Category: US Military

The Stars & Stripes has a report stating that troops still feel like they are being retaliated against for reporting sexual assaults:

Too little progress has been made in countering perceptions of retaliation felt by those who report a sexual assault, and all the services must take measures to protect victims and others who report wrongdoing from reprisals, especially from peers, Pentagon officials concluded from an annual report on sexual assault in the military.

About two thirds of female troops who are sexually assaulted and report those attacks believe they experience retaliation afterward, according to the report.

“We’re not making enough progress on countering retaliation,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said at a news conference when the report was released Friday. “Too many servicemembers, the data shows, feel that when they report or try to stop these crimes, they’re being retaliated against in some way.”

The retaliation numbers, which are unchanged from 2012, come from a survey done late last year, and were first released in December. At the time, then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced new training and an additional study designed in part to prevent retaliation.  [Stars & Stripes]

I think to really understand this issue you have to define what retaliation is?  Is retaliation the command going after you with UCMJ and other measures or is it simply people in the unit not talking to you?  With an issue like sexual assault people may be uncomfortable talking to someone who made a report and that could be interpreted by someone as being retaliation.

The sellout of the military retirement system to Wall Street is almost complete:

The old, reliable military retirement system is about to be retired.

House and Senate lawmakers are moving ahead with dramatic plans to replace the current 20-year, all-or-nothing deal with a “blended” compensation system, complete with a 401(k)-style investment plan that promises all future troops will leave the service with some money for retirement.

The moves echo recommendations from the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission earlier this year, which pushed for changes to recognize the estimated 83 percent of service members who leave the military with no retirement benefits.

But some outside advocates still worry that, while well-intentioned, the change could decimate the senior noncommissioned and officer ranks, by giving them too much incentive to start a civilian career earlier and not enough incentive to stay to 20 years.  [Army Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but can you imagine how much money the Wall Street crew is going to make from transaction fees for doing little to nothing to manage all the money that will be flowing to them for these 401k’s? They are going to have a financial windfall at the expense of less money going into the pockets of US servicemembers.

This is just another example of someone thinking the entire US is like the South:

Army officials are investigating a diversity training briefing at Fort Gordon, Ga., in which a slide about “white privilege” was inappropriately shown to soldiers, according to an Army spokeswoman.

The Equal Opportunity briefing took place Thursday for about 400 soldiers of the 67th Signal Battalion, Capt. Lindsay Roman, an Army spokeswoman, said Friday. The slide titled “The Luxury of Obliviousness” has bullet-point items about “white privilege.”

One item reads, “Race privilege gives whites little reason to pay a lot of attention to African Americans or to how white privilege affects them. ‘To be white in America means not having to think about it.’ ”  [USA Today]

You can read the rest at the link, but when I was growing up and since then living in various majority Hispanic communities I was very aware of being white.

It is interesting that for fixed military pensions it is okay to turn these into 401k’s, but the minute someone mentions turning Social Security in a 401k suddenly the claims of throwing grandma at the mercy of the Wall Street casino comes into play.  So how come it is okay to throw servicembers retirement at the mercy of the Wall Street casino while it is not for grandma?  The answer is a lot more grandmas vote compared to servicemembers:

President Barack Obama announced Monday he will back sweeping overhauls to the military retirement and health care systems as a way to ensure the costly benefits survive into the future.

Obama said he will provide Congress a list of proposals by the end of April that will be based on the recommendations of the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, a panel created by lawmakers to find solutions to ballooning personnel expenses.

The panel has advised the military to eliminate its 20-year pensions in favor of a 401(k)-style retirement system, and replace Tricare health coverage with a wide variety of private insurance plans. Those and a list of 15 changes to military compensation — including a consolidation of commissaries and exchanges — could save almost $5 billion next year and up to $10.4 billion per year by 2020, the panel claims.

“I believe the recommendations are an important step forward in protecting the long-term viability of the all-volunteer force, improving quality-of-life for service members and their families, and ensuring the fiscal sustainability of the military compensation and retirement systems,” Obama wrote in the letter to Congress.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but just think how much money Wall Street is going to make off of “service fees” for all these new 401k’s.  Those guys always win.

