AUSA’s Vice President for Education, LTG Theodore G. Stroup, Jr., USA, Ret., provided testimony for a joint hearing held last week by the Senate and House Veterans’ Affairs Committees on AUSA’s legislative priorities.  The testimony touched on many issues including the need to:

--Pass S. 22 (amended), a bi-partisan bill that would create a new GI Bill for the 21st century.  The bill would allow a veteran to enroll as a full-time student and to focus solely on education – as it funds tuition at an amount equal to the highest in-state tuition rate charged by a public college in a state, as well as providing stipends for housing and for books and other educational costs.  Further, the bill would allow Reserve Component troops to accrue credit for their multiple tours toward GI Bill entitlement, creating an incentive for further service. 

--Raise education benefits for National Guard and Reserve service members under Chapter 1606 of Title 10.  For years, these benefits have only been adjusted for inflation.  Currently, Reserve GI Bill benefits have fallen to less than 29 percent of the active duty benchmark giving them much less value as a recruiting and retention incentive.  This also sends a signal to Reserve Component personnel that their service is undervalued.  Further, a transfer of the Reserve MGIB-Select Reserve authority from Title 10 to Title 38 will permit proportional benefit adjustments in the future. 

--Revisit the need to dock volunteer force recruits $1200 of their first year's pay for the privilege of serving their country on active duty.  Government college loan programs have no upfront payments; thus, it is difficult to accept any rationale for our nation's defenders to give up a substantial portion of their first year's pay for MGIB eligibility.

--Allow all participants of MGIB's predecessor, the Veteran's Education Assistance Program (VEAP), as well as those service members who were on active duty but did not enroll in VEAP, to receive MGIB educational benefits.  There are about 25,000 non-commissioned officers and officers bravely serving their country in the war against terrorism at home and abroad in this situation.  However, when they exit the service, they will have no education benefits to help them achieve their post-service goals like all other veterans.  These service members should be given the opportunity to take the MGIB or decline it. 

--Support giving MGIB participants who serve a full military career the option of transferring their benefits to dependents as a career retention initiative. 

--Support full concurrent receipt for those with disabilities of 49 percent and below.  AUSA urges that the thousands of disabled veterans left out of previous legislation be given equal treatment and that the disability offset be eliminated completely. 

--Allow members who were forced to retire short of 20 years of service because of a combat disability be “vested” in the service-earned share of retired pay at the same 2.5 percent per year of service rate as members with 20+ years of service.  This would avoid the “all or nothing” inequity of the current 20-year threshold, while recognizing that retired pay for those with few years of service is almost all for disability rather than for service and therefore still subject to the VA offset.

--Allow terminally ill veterans who hold National Service Life Insurance and U.S. Government Life Insurance to receive benefits before death, as can holders of Servicemembers Group Life Insurance and Veterans Group Life Insurance. 

--Develop and deploy an interoperable, bi-directional and standards-based electronic medical record; a “one-stop” separation physical supported by an electronic separation document (DD-214); benefits determination before discharge; sharing of information on occupational exposures from military operations and related initiatives.  AUSA strongly recommends accelerated efforts to realize the goal of “seamless transition” plans and programs.

The inherently difficult nature of military service has never been more self-evident than during the current conflict.  While grateful for the good things done for veterans, AUSA reminded the committee members that we consider veterans benefits to have been duly earned by those who have answered the nation’s call and placed themselves at risk.

 

Army's Vice Chief of Staff: Timely Funding Needed

Full and timely funding is critical to the Army.  That was the message offered last week by the Army’s Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee and at a breakfast hosted by AUSA’s Institute of Land Warfare.

Gen. Cody called on Congress to quickly pass the pending $70 billion emergency defense spending bill and fully fund the Army’s budget request of $140.7 billion for fiscal 2009.

“Military pay is a lot” of the emergency spending bill, but $18 billion goes to resetting equipment, especially equipment that remained in theater longer than expected for the surge, or buying new equipment.

“We run out of military pay in June.  We run out of ops funding in July,” Gen. Cody said in explaining the ramifications of a delay in passage of the emergency supplemental spending bill.  The impact would “be a devastating blow to the morale of our soldiers.”

In his prepared testimony, Gen. Cody elaborated even more on the impact a delayed bill would cause.

--Two Stryker Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) may not receive hull protection kits before they deploy;

--Armored Security Vehicles could face a break in production;

--Army National Guard will not receive 10 CH-47 F model helicopters;

--Converting and existing BCTs will not receive the Bridge to Future Networks communication systems; and,

--The Army will be unable to upgrade and construct facilities for returning Wounded Warriors at Forts Drum, Campbell, Stewart, Carson, Hood, Riley and Polk.

On the topic of readiness Gen. Cody said, “Our readiness is being consumed as quickly as we can produce it,” and this has left the service “out of balance.”  He added, “When this surge went, the fifth surge of this war,  it took all the stroke out of the shock absorbers” because it meant sending five additional brigade combat teams and additional engineering, aviation and military police units to Iraq to support the effort there.

“It also forced us to issue all our pre-positioned stock in the area” to support some of the units coming in.  In other cases, the units coming in fell on left-behind equipment.  Gen. Cody explained that units about to be deployed are “not where they should be” in terms of equipment and training on that equipment.

