“In 10 years, we’d only be able to afford a smaller force at the same [budget] level as today,” says Todd Harrison, senior fellow for defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, a think-tank in Washington, D.C. That said, total national security spending topped $967 billion in 2014, up roughly 50% since 2000, according to Lindsay Koshgarian research director at the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization in Northampton, Mass. which provides analysis of the federal budget. But this figure also includes $151.3 billion from Veterans Affairs and $51 billion in homeland security, and other non-Department of Defense costs.
Speaking of the Pentagon’s ongoing spending cuts and uncertainty over the Department of Defense budgets, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work last month told a defense conference that the Pentagon should “stop the madness.” The National Defense Panel, a bipartisan commission chartered by Congress, found that they constitute a “serious strategic misstep on the part of the United States.” What’s more, “near-term gaps in training and maintenance diminish readiness,” according to this report published in March 2014 by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Budget Brief for 2015.
Manpower
is shrinking, too. The number of active service members has fallen by
17% to 1,373,249 (excluding the Coast Guard) at the end of October 2014 from 1,610,490 two decades ago,
according to the U.S. Department of the Defense data, and could be
further reduced over the next five years. (That figure has moved up and
down over the years, and peaked at over 12 million during World War II.)
The Army has the largest number of active duty members (505,982)
followed by the Navy (325,818), the Air Force (314,789) and the Marine
Corps (186,402), according to the latest figures for October 2014.
“Reductions to end strength [the size of the force] will occur
regardless of whether or not sequestration returns,” a DoD spokesman
says.
Although military pay
is exempted from sequestration — the 2011 deal struck between the White
House and Congress to reduce the budget deficit to what economists
regard as sustainable levels — under President Obama’s sequestration exemption,
the military health care system and future pay raises are not and 80%
of military households earning at least $50,000 a year (versus just 36%
in the general population) still feel anxious about sequestration
according to a survey released in October by First Command Financial Services;
that’s up 18 percentage points since the end of the first quarter. Some
79% of military families expect to be at least somewhat financially
impacted by potential cuts.
2. The military is a middle-class institution
Just
about all enlisted members of the U.S. military — 99%, an all-time high
— have a high school diploma and/or some college experience, according
to the most recent report
by the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. Education
also improves with rank: The percentage of active officers who have a
Bachelor’s and/or an advanced degree was 82.4% in 2012; although that’s
down from 89.6% in 1995. This compares favorably to non-military
personnel: Just over 30% of civilian adults 25 and under have a B.A.,
according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The B.A. rate for enlisted
personnel — while much lower — rose to 5.9% from 3.4% over the same
period. “The military is a way to get out and get an education,” says
Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington,
D.C. “It’s perceived as a very meritocratic organization.”
“The
military in 2014 is distinctly middle class,” Brooks says, or at least
headed that way. There’s still a post-Vietnam “hangover or perception”
among the American public that the military is predominantly composed of
poor kids from rural areas, she adds. “That’s definitely no longer
true. It’s more of a small town military than extremely rural or
extremely urban military.” Although there was some relaxing of
recruiting standards in the mid-2000s during the Iraq War, she says the
military today requires a high school diploma or GED, and has relatively
tough physical fitness requirements.
The
percentage of military personnel recruited from areas with the lowest
and highest average incomes is about the same (7%) and represents the
lowest rates of recruitment, according to a 2010 report
by the National Priorities Project. The highest percentage of recruits
(12%) comes from areas closest to the median household income in the
U.S. (These percentages have changed little over the last five years.
(The military doesn’t offer data on household income of recruits, so
this report based its findings on the household income of each recruit’s
zip code.)3. Service members are more likely to have money troubles
When
U.S. service members return from active duty, studies show that they’re
more likely to face serious financial problems than civilians. They’re
almost twice as likely to carry some month-to-month credit card debt
(58%) than civilians (34%), according to a survey released last May and
carried out by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling and Pioneer
Services, a division of MidCountry Bank in Bloomington, Minn. Twice as
many service members as civilians have paid less than the minimum
required payment on credit cards in the last 12 months (6% versus 3%),
the study concluded.
While health issues like PTSD
or depression and physical disabilities can play a part, the winding
down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan came at a bad time for job
seekers. More than two-thirds of veterans (69%) consider “finding a job”
the No. 1 challenge after leaving active service, according to a 2012
survey of 2,453 service members, 1,845 of whom were veterans of the
second Gulf War. The survey was carried out by Prudential Financial Inc.
for the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. The No. 2 challenge
is navigating the complex benefit and support system for veterans.In an effort to address this, the Obama administration and Department of Defense want to introduce stricter rules to help protect military service personnel from unsavory lenders. Included in the proposals, for example, is a new rule that says creditors may not charge an annual percentage rate of more than 36% on all consumer credit; this previously only applied to payday loans, vehicle title loans, and tax refund anticipation loans. The proposed legislation is designed to “help ensure that our service members and their families are as far beyond the reach of financial exploitation as possible.”
