There are 800,000 government civilians.
If you run into three government employees on an average military post, on average one is a civil servant and the other two are military.
That does not yet include the hoards of contractors.
This is insane.
The vast majority of the of the DOD personnel cuts since the late 1980s have been to the uniformed active duty side.
The civilians primarily operate in an administrative capacity. It is administration which has seen the most automation as a result of the information revolution of the last 30 years. Yet the DOD still carries such a significant level of administrative overhead.
The uniformed services require some level of overhead, because of the risk associated with warfare. There has to be a designated deputy in case the leader is killed or injured. This level of redundancy no longer exists in the private sector. Nor does every first level manager have a an administrative assistant (i.e., secretary) any more. In most cases you need to be a manager of managers of managers to warrant an administrative assistant.
But the government is different.
The vast majority of the of the DOD personnel cuts since the late 1980s have been to the uniformed active duty side.
That is true, but the military personnel cost a fortune! The civilian is expensive too but not nearly as expensive as the military personnel. Sorry but that is a fact.
Not sure where this is true but there are a lot of civilian wrench turners. There are whole sections with no military personel assigned even though they have the same career field.