Posted on 01/28/2015 6:35:47 PM PST by Timber Rattler
Odd you should say that, my late husband was a jet mech and he served here, overtime, some holidays, overseas on a ship but not in a war. On the ship he told me they could not make him work more than 21 hours a day (or was it 20??) Does your job do that?
And the “military benefits” haha!!! The only benefits that are left are Tricare (which I thank God for) and the commissary, if only I lived close enough to a base to go there.
And that’s exactly what they’re doing. Exactly.
Don’t know how many, but some of us kept serving anyway. I was eligible to go out with a year and a half reduction in retirement age, but turned it down, Have to say though that the way things have been going, I won’t mind hanging it up at 60 in a couple of months
I agree! I retired after 26 years of active duty. They retirement pay is not all that “lavish” and the benefits would be better if I lived near a military installation.
Too many do not understand the beating you take over the period of 20+ years. I believe military retirement pay should be tax free.
running till your tongue hung out
I’ll add to that. I fondly recall the days of PT at Camp Geiger when the cloud of hangover stench engulfed the formation. Men would periodically run to the side of the road to puke and then run back into the formation. We all suffered but we all did it together. And that built up out camaraderie and we worked so much better as a team.
That is exactly what the National Guard has currently...no benefits until about age 60. So, why would someone put up with every day garbage from the military when they could do it once a month, have a civilian job, and still get the same benefits?
And if they change the National Guard compensation, then how will they get anyone to join that?
There are variants in military pay that the civilian market would not likely be able legally to get by with. Who draws a larger paycheck on active duty? An E-5 single and no dependents or an E-5 married with kids? Now keep in mind both would have the same job. The married E-5 makes more per month.
There is also this. Many government agencies are not Constitutional yet have huge numbers of federal workers making far more money and far better lifetime benefits than the military. However according to the Constitution the Congress sets the number of allowed military members and must pass legislation that provides for their needs and wages. You live under different laws, even legal double jeopardy, and only mandatory you get one hot meal a day and an hours sleep when I was in.
My Rating Machinist meant when I was in a 6/2 duty ratio. Six years sea duty to two years shore. A 20 year enlistment you'd see maximum 6 years shore duty if that. At sea work hours were 4 & 4 or 4 on and 4 off. Of the 4 off likely two of them were on Watch which is additional duty.
The working environment? 120 plus degrees in 100% humidity. A hand being placed near a steam leak you could neither see nor hear meant you lost your hand if it got over the pencil lead sized leak.
In peace time when we went to see there was a good chance someone wasn't coming back alive. Either by accident or natural causes. I know about that one my shop had to stand watch over the deceased until transported off. My last year in we were at three section duty in port. Any sailor can vouch for what that means. One night in three you stayed onboard till the next evening. This was supposed to be downtime but the Iranian Hostage Crisis had crews doing shipyard workers jobs in the yards to speed it up. Some nights I left the ship as late as 10:00pm to be back at 0700 next morning and that was my non duty night. Again no overtime, no compensated time, the jobs had to get done. We stayed at sea typically 9 - 10 months of a year. Then you had to make sure your division could spare you to take leave for a vacation. Yes it was 30 days but every day counted. I got out early because I had unused days on the book.
The enlistment obligation has also been increased from a total of six years to eight. Meaning an 18 year old enlisting is obligated for years past their four years active served for being called back up and that is now common. Take 18 years in age and that puts a first enlistment teenager obligated till age 26. Why? Because troops are spread too thin.
Some specialties like Nuclear Propulsion, Intelligence, jobs Etc where the military has vested over a year in schooling an extended obligation can be justified. But not for a typical enlistment.
Peace time can be as deadly as war. I escaped serious injury or death several times in four years while on board ship. My senior NCO's with 20 years in looked like 50 year old men when they were 40. Then there was the mid 1990's blood letting. Persons who had vested even 16 plus years were booted out due to force reductions. Yet Social Engineering like women on carriers was made top priority. Oh and likely at a cost of hundreds of millions in ship alterations to make it possible.
Congress needs to get it's priorities straight. The EPA for example is not a Constitutional function of federal government. It was Nixon's idea. The military has been a Constitutional function of government since ratification of the Constitution. Yet it is the very first place the budget cutters head for usually trying to either lower pay or cut retirement.
In 1980 retention in critical jobs was so undermanned the Navy offered me $15K and E-5 as a bonus if I would simply re-up. Why the shortage? Because Jimmy Carter and congress also thought the military needed cuts back then. They created a military no one wanted to be in including many lifers.
By 1983 a turnaround had occurred and most ratings were once again manned because we had a POTUS that cared about our troops and insisted Congress give them their due. No POTUS since Reagan has done like wise. None of them have.
