Marcus Weisgerber, “Pentagon, Regional Staffs Growing Despite Orders to Trim Personnel,” Defense News, June 2, 2013.

Overall, staff sizes of major US military commands grew by 15 percent from 2010 to 2012, despite then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ call to reducestaff sizes as a way of cutting redundancy and saving money.

Organization; Size 2010; Size 2012; (Change; % Change)

OSD — 2010: 2,433; 2012: 2,665 (+232, 9.5%)
Joint Staff — 2010: 1,286; 2012: 4,244 (+2,958, 230%)
AFRICOM — 2010: 1,661; 2012: 1,919 (+285, 15.5%)
CENTCOM — 2010: 2,686; 2012: 3,207 (+521, 19.4%)
EUCOM — 2010: 2,494; 2012: 2,286 (-208, -8.3%)
NORTHCOM — 2010: 1,585; 2012: 1,687 (+102, 6.4%)
PACOM — 2010: 3,825; 2012: 4,147 (+322, 8.4%)
SOUTHCOM — 2010: 1,795; 2012 — 1,797 (+2, 0.1%)

On Aug. 9, 2010, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Pentagon needed to cut staff sizes. He made this task part of his efficiencies initiative — an effort to save hundreds of billions of dollars through better business practices. The military services’ incentive for accomplishing these tasks was that they would be able to get back some of that money to reinvest in other priorities.

But almost three years later, staff sizes within OSD, the Joint Staff and COCOMs have grown, prompting a new round of calls from senior Pentagon officials and defense observers to truncate the so-called “fourth estate.”

The Joint Staff, for example, grew from 1,286 people in 2010 to 4,244 people in 2012, a 230 percent increase.

The Pentagon also estimates it has more than 700,000 contractors working alongside its civilian and military workforce, but the exact number is unknown.

“They cannot really tell you, [and] Congress is frustrated,” Punaro said.

Estimates peg the number of contractors as high as 700,000, around the same size as the Pentagon’s entire civilian workforce.

“In business, if you cannot control your headcount, you are doomed,” Punaro said. “So, they do not control their headcount, and they do not have mechanisms to control the headcount. There ought to be someone that owns headcount, and you cannot increase it without higher authority.”

Read the full article here.