4. Sexual-assault allegations far outnumber reports
There
was an 8% increase in sexual assault allegations from fiscal year 2013
to 2014 (a total of 5,983) after a 50% increase the previous year. The
military now receives a report from an estimated 1 in 4 victims up from 1
in 10 in 2012. However, the estimated number of service members
experiencing sexual assault was 19,000 to 20,000 in 2014, down from
26,000 in 2012, according the DoD report released last week. The DoD
provides an anonymous “safe helpline” for 24/7 support for those who
have not yet decided to file a report. “For those victims who are
considering making a report, it’s our goal to give them options that
respect their privacy, their rights, and their desire to participate in
the military justice process,” a DoD spokeswoman says.
The DoD established a Joint Task Force for Sexual
Assault Prevention and Response in 2004, and this year introduced more
measures to make it easier for victims of sexual assault to come
forward, a department spokeswoman says. This includes special victims
counsel attorneys, improved training on the program for military members
and elevating prosecution decisions out of the units where the victim
and suspect serve to a “senior, impartial commander.” It’s not a problem
unique to the military: College fraternity members who signed up to
rape prevention programs were less likely to commit sexually coercive
acts than a control group of men who joined fraternities, studies have found.
But
some lawmakers say changes in how the military addresses such cases
don’t go far enough, especially when prosecuting cases. Among them is
Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, who says the military faces
an “epidemic” of rape and sexual assault. In 2011 and 2013, she
introduced the Sexual Assault Training Oversight and Prevention Act,
which proposed taking the reporting, oversight, investigation and victim
care of sexual assaults out of the hands of the military’s normal chain
of command and, instead, passing those responsibilities to non-military
prosecutors. The legislation was never enacted. But there were other
sweeping reforms in 2012: DoD policy prohibits commanders from
investigating or evaluating the validity of a sexual assault report
themselves and sexual assaults joins rape as an offense with no statute
of limitations.
5. Our R&D is trailing the private sector
Once
upon a time — about half-a-century ago — the U.S. military was at the
forefront of the technological revolution, and played a role in
developing nuclear power, jet propulsion, communication satellites and
even the early development of computers and the Internet. But the
Department of Defense has since been upstaged by the private sector.
“The U.S. relies on technology to be an effective fighting force, but
with relatively smaller budgets and a cumbersome process it’s difficult
for them to get access to the best technology,” says Ben FitzGerald,
senior fellow and director at the Center for a New American Security, a
bipartisan, nonprofit think-tank in Washington, D.C.
U.S.
corporations have an estimated budget of $307.5 billion for research
and development projects in 2014, according to Battelle Memorial
Institute, a private nonprofit science and technology development firm.
U.S. federal spending on R&D is in “turmoil,” the report
noted, “because of enormous pressures to pare federal spending,
especially defense and aerospace budgets.” The Pentagon is still the
largest contributor to federal research and development projects and
enacted $62.8 billion in federal research, development, test and
evaluation (RDT&E) funding in 2014 versus $63.3 billion in 2013.
Half-a-dozen companies in the private sector have more than three
quarters of the DoD’s budget this year ($54 billion), according to
management consulting firm Strategy&,
Samsung alone had R&D spending of $13.4 billion in 2014, followed
by Intel ($10.6 billion). (At current cap levels, RDT&E would
decline by 1.3% per year from 2015 to 2019.)
The
White House was criticized for failing to anticipate the invasion of
Crimea by Russian-backed rebels and the push into Iraq by ISIS.
FitzGerald says existing military technologies allow the U.S. to respond
quickly, but warns that “the U.S. military advantage is predicated on
technological superiority. Declining budgets, lower purchasing power and
outdated business models are putting that superiority at significant
risk.” Last month, the White House requested that Congress boost the budget
for Overseas Contingency Operations, not covered by sequestration,
including for satellites and other data technology. And, according to a
2012 report by the Council on Foreign Relations Competition,
the civilian market may spur a higher pace of innovation than the
military demands: “The rapid growth of the videogame industry sped the
development of virtual reality training systems for soldiers. Notably,
no other developed nation allocates more than 30% of government R&D
support to defense.”
