Regardless of what happened IRL, or what may have happened if the nukes hadn't flown, large headquarters units, and large numbers of HQ's are a waste of resources in the T2K environment.
The key to a unit's success in 2000 is streamlining - removing unnecessary waste and allocating resources to maximise their usefulness. Manpower is a resource just as important as food, fuel, ammunition, vehicles, aircraft, etc, etc, etc. It may even be more important as the number of specialists decrease through injury, disease, famine, and so on.
Maintaining four seperate military forces (Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines) post nuke is extremely wasteful, especially when two out of the four have effectively lost their reason for exisiting (virtually no planes or ships left, and certainly no fuel for those still in one peice).
The Navy has probably suffered much more than the other arms too. When ships sink in the middle of the ocean, just getting into a lifeboat is no guarentee of survival. Chances are the vast majority of the ships company will perish before reaching safety. Therefore, I just can't see large units of naval personnel being formed. Yes there would be personell left on shore in supporting roles, but these would quickly be absorbed within the army, with a fair proportion also deserting if within continental US (as would members of the army, etc).
Keeping a naval command structure when almost no ships remain (a handful in the middle east and a few others scattered around the globe) is pointless. These Admirals, Captains, etc would find themselves (if they survived the nuking of the Pentagon and other areas) commanders of nothing but those few men (and women) who remained of their staff - not exactly a great resource of relevant skills and knowledge. The same could be said of the Air Force commands.
With next to no training for ground based operations, placing these people in command of ground units seems to me at least a really bad idea. therefore, why do it when there's the better alternative of attaching surplus naval and air force personell to army or marine units?
[/rambling comments]
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