Failure to understand history

Reference/background story

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2012/07/02/review-change-guard-reserve-pay.html?ESRC=army.nl

I dearly love the Pentagon. (oops, sarcasm there). I dearly love Congress. (oops, sarcasm there)

You know why? Because they are peopled with individuals who really have no sense of history and rarely seem to understand how or why some things came to be.

For example: The Guard and the Reserve actually have different mandates. One solely is to support the active component (The Regulars) and the other serves that role but also serves as the military force for the states and territories and that is not a federal role.

Now, some of us have served back in the day when a Unit Training Assembly (UTA) was held every week. It was a four hour block of training, usually in the evening, that a reserve member was required to attend. The reserve members were paid the equivalent of one day’s pay for someone on Active Duty (The Regulars) for their efforts. Back in those days, you were talking about $3 or $4 per meeting for a low ranking service member (today it can be $15 or $20 for the same service member).

Then in the 1970s, it was decided that in most instances it would be better to consolidate training in two days per month than have them four times a month. Still, it would count each four hours as one day of training as it had before. More efficient use of time, but if you just counted days, you would be halving the pay of Reserve force members, so they decided to play the fiction that each four hours was the equivalent of eight hour days in the civilian world.

But then, if a unit left its Reserve Center or Armory to do any field training, all of a sudden instead of being gone for 16 hours of training, they would be participating in more like 36 to 54 hours of training (depending on if it was a MUTA-4 or MUTA-5) for exactly the same pay.

In addition, officers and senior non-commissioned officers often were required to meet in between the usual monthly session for more than a few hours, to plan and prepare for the monthly unit training assembly (the MUTA). This was sometimes, but not always, counted as an additional Training Assembly (ATA), since it often was like four hours on some weeknight. Officers and NCOs often would also have to participate in CPX (command post exercise) and TWOT (Training Without Troops) exercises. These usually would get the officer or NCO one or two ATAs depending on the length of an exercise but would be counted as one per 24 hour day (at least in my experience).

Now, in order to balance the budget (tee-hee), a Pentagon whiz kid says, gee it ain’t fair that inactive duty troops get credit for two days of pay, when they only are working one day. Their brethren called up to federal service only get one day, so maybe we should change the system.

Well, considering that the active duty soldier also usually qualifies for the Basic Allowance for Quarters and the Basic Allowance for Subsistence (which people on Reserve inactive duty status don’t), plus allowances for uniforms and hazardous duty pay, and other benefits, it seems that given that they are probably underpaid for hazarding their bodies 24/7/52/365, I am not sure the inactive duty individual is overpaid.

But leave it to some active component or active Guard and Reserve (AGR) person not to understand the history behind the way things are the way they are. It is too deep for them.

It is like the guys who dreamed up the consolidating Active Duty, Guard and Reserve units under the same job rating scheme … but somehow forgetting that Guard members belong to the governor of the state (unless on federal duty) and Reserve and Active Duty folks belong always belong to the president. Slight problem there, as to who signs off on whose evaluation when you go up the rating chain.

Separation of powers can be a real bitch sometimes and make things more complicated than if the world was simple place and there was just one government.