Why do we have so many Colonels?

A disclaimer...I am not complaining about the command selection system here. I know everyone who was selected to command and they are amazing officers. This is about a perception that the Army is so rank heavy that it must promote lieutenant colonels that it is not going to put into command positions (thus shutting them out of continued promotion chances). Either we are too rank heavy (from the 4 star level on down to about...major) and it has a trickle down effect or we are promoting officers for the sake of maintaining them (throwing them a bone to keep them in for as long as possible). It just seems to me that the military could use the money spent on Colonels who are not going to be competitive any longer towards a better purpose. Imagine the money which could be spent on pay raises for enlisted by taking all the non-competitive LTC's out of the promotion mix.

"Too Many" would be quite a discussion in other services around the world. We are more top heavy than Commonwealth services but far less top heavy as say Cambodia where a two star has, wait for it, maybe 700 people. So if you get away from billets with say 4-5 Battalions of O-5's in charge that you run, there's not much out there other than specialty and staff stuff. So some of it is having a body count of O-6 slots that creates some promotion opportunity and enough of a pool to select a decent star from. I'm staff corps, so my commands were much smaller on body count but high end on contracting, environment, etc. The question then gets to how much, how complex, and AOR. Do you have enough horsepower to make it happen with the trigger puller side? Do you have the cajones to buck up against a stupid Flag that wants to give you mission without force protection? Some of it is having enough rank to protect your people from head case Alpha Hotels. So the current formula mix seems to work but there hasn't been much of a decent analysis to evaluate changing the structure. I will say, the Commonwealth services tend to have lower ranks with more responsibility, but then I've seen their relative compensation package compared with the other folk at home. Different culture, different story.

It did feel strange being in Australia and rating an aide/driver. They made me use them because that's how it's done there. Turned out the aide/driver took very good care of me and I was able to get vastly more done in a work day given the pace of the large scale multinational work being done.

Sir, I fully agree with you, specifically at a one star or two star command. Why do we need a Full Bird Colonel, for each one of General Staff Sections (G-Shops)? I have been a G4 and J4 NCOIC, and see no good reason for the requirement of an O-6 OIC. A Light Colonel or better yet, a Major would be more then sufficient.