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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, April 28, 2003

MILITARY UPDATE
Plan lets top brass serve longer

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, 50, enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1973 and served as an information officer from 1974-77.

By Tom Philpott

One key to transforming the Defense Department for challenges ahead is a more flexible management system for senior officers, allowing the best to serve up to 40 years, says Dr. David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. In return for longer service, these most valuable officers, and certain senior enlisted, too, he said, should be able to draw up to 100 percent of active-duty basic pay in retirement.

Chu, in a phone interview, discussed these and other highlights of an ambitious legislative package from the Bush administration to Congress this month to reshape the defense civilian and military workforce.

The proposal, called Defense Transformation for the 21st Century Act, aims its most sweeping changes at civilian employees, urging they be shifted from the rigid Civil Service System, and nine personnel demonstration programs, into a new National Security Personnel System with new tools to recruit, train, evaluate, pay and separate employees.

Changes sought for military personnel are more modest but still significant, particularly for senior officers. The package calls for an end to mandatory retirement of generals and admirals (O-7 and above) at 30 years and to the ceiling on retired pay set at 75 percent of basic pay.

The most talented senior officers, and perhaps enlisted, too, should serve up to 40 years and be rewarded with retired pay of up to 100 percent of basic pay, Chu said. Too many military leaders are rotated through assignments too quickly to make a difference, and then their talents are lost to the military while still in their prime.

To accommodate longer careers, the Pentagon proposes that generals and admirals, including those in the Reserve and National Guard, be allowed to serve until age 68 versus the limit of 62. Under the proposal, the defense secretary could even defer retirement for individual officers until age 72.

Keeping even small numbers of senior officers longer can slow promotions for officers below. The military would avoid this, Chu said, by asking Congress also to end a requirement, at least for star-ranked officers, that they serve three years in grade to retire at that grade. The Pentagon also seeks permanent time-in-grade waiver authority for officers in grades O-5 and O-6. Allowing some to retire after only a year or two in grade can avoid promotion stagnation and actually improve the pace of promotions overall, Chu said.

The transformation package also would:

  • Allow the most senior officers to move laterally between top command and staff assignments.
  • Raise basic pay of four-star combatant commanders by 10 percent to match pay levels of service chiefs of staff.
  • Remove the limit of only two back-to-back, two-year tours for the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president could appoint them to as many tours as he thought necessary, with the consent of Congress.
  • End restriction on service chiefs of staff serving no more than four years in these posts. Four-year limits also would end for service judge advocates, surgeons general, personnel chiefs and directors of nurse corps.

Questions, comments and suggestions are welcomed. Write to Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA 20120-1111, or send e-mail to: milupdate@aol.com.