Marines to appoint a safety general

The Marine Corps will place a general officer in charge of the service’s Safety Division next summer, the acting commandant announced Wednesday in the latest response to two deadly aircraft crashes.

The division is currently led by a colonel. (The Navy’s Safety Command is run by a rear admiral.) Bumping the Marine command up a paygrade will allow a one-star to “supervise it, to authoritatively direct it, and ensure that ruthless adherence to our culture of safety, that I think will matter,” Gen. Eric Smith told reporters on the sidelines of the Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “[H]aving that general officer in charge will help because general officers do matter. Because there's only 63 of us in service. And that means that they don't have to salute very many people and they don't take, frankly, any junk from anybody.”

The officer will still be “reporting to the assistant commandant [of the Marine Corps] but we will have a general officer in charge of safety. It's that important to me, and I think it's time to do that,” Smith said.

Like the other services, the Marine Corps is authorized a set number of general officers, so it's unclear at the moment where the general officer will come from to lead the division.