Army Officer Commercial

[Kiwigrunt]

Timely poll result

A bit off topic, but on reading this poll, my eyes were drawn to the number (200,000) of officers in US active service. I thought, shikes, that seems a lot. So I asked my friends Google and Wiki for some numbers and came up with these officers to enlisted ratios:
US Army 1 : 5.2
USMC 1 : 8.8
US Navy 1 : 5.4
US Air Force 1 : 4.1
US Coast Guard 1 : 4.1

What struck me here (apart from the relatively high number of officers in relation to enlisted) was that the USMC stands out…quite a bit, especially when compared against the army. I assume larger platoons will have something to do with it but…..what else?



PS: If we completely flatten the hierarchy we could almost have one officer to every fire-team.