[marktwain]

It goes 18 levels deep all the way to Assistant Secretaries?

Ridiculous. Who is going to obey a secretary as having authority? Might as well go all the way down to buck private and base janitor.

Assistant Secretaries in this context are high ranking military officers. They are probably Generals.

[OldGoatCPO]

The Assistant Secretaries I met were either retire military (not all Generals) or SES types. Civilians that are treated like Generals. The appointed Secretaries are temporary, an SES is generally a career bureaucrat. That has been my experience anyway. Some of the Assistants Secretaries were pretty cool people. Some were former enlisted, one was a CMH holder from Vietnam another was a retired enlisted guy who was very good at some arcane stuff and because of that he valuable to the DOD. I think he was the only guy in DOD who knew how to make coffee😂