With two more two-stars in charge of the central headquarters, a military chief rabbi and a chief judge, and also the defense attache in Washington, the Israelis have a grand total of 16 major generals on active duty for their ground, air, and naval forces...
...Still, it is interesting to compare the workings of a military structure in which the officer corps has been deliberately kept to a minimum with one that plainly has too many chiefs...
...Similarly, the Israeli sea corps—a very small but significant force with its powerful fleet of missile boats—is also commanded by a single two-star rear admiral...
...The Israeli version of a systems command, staffed by a handful of colonels and headed by a one-star general, has in recent years successfully supervised the development of an entire range of advanced equipment, including air-to-air missiles, air-to-ground missiles, and pilotless aircraft, as well as the secret equipment employed in 1982 to destroy Syrian antiaircraft installations in Lebanon...
...The U.S...
...E.N.L...
...The USAF has 120...
...There are no four-star generals and only one three-star lieutenant general, officially described as "chief of staff" but in fact the professional commander of all Israeli armed forces...
...A Lean, Mean Machine The most successful military organization of our day, the Israel Defense Forces, has a much lower proportion of middle-ranking and senior officers than the American military...
Vol. 17 • April 1985 • No. 3
