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Legislative UPDATE
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year exemption from physical-training as- sessments for any female airmen who have had pregnancies lasting at least 20 weeks. The Air Force also is allowing one-year deferments for new mothers given orders or assignments to locations where airmen would not be allowed to bring a dependent. Secretary of the Air Force Deborah
James said, “The goal is to alleviate the strain on some of our talented airmen who choose to leave the Air Force as they struggle to balance deployments and fam- ily issues, and this is especially true soon after childbirth.”
New Chiefs on W
the Block Fresh faces mean new opportunities and challenges.
ithin a 12-month period, every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is going to complete his
term, an occurrence not seen in over 30 years — and the turbulence they might face over the next year will be startling. One job of the Joint Chiefs is to ensure personnel readiness, and one of the first things the Joint Chiefs must address is increased pessimism within the ranks. A recent Military Times survey found barely 1 in 4 surveyed said they believed leader- ship had servicemembers’ best interests at heart. In the same survey, 56 percent stated their quality of life is good or excellent, down from 91 percent in 2009. It’s easy to see why morale is sinking. Se-
questration has forced the military to take a disproportionate share of solving budget problems. We’ve asked the services to kick out exceptional personnel and eroded pay and benefits, creating an unstable environ- ment where military families never know when the next shoe will drop.
40 MILITARY OFFICER SEPTEMBER 2015
Instead of planning for tomorrow’s battles today, sequestration forces the military to fight tomorrow’s battles with yesterday’s budget.
The new chiefs will be the first to expe-
rience how troops will respond to major retirement reform and the Pentagon’s Force of the Future initiative. Will the prospect of relaxing some of the rigidity that exists in the military foster retention, or will it leave troops wondering if the military offers anything different from jobs in corporate America? After all, if you could get the same experience in the civilian sector without the prospect of being shot at, would you stay in? Ultimately, the service chiefs will need
to structure the remaining force to face the next war. Will the next conflict be long, large, and protracted or consist of small, tactical, and precise skirmishes? How will the leaner military respond to asymmetrical warfare in disparate loca- tions? How will it fare against cyberattacks like the recent Office of Personnel Man- agement data breach? Can a lean military project force to countries like China, North Korea, or any future enemy the U.S. might face? Will a military that’s already been cut to the bone be able to face a traditional enemy in combat? Regardless of the threat, the remaining
force will continue to go into harm’s way as long as the troops know leadership has their back and their family’s interests at heart. Given the current unstable environment,
it’s critical the service chiefs win back the trust of troops and their families. MO
— Contributors are Col. Mike Hayden, USAF (Ret), director; Col. Mike Barron, USA (Ret); Col. Bob Norton, USA (Ret); Capt. Kathy Beasley, USN (Ret); Col. Phil Odom, USAF (Ret); Cmdr. René Campos, USN (Ret); Karen Golden; Jamie Naughton; and Trina Fitzgerald, MOAA’s Gov- ernment Relations Department. To subscribe to MOAA’s Legislative Update, visit
www.moaa .org/email.
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