It's been cuts after cuts both in manpower and critical programs to pay for new federal agencies and new civilian entitlements. I say we look first at non Constitutional agencies as well as the very generous Congressional Retirement Program for cuts. Elected Office should not be a career for any office at any level of government so why give them retirement pay? Give them Term Limits instead and force them back to private sector.
There are retired congresscritters drawing in excess of $150K a year retirement. Have you read any mainstream media stories on their retirement cost to taxpayers? But Joe is in the military & is making a fortune by golly. A myth that has been around every since. My dad at the end of WW2 made so little money he had to leave the service on a hardship to come home and make enough money to support the family. His dad had passed away after my dad had been in the Navy for only seven months. His brother stayed in and eventually went from E-1 to 0-5 before retirement. Dad did 45 year for Ma Bell. Dad came out better on retirement and money made over their lifetimes.
There's that word again.
Times are alot different now...there are very few isolated specialties where a servicemember basically puts in an 8hr. day and calls it a day. REMFs maybe, but not the line troops.
The services have combined career fields in addition to reducing manning to the point that in many cases, a 12hr. day is a “good” day.
So a servicemember will actually work more than 3100 hrs. vs. around 2100 hrs. in a normal year...in their PRIME years.
This isn’t counting deployments.
No, before we go after the folks in uniform, the politicians who use our troops as planks in their bridges need to pay and sacrifice.
Never tell your folks to do things you yourself have not or will not do. If you will not take a pay and benefit cut, then do not expect your “troops” to do the same without incurring some kind of blowback.
It was tried back in the late 80s early 90s with disastrous consequences to the middle tier NCO corps.
Go into the military. Get shot at. Have people try to plant explosives near you. Watch your friends die.
Come home. Get classified as mentally ill. Lose all your gun rights. Get horrible medical care at the VA. Have the government renege on the pension.
WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE ABOUT BEING IN THE MILITARY!
Should include a picture of those REPUBLICAN [SPIT] scum who are pushing amnesty as well...most of the US Capitol is complicit in this.
You have no idea the risks involved with being an aircraft mechanic, do you?
Granted, they are no where near like being shot at, but there are risks.
It’s gotten much better since I started and was serving, but injuries and sometimes death were common place on the flightline. Ever see what’s left of a crew chief after an aircraft wheel blows apart? Or what’s left of a jet engine mechanic who is maimed because another maintainer effed up large and did something they weren’t supposed to? No, these and many other stories are not presented to the vast majority of folks.
I have been exposed to products containing liberated asbestos fibers, composite materials, organic compounds, lubricants, fuels, MIBK, MEK, and numerous other chemicals all KNOWN to induce cancer...not counting the high risk environment of aircraft operating on a flightline.
I have numerous skin “conditions” as a result of exposures to the many items I encountered in my 20 years, loss of hearing, weak knees, to name a few.
The physical toll placed on my body in the 20 years I worked on the flightline is a hell of a lot worse than a REMF desk jockey that’s for sure...and I get to “wait and see” how long I get to live as a result of my chemical exposures.
But you picked us out instead of them, so you’re welcome for the “education”.
I love many of the folks I worked and deployed with...that’s what I love about the military...Even knowing what I know now, I’d do it again.
The military is one of the few organizations where you can begin drawing a pension as young as 37. It makes for an expensive retirement obligation.
It took several years for the U.S. Air Force’s Operation “Ranch Hand” to defoliate a large swath between the Cambodian Border and Saigon, and my Recon AO was now located in a part of this swath. During the time Ranch Hand was defoliating this swath through Tay Ninh, Binh Long, and Phuoc Long Provinces, I had been out numerous times on combat operations in these areas, and I eventually became somewhat at ease with defoliation occurrences, but my first experiences with Agent Orange were a bit disconcerting.
As a herbicide, Agent Orange was most effective during the dry season when this part of Vietnam would go for months without any appreciable rainfall and plant life had been stressed to the maximum. In addition to that, Ranch Hand would run their defoliation flights during mid-day when the day’s heat was at its highest and plant life was especially stressed. During this intense heat of mid-day, I would halt my Montagnard Company, form a defensive perimeter and not move until the sun dropped toward the horizon and the temperature dropped with it. The Montagnards called this noontime break “Pak” and believed it to be unhealthy to move during this period of extreme heat, and it probably was. During the intense heat of Pak, everyone, even the Viet Cong, would find shade, halt, lie down, and fall into a semiconscious stupor (it wasn’t really sleep) until the intense heat of mid-day had subsided. Only American combat units moved in the noonday sun, reminiscent of an old East Indian proverb, “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.”
