Military pay, promotion, and retirement systems are Cold War relics that do not fit "contemporary realities," according to a bipartisan panel of prominent Americans that, for two years, studied national security challenges. Unveiled this spring, the final report of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century contains 50 major recommendations for improving homeland defense, strengthening the U.S. technological edge over potential adversaries, reshaping forces and missions for the post-Cold War era, and filling ranks with longer-serving, higher-quality personnel.
Hindering the last goal, the report said, are an "up-or-out" promotion system and a 20-year retirement plan that encourage members to stay only a short time or to retire while in their professional primes. An inflexible compensation system and anemic veteran education benefits further aggravate retention.
"There are very, very talented people in the military who are very happy maintaining aircraft engines or gas turbines on Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers. But we make them go home because at a certain point, 20 years, they haven't made master chief," said retired Navy Admiral Harry D. Train II, one of the panel's 14 commissioners, in an interview. Admiral Train, a former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Atlantic Command, and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, said personnel practices such as up-or-out promotion systems need to be reconsidered in light of 21st-century needs.
Unless the services are allowed more authority to manage careers, test new compensation incentives, and expand awards for service, the commission warned, "the United States will be unable to recruit and retain the technical and educated professionals it needs to meet 21st-century military challenges."
Two commissioners were retired four stars—Admiral Train and Army General John R. Galvin, also a former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. Ex-lawmakers were represented by Congressmen Newt Gingrich and Lee Hamilton and Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman. Other commissioners gained prominence as defense officials in past administrations or as standouts in industry, journalism, or academe.
The commission suggested four changes to stop the military from squandering its investments in professionals:
- Reinvigorate the concept of "citizen soldiers" by relying more heavily on reservists for homeland defense. National security threats, particularly terrorism, should become primary security missions of the National Guard.
- Direct recruiting efforts more toward college campuses with offers of grants and scholarships, more rapid promotions, more flexible career paths, and a wide variety of incentives and enlistment options. An improved GI Bill, including the ability to transfer benefits to family members, would be key.
- Adopt a more flexible promotion system and find other ways to reward performance, including more flexible assignments, incentive-based retirement options, offers of advanced education, leaves of absence, and other similar rewards.
- Provide more retirement options than the "all-or-nothing" 20-year system. Under the current system, "junior personnel have to commit themselves to a long-duration career" or they get no benefit, the commission said. But once they reach 20 years, the system "induces them to leave the military in their early forties.... The armed forces lose enormous investments in training, education and experience at the very moment that many mid-grade officers and mid-grade and senior NCOs are poised to make their most valuable contributions."
The report urges the lawmakers to give the services new authority to reshape their personnel systems dramatically.
"Mandatory promotion rates, officer grade limitations, required separation points under `up-or-out,' rigid compensation levels, special pay restriction and retirement limits collectively bind the services to the point of immobility." Similar restrictions, the report said, apply to enlisted careers.
Then-Defense Secretary William Cohen chartered the commission in 1998 to produce the most comprehensive review of U.S. national security in 50 years. It was given a four-year budget of more than $10 million and produced a three-phase report. Phase one, completed in September 1999, described a changed world. Phase two, in April 2000, laid out a national security strategy for those changes. Phase three, the latest report, recommends reforms to allow strategy implementation.
Admiral Train, now a senior executive with Science Applications International Corporation in Hampton Roads, Virginia, said, "Clearly the military personnel situation today isn't one that makes the service chiefs smile. We are not doing it in a way that attracts or keeps the people we need."
"We are in a period where interstate wars are becoming much less likely," the report said, yet civil wars increasingly threaten regional stability. That is why the commission, made up of seven Democrats and seven Republicans, recommends an end to the long-held view that U.S. forces be structured for two near-simultaneous major theater wars.
"We think if you keep a force that can deal with one major theater war, and design and equip [remaining] forces to be highly mobile, lethal, agile, and network centric [to deal with intrastate conflicts], the nation will be better served," Admiral Train said.