This sounds more like the spouse thinking she wears the rank of the servicemember their married to:

My wife and I own a couple of smoothie/food shops. As small-business entrepreneurs, we take a lot of pride in providing 55 jobs while making payroll every week, all self-financed as saved- and scrimped-for investment capital. As owners, we choose to offer a 10 percent discount to first-responders and active-duty/reserve military and guardsmen. Which is where I get to my rub.

Recently, I had a military spouse grow irate with my cashier because we didn’t offer a discount to military family members. Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has happened. I guess I could stop offering any discount at all to the military, but would rather not. In this particular case, my cashier was on the receiving end of a very long tirade about how obviously unappreciative ownership must be of the sacrifices of the military family. The woman ended by stating “it would be in the owner’s best interest” to offer discounts to families as well. I wish I was there to find out exactly what she meant beyond her vague threat.

Her response, I believe, had nothing to do with my veteran-owned business being unappreciative of military families (we know firsthand about the hardships endured on the home front), and everything to do with the growing sense in our active and retired military community that as a group its members should be catered to because of their service. This is terribly misplaced and hurts civil-military relations, as well as sullies our service to this great nation.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link,but no business should be expected to give military discounts like this woman wanted.

According to the Korean media here are the three sites that have been chosen as candidates to host the THAAD missile defense system if it ever does get deployed on the peninsula:

The United States has yet to make a decision on the deployment of its advanced missile-defense system in South Korea, though it has carried out surveys on candidate sites, the U.S. forces here said Thursday.

Washington has hinted at the deployment of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery on Korean soil, which is home to about 28,500 American troops, to better cope with Pyongyang’s growing nuclear and missile threats.

“There are possible site locations in Korea for this system … Informal surveys have been conducted to find suitable sites in the event of a possible future deployment,” United States Forces Korea (USFK) said in a statement.

The statement came after the vernacular daily Munhwan Ilbo reported Thursday that Washington has picked three candidate sites — the city of Pyeongtaek, just south of Seoul, the southern port city of Busan and the border town of Wonju.

Without elaborating, the USFK said, “No decisions have been made either to deploy a system or determine where such a system might go … No procedures for discussions with South Korea have taken place.”

Stressing that the U.S. will be “in full consultation” with South Korea if it were to station a THAAD unit on its soil, the USFK said the battery “would provide benefits” to the defense” of the host country “against the North Korean missile threat by augmenting the Korean Air and Missile Defense (KAMD) system and U.S. Patriot systems in Korea.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

One of the Navy’s highly controversial acquisitions programs is about to make its debut in South Korea:

The U.S. Navy will send its new combat ship tailored for Asia’s shallow coastal waters to join military drills with South Korea that North Korea calls a prelude for invasion.

Carrying a helicopter, a vertical takeoff unmanned aerial vehicle, a 57 millimeter gun and 21 missiles, the USS Fort Worth will become the first littoral combat ship to take part in the annual Foal Eagle exercises starting next month off the coast of South Korea.

“The specific role that Fort Worth will play in Foal Eagle is really no different than any other Navy ship has for years,” Rear Adm. Charles Williams told reporters Tuesday in Singapore on board Fort Worth. “Fort Worth’s role will be just a normal part of that exercise,” said Williams, who is Logistics Group Western Pacific Commander.

The 389-foot littoral combat ship — the second to have been deployed to the region — will operate in Asia for 16 months, primarily in Southeast Asia, within the 7th Fleet. In North Asia, the ship will make port visits in Japan, a U.S. ally immersed in a territorial spat with China. Williams said the littoral combat ship could also operate in South Asia. [Bloomberg]

You can read more at the link.

So how much will military retirees lose if the current retirement system is replaced with what is basically a 401k?  Well the Military Officer’s Association of America has done the analysis and it will be hundreds of thousands of dollars:

For example, critics of the current system say it’s unfair the 83 percent of entrants who leave before 20 years of service receive no retirement benefits. The commission’s hybrid retirement package with a vesting 401(k) and government match would be attractive to those who are uncertain of or do not intend to make the military a career.

