Category: US Military

It is about time the US Army reassessed its body composition standards because I have seen too many fit troops be considered “fat” over the years due to the tape test.  There has to be a better way of determining who is really fat:

For the first time in 14 years, the military is rewriting its body composition standards and the methods used to determine whether troops are too fat to serve.

Pentagon officials intend to publish a new policy later this year, a document expected to have sweeping effects on how the military defines and measures health and fitness. The review comes amid rising concern about obesity. Among civilians, it is shrinking the pool of qualified prospective recruits. And in the active-duty force, a rising number of overweight troops poses risks to readiness and health care costs.

“You can look around and see all the soldiers that are pushing that belly,” said Dr. David Levitsky, a professor of nutritional science and human ecology at Cornell University who has studied military nutrition and obesity. “They have to do something about it.”  (…………….)

Medical experts say the BMI is flawed at each end of the spectrum. It unfairly penalizes weight lifters and other athletic people who are healthy but have a lot of muscle mass that increases their weight. And the BMI test can fail to catch unfit troops who are naturally tall and thin.

“When you have groups of individuals who are fit and highly trained, then BMI is absolutely useless,” said Dr. Dympna Gallagher, the director of the body composition unit at the New York Obesity Nutrition Research Center.  [Military Times]

You can read the whole thing at the link, but I have always felt that the physical fitness test should be the determining factor if someone is unfit for service.  From what I have seen generally people who are truly fat have a hard time passing the PT test.

Hopefully the House shoots down this BAH plan because all it is going to do is increase paperwork for troops, cause personnel to rent larger houses than they need and then inflate the housing market around military bases while taking money out of soldiers’ pockets:

A leading defense analyst is calling the Senate’s plan to reform military housing allowances a potential disaster for troops’ finances.

The proposal, included in the Senate draft of the fiscal 2017 defense authorization act, would require the Defense Department to reimburse only troops’ exact rent and utilities costs, instead of issuing stipends that estimate cost of living in different areas.

The move could pull hundreds of dollars a month out of some families’ military payouts, although Senate planners argue those troops are receiving more than their share of housing costs.

But Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in an editorial in Politico this week called the housing plan “perhaps the most misguided proposal with the greatest potential for unintended consequences” in the annual budget bill.

“What the Senate proposal fails to recognize is that the housing allowance, despite its name, is not really about housing at all,” he wrote. “Congress has used the housing allowance to increase cash compensation for the military, and it’s a smart way to do that because it doesn’t incur additional liability for retirement pensions.”  [Army Times]

The only part of this plan that I think the Senate has a fair point is having one BAH for dual military married couples.  That is a harder entitlement to defend considering just one housing allowance is needed to provide housing just like soldiers who are not married to another servicemember do.

The incident that got the Dallas police shooter discharged from the Army has been disclosed; he stole panties from his officer girl friend in his reserve unit:

But two soldiers who knew Johnson in Afghanistan, who were reached and interviewed separately, said it was an open secret that the pair had a romantic relationship and were publicly affectionate.

In an interview with TheBlaze website, Johnson’s mother, Delphene, implied they were more than friends.

“Before, when they went to drill, during the drill weekends, she stayed here,” she said. “Yeah, they slept in the same bed.”

Gilbert Fischbach, a former Army sergeant who was Johnson’s squad leader, says that the woman has denied being intimate with Johnson and that he believes the two were just close friends.

But, he said, the nature of their relationship doesn’t matter — he was found with her underwear without her permission.  [Dallas Morning News]

After the incident Johnson was supposedly ostracized from his unit and eventually moved to a different base.  When it comes to a sex crime accusation in the Army of course few people are going to want to be associated with someone accused of that crime; especially one caught in the act.  Here is where the reporter states that the ostracizing of Johnson led to him hanging out with “black people”:

“Everybody thought that he was just a person that stole panties,” a soldier said. “He broke down after that a little bit because they ostracized him. All of his friends started unfollowing him on Facebook. They wouldn’t deal with him, they wouldn’t talk to him.”

“He started hanging out with people he usually didn’t hang out with — the black people, honestly,” said the soldier, who is black.

