Congress Orders DoD to Justify Enlisted Aides for Generals, Admirals

I would say when Congress can justify their hill staffers then the Admirals and Generals can justify enlisted aides. Wow!

LTC Jason Strickland Sir, I have a few officer friends that are Aides to a COCOM CCDR, and from what they tell me, the way Flag/General Officers employ their aides can vary widely. I've heard of a 4 star General from a service that will remain nameless requiring his enlisted aides to fly ahead of him, check into the hotel room and unpack his suitcase into the dressers for him, then stay after him and pack it up, he would also send aides (oficers and enlisted) to pick up dry cleaning and to fetch barbers to come to his office to cut his hair (then to clean up after). The 4 star general for which my friends work, on the other hand, uses his officer aides principally as trip planners. They're given wide authority trust and responsibility, alternating turns on planning his upcoming travel including timing, logistics and calendar for his entire trip. He travels so frequently (necessarily-to supervise and perform KLE's) that while one is executing a trip the other is planning the next. He's a Marine (Ill claim that one for my service) and he picks up his own dry cleaning and goes down to the barber himself. And he also PTs-when his aides build in enough time in his schedule for it. He imbues them with such trust and confidence, if they scheduled him a 20 hour day, he'd execute it, trusting they did everything they could to make the mission work.

I'd say like most things, it depends on the quality of the individual.

LTC Jason Strickland Sir the value of an enlisted aid to a General Officer, while different from that of an Officer Aid, is still quite valuable. I met the enlisted aid to Admiral Mullen when he was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he was a Master Chief Petty Officer and was responsible for ensuring the support services such as uniforms, billets, food etc were taken care of. At the level where enlisted aids are assigned these roles are critical. No one wants to see a General or Flag Officer whose uniform is wrong, because lets face it, they have many things to do and an order of importance must be established.

While budgets are important, more important is the professionalism of our military. At some point in balancing the budget I am hopeful our elected leaders will begin to examine the cost savings versus long term damage done to the American fighting forces.