 Ed
Offley, Editor of DefenseWatch magazine, has
been a military reporter and defense specialist
for 22 years in a variety of journalism assignments
throughout the United States. DefenseWatch
is an online magazine that addresses military
and security issues from the viewpoint of
active-duty and reservist component personnel
and veterans.
Offley previously served as Editor-in-Chief
of The Stars and Stripes after the civilian-owned
newspaper was acquired by Stars and Stripes
Omnimedia Inc. in March 2000. A 1969 graduate
of the University of Virginia, Offley served
in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam before joining
The Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg, Va., as
a reporter in 1972. He worked as an editorial
writer at three newspapers in Virginia during
1977-85 before joining The Seattle Post Intelligencer
as an editorial writer in 1986.
Offley, 55, lives in Panama City Beach, Fla.,
with his wife, Karen, and daughter, Andrea.
Contact: dweditor@yahoo.com.
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January 31, 2005
[Have an opinion about the views expressed in this article? Sound
off in the Hot Issues with Defensewatch Forum.]
By Ed Offley
One of the things that I love about the Pentagon is the response
when you ask a question on a subject that Defense Department officials
have no interest in discussing. There are actually two responses:
Either a stolid, resounding silence on the line, or the telephonic
circle jerk the PAOs organize to send you from Tinker to Evers to
Chance (DoD to the military service HQs and back to yet another
disinterested DoD flack) without ever getting a response.
This week's subject is the arbitrary and stingy amount of "Imminent
Danger Pay" (IDP) that the Defense Department pays out to men
and women in uniform serving in combat, and the arbitrary and obsolete
mechanism by which the Pentagon declares eligibility for that income.
A DefenseWatch review of the existing IDP system clearly shows that
this well-intentioned program is in need of serious overhaul.
This is the system that is in effect today, according to DoD:
"A member of a uniformed service may be paid special pay at the
rate of $225 for any month in which he was entitled to basic pay
and in which he:
* Was subject to hostile fire or explosion of hostile mines;
* Was on duty in an area in which he was in imminent danger of being
exposed to hostile fire or explosion of hostile mines and in which,
during the period he was on duty in that area, other members of
the uniformed services were subject to hostile fire or explosion
of hostile mines;
* Was killed, injured, or wounded by hostile fire, explosion of
a hostile mine, or any other hostile action; or
* Was on duty in a foreign area in which he was subject to the threat
of physical harm or imminent danger on the basis of civil insurrection,
civil war, terrorism, or wartime conditions.
"Reserve members are also eligible for Hostile Fire and Imminent
Danger Pay."
(As my colleague, Nathaniel R. Helms points out in an accompanying
article in this DefenseWatch Special Report, "Junkets
Corrupt 'Danger Pay' System," the eligibility provisions constitute
a standing invitation for fraud and abuse, particularly from high-ranking
officers with the clout to wangle short-term travel orders and military
transportation to ferry them from their posh headquarters to the
so-called hostile zone.)
(There is also a tax-free income eligibility for service personnel
serving in hostile-fire zones that is computed on the basis of Base
Pay but limited by statute to not more than the highest rate of
pay an E-9, which in 2004 was a maximum of $6,315.90 per month.
That benefit is not the subject of this column.)
How much is $225 per month in IDP really worth? Well, you can calculate
it as $7.50 per day, a laughable amount to reward our grunts racing
down the IED-laden streets of Balad or Mosul, or humping the mountains
of Afghanistan. But if you review the military's own record, the
amount is even stingier than the daily average suggests.
Consider: An Army private in 1942 received a base salary of $50
per month. Overseas duty kicked in another 20 percent, or $10, for
a total of $60. Elite combat troops such as the airborne infantry
earned yet another $50 in jump pay. So an enlisted trooper with
Easy Co., 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division,
earned an extra $60 each month during his combat service in Normandy,
Holland, Bastogne and the invasion of Germany.
In 2003 dollars (the 1942 amount adjusted for inflation), that paratrooper
received an extra $716.60 per month above his base salary - nearly
three times what his grandson or daughter is getting in actual IDP
for service in Iraq or Afghanistan today.
