Stop Loss (Not specifically a NAVAIR issue but will seriously affect it)

Got this from MOA today:

Issue 3: Stop-Loss: The New Draft

The more we think about the Defense Department's plan to meet wartime
requirements for the next few years, the more concerned we get.

The plan is to increase Army manning by 30,000 for the next few years.
But that won't be accomplished through additional recruiting, as most of
us tend to think when we hear those words. It will be accomplished mainly
by barring current members from leaving when their terms of service are up
- a policy known as "stop-loss." The plan is to keep stop-loss in place
through 2005, for thousands of active duty, Guard and Reserve troops.

It's hard to see that as anything other than a reinstitution of the draft,
imposed in the most ironic way possible. The only people being drafted
are those who have already volunteered to serve in the first place. Many
have already seen combat or hazardous duty in Africa, the Balkans,
Afghanistan, and/or Iraq. Now their end-of-tour separations are being
denied so they can be forced to fill manpower shortages and deploy again.

The Defense Department is trying to put a good face on it, saying it will
meet wartime needs through "increased retention" rather than increased
recruiting. If stop-loss is being euphemized that way, somebody's kidding
himself. You can't keep stop-loss in place for extended periods without
risking negative retention consequences for the longer term.

Don't get us wrong. Sometimes stop-loss is the only way to meet the
national defense mission. But prudent planners know it should be a
short-term tool, not an extended policy. It means that somebody didn't
plan very well.

The planning deficiency didn't start with current leadership. We should
have started recruiting for a bigger force years ago, because the troops
have been overstressed for more than a decade. But the fact that it
hasn't been done yet is no excuse to keep putting it off.

Is anybody thinking about the situation this process is creating for
whoever is leading the Defense Department and the Services two years
downstream? When the stop-loss policy ends, does anyone think there won't
be a disproportional wave of "negative retention"? If we need a larger
force for years to come - and everybody knows we do - prudent planning
would seem to dictate that increased recruiting has to be part of the
solution.

We don't think the need is lost on military leaders. They're doing their
utmost to find the best solution to a huge manpower challenge within the
"transformation" limits imposed upon them by politicians and political
appointees. But there's also a limit to how much reality can be ignored,
and a limit to the risks we should accept in planning military force
levels needed to defend the country.

Remember, "Help is on the way"? We never thought it meant just another
helping of sacrifice heaped on those who have already borne their fair
share of the battle.


--
Bill Kambic

If, by any act, error, or omission, I have, intentionally or
unintentionally, displayed any breedist, disciplinist, sexist, racist,
culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, localist, ageist, lookist, ableist,
sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomicist, ethnocentrist,
phallocentrist, heteropatriarchalist, or other violation of the rules of
political correctness, known or unknown, I am not sorry and I encourage you
to get over it.