Monday, December 22, 2025

Navy Flag Officer Numbers

According the Navy’s web page, the service has 305 admirals[1] and 290 ships of all types[2].  That’s more than one admiral per ship. 
 
If the useless ships, such as the LCS and others are excluded, the ship count is much, much less.
 
How many admirals is the Navy allowed to have?  This is set by law with the controlling legislation being Title 10, Section 526 of the U.S. Code. The limit is supposedly set to 150 admirals.  Here’s the initial text of the legislation.
 
 
10, §526. Authorized strength: general officers and flag officers on active duty
(a) Limitations.-The number of general officers on active duty in the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Space Force, and the number of flag officers on active duty in the Navy, may not exceed the number specified for the armed force concerned as follows:

(1) For the Army, 219.
(2) For the Navy, 150.
(3) For the Air Force, 171.
(4) For the Marine Corps, 64
(5) For the Space Force, 21
 

Unfortunately, the legislation goes on to carve out many, many exceptions and waivers, chief among them being joint duty exceptions, which explains why the Navy has 305 admirals while only authorized to have 150.
 
If you skim through the titles of the 305 admirals, as listed on the Navy website[1], you can’t help but laugh at many/most of them.  Talk about make-work and busy work!
 
This is yet another area where SecDef Hegseth should be taking aggressive action to reduce the flag officer ranks and yet he is not.  He continues to disappoint.


 
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11 comments:

  1. G2milDecember 22, 2025 at 6:12 PM

    There are lots of Navy SES, or civilian equivalents to Admirals. Hundreds as I recall. Some are former Admirals so the Navy pays them full retirement salary and a full civilian salary.

    ReplyDelete
  2. BA 1959December 22, 2025 at 6:40 PM

    I would think that a limitation in this regard is different than a speed limit - there isn't an absolute requirement even for 150 admirals.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ComNavOpsDecember 23, 2025 at 6:02 AM

      In peacetime, with a fleet of around 250 useful ships, you'd have a hard time justifying ten admirals.

      Delete
  3. AnonymousDecember 22, 2025 at 7:57 PM

    At least on the Army side, we are overstaffed with officers and NCOs at all levels in order to provide leadership for a mass expansion of the army for The Big One. Platoon leaders will step up to become company commanders, company commanders will step up to become battalion commanders, battalion commanders will become regimental commanders, and so on so forth.

    The Army has systems and procedures in place to rapidly grow the force with a draft in time of total war. Does the Navy have anything like that in place?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ComNavOpsDecember 23, 2025 at 6:05 AM

      "on the Army side, we are overstaffed "

      On the Navy side, we're overstaffed in order to provide more and better retirement benefits.

      Delete
  4. AnonymousDecember 23, 2025 at 12:30 AM

    The navy needs so many admirals and some more because it is busily working on the Conops of the future class of "Trump" battleships.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousDecember 23, 2025 at 6:31 AM

    I propose inverse decimation, fire 9 out of 10, take a hard look at their posts and closed down as much as possible.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousDecember 23, 2025 at 7:43 AM

    I sure hope we have an article about the so called Defiant class of “battleship” which really just looks like an overgrown cruiser. No large caliber guns instead small caliber railguns, deck space at a premium once again like most modern ships, likely no armor of any sort both RHA or composite, those weapon mounts could be knocked out or worse explode and will likely take the better part of a decade to build and fully commission. It’s a ship built my committee like every ship since they stopped building BB’s and gun Cruisers.

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousDecember 23, 2025 at 8:16 AM

    The big advantage of the Trump class battleship is that they will be big enough for a ballroom.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ComNavOpsDecember 23, 2025 at 8:54 AM

      We don't make political comments or jabs on this blog ... but that was funny!

      Delete
  8. AnonymousDecember 23, 2025 at 8:33 AM

    After reading about it as in comments above I looked up the "Trump class battleship" and found below:


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump-class_battleship

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Defiant_(BBG-1)

    https://news.usni.org/2025/12/22/trump-unveils-new-battleship-class-proposed-uss-defiant-will-be-largest-u-s-surface-combatant-since-wwii

    https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2025-12-22/trump-class-battleship-navy-20177153.html



    Looks real enough, I would suggest to be useful they will need to have to the range to reach Taiwan and back without refueling so nuclear or at least a large enough fuel store as Taiwan will need all the fuel she can get to fight China. So something like below due to below in this case they need to reach Taiwan to attack China:

    The ship's fuel supply was increased from 4,400 long tons (4,500 t) to 4,850 long tons (4,930 t) to prevent the fuel shortage problems suffered by King George V and Rodney during their pursuit of the German battleship Bismarck.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Vanguard_(23)


    ReplyDelete

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