So what is this passage supposed to mean?  That him hanging out with other black people led to him becoming a racist killer? That if he didn’t hang out with other so called “black people” that the killings would not have happened?  I also find it hard to believe he was not hanging out with so called “black people” before this incident happened.  Notice how the reporter had to specify that the quoted person was black; this was intentional because the reporter does not want to be accused of passing on a racist statement if a white guy was quoted as making that statement.

Johnson was discharged for the panty incident in Afghanistan and the article concludes with the reporter insinuating that the Army should have checked up on this guy despite him no longer being in the Army:

One of the soldiers interviewed by The News reported talking to Johnson about a year after they returned from Afghanistan.

“I was like, ‘How are you doing? Has anybody called to check up on you?'” the soldier recalls. “He said, ‘You’re the first person I’ve heard from in the unit.'”

This reporter doesn’t seem to understand that the Army has no obligation to check on Soldiers when they are no longer in the service.  Considering the amount of Soldiers that leave the Army every year this would be an impossibility anyway unless a large unit was stood up to do this.  This article seems like a lame attempt by the reporter to pass blame on to the Army for what happened in Dallas instead putting the responsibility solely on the person that committed the crime.

Times are a changing and I am looking forward to the new recruiting commercials:

Transgender men and women can serve openly in the United States military following the repeal Thursday of Pentagon policies that forced them to keep their gender identities secret or risk a discharge.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter said those policies discriminated against “talented and trained Americans,” and did not represent the values of the United States military as he announced his decision at the Pentagon nearly a year after he vowed to repeal the ban. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers blasted Carter’s decisions as “politics over policy” during a time of war.

“Our mission is to defend this country, and we don’t want barriers unrelated to a person’s qualification to serve preventing us from recruiting or retaining the soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine who can best accomplish the mission,” Carter said. “We have to have access to 100 percent of America’s population for our all-volunteer force to be able to recruit from among them the most highly qualified and to retain them.”

The new policy will be rolled out over a one-year period. Effectively immediately, Carter said, troops cannot be discharged, denied reenlistment or involuntarily separated solely because of their gender identity. But it will be about a year before the military begins to openly recruit transgender individuals to join the service. Even then it will only allow transgender individuals who have completed any gender-related medical treatment to join the military, and it will require certification from a doctor that they’ve been “stable in their preferred gender for 18 months,” according to Pentagon documents.  [Stars & Stripes]

Here is part of the policy I have concerns with.  Considering all the pay and benefits currently being taken away from troops the DoD some how found the money to pay for expensive sex change surgeries and hormone treatments?:

Also beginning Oct. 1, the Military Health System will begin providing transgender troops “all medically-necessary care” related to gender transition, Carter said. A military doctor will determine what medically-necessary care is needed for such individuals on a case-by-case basis. That care could include gender reassignment surgery or hormone therapy, a senior defense official said. It will not include any cosmetic surgery, added the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the policy publicly.

The costs to the military associated with allowing open transgender service will be relatively low, the defense official said. The military was only likely to incur about $4 million to $14 million per year in additional medical costs to provide the medically-necessary transition care.

You can read more at the link, but I also think this is all the more reason why there has to be one physical fitness standard now.  How is it fair that someone biologically male, but identifies as a female gets to take the female physical fitness test?  This puts them at an advantage against both male and female troops by taking an easier fitness test and thus scoring more points for promotion.

I know parking in the D.C. area can be crazy, but this going way overboard:

Bryan Whitman, the senior Pentagon official charged last month with stealing a Capitol Hill nanny’s license plates, has been placed on paid administrative leave and had his top-level security clearance revoked.

It remains unclear whether Whitman, the highest-ranking career civilian in the Defense Department’s public affairs office, had informed his superiors of the alleged crimes — which he was required to do.  (……)

In early April, court records say, Whitman stole two license plates from the car of a nanny who had used a visitor pass to park in his neighborhood, where she cares for a young couple’s 1-year-old son. Two days later, after the plates were replaced, he stole another from the car. Then, in late April, he struck once more — but this time the couple caught him on a video camera they had mounted inside their home’s front window.

After handing over the plates to police and being charged, Whitman agreed to a deal this week that would lead to the case’s dismissal if he pays $1,000 in restitution, performs 32 hours of community service, remains out of trouble for the next 10 months, and stays away both from the nanny and the woman for whom she works.

