Is 20-year military retirement too soon?
I picked this story up from our buddies over at ROK Drop and thought I’d bring it over here because it fits with my warnings that the Obama Administration is coming for our compensation.
The discussion begins with Nathaniel Fick, the CEO of the Center for New American Security who claims that the current 20-year retirement system that the military depends upon is outdated because, somehow we’re not an agrarian society now;
Cliff retirement at 20 years of service, for instance, strikes me as a relic of an age when twenty years in the Army left a veteran a broken man, with blown joints, no hearing, and a limited ability to work in an agricultural or industrial economy.
Fick is basically an imbecile. According to his bio, he’s a former infantry officer, and I noticed he didn’t bother to do a twenty or thirty year stint, but I’ll bet he had career NCOs who trained his young, hairless ass how to be an infantry leader. What if those guys had decided that sticking around for thirty years wasn’t worth it.
Fick acts like retention won’t be affected, like James Orbitron Webb thinks that lower pay won’t affect retention.
The result: lower and more flexible personnel costs that are heavier on discretionary spending and lighter on mandatory spending, and a system more aligned with your view (quite correct, in my opinion) that people are much more important than things — paying our young warfighters more and our “retirees” (if we can call someone in his 30s that with a straight face) less.
Um, Fick, don’t you want those “young warfighters” to hang around long enough to be retirees? There’s a cause and effect model here that I don’t think you want to tamper with from your ivory tower think tank, Fick.
Not only that, but servicemembers who accept the lower pay, the family displacements, the deployments are twenty years behind their peers when they get out of the military and the paltry retirement makes up for that deficiency somewhat.
So how are the musings from a think tank related to the Obama Administration? Well, given the importance that the Obama Administration places on the denizens of this particular tank should give you reason to worry. The two founders of the Center, Michèle Flournoy and Kurt M. Campbell, are currently members of the Obama clan as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, respectively, so they wield some measure of influence among the Obamistas.
Our military is unique in the world because we have a young and experienced core of professionals, but the Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress seem deadset on tearing down the professionals by destroying retention.
Funny how outsiders always seem to have all of the answers for lowering costs, and the answers always seem to be the military and their personnel issues.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Military issues
And let’s not forget that someone who does 20 now only gets 40 percent of their base pay versus 50 percent. And as far as “blown joints, no hearing, and a limited ability to work”, well he got two out of three right.
In all my years on the boats, I don’t recall a single CPO who didn’t look FAR older than his age. The body takes an incredible amount of abuse, from stress, long hours, deplorable living/working conditions, and these are not limited to any particular branch or community.
Had I stayed in, I would have retired five years ago. Assuming I made CPO, I could look forward to a paycheck of about $2000 per month, before taxes. I don’t live anywhere near a base with commissary/exchange privileges, and NH has a few VA outpatient clinics, but that’s about it. After taxes, I’d be getting maybe $1300-1400 a month. That doesn’t even cover my mortgage.
$1300 a month for a lifetime in which I could have said FTN after my first enlistment, turned around, and MORE than doubled my salary. Mister Fick needs to pull his head out of his ass and shake of that case of the dumbfucks he’s got.
Someone needs to give Mr. Fick and company a dose of reality.
I stayed 4 years in the Infantry and only 1 deployment to Iraq.
I started school at 23, and my profession at 27, that is not that bad but, I could not think of starting a career at 40! They don’t hire managers with no experience.
Unless he is insinuating that military retirement after 20 is enough to actually retire on.
You get what 50% of your base pay? That’s about what $1,500 a month… YAY retirement on cat food!
Dollar for dollar our military are undercompensated for the total dollar value of all they sacrifice; i.e. time, money, family, health, happiness, freedom, etc.
I feel better compensated and have a higher standard of living as a civilian (I get to go home every night) compared similarly paid soldier living in Iraq.
Not only that, but I make more money than a soldier with similar experience (4 yrs enlisted and a bachelors degree with less than one year on the job).
So, how are our men and woman in the service getting over on the tax payer?
What, it makes sense that they should do 30 and then try to come out and start a second career at 48?
BTW IronKnight I could not think of starting a career at 40!
I lost my job in the automotive industry and am just now starting a new career in the utility industry at 43. Yup, I’m at the bottom rung again at about 1/2 the pay I was making 3 or 4 years ago……
I think you are underestimating our friend Lt Fick here, he wrote a book and he was in Generation Kill, the book that became the HBO mini series. Why wouldn’t you want to listen to him?
I read his book “One Bullet Away” and really enjoyed it. I never got the impression from reading it, though, that he was this far off base (pardon the pun).
Well lets see. Did twenty, got two knees that go snap, crackle and pop, bum shoulder, bum neck and a bad hip. Fick can go have conjugal relations with himself.
I did retire after 22 years in the Infantry, not all of that time was spent in line units, I had some admin time like recruiting, but I can definitely testify to the blown joints and hearing loss.
I tried to take measures in last years on active duty to prep for life outside the Army by taking classes in computer science and working towards a degree since I viewed it as the offering the best chance of employment once I got out. I didn’t start out there however. First job was ass’t manager for a auto parts store, then Wal Mart changing oil on cars and fixing tires and eventually I got my nose in the door with an IT job. It was hard starting over at 42 but I managed to pay the bills and keep a roof over the families head and it certainly wasn’t due to the fat check I was getting from Uncle Sam.
