Published: Saturday, May 22, 2010
Defense Department launches study of military compensation
Military compensation is far different today than it was on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked America.
As U.S. troops surged into Afghanistan and, 17 months later, invaded Iraq, Congress began pumping a stream of piecemeal improvements into pay and benefits. That continues, though the flow of new initiatives has slowed.
This month the Defense Department launched a year-long study to review key elements of military compensation, almost all of which have been altered, or perhaps should be, as a result of ongoing wars.
“Oh absolutely,” said Thomas Bush, newly announced director of the 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation. “If I go down this list of the four areas we’re looking at, after eight-plus years of being in conflict … there have been a number of changes. It’s time for us to step back and see if it all makes sense. Should it be that way in the future?”
Areas for the review include:
Compensation for service in a combat zone, during combat operations, in hostile fire area or while exposed to a hostile fire event;
Pay and benefits for members of the National Guard and Reserve
Compensation for wounded warriors, caregivers and survivors.
Pay incentives for the critical career fields including special operations personnel, mental health professionals, linguists and translators, and new mission skill such as unmanned aerial vehicles operators.
All of these areas clearly have been influenced by “eight-and-a-half years of conflict,” said Bush on May 10, a day before the review began.
To keep recruiting and retention strong, compensation changes since 9/11 have ranged from bigger annual pay raises and hefty gains in housing allowance to increases in death benefits, danger pays and separation allowances. Spending on enlistment and reenlistment bonuses, special and incentive pays jumped, particularly for combatants and high-demand skills.
Changes like Tricare Reserve Select were aimed at the Reserve and National Guard as they became full partners in the fight. Obvious pay inequities ended but others have surfaced. Congress, for example, lowered reserve retirement age, based on time deployed, but made the change applicable only for time deployed after the law was signed.
How these wars are fought also has shaped compensation. Tragically, improvised explosive devices cause the wars’ signature wounds — traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress. Advances in medicine and recovery of the injured have saved lives that would have been lost in earlier eras. But the severity of survivable wounds today have created other compensation needs including traumatic injury insurance to give immediate financial relief to the catastrophically injured and their families.
The review now sets out to examine how a lot of the pay changes fit together, and whether some need to be streamlined and others enhanced.
By law, the executive branch must conduct a study of military compensation every four years. President Barack Obama announced his goals for this review last December. Those goals haven’t changed, Bush said.
This review, for instance, won’t be examining the competitiveness of basic pay and allowances, despite fresh complaints from defense officials that Congress is unwise to continue to add a half-percentage point to every proposed annual pay raise. Those are dollars, they argue, that could be more effectively spent on targeted increases to critical skills.
“I’m not sure that looking at basic pay fits into our charter (and) we are limited in how much time we have to conduct the review,” Bush said. But the review will embrace the notion of targeting compensation dollars to more efficiently sustain the all-volunteer force, he explained.
The compensation review will decide whether new discretionary authorities are needed so “we don’t lock ourselves into long term commitments.”
To comment, e-mail milupdate@aol.com or write to Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120-1111
As U.S. troops surged into Afghanistan and, 17 months later, invaded Iraq, Congress began pumping a stream of piecemeal improvements into pay and benefits. That continues, though the flow of new initiatives has slowed.
This month the Defense Department launched a year-long study to review key elements of military compensation, almost all of which have been altered, or perhaps should be, as a result of ongoing wars.
“Oh absolutely,” said Thomas Bush, newly announced director of the 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation. “If I go down this list of the four areas we’re looking at, after eight-plus years of being in conflict … there have been a number of changes. It’s time for us to step back and see if it all makes sense. Should it be that way in the future?”
Areas for the review include:
Pay and benefits for members of the National Guard and Reserve
Compensation for wounded warriors, caregivers and survivors.
Pay incentives for the critical career fields including special operations personnel, mental health professionals, linguists and translators, and new mission skill such as unmanned aerial vehicles operators.
All of these areas clearly have been influenced by “eight-and-a-half years of conflict,” said Bush on May 10, a day before the review began.
To keep recruiting and retention strong, compensation changes since 9/11 have ranged from bigger annual pay raises and hefty gains in housing allowance to increases in death benefits, danger pays and separation allowances. Spending on enlistment and reenlistment bonuses, special and incentive pays jumped, particularly for combatants and high-demand skills.
Changes like Tricare Reserve Select were aimed at the Reserve and National Guard as they became full partners in the fight. Obvious pay inequities ended but others have surfaced. Congress, for example, lowered reserve retirement age, based on time deployed, but made the change applicable only for time deployed after the law was signed.
How these wars are fought also has shaped compensation. Tragically, improvised explosive devices cause the wars’ signature wounds — traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress. Advances in medicine and recovery of the injured have saved lives that would have been lost in earlier eras. But the severity of survivable wounds today have created other compensation needs including traumatic injury insurance to give immediate financial relief to the catastrophically injured and their families.
The review now sets out to examine how a lot of the pay changes fit together, and whether some need to be streamlined and others enhanced.
By law, the executive branch must conduct a study of military compensation every four years. President Barack Obama announced his goals for this review last December. Those goals haven’t changed, Bush said.
This review, for instance, won’t be examining the competitiveness of basic pay and allowances, despite fresh complaints from defense officials that Congress is unwise to continue to add a half-percentage point to every proposed annual pay raise. Those are dollars, they argue, that could be more effectively spent on targeted increases to critical skills.
“I’m not sure that looking at basic pay fits into our charter (and) we are limited in how much time we have to conduct the review,” Bush said. But the review will embrace the notion of targeting compensation dollars to more efficiently sustain the all-volunteer force, he explained.
The compensation review will decide whether new discretionary authorities are needed so “we don’t lock ourselves into long term commitments.”
To comment, e-mail milupdate@aol.com or write to Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120-1111
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