Of course, the problem of paying our troops a real IDP rather than
the insufficient $225 stipend is the overall bottom line, as DoD
officials confirmed two years ago. Four months after hiking IDP
from $150 to $225 per month (and increasing a separate family separation
benefit from $100 to $250) in April 2003, the DoD bean-counters
revealed they wanted to let the enhanced stipends expire and revert
to the lower levels when the 2004 fiscal year began on Oct. 1, 2003.
Why? Pentagon officials protested that the extra $225 monthly was
costing DoD about $25 million more a month, or $300 million for
a full year. So rather than trim production of a single F/A-22 Raptor
- whose unofficial unit cost hovers at the $300 million mark - the
Pentagon opted to give a slap in the face to some 148,000 U.S. troops
serving in Iraq and their 9,000 counterparts in Afghanistan at that
time.
At that juncture, a rare political firestorm erupted in Congress
- not over the fate of some treasured pork-barrel defense program
or cherished (but obsolete) military base in a powerful solon's
district - but rather, out of concern for the welfare of the troops
doing the heavy lifting. The Pentagon quickly backed down, leaving
the current IDP system in place.
This is a pity, because news accounts from that flareup reveal
that some DoD officials were indeed interested in reforming the
system to get a larger amount of IDP into the hands of the smaller
number of troops who actually deserve it. On Aug. 14, 2003, Lawrence
Di Rita, chief spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld,
said that the Pentagon wanted to focus on compensating those facing
the most danger. "Things fluctuate," Di Rita told reporters. "But
the philosophy is target it where it's needed the most. It's clearly
needed in Iraq and Afghanistan."
The problem that since the 2003 controversy, neither Congress nor
the Pentagon has seemed interested in confronting the real culprit:
the three key aspects of the IDP system that guarantee its costs
will be prohibitive (and I do not include the fact that we still
have over 135,000 troops in Iraq and another 18,000 in Afghanistan
today - that's the coast of a multiple-front war, folks). The problems
are:
Arbitrary Geographic eligibility: The Pentagon defines who is eligible
to receive IDP by creating a "hostile fire" zone usually defined
by a country's borders or - if ocean areas are involved - by an
artificial Latitude-Longitude operating area designation for Navy
warship or combat aircraft operations.
In many cases this is appropriate. Given the lethality and seamless
presence of the insurgency in Iraq, for example, it would be hard
to identify anyone in uniform serving there that doesn't merit IDP.
But a case could also be made that support personnel in many countries
adjoining Iraq, such as Bahrain and Qatar, do not.
Short-term qualification: In order to receive IDP pay and the tax-free
base pay for any month, the individual only has to serve in the
designated hostile-fire zone for one day. As DefenseWatch has reported
in the past, this is a recipe for abuse of the system, especially
by senior officers serving out of the area (see "The
Grunts Patrol, the Generals Junket," Guest Column, DefenseWatch,
Sept. 30, 2003 and "Sailing
to the 'Golden Circle' ", Ed Offley, DefenseWatch, Feb. 26,
2004).
Once hostile, almost forever hostile: The Defense Department posts
on its website an informative chart listing current and former hostile
fire zones (see "Imminent
Danger Pay - Who Gets It," by Jim Garamone, Armed Forces Press
Service, for the complete chart). It makes for fascinating reading,
especially when pointing out that Sigonella NAS in Italy, the African
nation of Burundi, all of Egypt, Souda Bay in Crete, and Zaire are
just as hazardous to your health (and tax-free for your 1040 forms)
as Iraq and Afghanistan.
We at DefenseWatch believe that the amount of IDP money being issued
to the troops is grossly insufficient, and at the same time far
too many people are receiving it who do not really deserve it, thanks
to a system that has endured as a result of bureaucratic sloth rather
than from any careful study or calculation.
In the days and weeks ahead, we hope to call attention to the inequities
and systemic abuses that have riddled the IDP system, and begin
a dialogue on how true reforms can both save the taxpayers from
being ripped off while providing the guys and gals truly in harm's
way with a meaningful compensation for that danger.
Ed
Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com.
©2005 DefenseWatch. All opinions expressed in this article are the
author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.
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