Maybe other MOS’s have a longer life span, but being a grunt in a line unit at the age of 40 is tough. The bruises don’t heal as fast, the muscle aches never go away and there is a reason 500mg Motrin is called grunt candy. I was proud of the fact that even at age I was able to beat most of those under on the PT test and nobody had to carry my load.
You take away that option to retire in 20 years and watch the NCO corp wither away to nothing. I enjoyed the job, but I always knew the day would come when I would have to hang it up. Would I have stuck it out that long if there was no reward at the end? Hell no. I would have been gone after my first enlistment.
“I think you are underestimating our friend Lt Fick here, he wrote a book and he was in Generation Kill, the book that became the HBO mini series. Why wouldn’t you want to listen to him?”
We are a decade or older than Fick, did it longer and hurt a helluva lot more that Mr. 1 term ex-officer….
Gotta get my gel-pack out of the ‘fridge for my elbow brace & pop my VA prescribed Etodolac 400mg for joint inflammation now.
“there is a reason 500mg Motrin is called grunt candy.”
Hit the MOTRIN lick as you exit the aircraft during the MASS-TAC….
IIRC, it was easier to get Tylenol out of the EOOW’s desk in Maneuvering than from the Doc…
Another clueless idiot attempting to “lead” with limited knowledge. The 0bama Administration is filled with anti-military idiots. Pretty soon, I think that the US military will compare to the French military, a bunch of surrender monkeys. We NEED to get this moron and his minions out of the White House ASAP!!
NH: I made the mistake of going to sickbay after getting a small burn on my finger. All I wanted was some burn cream and a band-aid and spent 30 min filling out an accident report before the corpman even looked at it. Lets see Engine Room, steam piping, ship bouncing around, burns happen. After that I just stocked my own little medical kit down in the plant. And on deployments my wife would mail me the occasional bottle of “liniment” for muscle relief.
24 years, 3 months, 11 days…first 4 years a national guard infantryman. Even part-time it was obviously going to take a toll. It took about that long to go on active duty and apply for flight school.
Guess what? Helicopter vibration, stress, and the bad seats damage you too. Along with the results of poor-form PT. My kids think it’s funny when I stand up and most joints pop.
I now love my desk job, thankyouverymuch.
I’m sorry… but what is “Fick” mean in German? I’ve forgotten.
In only 3 1/2 years as a tanker my knees where already starting to feel it from climbing all over that thing…..I couldn’t imagine what they would be like if I did 20 on tanks…and I do triathlons now!
21 yrs. 4 on tanks (M60A3)in the reserves, 2.5 years as a military fireman attached to a foreward area ammunition supply company (NG), 14.5 years as a heavy wheeled vehical operator (NG), and one deployment to Iraq in 2003-2004 doing a job we weren’t even close to trained for. I enjoyed almost every single painful moment of it, but it was still an effort to stay committed to the grind, even as a citizen soldier. Mr Fick is an idiot. Mandating 30 yr retirements would absolutely be a retention killer.
Nate Fick and Andrew Exum (both of CNAS) are two guys who wrote great books about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I could not dissagree more with their views on the military . I lost all respect for Exum when he wrote that he respected Andrew Sullivan. They provide cover to the administration, no matter how stupid the policy.
Did twenty in the AF, my father did 20 in the Navy. He retired in ’67. He told me then that they had been trying to mess with the retirement system since the ’50s. This comes around every now and then. The last time in the early ’90s with don’t pay them till they are 62 and then deduct it from the SS.
Aside from the creaky joints and bad hearing, let’s not forget what really sets apart a military career from a civilian job. No civilian job, except maybe law enforcement, requires one to sign a blank check payable to the American people for an amount up to and including my life. That’s a hell of a commitment to ask a citizen to maintain for 20 years. After 20 years, we owe them their retirement.
Bama, you might wanna throw firefighters in there. Our city’s main fire station is across the street from where I work and when I see them carry a 200 lb. dummy up 4 flights of stairs in their training tower, in the summer, in full gear, I think to myself, “that looks like it really sucks”
Bama your right, but none of them sign a contract they can’t get out of…..sign up for 4 or 6 and your in for 4 or 6. My uncle Bob Behrens was a WWII vet. went in in ’44, he had his enlistment and re-enlistment contracts for his entire 20. When he was 80 and went in for quad bypass he got a bill. He said no I don’t I have a contract with the FEDs for free health care for life, after a lawsuit was told tough shiiit. When I retired and went thru TAPS, one of the speakers said military retirement will go before SS, because we vets don’t vote as a block.
If Mr Fick wants to cut gov’t retirements before 20 years, why not look at the civilian side of the house? There’s a lot more people there, spending a lot more of our tax dollars then could be imagined on the military side.
Dept of Education, HUD, BATFE, Agriculture Dept, etc, etc.
WhatEVER would we do with less of, if not none of these government entities, and their minions? A lot better, I’m thinking.
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Same thing happened to me. I filed on 2/5/09 and just checked the status to receive the same message. Hopefully 3 weeks will be all they need. I’m just glad there are others but I agree. They should just tell us the true wait time instead making us anticipate a sooner return. I know a bunch of people who have been overspending in anticipation of this money coming in the mail.
#27, GO SCREW YOURSELF up your rectum with a pile of rusty, tangled, diarrhea-soaked concertina wire after you’ve been sadistically sodomized by a grizzly Bear with AIDS and the SOB that was mean enough to give it to him!! Go somewhere else and buy some ad space, ASSWIPE!!