Category: Military issues

From the Washington Times comes a report from the Military Officers Association of America which has been unflinching is their support of the troops and veterans during the last five years of attacks on their well-being from this White House. The MOAA says that the recent budget proposal to Congress from the Pentagon will cost active duty families about $5000/year in compensation and benefits;

The Military Officers Association of America has calculated the cost for that Army sergeant, and its analysts say officers stand to lose even more under the Obama administration’s proposed fiscal 2015 budget. Mr. Hagel and other Pentagon officials say the military’s historically generous benefits must be trimmed to rein in costs and free up money to reshape the nation’s armed forces for challenges of the future.

Active-duty members approached by The Washington Times have shied away from speaking out on the issue, but some retired service members are weighing in with frustration and anger.

[…]

The proposed budget calls for slashing subsidies for base commissaries that thousands of young military families use for discounted groceries. It also calls for a 5 percent increase in the cost of military housing for average active-duty service members and a cap on active-duty pay increases at 1 percent annually.

I wonder how loud Congressional staff members would complain if they were facing reductions in their pay or benefits. Or, how loud would the civilian staffs at the Pentagon would be in the same circumstances. Or if Michelle Obama would bellyache if her shopping sprees and shopping tours suffered those cuts.

Maybe the troops should take the President’s advice to prioritize their bills and find a place to cut that five thousand bucks out of their families’ budgets.

The Washington Times reports that the Navy will deploy a laser system to use against drones and other small aircraft later this year;

The Laser Weapon System (LaWS), which will be used to protect vessels from drones and other small aircraft, will be deployed this summer with the USS Ponce, the technology website Ars Technica reported. LaWS accomplishes its task by causing a drone’s sensors to malfunction or, with enough energy, bursting it into flames.

“The effects are scalable,” Navy Capt. Mike Ziv, the Naval Sea Systems Command’s program manager for directed energy and electric weapons, told Armed With Science, a Department of Defense blog. “In some cases [the weapon’s effects are] reversible, and in some cases it can be used for destruction.”

I remember 40 years ago when they envisioned the use of lasers against aircraft, and now we’ve advanced to the point of shooting down small aircraft. The USS Ponce was last deployed as part of the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf and it’s currently being fitted as a staging base for counter-mine operations. So I guess the main target would be Iranian drones – not a big threat, I would imagine.

The Military Times got a hold of DoD’s new proposal to Congress for altering the military retirement system for troops who make a career out of the uniformed services. It’s pretty difficult to understand, well, more difficult than the current “50% of the average top three years of earnings” system, but a lot of it revolves around the Thrift Savings Plan. So, let me tell you now how I’m a proponent of the TSP.

I started my TSP 14 years ago, and on the day that George W. Bush was reelected I had $35,000 in that account by maxing out the contributions in those lean-contribution days. I took a $50,000 loan from the account in 2009 to help buy my house in 2009 and when I retired last month, my account balance was hundreds of thousands of dollars. But, I’m using that as a life insurance policy for my family, not as part of my actual retirement income.

Like I said, I maxed out the contributions for 14 years and adjusted my lifestyle accordingly, because I hate paying taxes. The reason that the TSP works so well is that the costs in the plan are lower than almost any investment company out there. I used to be in the business, so I kinda know about that stuff.

So, my point is that you should be contributing to the TSP, even though the Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel is adamant that he does not expect to change the plan for currently-serving troops. We all know how quickly that can change since the DoD is looking for ways to keep their generals and civilians fat and happy and still cut spending – the troops, then, will bear the brunt of the cuts. The TSP is your own insurance policy against those personnel-cut-happy bureaucrats.

The new proposal by DoD seems to be a mix of a reduced defined benefit (pension) plan and the TSP, if what the Military Times reports is true. The current multiplier for figuring pensions is 2.5% (50% of the average of your top three years’ earnings for 20-year retiree) and they want to reduce that to 2.0% (40% at 20 years), with the TSP (which you can’t touch without being penalized by the IRS until you turn 59 1/2) making up the difference.

The Pentagon submitted two plans to Congress for consideration which they say won’t affect recruiting or retention. I don’t know how they can pretend to know that, but The Military Times explains the difference between the two plans;

An important difference between the two options involves the “transition pay.” Under the “partial benefit” plan that reduces retirement pay during the “working age” years and increases it at age 62, DoD would offer a generous lump-sum transition pay that mounts to about 2 1/2 or three years of basic pay. Under the other option that more closely resembles today’s system, transition pay would probably be equal to one-half or three-quarters of one year’s basic pay.

In the Stars & Stripes, they quote a Pentagon spokesman who is adamant to deflect blame from the Pentagon for this proposal;

The Pentagon prepared the report, “Concepts for Modernizing Military Retirement,” for the Congressionally mandated Commission on Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization, which is conducting a broad study of how the department pays its current troops and retirees. The commission’s report is due in February 2015.

“This is not a proposal, it’s not a plan, and it’s not a recommendation,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen said. “It’s something we’re required to submit to the commission for their use as they work toward an ultimate recommendation to Congress and the President.”

No matter who proposed it, it’s sure to throw some doubt into the equation when the troops are making the decision whether they want to make to make a career out of military service or not. Any change to the current plan will eventually hurt retention and hinder readiness.

But the one thing that ease doubt is for you to begin contributing to the TSP now, no matter what your career status is. And if the Pentagon wants to make the TSP option more attractive to career personnel, they should begin matching contributions, because the last I heard, they weren’t.

Reuters reports that President Xi Jinping of China announced that the People’s Republic will be spending more on their military in coming years, the biggest jump in three years;

The government said it would increase the defense budget by 12.2 percent this year to 808.23 billion yuan ($131.57 billion), as China seeks to develop more high-tech weapons and to beef up coastal and air defenses.

The increase follows a nearly unbroken run of double-digit hikes in the Chinese defense budget, second only to the United States in size, for the past two decades.

[…]

China’s military is not made up of “boy scouts with spears”, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a briefing in response to Japan’s criticism.

“Some foreigners always expect China to be a baby scout,” Qin said. “In that way, how can we safeguard national security and world peace?”

The announcement comes while China is asserting it’s power in the South China Sea and prompting reactions from the US Pentagon, who, by the way was in Congress yesterday justifying their own cuts to the military.