Posted on 12/14/2013 3:25:15 AM PST by SkyPilot
Edited on 12/14/2013 4:31:16 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Editor's note: Rebekah Sanderlin is an Army wife, Military Spouse of the Year finalist, and a writer who focuses on military issues. She, her husband and their three children are stationed at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. She is an advisory board member of the Military Family Advisory Network.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
I’m saying it’s all about supply and demand. I’m sure they could reduce benefits on FUTURE service men/women and still attract people. I’m also saying that if they would reduce food stamps, hey, people would probably start looking for work.
Looks like we get the shaft again.
Anyone remember Redux?
The High 3 plan?
What are they going to call this one?
BOHICOLA?
I agree with you if you make the promise keep the promise.
This problem is it is such an emotional issue.
The facts are downright scary. Look I am to old and can’t go anymore but what do you tell the moms of 8 and 7 year old kids right now that there kids have to go off and fight like we did at the beginning of WWII with inferior equipment at almost every level.
Bad terminology, we served for minimal pay and in return, if we made it to 20+ and retired, then we would see a modest payment, based on some now convoluted formula against one’s basic pay.
But I’ll tell you this, signing a contract with the government is not a promise. It’s a contract...I suspect many of the so called conservatives on this board would argue that contracts don’t mean anything, that they’re just a formal way of making a gentleman’s agreement.
What sucks is that the government has all the cards in their hand...they can break or modify the contract at will whilst the servicemember has absolutely no options to do either. We served based on the premise that the government would uphold their responsibility as outlined in our enlistment contracts.
I have absolutely no problem with SHARING the pain, but this legislation does not do that.
Military only get screwed, again.
Military compensation has been getting cut, for years...I’ve lived through and I am the proud recipient of not just one, but two of their cuts.
Redux/High 3...and VEAP, being charged for the medical (although I don’t complain about it), it’s still, by definition, a “cut”.
This has been going on for DECADES...death by thousands of “cuts”...but it has almost always impacted those who are currently serving or currently retired. I have yet to see these impact those yet to come into the service or retirement.
It’s one thing to sign a contract knowing up front that you’ll only get 40% of base pay for retirement, but it’s another to have a 50% of base pay retirement modified at one’s 17th or 18th year of service to either 40% or a High 3 average.
Point 1)
Wrong, I am talking about the rate not the absolute number of casualties. If you want to discuss the problem intelligently then we will do so but first compare the Thunder Runs into Baghdad April 2003 to the debacle in the hedgerows of Normandy. In the 2003 case almost invulnerable armor while in 1944 completely vulnerable armor with a gun that could not penetrate. The WWII generation learned the hard way not to let the technology fail.
I can go on and on about this but I also lived it in the Carter Years, which is why I left and since then have done my best to warn against technological surprise.
Point 2)
The Army is probably going to RIF another 70,000, the Navy layup 3 AGC and the Air Force will illegally go out of the non-tactical airlift mission. This is not conjecture this is like it or not a decision that is being made within the next few weeks. R&T and procurement will see a decline of $141B to 2018 until the OCO is reabsorbed.
Don’t tell me about technological dead ends, I lecture on the subject and get paid to advise governments on this subject. I have seen more waste that you can possibly imagine.
As far as China goes, I am on the rooftop screaming about this one because I know the nominal Chinese Government, (either the Princelings or Old Guard) are not completely in charge. There are large elements of the PLA/(N)/(AF) that are not in control of the nominal Chinese Government, but junior officers acting rather local “Warlords”. These actions cannot be properly examined using the filter of US experience and concept of Civil control of the Military. The situation in China is now much closer to the historical period of Japan in the 1920’s and we know how that worked out.
BTW the Chinese Defense Budget, if there really is such a thing does, not have personnel costs per se in it because the PLA kind of sort of works for “free” so what you see is almost all procurement and R&T spending.
The point that I am trying to make is our duty as the older generation to assure that the next time we fight we will not be woefully unprepared as we were upon our entry in to WWII where whole divisions and Naval units were sacrificed to hold the line.
Hard choices have to be made; so what is it benefits today or blood tomorrow?
I am sorry but you are mistaken. You personally may have been cut but the percentage of the DOD personnel budget is increasing over the whole.
Numbers are numbers and what people do not understand is the way the government allocates money no matter who is in charge.
Life in the military is going to really sink in a few years based on my experience and the real no BS numbers out to 2024.
Sorry
Quite a patronizing comment...I think I’ll go scrub my toilet now...will probably be more productive.
I know this is such an emotional issue but we couldn’t even get GSA toilet paper in the early 80’s, that’s how far it went. You bought the stuff yourself and carried it around all day with you.
