Earlier drawdowns give idea of what’s to come - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Earlier drawdowns give idea of what’s to come

The Army’s drawdown of 80,000 soldiers planned for the next six years has several similarities to the drawdown after the Cold War.

One big difference: The Army had 770,000 soldiers on active duty in November 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. That’s about 200,000 more than in December, when the last Humvees and MRAPs rolled out of Iraq.

Here are some things soldiers may see in this drawdown that the Army has experience with:

Timeline: Six years is the timeline that defense and Army leaders stipulate for the upcoming force reduction.

That’s the same amount of time the post-Cold War drawdown took to reach 490,000 soldiers, despite a manning surge related to the brief Persian Gulf War of 1991.

Lt. Gen. Thomas Bostick, Army personnel chief, has said that the size of the drawdown is not as important as the length of time the Army is given to achieve that reduction.

“We feel that with the demand going down ... and given the time to conduct a reasonable drawdown, we can manage [the force reduction] as we have managed drawdowns in the past,” Bostick said.

Separation incentives: Several of the incentives used in the drawdown of 1990-96 expired years ago, but were reinstated in the 2012 Defense Authorization Act signed into law Dec. 31 by President Obama.

Lawmakers recently reinstated the Voluntary Separation Incentive and the Special Separation Benefit, which had been approved by Congress in 1991. The incentives can be used through Dec. 31, 2018.

Targeted officers and enlisted soldiers with more than six but less than 20 years of service were given the choice of volunteering for either one of these buyouts.

• The SSB provided separating soldiers with a lump-sum payment equal to 15 percent of their final monthly pay multiplied by 12, and then multiplied by the soldier’s years of active service.

The VSI was a special type of annuity that provided one payment every 12 months equal to 2.5 percent of a soldier’s final monthly pay, and then multiplied by the soldier’s years of active service.

The VSI payment was to be made for twice the number of years the soldier served on active duty.

Soldiers who accepted either of these incentives agreed to serve in the Ready Reserve of any service, with the length of obligation determined by the incentive option.

SSB recipients incurred, at a minimum, a three-year reserve obligation. VSI soldiers were obligated to serve in a reserve component for the duration of their payment period.

• The 2012 Defense Authorization Act reinstates a voluntary separation option called the Temporary Early Retirement Authority until Dec. 31, 2018.

Congress had established this incentive in 1993. Personnel managers targeted the incentive at soldiers with 15 to 20 years of service.

Under TERA, targeted soldiers had the option of retiring after only 15 years of service.

While monthly retirement pay was adjusted to reflect years of active-duty service, recipients qualified for all other benefits.

A Congressional Budget Office study of the post-Cold War drawdown shows that TERA generated about 7,500 voluntary early retirements among field-grade officers from 1993 to 1996. By 2000, more than 54,000 former officers and enlisted military members were drawing TERA.

Early retirement: The newly enacted 2012 defense budget authorizes a voluntary retirement incentive for officers with 20 to 29 years of service. The authority would provide up to one year of basic pay for eligible officers.

The Senate version of this provision did not limit the number of officers who could be targeted for the incentive.

Lawmakers from the House and Senate agreed to a formula that would cap the number of officers who can receive this incentive to 675 for all services through the end of the authorization on Dec. 31, 2018.

In an effort to balance force reductions across all grades, managers of the post-Cold War drawdown authorized retention screenings of certain retirement-eligible colonels and lieutenant colonels.

Called Selective Early Retirement Boards, these retention reviews ended the careers of several thousand officers.

For example, the 1992 lieutenant colonel SERB selected nearly 1,200 officers for early retirement.

Those findings later were offset by federal court rulings that found that affirmative action guidance issued by the services violated the constitutional rights of white, male officers.

The Army has not yet indicated if it will conduct SERB boards for officers during the upcoming drawdown.

The enlisted drawdown is expected to include SERB boards for retirement-eligible senior NCOs in the ranks of sergeant first class, master sergeant and sergeant major.

The reviews are scheduled to begin with the sergeant major training and selection board that meets in June, according to Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond Chandler.

Bar to re-enlistment: It’s not clear if the drawdown will include an involuntary program to bar re-enlistment for soldiers who appear to lack retention qualifications during a time of declining strength.

But this has been used before. During 1990-91, more than 20,000 soldiers were separated under such a program. Soldiers were placed on probation for six months, and any time during that period could elect to voluntarily leave service.

Soldiers who remained on probation were expected to improve. Those who did not were separated.

During the post-Cold War drawdown, the Army used a combination of voluntary and involuntary policies to reduce its population of nearly 624,000 enlisted soldiers.

Junior officers: The Army also targeted involuntary separation programs at junior officers.

Among the earliest was the convening of a Regular Army Probationary and Conditional Voluntary Indefinite selection board targeted at non-promotable first lieutenants in two year groups.

About 750 of the nearly 5,000 officers in the zone of consideration failed the retention review and were involuntarily separated.

Like it had done after Vietnam, the Army planned to conduct reduction-in-force boards for captains and majors, but abandoned the effort to meet officer requirements for the first Gulf War.

Apocalypse then: The drawdown of the post-Vietnam war era influenced the 1990-96 strategy. After Vietnam, the Army slashed end strength from 1.3 million soldiers to 780,000 in just a few years.

Some unpopular methods were used to cut the force: sharp cuts in the timing and selection rates for promotion, a tightening of retention standards and RIF boards that short-circuited the careers of many thousands of soldiers.

Because of the unpopularity of those measures, the Army opted to use a combination of voluntary and involuntary programs in the early 1990s.