this promising long time pensions has got to stop....for everybody......start paying pensions for work of 20/30/40 yrs at age 60 or 62....
Nope, can’t agree. Young people miss out on too many other opportunities when they go in the military. That early modest retirement pay is needed and deserved.
I could agree to raising it to as much as 25 years but it must start at separation.
Have you ever seen a 50 year old Captain trying to lead 18 year old soldiers? I have (Bundeswehr and U.S National Guard). It is not a pretty sight. War is a young man’s game. And no, there are not, and should not, be enough slots for uniform folks to sit while others bear the real burden.
The 20 year retirement is a small price to pay to avoid an attenuated, lard assed military that is less warrior than social program. And yes, there are specialties where more mature Americans can serve. But those are not line dog roles and can and should be filled with fireable civilians.
WRT “20/30/40 years of work”, how are you counting “a year”? In the civilian world, it is ~2000 hours. A deployment year is, +/- ~6570 hours, not counting wear and tear, stress on the body etc and oh yeah, the chance at getting seriously hurt.
What we will see is a repeat of what we saw last time this was attempted with the Redux program in 1986-96. Mid grade retention will crash, and we will scramble to reverse the effects. Unlike Walmart, the military cannot run job ads for mid and senior grade leadership. Every single leader is hand made from scratch.
Agree we need to shrink the Fed gov’t and its debt. Suggest we start by zeroing out all UN-earned benefits, then we can look at the altering the terms of the earned benefit contract. With the defense of the nation, oh yeah, gov’t job #1, comprising less than 25% of the Federal budget, I bet we can solve the problem well before re-negotiating the terms of the contract the American people signed up to with their Soldiers.
I did one active duty enlistment and a one year drill reserve enlistment. The guys I saw approaching their 20-30 years of active duty were wore out physically. In my Rating Specialty or IIRC {Army terms is MOS} you did 18-20 hour days at sea yes even the lifers.
IF we go by your idea well then I think the military should have to pay overtime then. Lets see how that works out. They work the hours then they deserve the pay for them right? The government gets it's moneys worth out of a Lifer then some. One of my Chiefs I tried to find 15 years after I got out was dead. I doubt he was over 50 at death. Another one who was at about his 16 year mark went into Cardiac Arrest at Norfolk Naval Hospital in the Lobby going there for chest pains. He was lucky they got him back.
The military is a young mans job and senior NCO's really should be out by age 50 which would be 32 years if the enlistment was at 18. What service a person is in and their job means everything when determining just how long they can keep at it and even possibly how well they can work after getting out in civilian jobs.
Using a Ratio of 1.5 years military worked time vs civilian 8 hour a day 5 days a week time a 20 year Lifer would have done the civilian equivalent of 30 years and the toll on body about the same as the 30. A 30 year Lifer would be closer to hours worked a 45 year civilian in wear and tear.
This same change the time in service requirements nonsense was floated around in the Carter Administration. To keep qualified and upper cut members of the armed forces it means their wages will have to be sufficient enough and a retirement secure enough to make it worth their efforts to sacrifice a higher civilian career and remain active duty. You aren't going to get E-6 through E-9's experience & knowledge by hiring off the street.
Cutting the retirement benefits or rather extending the time before eligible to draw with out a very large increase upfront in active duty base pay to make up the difference will mean Senior NCO's will be hard to come by. No incentive to take the abuse when civilian jobs pay better. If they have to work to 60-65 well gee they may as well stay go civilian at the end of their first enlistment and make it worth while to stay in one job till 60-65 and really cash in.
Maybe you come from a family of officers, I don’t know, but enlisted retirement pay is DESERVED and EARNED. and they should get it.
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.