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Hint: "this department" refers to the department under discussion, i.e. DoD. If GP had said "this agency", this odd tangent might have made sense.

[EDIT: also you seem to have edited your comment 3 times in less than 5 minutes, without mentioning the fact. Some people consider this rude.]

> I don't know how you came to this conclusion, as the actual numbers and ratio of military vs. civilian personnel is still classified to the best of my knowledge. To the best of my (circumstantial) knowledge, the ratio for civilian vs. (usually US Navy) military personnel is likely somewhere around 60/40. I couldn't tell you which category is civilian vs. military, though.

I'm not saying this to be mean, but you didn't parse my comment properly, so I'll break it down.

>Although this department includes the military forces (minus the coast guard), the vast majority of its member agencies are all civilian agencies, and the person who heads it up (Secretary of Defense) is a civilian.

This department is referring to the Department of Defense. The next sentence refers to its member agencies, not the members of its agencies. The member agencies (the agencies that are a part of the Department of Defense) are mostly civilian agencies, which you can see listed out on the wikipedia page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Def...

In it, you'll see that there are 15 defense agencies, 4 intelligence agencies, and 3 military departments, for a grand total of 19 to 3.

> No, the person who heads it up is an Admiral in the Navy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers The SECDEF oversees the DoD as a whole.

The "it" in that sentence is referring to the Department of Defense -- which was initiated by "this department". The person you linked to DIRNSA, which has nothing to do with what I was saying.

The Secretary of Defense is Ashton Carter, who's a physicist that's never served in the US Military.

Huh? Michael Rogers is not the secretary of defense.

It's splitting hairs. (and what I'm doing, only $deity knows)