Hanger queens were the norm not the exception and the vehicles were so bad if something dropped on the floor board of the trucks it would likely fall out through the rust holes.
The quality of the human capitol was so bad everything had to be reduced to comic book form. The manuals were literally two color comic books.
and part of that sign up was the agreement re their retirement BENEFITS - not 'entitlements' -
They served their end of it - now they're being short-changed.
You okay with that...
Well, there’s another Leftist’s point of view heard.
As if the members of our military get paid top dollar to begin with. They sign up for years at a time. They are at the military’s beck and call 24/7/365. They generally put their personal lives on hold for however long they are in the service.
If they don’t serve in a combat zone, they are all supporting the effort.
Now the going gets tough for the government, and even folks on our side line up to take a swing at the military.
Good Lord, with friends like this...
Compare the retirement portion of the military outlay to the $500 billion plus welfare cost per year. And then come back and aplogize to the men who stand up for you and your family, that you insulted.
Exactly the same as federal workers? Really? Promises = entitlements? Really?
As for your last comment, we spend more than we have all the time. The main reason is because we never back down to the left, and their demand we support their pipe dreams.
The military is one of the few things our federal government is charged with administering. None the less, that’s the first place folks think of cutting.
When welfare has been cut by 75 to 95%, come back and talk to me.
I agree. If Congress will cap all government spending so it GROWS at 1% below inflation...then I’m fine with capping my retirement in a similar fashion. Do the same to Social Security and all federal workers.
But of course, the ONLY place they want to do this is with retired military.
BTW - something I’ve heard from potential employers...’If I can hire you or someone who NEEDS the job, guess who I would hire...’ If you have retirement pay, they assume you will feel free to walk away if the job isn’t fun, or if the boss is a jerk.
And we know where and why the practice of fragging emanated. And as we both know, most Officers are institutionally bred through College rather than battlefields. But as they learned on the battlefields, they are surrounded by the enlisted, but always remember, it is fool hearty to paint with a broad brush.
Thanks for your perspective in this, and a followup post. I learned a thing or two today.
> You okay with that...
Sure. NEVER put your trust in elected officials. I treat all that as something that could be gone tomorrow.
Not emoting, simply stating facts about 2 significant events as I and countless thousands of others experienced them.
There were “groups” based on enlistment periods that were screwed at their 17th or 18th year by changes in the retirement system. Switched to High 3 or given Redux, depending on their period.
VEAP was a friggin’ joke to begin with, and yes, I and a few thousand others were screwed because of that program. I have 0 veteran’s educational benefits because of it and the gap left when it was converted to the MGIB.
These were personnel cuts that affected the active duty prior to their potential retirement, in breach of contract.
I worked on many a hangar queen in my day, cannibalizing engine parts from the engine shop in the middle of the night so jets loaded with material could make their missions, etc. I too saw vehicles as you describe...equipment and tools as well...it was a dangerous time to be an aircraft mechanic.
But to throw those who upheld their end of the bargain, served their nation honorably and in many cases, with distinction, under the bus while protecting the dregs of society is foolishness.
The battle of the hedgerows in Normandy was less about M-4s versus PZKW IVs and more about an intelligence failure concerning the compartmentalization and invulnerability of the centuries-old hedgerows themselves. Our forces were trapped into very close-range fire lanes and the Germans had a field day in ground they were very familiar with. In more open ground - and once an unknown innovator designed the "teeth" that could cut hedgerows - M-4 Shermans could and did exploit the relative weakness of the Panther's sides and hindquarters to good effect. The up-gunned Shermans and follow-on armor were still in the pipeline but made their presence known later.
The "Thunder Run" was glorious fun but was made possible only because the Iraqis were demoralized and on the run. A more appropriate example would be what happened to the Russian armor in Grozny. As I remember, one M1A1 was disabled in Baghdad by an RPG-7V anyway but I digress.
The point I attempted to make, that trained, talented personnel are irreplaceable and vital - and worth whatever we have to pay for them - stands. Technology as such, sometimes provides a critical edge but it really is a case of luck too. We have some well-funded technology entities - like DARPA and ONR - but a lot of their projects range from useless to poppycock because their members aren't often veterans of military service. Even the services waste billions on dumb projects, like the army's Crusader and the "Non-Line Of Sight" rocket that cost $250K per shot and the Marines' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle which posed a heavily armored vehicle skipping across the waves and could only carry the huge engine and fuel.
We need leaders with technology creds or we are going to keep wasting big bucks on bad stuff.
Yes, we should really watch the Chinese and plan for the stuff needed to fight them - and most important of all, keep the really good people we will eventually need to fight them.
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