6. Veterans are vulnerable to becoming homeless.
Veterans
with minor financial problems, like bouncing a check or exceeding their
credit limit, are four times more likely to become homeless within the
next year than veterans without such problems, according to a survey of
1,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in the American Journal of Public
Health. In January 2014, there were 578,424 homeless people in the U.S.
on a single night and among them 49,933 were veterans, according to a
separate U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development report
released last October. “There is still a tremendous amount of work ahead
of us but the strategy is working to end homelessness as we’ve come to
know it,” U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro
said at the launch of the report.
While
still a problem, homelessness among the nation’s 22.2 million veterans
fell by 10% drop since 2010 among all homeless people and 33% fall in homelessness among veterans.
“Huge progress has been made,” says Jake Maguire, spokesman for
Community Solutions, a New York-based non-profit focusing on
homelessness and neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. But he still
worries about the newest generation of veterans. “There’s a huge
generation of vets coming back home right now. Things are a lot better
than when folks came home from Vietnam, but there’s still a lot of work
to do.”
So what’s changed? In 2008, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Veterans Affairs created Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) which has awarded 10,000 vouchers each year to homeless veterans and those at risk. The VA’s Supportive Services for Veteran Families Program
also gives rental subsidy vouchers for those considered vulnerable.
“They’re still a population that’s vulnerable to being homeless,
especially those with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress,”
Maguire says, “but the military has gotten better at how it screens for
these things.” The VA also provides guaranteed home loans and offers help to avoid mortgage deficiency/foreclosure to veterans who have hit a rough patch.
7. People may grill you about what you’ve seen
Some
military veterans have fielded inappropriate questions after returning
from active duty. Rudy Uribe, 47, is president and CEO of commercial
staffing firm Recruit Veterans
in Cedar Park, Texas, and served 11 years in the U.S. Marines, leaving
as a captain. These, he says, are just some questions veterans who have
returned from active duty deal with: “Have you ever been in combat? What
did you see? What did you do?” Uribe says, “These are inappropriate
questions and a lot of veterans don’t feel the need to talk about that.”
Uribe was once asked by an interviewer — who himself was a U.S. Navy
veteran — if his management style would be draconian. “Had I been a
civilian, I would not have had to overcome that question.” Uribe — who
participated in the recent National Veterans Small Business Engagement conference — has advice for veterans in such situations: Remain professional and don’t feel obliged to answer.
Indeed,
interviews can be fraught with odd questions. Nick Lopez, 32, served in
the U.S. Army for 14 years. He was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. He
later got a Bachelor’s Degree in computer science from DeVry
University. But on his return home not everyone thanked him for his
service. “I sometimes felt that people were afraid of hiring someone
from the military,” Lopez, a Bronx native, says. During one interview
with a cable company, he says, the interviewers were impressed with him,
“but they kept asking weird questions like, ‘Have you ever seen action
overseas?’ I knew then that it was a no-go.’” He suspects why the
interview soured: “Some veterans suffer from PTSD and some employers
think they have a problem adjusting to civilian life,” he says.
Lopez
says he never knows how people are going to react. “You should never
ask questions like, ‘Did you ever kill anybody?’” Lopez did suffer from
mild PTSD after a rocket attack during his service. His symptoms
included shortness of breath when he was in large groups. “I couldn’t be
in a movie theater because it was too dark and I couldn’t see the
exits,” he says. With treatment, he got better and he now works as a
quality assurance engineer for Sharp Decisions, a technology services
company with 400 employees that’s hired 50 veterans. He currently works
on a project with EmblemHealth, a New York health maintenance and health
insurance firm.
8. Gulf War vets have higher rates of unemployment
The
unemployment rate for those who served on active duty in the U.S. Armed
forces since September 2001 and discharged before 2014 — a 2.8
million-strong “Gulf War II” vets — had a 9% unemployment rate last year
(versus 9.9% in 2012) compared with a national average last year of
7.3%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
It was better for all veterans: 6.6% (versus 7% in 2012), and has
presumably fallen since then along with the overall average (the
national unemployment rate is now 5.8%). Among the 722,000 unemployed
veterans in 2013, 60% were age 45 and over and 35% were age 25 to 44.
In
recent years, many companies have pledged to make an effort to hire
veterans as part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s “Hiring
Our Heroes” program, which aims to have 500,000 commitments by next
year. Last month, the program confirmed that it will exceed that goal by
85,000 jobs. Nearly 204,000 veterans have started careers in
franchising between 2011 and 2013, according to the International
Franchise Association. Big-box retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) pledged to hire 100,000 veterans by 2018 and Amazon Inc. (AMZN) hired 1,900 veterans last year.
