One has to serve for twenty years before being eligible for a military pension. It’s not at all clear from the article as to why the ‘Shooter’ retired sooner.
After getting bin Laden, there’s nothing left to do in that line of work but get killed.
Yes, though I would say he didn’t retire, he just resigned. And since you’re not eligible for an active duty pension before serving 20 years, he chose his fate.
He probably could’ve taken some paper-pushing clerk-type job for the remaining four years, but apparently he chose not to — why not?
On the other hand I have an aquaintance who has a “zero percent” military disability, and because he lives in CA his kids will go to college for free, paid for by CA.
Doesn’t seem right.
From what I heard about the full article, it was family issues that prompted him leaving. We get these young dedicated tough men and we seem to imagine they will forego a family and it just rarely works out that way for more than a portion of them.
Traveling in business with only transitory postings is hard — traveling in “deadly” business would be impossibly hard on the other family memebers in many cases. If a 16 year fellow was 18 to 20 when he joined and his wife he meets in 3 years his junior, by the time he has in 16 years, she is either halfway through her child bearing years waiting or has a number of young kids with a father that is not there all that much. Tough all around.