Believe it or not, the military assigns two-star generals and admirals to run its versions of Wal-Mart. At least it did before Defense Secretary Robert Gates began trimming Pentagon waste.

In a memo dated March 14 and acquired by Danger Room, Gates ordered the Pentagon, the combatant commands and the military services to eliminate more than 100 flag-officer positions and hundreds of contractor jobs, and pare down or consolidate scores of other functions. It’s part of Gates’ plan to transfer $100 billion worth of overhead bloat back into priority weapons and personnel systems, and flatline the military’s rate of budget growth.

All told, the cuts will save the Defense Department more than $13 billion during the next five years. That’s a pittance. With war costs factored in, the Pentagon is asking congress for $671 billion for just the next year.

So whose jobs are getting chopped? The military’s eliminating or downgrading 140 generals and admirals — out of more than 950 flag-rank officers. Headquarters staffers at U.S. Army Europe are losing their stars, a prelude to Gates moving a small part of the Army off the continent.

The Navy’s Network Warfare Command will be now be led by a captain. So will the Pearl Harbor shipyard. Seven top headquarters officers at the military’s new Cyber Command are being slashed.

Many of these jobs were long slated for cuts: Over the summer, for instance, Gates said he was disestablishing the Joint Forces Command, which is on the memo’s chopping block, as well.

Then comes 28 positions that the military expects to cut over the next five years, but can’t say with any certainty that it will, owing to “conditions to overseas contingency operations” (i.e., wars): the military command in Afghanistan (really?), the Pentagon director for stopping homemade bombs (as the bombs proliferate worldwide?) and the director of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay (not if House Republicans have anything to say about it).

Many contractors who are out the door: 1,000 of them will get the boot from the Missile Defense Agency, for an estimated savings of $225 million over five years. Another 130 will be cut from the undersecretary for policy’s shop ($22.6 million). A program that “funds the travel of contractors to visit various countries,” originally to Eastern Europe, has been cut, saving at least $2 million. And another 364 will be slashed from the military’s health care management organization, freeing up another $36.4 million.

Spycraft also gets a bit of a shakeup. All Pentagon human intelligence and counterintelligence functions will be consolidated within a single shop run by the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. The U.S. Special Operations Command will lose control of a post-9/11 Counter-Threat Finance program to track enemy cash. And the Army Special Operations Command will swallow the Joint Military Information Support Command, an agency responsible for what used to be called psychological operations (now Military Information Support Operations, or MISO).

Darpa, the Pentagon’s blue-sky research arm, will have to restructure its budget to more realistically capture the grants it gives out, to save an estimated $153 million. Contractor IT support is on the block, for a reduction of $58 million. Darpa will have to produce a quarter fewer “advisory boards and studies,” saving another $1.3 million, and the expansion of a classified computer network called Savannah will eliminate another $4.4 million worth of redundant systems. That’s for an agency with a nearly $3 billion annual budget.

Clearly there’s a lot more fat to cut if the military’s interested. But for now, salute Maj. Gen. Bruce Casella, commander of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, and Rear Adm. Glenn Robillard, commander of the Navy’s version. After they leave their posts next year, civilians will be in charge of stocking military post exchanges full of energy drinks, DVDs and fresh-enough groceries.

Just saying: Getting rid of these jobs was on Danger Room’s wish list for Pentagon belt-tightening.

Credit to Inside Defense, which first reported on the existence of the memo on Tuesday. Photo: Flickr/DVIDSHUB