Nice to See DoD Has Plenty of Money
I guess that must be the case. DoD has decided to play around with R&R leave rules.
Yeah – again.
Now, it seems as if anyone who deploys prior to 1 June 2014 to “the land areas of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan” will be “grandfathered” for R&R. Specifically, it means if you deploy before 1 June 2014, you’ll be authorized non-chargeable R&R leave, complete with paid transportation to/from the leave location.
Deploy on or after 1 June 2014 to those areas, and you’re SOL.
The reason those 9 areas were losing R&R authorization was that they’re also losing “combat zone” designation on 1 June 2014 – and thus most “combat zone” bennies. They still are.
Personally, I think that’s long overdue. If there have been shots fired in anger in any of those 9 countries during the past decade, I certainly haven’t heard of it. They’ve IMO been nothing but a remote unaccompanied tour for at least that long.
Sheesh. It seems to me that using a little common sense was all that was required vice yet another exception to policy. Specifically: if you had spent enough time to qualify for R&R under the “old rules” as of 1 June 2014 (6+ months, if I recall correctly), then you should get R&R. If not – well, as JFK said, “Life is not fair.” Maybe that’s just me.
But I do have to wonder how anyone reporting in on 1 June is going to feel now when the guy or gal who got there a week earlier goes on R&R – and they realize they won’t get to do the same.
Still, it’s nice to see that DoD has a bunch of extra money laying around. They must have in order to pay for things like this.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "Your Tax Dollars At Work"
Hondo, you’re on a roll today! Jonn being away, the cat is playing :-). Why not poke Bernasty, Chevy, Joe and Round Ranger while you’re at the helm?
Great job, as always.
Ditto above. Thanks Hondo!
P.S.- curious if you checked out that article in the U2 post/comments I left for ya yesterday.
If that was the article about the SR-71 pilot, I’d seen it previously. Another commenter recommended it on another thread. Damn good one, as I recall.
Sorry for the delayed reply. Ben a bit busy the past couple of days.
Yeah, I know you been busy… but the article is not about SR71 or any variant. You will like it…. dare I say “trust me”. http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-bias/
Yeah, I saw that a few minutes ago – the article was about Wald and his work during World War II. Mea culpa. It was someone else recommended the SR-71 article for the 2nd time.
The article on Wald was indeed a good one. Looking for what’s missing is indeed an art – one with few practitioners.
OK, just read the article and I is confused.
What exactly is the benefit? When I was in Kuwait in 2004 for OIF, our troops were allowed a 30 day leave during their deployment, with the leave not starting until they arrived (I believe) at their final airport (though it may be that the leave started when they arrived in CONUS. I didn’t take a mid tour leave so I don’t remember for sure.)
So at least for us the ‘benefit’ was that the leave didn’t start until they got to their home and it ended when they arrived back at the same airport. This is of course different from garrison rules where your leave starts when you leave the post or duty station, and travel time is counted as part of leave.
However, the leave time our troops took was still chargeable leave (and because I didn’t take any mid-tour, my discharge date from AD was adjusted to 30+ days after REFRAD to cover terminal leave.)
But if I understand, sometime after 2004 DoD started granting non-chargeable (free) leave for mid-tour? Is that correct?
That is correct – in either 2010 or 2011, R&R leave became non-chargeable. Prior to that, it was chargeable as ordinary leave, with the proviso that it (1) started on arrival at the leave location vice on departure from the duty location, and (2) ended on reporting in for return transportation vice on arrival at the deployed duty station.
Unfortunately, that change occurred well after my R&R too. (smile)
Interesting…I wonder if they did that to encourage people to take leave vs. ‘banking’ it (which is what I did.) I presume the rules also stated that it was a “use it or lose it” benefit, i.e. you don’t get an additional 2 weeks of leave added to your balance if you don’t take it.
I deliberately chose not to take leave at the beginning of our deployment. I was with a WYARNG unit and most of the members of the unit had never deployed anywhere (some of them had actually never done any active duty other than their initial training, apart from the 2 week “summer camp” and the occasional reserve component schools.)
OTOH, it was deployment no. 4 for me, and I had done a year in Korea without taking leave when I was on active duty, so I figured a year in the middle east would be a piece of cake.
The real reason, though, was that I knew it would be difficult for me to enjoy a 2 week leave and then have to return to Kuwait. I figured it was easier in the long run to just “gut it out” and to know that when I left Kuwait, I’d be leaving for good.
Of course, I was single and had no kids, so it was an easy decision for me to make. Those with spouses or kids pretty much had to take the leave.
martinjmpr: by 2007, it was virtually impossible NOT to take R&R leave. In fact, if you were taking less than the specified 15 days (assuming a 1-yr tour), you had to get the approval of the first GO/FO in your chain-of-command to do that. Approval as in “the GO/FO had to personally sign the leave form”.
