For the sake of our military and the Republic
it defends, we must cultivate a societal and organizational shift that sees
military service not as the noble obligation of the few, but as an opportunity
for the many. The many benefits offered as part of the greater American social
contract should be contingent upon, at the very least, the willingness to give
to their nation before receiving from it. Meeting this objective will
require fundamental legislative and bureaucratic shifts to allow the All-Volunteer
Force to
maintain its dominant international status at a less strenuous cost, in both
its short-term cost and its long-term fiscal obligations, on our nation.
The All-Volunteer Force has succeeded
magnificently. Forty years later, however, the fuel for that success, namely
fiscal largess, is in unquestioned risk. As Milton Friedman correctly
observed, the All-Volunteer Force is the proper military for the defense of a
Republic founded upon freedom. To ensure its continued success, however,
will require significant adjustments to benefits and retirements to maintain
the bedrock of security the world relies upon today, and maintain its existence
in the near future of limited budgets. The current status of half our
serving enlisted as careerists is unnecessary, expensive and unwise.
The current military retirement system remains a vestige
of the draft-era military…In our current national financial state, revisiting
some of these bypassed considerations is critical to ensure the health and
viability of the military.
Almost 75%
of American 17-24 year-olds are ineligible for
military service for legal, physical, or educational reasons. The
military already competes for the best of America’s youth. This
increasingly limited recruiting pool is less damaging to the military than it
is to society as a whole. Margaret
Mead accurately saw the societal benefits of
universal service. “Universal national service,” she noted, “in addition to
solving the problem of fairness for those who are asked to serve in the
military, in contrast to those who are not, is above all a new institution for
creating responsible citizens alert to the problems and responsibilities of
nationhood in a rapidly changing world.”
The current military retirement system
remains a vestige of the draft-era military. At the time of its
inception, the long term costs of the All-Volunteer Force model were largely
minimized in the desire to quickly create a volunteer force capable of facing
the immediate Soviet threat. In our current national financial state,
revisiting some of these bypassed considerations is critical to ensure the
health and viability of the military. Of the 16 major studies of the U.S.
Military Retirement system from 1948 to 2005, only one (the 1st
Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation of 1967-1969) recommended
contributory retirement. There is a fundamental assumption in these
reviews that we need to maximize the time in service of our
professionals. This assumption is flawed. The military is
strengthened by youth and diversity, which our current “20 or nothing”
retirement plan discourages. Constrained intellectually by the 20-year
retirement, to encourage service beyond the 20-year mark is obviously
beneficial–why pay two service members (one serving, one retired) for the same
position?
Recruitment Costs
Some argue a more mature military is a
strength. As a Reservist, I see areas of the military art where the
wizened warrior is of benefit. By and large, however, the military is a
young man’s (and woman’s) profession. The Marines have developed a
younger force by virtue of an admirable combination of recruiting and adherence
to historical cultural norms. The average age of a Marine is 25 (while
the other services all average around 29-30 years old). The Marines have
deliberately developed a commanding position where being a Marine, former or
otherwise, is a benefit in and of itself. Young Marines are given
leadership authority at a lower rank and the service enjoys personnel costs
significantly lower than their fellow services. To the great benefit of
the National Guard, many of these former Marines fill our ranks continuing
their service to our nation in an equally admirable, yet less expensive manner.
The larger services cannot hope to emulate a recruiting strategy formulated
on 70 years of immaculate strategic communication. But they can look at a
recruiting strategy of “get in, get out, and move on” and attempt to emulate
that successful model.
The uncomfortable fact is that our current
military compensation is essentially correct by the law of supply and
demand. Should we wish to decrease compensation, as we must, the demand
for military service must be somehow encouraged via other, more creative,
means. We must acknowledge that a younger force is cheaper, but no less
effective. We must make military service, for its own sake and not for
direct compensation, valuable to America’s youth. The simplest and most
viable way to do this is to directly link government employment and benefits to
military service. A federal job, in the current economic environment, is
a highly valuable resource. While veterans’ preferences exist for many
positions, they are most often not the deciding factor. For those who are
physically qualified, they should be. This would encourage those who wish
to serve in government to invest a few years of their lives to the military
before continuing on in other, equally valuable, ways. Likewise we have
magnificent educational benefits for military service while still offering
billions in grants to students who would otherwise be eligible for service in
uniform.
The requirement of a modern, professional
military likewise demands a modern, professional and, above all, mobile
workforce. The mechanism for this desired mobility is the contributory retirement
system often called collectively a 401K. The federal government already
has a system in place mirroring this–the Thrift Savings
Program.
The military has adopted the program, albeit absent the matching
contributions. The military should immediately begin phasing out the
non-contributory 20 year retirement plan and implement a matching Thrift
Savings Program.
As with the GI Bill, which is also
contributory, new recruits would be given the onetime, non-reversible option to
choose matching contributory retirement or standard 20 year retirement.
How the young men and women choose can be the basis for maintaining a system of
options, or simply removing the 20 year retirement option altogether. Buyouts
for current service members should be considered within the context of limited
near term budgets. With a portable retirement plan, we would no longer
have the mid-grade sergeants and officers filling unneeded billets in unneeded
commands. The military now is understandably loath to remove a mediocre
career service-member at the 15 year mark, or even the 10 year mark. With
a retirement plan based on all or nothing, to abandon someone who has invested
most of their adult life to the service is morally and organizationally
wrong. The freedom to leave the service when either the service or the
service member believe it to be in their own best interests is in no way a
detriment to the mission.
Likewise, we offer a buffet of benefits to
attract recruits who may only be interested in a single aspect. The many
benefits of military service include health care for family members,
educational benefits both while in service (tuition assistance) and after
service (GI Bill and its many manifestations.) Other benefits include: choice
of job skills, choice of duty assignment location, enlistment bonuses, and
student loan repayment, among others. Most often, these benefits are
offered en masse, notwithstanding that most recruits are only focused on one or
two items as incentives to enlist. Yet, as their career progresses, they
often end up utilizing all of them.
Why offer both tuition assistance and the GI
Bill? If a recruit is interested in dependent health care, then the other
factors should be at the whim of the service. Choice of military skill
may preclude other benefits. If the military offers to train a high
paying civilian equivalent skill, then why continue to pay for other job
training through heavily subsidized college courses? The development of
an à la carte menu of benefits will have huge personnel cost
savings with little loss of recruiting. As recruits choose or don’t
choose, up front bonuses will prove to be a much cheaper alternative to entice
a would-be service member than long-term, open-ended, expensive and expansive
benefits.
Removing the 20-year retirement, wholly
through voluntary measures, would give the military the needed flexibility in
times of war and peace and in times of plenty and austerity. Likewise,
limiting and tailoring benefits to focus on the immediate recruitment would
provide budgetary stability and control over the length of a service member’s
career. The military’s budget problems are the Nation’s problem.
The Nation must likewise share the burden in correcting it for the sake of the
welfare of both our men and women in uniform and the taxpayers whom we
voluntarily defend.
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Darling is an Alaskan
Army National Guardsman assigned to the National Guard Bureau Joint Staff as a
strategist. The views presented here are his own and do not represent the views
of the Alaska Army National Guard or the U.S. military.
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