It was during one of these Pak time halts when my first experience with Agent Orange occurred. In the distance, we heard the rumble of a low-level approach of what we had thought to be an approaching flight of A1-E Sky Raider bombers because of the sound of the aircrafts’ reciprocating engines and their propellers. As Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) flew these bombers and considered our AO to be a “Free Fire Zone,” they were liable to drop their bombs whenever and wherever they pleased, so the sound of their approach claimed our undivided attention. When the sound of what we thought were approaching bombers drew nearer, we could hear they were coming in very low, just as they would if they were on a bombing run, and I could see the look of apprehension on my Montagnard troop’s faces. A flight of A1-Es could do a lot of damage and we could tell from the sound they would soon be right on top of us. About that time, what we had thought to be A1-Es would pass directly overhead just above the treetops, and we would smell a faint chemical odor. We then knew these aircraft were not single engine A1-E bombers but were twin-engine C-123s of Ranch Hand, and we were in the midst of a defoliation operation. We had been told Agent Orange was completely harmless to human beings and I had believed it, but what happened next gave me second thoughts about the chemical’s safety.
Within minutes of the aircraft passing overhead, leaves would begin to fall from the trees. Thousands of gigantic trees that had stood there probably since before the time of Christ were now dying after receiving a single dusting of what had to be the most poisonous substance on the planet. What started as a rustling of the falling of a few leafs soon increased in volume to become a loud hiss as millions of leaves began to fall from thousands of trees until it sounded as if the forest was exhaling its dying breath in a final, loud, continuous sigh. The birds and the monkeys in the tops of these giant trees would begin to scream and fly or jump about in mindless panic, and a few monkeys would become so panic-stricken they would lose their grip and fall to their deaths on the forest floor, causing my Mountagnards to think the monkeys had been killed by the defoliant. I never understood what had caused these animals to become so panic stricken when they were caught in an Agent Orange defoliation, and I wondered if they had possibly known something I didn’t know, or could they have sensed something I was unable to detect? Could the birds and animals have sensed the agony of thousands of trees, as these living beings died a slow, horrible death? Could they have understood that their home, their world, and their life as it had been was now gone forever?
http://projectdelta.net/dry_hole.htm
Now, at the age of 73, I’m beginning to feel what those trees felt back in 1965.
You are absolutely correct, except to say there are some things you just don’t know until you’ve done them for a decade or two. The younger guys ALWAYS need NCOs and officers with more than one hitch. But once you get in your 40s and start physically slowing down, it is time to let the next cadre take over. In doing it this way, I believe the US Armed Forces has the best NCOs in the world, and that’s why our military is so good. But in the end, it’s all about retention. Right now, they think they have enough people willing to make a commitment by re-enlisting/staying on as a regular—even without the retirement benefit.
That made a lot of mistakes over the years, trial and error, and finally came up with the current system. I retired under the previous system. Had I not been able to, I wouldn’t have stayed in as long. Under what they’re proposing, I would do 4 and out.
So, when the shit hits the fan, and they really need experienced NCOs and officers, they very well will not have any, or have too few.
If we’re lucky and not get totally defeated early, the benefits and enticements will return.
It’s always been that way up until WWII. After WWII, the Cold War was “fought” for 45 years, immediately replaced by the “Global War on Terrorism”.
It would be typical for this country to drop down to a tiny cadre of regulars and have very few benefits until the next fan hit.
I’m not saying the younger guys should get screwed, I’m just saying if they hadn’t offered me what they did I would not have been a career man. So I think the younger guys are more than welcome to bail. I understand that in my day, they needed me, offered me a contract I liked, and we both fulfilled it.
Agree with you, the military wages are appalling, they give up their youth to serve, early retirement is not a problem.
Although the military’s retirement program serves only a small minority of the force—about 17 percent of military personnel eventually qualify for retired pay—it provides an exceptionally generous benefit, often providing 40 years of pension payments in return for 20 years of service.[3] According to DOD’s Office of the Actuary, in FY 2012 there were 2.3 million military retirees and survivor-benefit recipients. They received approximately $52 billion in payments.
$52 billion, which doesn’t seem to me to be a big problem compared to all the money they waste on.......you name it.
I don’t know is this new recommendation will include the current requirement that all “retired” at 20 years military personnel are subject to recall to active duty until they have a combined 30 years of active and retired service.
“all “retired” at 20 years military personnel are subject to recall to active duty until they have a combined 30 years of active and retired service.”
I was told that when I retired after 20 years. Also I remember a distant cousin, WWI vet who was recalled during WWII eventhough he had retired around 1935 or 36 after 30 years of enlisted and commissioned service. My father told of going on weekend pass to visit “The Major” and his wife and their taking him around Hollywood. They were both assigned to March Army Air Field. The Major was enlisted artillery and commissioned in Infantry in 1917.
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