He said the five Army depots “are doing unbelievable work,” about 3 ½ times more than two years ago, in resetting tanks, humvees, Bradleys, radios, Blue Force trackers, rifles, machine guns, etc., much of it paid for out of emergency spending bills.  “It will take three years, maybe four to reset and buy new equipment” that was identified as being required in a 2006 Army review, Gen. Cody said.  He added, “I have never seen our lack of strategic depth as it is today.”

The nation needs an airborne brigade, a heavy brigade, a Stryker brigade and a light brigade ready for a range of operations, “we don’t have that today,”  Gen. Cody testified.

He said that infantry units can be relatively quickly brought back to high levels of readiness for the spectrum of military operations.  Others, such as artillery units who deployed as military police or infantry, “will take longer to come back.”

He told the panel that the Army’s goal is to restore balance by 2011 and a key ingredient in doing that was growing the Army to 76 brigade combat teams and 227 sustainment brigades.

Repeated deployments with little time at home “put the All-Volunteer Force at risk.”  Gen. Cody said, “It may take us 15 months to get to 12 months boots on the ground and 18 months dwell time.”

The Army’s force generation model has a goal of two years at home before a year of deployment for the active force and five years at home before a year of deployment for the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve.

Gen. Cody reiterated his message at the Institute of Land Warfare breakfast.  Speaking to a group that included key congressional staff members as well as Army and Industry leadership, he said, “The Army needs full and timely funding.”  Adding, “It is about balancing time and money” to attract and retain quality soldiers in an All-Volunteer Force.

He also said that the nation “must not make assuming away strategic risks” as it has historically done.  “Keep our Army resourced.  It is not broken because of its people,” he said.

 

Chiefs of Reserve Components Testify before House Readiness Subcommittee

The chief of the National Guard Bureau and the chief of the Army Reserve warned the House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee in a hearing last week that by mid-April the entire Army will have to again be planning on ways to hold down expenses unless Congress passes a $70 billion emergency spending bill by June.

“Big Army, the guard and the Army Reserve are out of options come June,” LTG H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said during the hearing.

LTG Jack Stultz, chief of the Army Reserve, said “The money to buy that equipment [to replace what was left in Afghanistan and Iraq] is in the supplemental.  We would have to start taking funds from someplace else” to pay soldiers.

“If the supplemental does not arrive [quickly], we are at risk of breaking our contract with 465,000 National Guardsmen, their families and their employers” that before deployment these soldiers and airmen would be fully trained and equipped for their missions.  “This is the unintended consequences of funding the guard and reserve through supplementals.”

Earlier in the hearing, LTG Blum said that for the first time there has been a commitment by the Secretaries of Defense and the Army, as well as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Army Chief of Staff, “to get equipment into the hands of the unit you want to get it to” for the state and national missions.  He added that while leaving equipment such as artillery in theater does not affect the state mission, shortages of trucks, radios, medical supplies, aviation assets and engineering equipment do.

“For the first time ever, the Chief of Staff of the Army has sent a letter to Congress that the National Guard does need this equipment,” LTG Blum said, adding the list covers more than 370 items.

He and LTG Stultz said that it was critically important to stick to the agreed upon spending plan into 2013 to equip the National Guard and Army Reserve.  “Don’t let it slide to the right,” Stultz said.

LTG Blum said the National Guard has about 61 percent of its required equipment on hand, up from 44 percent two years ago while Stultz said the Army Reserve is at about 66 percent of its requirement, down from 78 percent a few years ago.  He added, “Almost all of our equipment is dual use.”

“We certainly wouldn’t want our fire or police services to be equipped with 61 percent of their equipment,” Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, subcommittee chairman, said.

Because of the shortage of equipment, such as Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicles, LTG Blum said the National Guard is not training as it will fight.  “We seem to be training as we fought a while ago.”

Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., suggested that one way to close the equipment-training gap would be to use “manufacturer’s seconds,” equipment such as the MRAPs being built at plant near Camp Shelby, Miss., that does not quite meet Defense Department standards.  Blum said that he would check out that suggestion.

LTG Clyde Vaughn, director of the Army National Guard, said at the same time there was a pressing need for additional soldiers serving in Active Guard/Reserve positions to ensure that training goals are met.  “We really have got to look at this to [be sure] we have 100 percent trained soldiers.  We need to continue on that track.”

He told the panel that the model used for full-time manning in the National Guard and Army Reserve was created in 1999, two years before the roles of the reserve components began to switch from a strategic to an operational reserve.

“If you don’t have full-time support, it will take longer” to bring units to proper states of readiness, LTG Stultz said. “Some is better; more is better.”

“Any increase in that level [of full-time manning] would have a tremendous impact” on readiness, LTG Blum said.  LTG Vaughn added, “The Army has recognized that it has to get better.”

When asked how serious the shortfalls in equipment and training had left the armed forces, LTG Blum said, “We are not broke. … There is tremendous capacity and capability left.”

 “Transition from a strategic reserve to an operational reserve would take years even if there were no other demands on the National Guard and reserves. … We must have a solid plan of action, and we must provide the funding stream to make it happen,” Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., the ranking member, said.