The
VA says it’s provided more than $47 billion to send nearly 1.3 million
veterans and dependents to school under the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. There
are also military and academic support networks for the 250,000 veterans
who transition to the civilian life annually. The University of Phoenix
“Military Skills Calculator” takes the military occupational specialty (MOS) code and suggests a list of occupations. The Department of Labor’s “Transitional Assistance Program” provides workshops on job hunting, resume and cover letter writing, and interviewing techniques. The Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University has “internship-to-employment programs” and online seminars in association with Google Inc. (GOOG)
9. Lower your expectations after military service
Even
after a long, decorated career, many vets find it hard to find jobs
that match their skills and education. Less than one-third (29%) of
former military personnel say they are using their military skills in
the civilian workplace and 61% say their jobs are below their skill
sets, according to a survey of 1,000 veterans conducted in October by
Harris Poll on behalf of the University of Phoenix. As this 2013 White
House report
points out, many veterans have difficulty transferring their military
skills to civilian life due to complex licensing requirements.
“We
don’t have a lot of call for military men in corporate America,” says
Garland Williams, 55, vice. president of military relations at the
University of Phoenix; he moved to civilian life five years ago after 28
years in the army. He says it’s difficult to find employment with
similar levels of responsibility. At 25 years of age, he led a company
of 165 soldiers and at 48 he was commander of a garrison with 23,000
soldiers. He has a Ph.D. in international relations from Duke
University, and has taught at West Point. Even with that background, he
feels “lucky” that his résumé was found on the jobs forum Civilianjobs.com.
Many
people leave the military without the same network as those who
attended college, and may not know how to showcase their personality or
skills in interviews. When Ernie Lombardi, 57, left the military three
decades ago, he drove a Coca-Cola delivery truck. He went through more
than one layoff, two recessions, sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door and
lived out of his car for a few months in the 1990s. “I took any job I
could get my hands on,” he says. But he says he got his “personal power”
back. “I stepped up,” Lombardi says. “I had trained men. I was
responsible for getting in and out of combat situations alive.” He went
to college and became a middle school teacher and, in 2012, became a
senior event planner at Hiring Our Heroes, helping other vets find jobs.
10. Public esteem for the military has fallen
Most
Americans hold the U.S. military in high esteem, but the number of
those who do has declined in recent years. Some 78% of American adults
say members of the armed services contribute “a lot” to society’s
well-being, according to a 2013 survey of 4,000 adults by Pew Research’s
“Religion and Public Life Project.” That’s down from 84% four years
ago, the last time it asked the question. That said, the military still
tops the list of 10 occupational groups, followed closely by teachers
(72%), medical doctors (66%), scientists (65%) and engineers (63%), all
of which saw their support decline since 2009.
Republicans
were more likely to hold the military in public esteem than Democrats
(86% versus 75%) and, in a separate study released earlier this year,
more Republicans than Democrats regard military service as a top asset
for presidential candidates (58% versus 31%). But other than that, most
groups seem to hold the military with similar levels of regard: Men and
women (76% versus 80%), people ages 18 to 49 and those 50 years and
older (77% versus 81%), white versus African-American and Hispanic (81%
versus 72%) and college graduates and those with high school diplomas or
less education (76% versus 78%).
Uribe,
the U.S. Marine captain, says there are still many common public
misconceptions about those who serve in the military, particularly in
relation to people who suffer from PTSD. “Some are hesitant to
self-identify as veterans because of the negative perceptions,” he says.
Others are even hesitant about putting their military experience on
their résumé and were told by career counselors not put down their
military service, he adds. “For anyone who has any misconceptions about
the capabilities of military veterans, there’s plenty of examples of how
successful they can be.” He cites Republican senator John McCain,
businessman Peter Holt, owner of the San Antonio Spurs NBA team, and Bob
Parsons, founder of web-hosting company GoDaddy, as three veterans who
rose to the top of their professions. “They just don’t give up,” he
adds, “that’s what makes them successful at what they do.”
The
change in Pew’s public opinion poll may not be such a bad thing. “There
is greater awareness that the military is neither an institution that
we should be worshiping or vilifying,” says Brooks, the Georgetown law
professor. She says politicians and the media often take extreme views
on the role of military in society, and tend to use highly verbose or
very inflammatory language. “They’re either perceived as brave and
self-sacrificing heroes or brutalized and as overly macho. Neither is
true. Members of the military are like any collection of people. They’re
a lot more like the rest of America than we think.”
By Quentin Fottrell
December 15, 2014 9:10 AM
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