Mid-1961

NOTE: This reform is the same as OTL, so I'm not trying to do anything sneaky by retro-posting it. The only change is that some of the commanding officers are switched up to account for changes that have happened ITTL. Think of this more as a very long housekeeping post.

The Tatmadaw is an army that has never really been afforded the opportunity to make a clear organizational structure. The rapid expansion of the force–from a professional core of some 2,000 loyalists in 1949 to the over 100,000 strong army of 1960–coupled with the constant military campaigns against insurgents through the country meant that the Tatmadaw’s organizational structure remained painfully ad hoc. The entire country was divided between two colossal military districts and some fifteen independent infantry formations (mostly brigades). Though these brigades were in theory subordinate to the military districts, the vast size of the territory involved and the sheer number of units meant that the districts could not adequately control their subordinate units, who were more often than not left to their own devices.

Though far from ideal, the Tatmadaw has never been able to meaningfully alter this bloated military structure. Entrenched field commanders on the frontier, many of whom had led their units for years, had little interest in having their power curtailed by being brought under a more centralized authority, and viewed any attempt by the general staff or the Ministry of Defense to do so with great suspicion. Recognizing that dissatisfaction among the field officers was a one-way ticket to a coup that would eliminate both the civilian government and the general staff, Gen. Ne Win and the DSC decided that it was best to let sleeping dogs lie. But by 1961, a combination of factors had shifted the balance in field-staff relations decisively in the favor of the staff officers.

First, the purge of the most vocal field officers at the 1961 Commanding Officer’s Conference had effectively shattered the political organization of the field officers. The replacement of powerful field officers with up-and-coming officers more loyal to the general staff meant that the field officers, writ large, were more receptive to proposals of reform by the general staff–or at least, were less able to effectively oppose them.

Second, the reorganization of the Tatmadaw’s organizational structure aligned with the strategic priorities of both the Tatmadaw and the civilian government. With the withdrawal of the Kuomintang’s Lost Army from Burma in late 1960, the Tatmadaw’s primary raison d’etre shifted from offensive operations against a near-peer KMT force to counterinsurgency operations against various guerilla groups operating in the countryside. Consequently, the military saw less value in brigade-sized formations that could be transferred from one side of the country to the other, and more value in geographically defined regional commands that could focus on securing and holding territory in those regions.

The civilian government, on the other hand, saw tremendous value in organizational reform as a tool to neuter the ability of the Tatmadaw to overthrow the civilian government. Under the old organizational system, considerable power was afforded to the field officers in command of the Northern and Southern military districts. Both of these men, if alienated by the civilian government, had the resources to overthrow the government without much thought–especially if the government happened to piss off both of them. By breaking up the military districts into smaller regional commands, the power held by these two commanders would be likewise broken up into more commanders, none of whom would have sufficient resources to overthrow the government on their own.

Third–and most relevantly for the field officers themselves–restructuring the Tatmadaw would dramatically expand the number of senior officer billets that existed for field commands–something that the Tamadaw was woefully short on in 1961, with only two Brigadier-level positions outside of the general staff. In the earlier days of the Tatmadaw, this concentration of authority had made sense: the army was young enough and small enough that there were hardly enough officers experienced enough to fill these senior billets, let along to have competition for them. As the Tatmadaw continued to grow, so too did the number of upwardly mobile officers craving commands of their own, but the number of billets did not. This situation was exacerbated following the return to civilian government in 1960: many higher-ranking officers, who had been removed from their command in 1958 and given control of some function of the civilian government, returned to active military service to find that there weren’t any command positions for them to hold.

1961 Organizational Reform

The 1961 Organizational reform, promulgated by the Defense Services Council with the authorization of Minister of Defense Hmu Aung and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Aung Gyi, was a significant step in rationalizing the organizational structure of the Tatmadaw for the threats of today. The most significant change was the division of the two previous military districts, northern and southern, into five new division-level regional commands: Northwest, Eastern, Southeast, Southwest, and Central. Each district is led by a Brigadier, who is further assisted by a deputy commander holding the rank of colonel. This alone has more than doubled the amount of field officer Brigadier billets from two to five.

Notably, the reform also eliminated almost all independent brigade-level forces in Burma, choosing instead to turn them all into subordinate units under the regional commands. Only two brigades remain: 7 Infantry Brigade in Kachin State, which is engaged in border control and counterinsurgency along Burma’s northern border, and 11 Infantry Brigade, engaged in counterinsurgency in Karen State. Both of these units report directly to the Ministry of Defense by way of the Defense Services Council–the plan being that, should the government catch wind of a coup plot, either or both brigades could be withdrawn to Rangoon to secure the capital.

One of the major benefits of this reform is that it all but eliminates the ability of individual field commanders to act without the knowledge and permission of their superior officers. Of the five regional commands, three (Eastern, Southeast, and Southwest) are far too busy with counterinsurgency operations (for which they are heavily reliant on logistics support from the general staff and the MInistry of Defense) to pose any real threat to Rangoon. Only the Central and Northwest Commands have enough operational time to plan any sort of move against Rangoon (and even then, neither of them have the troops to do it alone), and those commands have been filled with Ba Shwe and Kyi Maung, respectively–both known loyalists of Aung Gyi.

Organizational Restructuring

1: New command was accompanied by a promotion (new rank listed)