Unacceptable Risk
This year, some Defense officials are trying to pit the needs of retired and reserve servicemembers against those of active duty troops and weapon programs.
By Vice Adm. Norbert R. Ryan Jr., USN-Ret.

Defense budgeting issues often are simplistically portrayed as “people versus weapons.” In a January Wall Street Journal article (see www.moaa.org/news/wsjmilitarybenefits.asp), current and former Pentagon officials asserted that costs of retiree programs are keeping DoD from purchasing weapon systems and programs for active duty people. They also saw little need to improve Guard and Reserve programs.

Readers should be aware of some facts and trends that affect our military today and ought to affect our plans for tomorrow:

• American troops, not American technology, are the key to success.
   
• Guard and Reserve members make up 40 percent of the troops in Iraq; this figure will increase in the months ahead.
   
• Defense leaders have said the war on terrorism could last for decades.
   
• Active duty troops can expect to have as little as 12 months at home between one-year deployments. Guard and Reserve troops can expect to be away for 18 months out of every five years.
   
• Families are key to retention—especially retention of impossible-to-replace-quickly mid-level officers and NCOs.
   
• We owe no less to those who defended the nation through World War II, Korea, and Vietnam than we do to those in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
   
• Suggesting we can give the troops “cash to buy a pickup truck” and they won’t worry about retirement benefits insults career servicemembers’ intelligence and undermines long-term retention and readiness.
   
• On a list of federal programs at “high risk” of being inefficient or ineffective, with “billions of dollars in waste each year,” the U.S. Comptroller General recently cited DoD with eight programs; defense inventory management and weapon system acquisition have been on that list for the last 15 years.

The one weapon system that has consistently delivered beyond expectations for DoD and the country has been military people. The smaller the force, and the less we’re willing to invest in it, the higher the risk to national security. Today’s military is being exposed to significant burdens (longer, more frequent deployments; stop-loss; family separations; etcetera) of a sort that have created retention problems in the past. MOAA holds that it is a serious mistake to view retirees, people, and weapon systems as either/or budget propositions. Shorting any of them, particularly in wartime, poses serious risks to national defense and breaks faith with all who are serving and have served.