Only time in my career I ever had leave approved by a GO. I only took 12 days. (smile)
And yeah, going back was kinda rough.
Still, you might enjoy this article I wrote about that experience some 16 months ago:
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=33762
Hondo – Do you have access to my email address? Could you email me if you do, please?
PN: check your e-mail.
It was something like 15MAR2010 – my R&R officially began 16FEB2010, and I was charged for it; my NCOIC happened to have his scheduled for EOM March (scheduled long, long before the change was announced) and got an extra two weeks of pay when we got home…
23MAR2010:
http://www.dodlive.mil/index.php/2010/03/dod-adopts-new-non-chargeable-leave-policy/
In Kuwait in 2011 our leave was chargeable. If we would have gone to Adder (which was what was originally planned until big Army changed our mission at the last moment) it would have been non-chargeable. We convoyed into Iraq all the time, but that didn’t matter because apparently sitting on the FOB in Iraq is more dangerous than running convoys-or something.
Not only that, but they changed our PDMRA in October 2011 so that we earned 4 days a month (provided that we had enough time) until October 1 and 1 day a month after that-cost me about two weeks of leave at the end.
In four tours I took leave once (2003-04)-I was never offered non-chargeable leave. All the others (2004-05, 2009-10 and 2011-12) I saved it until the end, so I could have more days for pay at the end.
Sometimes life just sucks and you have to suck it up. I signed my ROTC paperwork in 1980 just one week after they changed the retirement system from the high of 36 months to the average of 36 months. All because my school started later than most. That costs me hundreds of dollars a month. Oh well. Life goes on.
I know what you mean. I missed being eligible for the Vietnam Era GI Bill by a few months.
VEAP was better than nothing, I guess. But it sucked in comparison to real GI Bill bennies.
You and BK always make me hungry.
I was in Kuwait in 2004. I recall us being authorized 15 days of leave after 6 months in theater. The leave started when you arrived at your final destination (I think). I seem to recall this wasn’t charged against accrued leave but it’s been so long I no longer remember. I also was with the USCG then so they might have been different from everybody else in how they treated it.
Cav/Martin- yer correct- I was in IZ/KU thru 2005, not taking any leave whatsoever; going and coming back would SUCK, and would rather just leave and STAY ‘leaved’. So I left in 2003, not returning until 2005. Long, yeah, but worth it.
You got 2 weeks leave that was ONLY counted as 2 actual weeks at HS. If it took you 3 days to get there, and 3 days to get back, that was 6 days you were not charged for. Nor did you pay for the flights/travel either way. They implemented that entire program in Oct of 2003; there was a hubbub at the time over costs of travel back for leave, so DoD decided ‘whatever you put down in block (13?) on your leave form, that’s where you get to go and we cover it.’ That’s when people started putting EU, Asia, HI, and other destinations in. Lots of people were meeting up in HI (Hale Koa, here we come) for the two weeks.
Mr Wolf: wife and I considered Hawaii. She’d never been to Europe, though, and she finally decided that she’d rather try there instead.
Good decision. She loved it.
Hopefully we’ll be able to do Hawaii one year. Never been there, and would love to see it.
They better do something with all of that money laying around before Commander Phil Monkress at All-points Logistics comes up with a scheme to steal it!
Qatar was getting R&R leave? When I was in Iraq, we WENT to Qatar for R&R.
Folks in Kuwait were authorized 2 passes to Qatar in addition to R&R leave. Reputedly it was part of the official CENTCOM R&R policy.
I don’t remember anyone in Iraq or Afghanistan going to Qatar on pass.
TDY on rather rare occasions? Yes. Pass? No.
A lot of folks in my unit got cycled through a four-day pass to Qatar. I avoided that like the plague – Army travel is NOT worth the hassle. The fact that nobody could do my job while I took two days to travel there, four days of pass, and two days to travel back, IF everything went smoothly, helped me dodge that mandatory fun…
Well, then someone in DoD owes me a couple of Quatar pass vouchers!
Not only that, when things started heating up in Iraq, they shut down all the MWR trips into Kuwait City. I think that was circa April or so (our tour started in January.) The only time I ever got into KC was shortly before we left in December of ’04 to pick up some Christmas gifts donated by local Kuwaitis to the GIs. Other than that, the only parts of Kuwait I ever got to see were the interior of Camps Doha, Arifjan, Buehring/Udairi, New York, Virginia, and Liberty (The Kuwait camp Liberty, not the one in Iraq.)
