Marines left out of Army's 'warrior pay' proposal
By Jim Tice
Marine Corps Times Staff writer

After years of planning, the Army has convinced the Defense Department to endorse a new kind of compensation for soldiers who serve repetitive deployments.

Called "warrior pay," the proposed incentive is similar to Sea Pay, a special compensation for sailors, Marines and Army mariners.

The Office of Management and Budget is reviewing a request to include warrior pay in the fiscal 2008 budget plan that goes to Congress in early 2007.

If approved by the Bush administration and Congress, warrior pay could be offered to soldiers in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, 2007, but not to Marines, according to a spokesman at Manpower and Reserve Affairs at Quantico, Va.

"Warrior pay is an Army-specific initiative," said 1st Lt. Rob Dolan, who did not elaborate on why Marines aren't getting it.

While the Army ran its string of successful annual re-enlistment campaigns to nine in a row in 2006, service leaders are concerned that repetitive deployments and the relentless pace of operations will erode morale without a strong offset from bonuses and other pay incentives.

The retention picture in the Corps is high as well, with record-breaking re-enlistments among deployed Marines over the past two years even as deployment tempo, especially among reservists, has remained high.

"Operational units in contact with the enemy generally have the highest retention rates because Marines out there on the point are doing what they joined to do," said enlisted retention specialist Maj. Trevor Hall.

The warrior pay plan proposed by the Army would recognize the number of deployments a soldier has made over the course of a career.

"It's not necessarily targeted at senior soldiers, but any soldier [officer and enlisted] who has served multiple deployments," said Col. Gerald Barrett, chief of compensation and entitlements in the Office of the G-1.

Defense Department statistics show that through the end of September, 683,380 soldiers of all components had deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Nearly 164,000 had served more than one combat tour.

Across all U.S. military branches, troops had served more than 2 million combat tours as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

Barrett said that Army pay specialists do not know what the specific pay levels would be, but that warrior pay would be structured similar to sea pay "in that there will be different gates that soldiers have to meet."

Sea pay varies by service, but the Army scales range from $50 per month for privates to $740 for senior warrant officers.

Under the plan for warrior pay, Barrett said, a soldier who serves one deployment passes through the first gate and will receive extra monthly pay on his second deployment.

"When the soldier comes back from that deployment, he will pass into another bracket that will give extra money for every month he is deployed in the future," he said.

"Our vision is that this will carry through a soldier's entire career so that any time he deploys, he will not only be adding to his deployment history, but will receive extra money during the time he is deployed," Barrett said.

Deborah Holman, an incentives analyst in the office of the G-1, explained that sea pay rates are not in statute so each service has its own pay schedules, although the program is capped by Congress.

Likewise, warrior pay would be capped and would not have a pay scale designated in law.