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Old 08-28-2009, 02:04 AM
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pmulcahy11b pmulcahy11b is offline
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Originally Posted by headquarters View Post
not everyone can be an assault pioneer-some of us others have to make a living to..what would WE do without buearucracy ?

Seriously - the ratio of fighting men to logistics type personnel is a theme in Heinleins book Starship Troopers ( not a bad read ) .

Can anyone give some info on that ? Maybe it should be a seperate thread if it is of interest..
I can't give you a reference off the top of my head, but I dimly remember a lesson in ROTC where MSG Chinn told us the "teeth to tail" ratio in the US Army is about 1-to-10. (That was in 1983, however.) Which is disturbing in my mind...

That same subject is also brought up in The Forever War. The main character, William Mandella, also makes the comment that as an army gets older, the ratio of officers to enlisted men and NCOs tends to go up. Joe Haldeman is a vet and a student of military history, so he has a good idea of what he's talking about.
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