However, we’ve got serious concerns whether this proposal will draw people to 20 years of service and our analysis shows these changes come at the price of reducing the overall pension value to those that stay beyond 20 years of service — and it only gets worse the longer you stay in service. Our conservative estimates show an E-7 retiring with 20 years of service under the new proposal could lose $262,000 in lifetime retirement value. However, if the same E-7 stays for 30 years and is promoted to E-9, the lifetime loss in retirement rises to $740,000. That’s assuming a 5-percent government match and a 5-percent rate of return in the Thrift Savings Plan.  [MOAA]

You can read more at the link and remember this analysis is assuming growth in the servicemember’s retirement investment when they retire.  What happens to those who retire during a financial crisis like we saw in 2008 and have their 401k hammered?  Also this loss in retirement money would also come on top of other proposed cuts to health care and commissary benefits.

If these same cuts were recommended to for Social Security and Medicare there would be an absolute up roar.

This article about military retirements hits on one of the main reasons for the current system that I have highlighted in the past, military retirement is basically receiving the second half of your pay in the military:

To an outsider, military pensions sound ridiculous; you can put in 20 years starting in your late teens or early 20s and “retire” at the time when most people are hitting their peak earning years. Obviously, that’s a very expensive benefit for the government to provide. Should we ratchet up the retirement age? Some economists think we should.

People supporting the status quo will probably argue that the military is more physically demanding than most jobs, and therefore you have to expect people to retire earlier. But the pension is available to everyone in the military, not just infantrymen. Moreover, it is disproportionately used by officers, not enlisted men, and by the time they have 20 years in, officers are spending a lot less time hauling heavy things and running around in the mud.

But there’s another problem with rejiggering the Army’s pension schedule, and that’s the way it interacts with the “up or out” system that the military uses for officers’ careers. Basically, officers who don’t get selected for promotion get fired.

The military is not the only institution that uses this method. It’s also popular with consultancies, law firms and investment banks. That system is archaic and barbaric, and whatever it gains you in reduced payroll costs, it loses you in accumulated human capital, and it also earns you a backstabbing corporate culture.

Of course, no one asked me, and I expect that those sorts of firms will continue to use up-or-out pyramids for the foreseeable future. But what do all these firms have in common with each other, and not with the military?

They pay really well. The senior people who survived the tournament get paid even better, of course. But even the entry-level jobs pay better than most of the alternatives.

The opposite is true in the military. It pays badly in the beginning and it pays badly at the end, relative to what those folks could have been making if they’d been steadily moving up through the ranks in a normal industry.  [Bloomberg]

You can read more at the link, but the article goes on to discuss other issues such as constant moves and spouses being unable to start careers which is very different from civilian counterparts.  The article than says that if the government wants to do away with the defined benefit pension than it needs to be prepared to pay more up front or watch the quality of military careerists decline.

This posting can pretty much encompass all combat arms and even some of the support branches. So how many have you slept in?

Top 7 Best Places for an Infantryman to Sleep

7. On a cot less than a foot away from the grunt next to you

6. On the floor of an Air Force terminal before deployment

5. The back of a cramped C-130 transport plane

4. The bottom of a foxhole

3. Inside a ridiculously-noisy helicopter

2. The tried-and-true Humvee

1. In the dirt (We Are Mighty)

You can read the whole thing at the link, but I have slept at each of these locations. Something the author left out was sleeping in a Bradley. Nothing worse than trying to sleep in a Bradley turret. Best place to sleep if it cold is on top of the Bradley engine after turning it off. My favorite place was simply on the ramp. Bradley drivers had the best place to sleep though in their location.  By combat arms standards the driver’s compartment was like having your apartment in the field. Here is an actual picture of how my unit in Kuwait was sleeping before moving into Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom 1; not exactly the Hilton:

Anyone have some good military sleep locations they want to share?