At that, I got to see more than most just because my job had me driving between camps a lot, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.
As far as Qatar goes, there was some kind of conference there that a few officers got to go to. Drinking beer was the big thrill there, as apparently Qatar didn’t fall under GO#1.
Al Udeid at Fox Sports Bar, under The Bra, right down the sidewalk from Dairy Queen and the AF bikini babes…. 3 drinks or 3 beers each 24 hours with a CAC. I got there late at night and just nicely asked the barkeep how it all worked. She proceeded to tell me how to get my 3, then sit outside while they were closed for an hour (at like 0300), then come back in when they opened back up and get 3 more. I think I drank one beer and went to sleep, but I appreciated the info. That place seemed like a country club to me.
“…apparently Qatar didn’t fall under GO#1.”
Sort of-they had an exception to policy that allowed you to get like 3 beers a day (I don’t drink). Lots of Joes found ways to “supplement” that.
Lots of folks got a 4-day pass in Qatar from Iraq and Afghanistan, but some units had to curtail it because people were gone for 10-14 days with travel factored in.
In 2005 my unit offered us two passes to Qatar or the recreation area in Northern Iraq if we would forgo leave. Then they reneged due to too many people taking too long for travel.
Qatar’s ‘leave’ was an RnR ‘Commander’s RnR’ policy implemented before the entire leave program I described above. You got 4 days at the ‘Qatar Hilton’. 30-min C-130 ride in, same back, usually via alUdeied AB in Kuwait; some went thru Camp Wolverine on Kuwait Airport.
I was lucky enough to get an ‘extended’ RnR in Qatar; the motor sergeant there also handed me the keys to a Camry; I had the run of Qatar for 4 days. Never came back to base. Too much fun at the ‘western’ hotels.
30 minute ride from Kuwait, but you have to get to Kuwait first, and that’s where the hassle was. Going from your outpost to a main post to Balad/Baghdad to Kuwait, with a low priority, typical travel delays, and frequent red air, that could take days and days…the folks at ADACG did a great job, but it still took me 94 hours to get home on R&R, and that was higher priority travel.
I recall them periodically shutting down non-essential movement off base and/or MWR trips to souks and such due to intel indicating some planned attack or another. Supposedly the Kuwaiti MOI busted up a plot to attack the busses to the airport with RPG’s. We did, in fact, find an RPG and rounds stashed just a little outside the front gate of KNB.
In Jan or Feb of ’04, there was an ‘attack’ or attempted attack on some contractors headed towards Camp Doha, so they pulled access. Also, for intel on attempts on troop buses moving via Ring Road out to Al Udeid airport from KNB or Doha or other places. That’s when they started planning all troops to move via Al Udeid, staying on Camp Virginia or Beuhring, and not having to move thru town at all.
That, and the Kuwaiti’s really really wanted their airport property back…
Sorry- my idiotness is having a field day.
NOT Al Udeid in Kuwait- Ali Al Salem AB.
>>>>smacks head on wall
Yeah, as I recall Al Udied AB is in Qatar, not too far from Camp As Sayliyah. (smile)
Good to see some folks outside Kuwait actually got to Qatar on pass.
Thanks. I remember that now. In Feb someone shot up a bus of TCN’s coming to work at either KNB or Shuaiba. I think it was KNB. I think a few TCN’s were killed and a bunch hurt pretty badly. I recall the route to the airport now and that was where the attack was supposed to happen. We found the RPG on the main road from KNB. It was a long, straight stretch. We usually used the side gate to move though.
I seem to recall later there was a plot to kidnap a female GI and torture her on video so there was an order that females had to travel in groups or with escorts.
Mr.Wolf: Yeah, that sounds about right. We got to KU in late January of ’04 and our battery was tasked with force protection in Kuwait under ARCENT-FWD. For about six weeks I had a desk job on Doha and a nice air-conditioned room in one of the big warehouses they converted to barracks. The living conditions were plush but we had so little to do I was going out of my mind (especially since I was pulled out of my last semester of law school to go overseas with my unit.) I do remember hearing something about the planned attack and after that all trips into town were cancelled for the duration of our tour.
Funny thing about Kuwait – our facilities were good (AC, paved roads, nicely appointed camps, etc) but I hated it. By contrast, our accomodations in Afghanistan in 2003 were much more primitive but I liked it a lot more.
I was there when they built the Fox Sports Lounge.
In December 2009, Fox Sports visited Al Udeid, with the whole NFL Sunday crew. The executive producer saw the poor Desert Eagle lounge, and decided to donate $500K to renovate it and turn it into the Fox Sports lounge. They donated pretty much everything needed for the lounge.
It opened in June 2010.
woops, sorry, different topic.