Category: US Military

Here is a story that is likely to get the blood boiling for many people this morning:

Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist and go to war.

Now the Pentagon is demanding the money back.

Nearly 10,000 soldiers, many of whom served multiple combat tours, have been ordered to repay large enlistment bonuses — and slapped with interest charges, wage garnishments and tax liens if they refuse — after audits revealed widespread overpayments by the California Guard at the height of the wars last decade.

Investigations have determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet enlistment targets.  [LA Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but basically California National Guard personnel were illegally giving out federal reenlistment bonuses to personnel who did not qualify in order to meet their quotas:

In 2010, after reports surfaced of improper payments, a federal investigation found that thousands of bonuses and student loan payments were given to California Guard soldiers who did not qualify for them, or were approved despite paperwork errors.

Army Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe, the California Guard’s incentive manager, pleaded guilty in 2011 to filing false claims of $15.2 million and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. Three officers also pleaded guilty to fraud and were put on probation after paying restitution.

Instead of forgiving the improper bonuses, the California Guard assigned 42 auditors to comb through paperwork for bonuses and other incentive payments given to 14,000 soldiers, a process that was finally completed last month.

Roughly 9,700 current and retired soldiers have been told by the California Guard to repay some or all of their bonuses and the recoupment effort has recovered more than $22 million so far.

The way I look at it is if the personnel who were given the bonuses did not know they were improperly given then why should they be forced to pay it back when they fulfilled their end of the contract?  This looks like something Congress needs to take a hard look at and rectify.

It looks like the US military is trying to find different ways to respond to North Korean provocations other than simply flying over the peninsula:

Two U.S. Air Force B-1B strategic bombers this week made the closest-ever flight to North Korea to warn the communist country against any further provocations, the U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) said Thursday.

North Korea conducted its fifth underground nuclear test on Sept. 9, despite international condemnations and sanctions imposed after the previous nuke detonation in January. The latest provocation came on the heels of the launch of three ballistic missiles four days earlier.

One of the two B-1B Lancers landed on Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometers south of Seoul, after flying over the skies of South Korea on Wednesday. The other returned to Andersen Air Base in Guam the same day.

“It was the first time a Lancer landed on the Korean Peninsula in 20 years (since 1996),” the USPACOM’s website showed.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Considering the poor meal choices offered on US military bases, fitness programs focused on PT tests and not health and the change of lifestyle many younger troops live in front of video game screens it is easy to understand why soldiers’ weight have increased:

It’s not exactly clear why America’s military personnel are getting fatter. Could be that 15 years of war have weakened the focus on fitness. Could be that millennials, with their penchant for sedentary activities like playing video games and killing time on social media, aren’t always up to the rigors of military life. Could be all the burgers, fries, cakes and pies served in chow halls around the world.

And maybe, too, the military is simply reflecting the nation’s broader population, whose poor eating habits are fueling an alarming rise obesity rates.

This much is clear, though: Today’s military is fatter than ever.

For the first time in years, the Pentagon has disclosed data indicating the number of troops its deems overweight, raising big questions about the health, fitness and readiness of today’s force.  [Army Times]

You can read more at the link, but like I have always said I have had a lot of so called overweight soldiers that were actually very good troops who could pass the PT test just had problems with the tape test.

Here is what retired Marine Corps General James Mattis has been up to, writing a book about the military-civilian divide:

Most Americans greatly admire the military — but they actually know almost nothing about it.

“Most people know nobody in the military,” said retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis, who spent 44 years in uniform.

“There are many people who do not know if the U.S. Army has 60,000 men or 6 million. They do not have a clue about that,” he said.

Mattis, the revered four-star general who headed U.S. Central Command before retiring in 2013, is the co-author of a new book, “Warriors & Citizens,” that reveals ground-breaking research about the cultural gap between the military and the civilian population it serves. [Army Times]

You can read more at the link, but from what was quoted in the article none of it was surprising to me.

Looks like someone should find something else to do with their life instead of joining the military:

The sailor referred to San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who made headlines in August when he opted to take a knee for the anthem, saying he was not going to “show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”

“[The stanza] basically says land of the free, home of the brave, except for hirelings and slaves and I just can’t support anything like that,” the sailor said. “I think Colin had a really good point when he said we had bodies in the streets.”

In the video, the sailor, who is dressed in civilian workout clothing near a Pensacola barracks building, expresses anxiety that other Marines or sailors will notice her filmed protest and confront her about it.

Military regulations require troops to stop in place, stand and salute during the brief ceremony.

“My heart is racing. This is not an easy thing,” she said.

While the anthem is played, the sailor sits on a picnic bench with a raised fist, a symbol of solidarity in the Black Power movement. When the anthem concludes, she expresses relief and pride in her protest.

“Today I actually did something, and it was small but significant for me,” she said. “Until this country shows they’ve got my back as a black woman … I can’t, and I won’t and I won’t be forced to [stand].”  [Military.com]

You can read more at the link.

Next year the US military will be testing the THAAD missile system against a North Korean Musudan target:

The United States will carry out an interception test against Musudan-type intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM) next year with its advanced missile defense system, following successful trials on short and mid-range missiles, Washington’s missile defense chief said Thursday.

“As those (short-range and mid-range) tests have been done over a period of years and as that success has been achieved (with missile defense shield), we move to longer-range tests,” U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) Director Vice Admiral James D. Syring said in a group interview with local reporters at South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff headquarters in Seoul.

The agency chief said next year, the U.S. will test the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system against IRBMs to better counter the growing threats from North Korea in the Indo-Asia Pacific region. North Korea’s Musudan missiles are IRBM with a range of more than 3,000 kilometers and a capability of striking the U.S. territory of Guam and Japan.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but for those wondering how effective the THAAD interceptor is, it has been successful in 13 of 13 of its past tests to include shooting down six missiles that replicated current North Korean missiles.

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.