The list is public and the number is secret

In February 2025, the Office of the Permanent Secretary for Defence wrote to the House Committee on Military Affairs to explain that it could not tell them how many generals there are.

The committee had asked for the number of personnel at the rank of major-general and above. The reply, signed by the Director-General of the Adjutant-General’s Department acting for the Permanent Secretary, stated that this information is classified ลับมาก — the highest routine classification — particularly at the senior ranks, because disclosure would affect national security, and that the Regulation on the Protection of Official Secrets B.E. 2544 (2001) applied.

The letter was obtained and published by Anaylo Kosakul, an adviser to the committee who runs the defence analysis site thaiarmedforce.com.

And his observation is the one that matters.

Several hundred generals are transferred every April and October, and those lists are published. Every officer’s name, rank and new post appears in the Royal Gazette as a matter of routine. So how, he asked, does the total affect national security — and whose interest does it actually affect? He noted that many countries specify in law how many generals they may have. In Thailand the figure is a secret.

That is the whole subject of this article, and it needs stating plainly.

The state publishes the list and classifies the count.

The number is derivable, which is the point

A classification protects information that would otherwise be unknown. This one does not.

Every appointment and transfer is gazetted. Isra News has previously worked through the appointment records to estimate general-officer numbers across 2008 to 2018, and the resulting series is the reason anyone can discuss the subject at all:

Between 2008 and 2011 the number sat at roughly 550 to 584. In 2012 it jumped to 811. By 2014 it had passed 1,000. In 2021 it was reported at around 1,700.

⚠️ And here is a trap the article is going to walk around rather than into. The 2024 annual reshuffle order covered 808 generals. That is the number moved, not the number existing, and the two get quoted interchangeably in Thai discussion. Article 158’s lesson applies exactly: a flow and a stock are different populations.

So the count can be assembled by anyone patient enough to add up published documents. What the classification prevents is not knowledge. It prevents the ministry from having to state a figure it could be held to.

And this archive has spent fourteen articles on the proposition that a rule binds where the governed behaviour is observable. Here the behaviour is maximally observable — rank is worn on the shoulder, spoken in the form of address, printed on the card — and the aggregate is withheld. Every individual general is public. Generals in general are secret.

What the same letter admits

The reply that refuses the number volunteers something more useful than the number.

It states that the ministry is reducing general-officer establishment, and it names the posts being cut: ผู้ทรงคุณวุฒิพิเศษ — special senior expert — ผู้ทรงคุณวุฒิ, senior expert, and นายทหารปฏิบัติการ, operations officer. The programme is to complete within fiscal year 2028. 330 general-officer posts have already been cut, with a further 70 to go between FY2025 and FY2028.

Read what that list of post titles is telling you, because it answers the question everybody actually asks.

The reduction is not coming out of divisions, fleets or wings. It is coming out of advisory and specialist slots.

Which means that is where the generals accumulated. The ministry’s own remedy identifies the location of the problem: general rank attached to posts that are not commands.

In most armed forces, rank is a property of a position. You hold two stars because you command something that requires two stars, and when you leave, the stars stay with the post. Where rank instead attaches to a person, through advisory and expert designations that carry the grade without a command, the establishment can grow without any new unit being formed.

That is the mechanical answer to “why does Thailand have so many generals”, and it comes from the ministry’s own reduction plan rather than from any critic.

Why an institution issues rank rather than something else

The structural question is why the pressure exists at all, and there is an answer that requires no bad faith from anyone.

A closed career service has one currency.

It cannot pay market rates against a private sector that does not exist for its skills. It cannot easily let people move out and back. It cannot offer equity. What it can offer is promotion — and promotion, in a hierarchy, means rank.

So when an institution needs to retain, reward or make room, the instrument available to it is the only one it issues itself. This is article 166’s finding in a different register: a state deploys the instrument its machinery can produce. There it was budget lines producing posts producing presence. Here it is a personnel system producing the one thing a personnel system can produce.

And there is a second-order effect that makes the pressure worse. Thai general rank carries weight outside the armed forces — in appointments, boards, advisory roles and public life generally. An issuer whose currency is accepted beyond its own borders faces demand it does not itself generate, and every institution in that position, from central banks downwards, has to decide how much to issue. The difference is that a central bank publishes the figure.

The consequence that matters most

Article 166 The money bought presence established, from the Royal Thai Army’s own published account, that about 75% of the ISOC budget goes to the southern border provinces mission and close to 70% of that is personnel compensation.

Now add this article’s fact to that one.

If the number of officers at major-general and above is classified, the cost of officers at major-general and above cannot be computed from public documents.

The largest component of the security budget has a denominator the public is not permitted to know. Parliament’s own military affairs committee asked for it and was refused on national security grounds, by a letter that in the same breath described a reduction programme running to 2028.

Both things cannot comfortably be true. A number precise enough to be reduced by 330 and then by 70 more is a number the ministry holds to the unit. What is classified is not the ministry’s knowledge of it. It is the public’s.

This article makes no allegation about that, and does not need to. The point is narrower and harder: a budget line cannot be audited against a headcount that is secret, and 70% of the relevant budget is that line.

What could not be established

Tom’s question asked about police generals as well as military ones, and this article has almost nothing to say about them.

No comparable figure, series or classification decision for the Royal Thai Police was found. The police have their own rank structure, their own reshuffle cycle and their own establishment, and the general-officer inflation discussed in Thai public debate covers both. This piece covers one.

That is a gap in the research, not a finding about the police, and it is stated here rather than papered over with a sentence that sounds like coverage.

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Common misconceptions

“Nobody knows how many generals Thailand has.” The ministry knows precisely — it is reducing the number by specified amounts. The public is not told.

“There are 808 generals.” 808 is the number in the 2024 reshuffle order. That is people moved, not people existing.

“They command units.” The posts being cut are special senior expert, senior expert and operations officer — advisory and specialist slots, not commands.

“Nothing is being done.” A reduction programme runs to FY2028, with 330 posts already cut and 70 more scheduled.

“The secrecy protects operational information.” Every individual appointment is gazetted. The classification covers the sum of published components.