Military Update
U.S. troops abroad have staunch defender at home
By Tom Philpott
Military Update focuses on issues affecting pay, benefits and lifestyle of active and retired servicepeople. Its author, Tom Philpott, is a Virginia-based syndicated columnist and freelance writer. He has covered military issues for almost 25 years, including six years as editor of Navy Times. For 17 years he worked as a writer and senior editor for Army Times Publishing Co. Philpott, 49, enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1973 and served as an information officer from 1974-77.
On a breezy hilltop near the village of Mijak in southern Kosovo, Army 2nd Lt. David Hodges and his platoon from Company C, 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, keep a watchful eye on nearby hills inside Macedonia. Ethnic Albanian guerrillas routinely move through the area just beyond the border to skirmish with Macedonia soldiers.
Hodges and his men, on a five-month rotation from Fort Bragg, N.C., watch from bunkers and run foot patrols to ensure the fighting doesn't bleed into Kosovo. At night, Macedonia soldiers fire on anything that moves, including "cows, dogs and trees,'" said Hodges. "They react differently than we do."
A special visitor who appreciates the difference in force discipline is Army Gen. Henry "Hugh" Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Shelton, 59, has made more than a dozen trips to the Balkans since becoming the nation's top officer in the fall of 1997. He tells soldiers that they are making a difference. In return, he is reassured that force quality hasn't slipped as the Kosovo mission enters year three.
With 5,600 U.S. troops in Kosovo, 3,900 still in Bosnia and 500 in Macedonia, Shelton still worries about the pace of operations and the impact that long workups and frequent peacekeeping deployment have on active and reserve units.
Tax breaks, hostile-fire pay and tax-free re-enlistment bonuses ease the hardship. But the frequency of family separations is a big concern.
"We've been going hard for a long time," Hodges told Shelton on April 30.
En route to Bosnia for more troop visits, Shelton said the greatest challenge facing the U.S. military today is a lack of understanding among Americans that "we live in a very dangerous and unpredictable world." That's why defense budgets are 3 percent of gross national product, the smallest in 50 years. That's why the Congressional Budget Office estimates a shortfall at $90 billion a year in defense spending unless U.S. strategy changes and the pace of operations declines.
As the Bush administration prepares to unveil its first defense budget, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has 17 different panels reviewing every aspect of national security. The Joint Chiefs are being consulted, but it's a much different process than during the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review. Each panel this time works for the defense secretary.
Shelton said force quality must remain a top priority. He believes military pay is still 10 percent behind private sector wage growth of recent years. That argues for a hefty increase soon rather than the gradual half-percent reduction in the pay gap, to occur each year, under current law.
TRICARE must continue to improve, too, by improving patient access and the speed of claim processing. The health system also needs a more aggressive management structure to get costs under control, Shelton said. He agrees with surgeons general that too many dollars are being siphoned from the direct-care system to cover burgeoning TRICARE support contracts.
His advocacy was sparked soon after becoming chairman when he sat down with six Air Force enlisted members, all of them highly regarded. Only two said they would stay for full careers. The others blamed a retirement plan passed in 1986 that made 20-year careers less attractive.
"Who's going to lobby for soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines?" Shelton remembers asking his high-ranking colleagues. "Look around the room, gentlemen. We're it."
