Pentagon To Review Military Compensation In Order To Reduce Costs

The Pentagon is looking at ways to reform military pay:

If endorsed by the White House and enacted by Congress, a new blueprint for modernizing military compensation after 11 years of war would reshape many traditional service pays to strive for more efficiency.

The 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, after two years of study, has produced some wide-ranging recommendations, from replacing combat zone tax exclusions and overhauling weekend drill pay to reforming reserve retirement and slicing by half a reduction in survivor benefits that widows see when they accept VA dependency and indemnity compensation.

The law requires that the Department of Defense report to Congress every four years on the status of military compensation, focusing on key pay challenges that the president deems need review.

President Obama chartered the latest QRMC to study: combat zone compensation; reserve components? pays and benefits; compensation for wounded warriors, caregivers and survivors; and pay for critical career fields. This includes special operations, mental health professionals, linguists and translators, and new skills such as unmanned aerial vehicle operators. ?[Stars & Stripes]

I actually don?t have a problem with looking at some of these ideas because for example it is quite common to hear about how so and so senior officer or NCO would fly into Iraq or Afghanistan for some battlefield tour or visit troops at the end of the month and then leave at the start of the next month. ?This allowed them to get tax free for two months though they may have only been in country for one week. ?As far as the danger pay this is something else worth looking at. ?Should troops patrolling every day in the villages in Afghanistan get the same level of danger pay as a Fobbit?

Here is something else of interest in the article that shows how military compensation compares to the civilian world:

The QRMC concludes that military compensation overall fares well compared with the private sector.? The enlisted pay package is at the 90th percentile of civilian peers of similar age and education.? Officers, on average, are paid around the 83rd percentile of civilian peers.

I have no issue being paid less than my civilian equivalent counterparts considering the retirement that is offered by the military that I think makes up for the difference. ?However, as we have long discussed here on the ROK Drop military retirement pay and health care has been under assault and changes to this would only increase the gap between military and civilian pay.

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