The source close to him insisted he didn’t know his target was a nanny. Whitman, who has worked at the Defense Department for more than two decades, believed the person using the visitor pass worked on Capitol Hill and was taking advantage of the available parking.

A spokesman for the District of Columbia’s Department of Transportation Department said Wednesday it is legal for nannies to use visitor passes when they are working.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but I would not want to live some place where you have to get a parking pass just park on the side of the street.

For servicemembers who rely on their BAH for some extra cash by living in a smaller home than what you could afford with your stipend, get ready because Congress is coming to take that money from you:

Senate lawmakers want to radically overhaul how military housing stipends are awarded and end the practice of troops pocketing extra cash from the payouts.

The plan is tucked into the Senate’s pending draft of the annual defense authorization measure, and hasn’t received the same attention as major military health care and acquisition reforms also included in the legislation.

But it has the potential to change housing stipend totals for nearly every service member in coming years, with some potentially losing hundreds of dollars a month. And it comes after a series of pay and benefits trims in recent years that have left advocates frustrated about increased financial strain on military families.

Instead of the current Basic Allowance for Housing system, which assigns flat-rate stipends for zip codes across the country based on troops’ rank and family status, the new proposal would move closer to the military’s Overseas Housing Allowance. That system sets maximum payable stipends but awards troops only for their actual expenses, making recipients provide proof of what they pay in rent and utilities costs.

Dual military couples and service members who room with friends would not be able to game the system either. They’d see their individual stipend cut in half, adjusted to cover just their actual costs and nothing more.  [Military Times]

You can read more at the link, but this will do little to save any money and instead take money from troops to give to realtors.  I would not be surprised if the real estate lobby is behind this change.  That is because what will happen is that the realtors will make sure the rent for a home matches what the servicemembers maximum BAH rate is.  This will in turn drive up rental rates across the city as well which will bring in more money for realtors from civilians trying to find a place to rent.

This already happens in Korea with the Overseas Housing Allowance (OHA) which has led to realtors being put off limits for colluding with property owners.  I also wonder how this affects servicemembers who own homes?  Will they be allowed to use the BAH to pay their mortgage?  What if they have the house paid off?  Will they have their BAH cancelled?

It seems to me that if Congress wants to save money than tax whatever the remaining BAH is as income.  For example if someone’s BAH is $2,000 and rents a house for $1,500 than tax the extra $500 as earned income.  This would keep money in troops pockets and not artificially increase rental rates across an entire community plus put money back in the treasury.  This makes too much sense so it probably will not happen.

I wear New Balance running shoes and the claim they are not durable by the Pentagon I am highly skeptical of considering how the various shoes I have wore over the years have held up just fine:

Now the Pentagon has stepped into more procurement quicksand, this time here in Lawrence, where it touched off a war of words with the New Balance footwear company, the Lawrence City Council and U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas, D-Lowell, by alleging the company’s athletic shoes are not fit for military duty. The company is not allowed to sell shoes on military bases, which it says will cost it the sale of many as 225,000 pairs to recruits and soldiers annually.

 

It was a snub heard ’round the world, sparking allegations that the Department of Defense prefers shoes made in Vietnam and Malaysia rather than in American hometowns like Lawrence, and amplified by New Balance’s decision to retaliate by taking up arms against President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership. The trade pact would lower tariffs on goods imported from 11 other nations, which New Balance says would flood the market with cheap foreign-made athletic shoes.

 

Rob DeMartini, New Balance’s president and CEO, said he agreed not to oppose the trade pact in exchange for assurances from Michael Froman, the Obama administration’s top trade official, that he would ease the impact by helping the company get a Defense Department contract to produce up to 225,000 pairs of athletic shoes a year for military recruits and soldiers. That never happened, the company said, then unleashed its attacks on the trade pact after years of reluctant silence.

 

“I’m definitely not a defense appropriation or procurement expert, but in the seven years I’ve been working on this, I’ve seen nothing but a bureaucratic nightmare, where middle managers at the Pentagon are making decisions that affect real jobs and real lives in America,” said Matthew LeBretton, a New Balance vice president. “There’s something really wrong with the system.”

