MILITARY UPDATE
Disability criteria for retirees broadened

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

Defense officials are behind in finalizing rules and publishing Combat-Related Special Compensation (CRSC) applications, but they are adopting a more liberal interpretation of qualifying criteria than expected.

That means not 35,000 but 40,000 or more retirees could receive CRSC, with payments for most of them ranging from $104 to $2193 a month, depending on severity of qualifying disabilities. Retirees drawing VA's special monthly compensation on top of regular disability pay could get more.

Payments will not be automatic. Retirees must apply. By the end of the month, the application form, DD 2860, and other CRSC information will be available online at: https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/crsc and at base retired affairs offices.

Here is what is known so far about the program drawn from the Pentagon and a near-final draft of CRCS regulations obtained by www.crlegislation.com, a Web site by a group of disabled retired officers to keep visitors informed on CRSC and other concurrent receipt issues.

CRSC takes effect May 31. Payments for a small number of applicants still could begin as early as July. All payments for current retirees will be retroactive to June 1.

Active-duty retirees must have served 20 years, which leaves out those who accepted early retirement. Reservists are eligible if they earned 7200 retirement points. That can't be done without a lot of active-duty time.

CRSC will be paid to two groups of retirees. The first is Purple Heart Medal recipients whose combat wounds carry at least a 10 percent VA disability rating. Defense personnel records show at least 16,500 retirees in this category. Many more could surface in the application review process.

The second group has combat-related VA disabilities of 60 percent or higher. Here's a breakdown of the disability criteria.

• Armed conflict: Wounds or illnesses from war, military occupation, raids or other combat contingencies. It also includes disabilities from time spent as a prisoner of war.
• Hazardous service: Injuries or illnesses from dangerous activities such as aerial flight, parachute duty, demolition duty or diving duty. Injuries while traveling to or from such duties would not qualify for CRSC.
• Duty under conditions simulating war: Disabilities from war games, exercises, weapons practice, hand-to-hand combat training, obstacle courses and more. It would not include injuries from jogging, calisthenics or organized sports. Aboard ship it might include injuries suffered in heavy seas but not every injury that occurs while deployed.
• Instrumentality of war: Injuries or illnesses from tools of war such as military vehicles or equipment accidents, or exposure to gases, fumes or chemical agents. Service officials, in reviewing applications, will accept VA presumptions of service-connection between exposure to Agent Orange, used to strip jungles in Vietnam, and certain cancers and other ailments.

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