 

LeBretton refuted DoD allegations that New Balance shoes are too expensive, noting that the company offered to supply the shoes at cost in an effort to keep its assembly lines humming and its supply lines full. He also disputed Pentagon claims that the test shoes it provided were not durable; published reports say the shoes were given to just six service members who were asked to run 30 miles over two months and then fill out a questionnaire.  [The Eagle Tribune]

Here is probably the most troubling statement in the whole article:

“If the Defense Department wants to make an argument that they want to buy non-American goods, that’s one thing,” Smithberger said. “But what a company’s political position is should have no bearing on whether they would get a contract or get a fair hearing and an ability to compete. It’s definitely improper.”

You can read more at the link.

Drink/drive limit toughened on US military bases in Japan, in line with Japanese standard: https://t.co/aK8MyPkc68 pic.twitter.com/0BQioioflO

— Erik Slavin (@eslavin_stripes) March 28, 2016

For those that haven’t read about this read I recommend going over to the John Q. Public blog and read about the curious case of Air Force veteran Alicia Watkins.  She was the woman that for yet to be determined reasons was given media credentials at a Donald Trump event and given the opportunity to ask a question.  Trump then invited her to come up on stage and made her a job offer.  The whole scene was strange, but when people began digging into Alicia Watkins backstory things got even stranger.

If you take everything she says at face value she is a 9/11 survivor from the Pentagon attack who had a close friend die who she started a charity for.  She then deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq where she saw combat action, suicide bombers, was seriously wounded and was awarded the Purple Heart.  She was also a military sexual assault survivor, has a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress.  She was then medically discharged from the Air Force and proceeded to become a homeless veteran.  While homeless she did video diaries that eventually landed her a spot on the Oprah Winfrey show.  She then went on to attend Harvard, become a beauty queen, reality television personality and gets the VIP treatment at Super Bowl 50.  I probably missed a few things, but that is the best I could do in a paragraph.

So what has been verified about Watkins?  As far the media company she claimed to be working for that got her press credentials according to CNN it does not exist.  We also know that she was an executive assistant for Major General Durbin at Camp Eggers in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2006.  I have seen nothing yet to show she deployed to Iraq.  We also know that she is claiming to be at two places at the same time.  This 2007 Air Force article has her addressing airmen that had recently returned from an Iraq deployment.  Her speech was about how being at Ground Zero during 9/11 motivated her to join the Air Force which is different from her other accounts of being assigned to the Pentagon during the 9/11 attack.  The Washington Post was able to confirm that her enlistment date was in 1998 which means that the 9/11 attacks could not have motivated her to enlist.

It is also unclear if she had to be homeless because if she was medically retired she should have been receiving a stipend and disability each month.  As far as attending Harvard this was a stretching of the truth because she enrolled in the Harvard Extension School which is an online offering of courses which anyone can sign up for.  There has yet to be any evidence that she was actually hit by any IED or seen any combat action.  I also could not find any evidence of the charity she supposedly started for her friend killed during the Pentagon attack.

Really a DD214 would pretty much clear a lot of this up because it would show whether she has a Purple Heart or not.  It would also show her assignments to see if she was actually assigned to the Pentagon on 9/11.  It would also show her deployment history.  There are already a lot of holes in this story, but hopefully the Stolen Valor folks can get a copy of her DD214 to put the remaining questions to rest.

Here is something that all servicemembers should keep in mind this political campaign season:

In a year that will undoubtedly be headlined by politics both national and local, the Air Force is warning airmen to watch what they say and how they say it.

With the 2016 presidential election just nine months away, the Air Force released an informational video last week, reminding airmen of Department of Defense regulations on discussing politics on social media.

In the video, Tech. Sgt. Holly Roberts-Davis cites a long-established DoD directive that prohibits active-duty military members from directly participating in partisan political activities, but includes updates as the policy relates to social media.

Things like campaigning for a candidate, soliciting donations to a particular campaign and even wearing a military uniform to a partisan political event have long been outlawed by the military, Roberts-Davis says in the video. But 21st century ways of communicating have extended those same concepts to the online world.

Roberts-Davis says active-duty military members are generally allowed to express political views on social media platforms, but there are several important caveats.

“If that social media site, or your post identifies you as on active-duty … then you must clearly and prominently state that the views expressed are those of you as an individual only and not those of the Department of Defense or your service,” Roberts-Davis says.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.