Pentagon: If your not deployable, your gone...
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    Pentagon: If your not deployable, your gone...

    The Pentagon on Wednesday announced a new “deploy or be removed” policy that could affect up to nearly 300,000 service members who have been non-deployable for the past 12 months.

    “This new policy is a 12-month deploy or be removed policy,” Robert Wilkie, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, told the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on personnel and readiness on Wednesday.

    The move comes after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ memo last year stressing the need to ensure that “everyone who comes into the service and everyone who stays in the service is world-wide deployable.”

    The plan was first revealed by The Military Times.

    According to various estimates, between 11 to 14 percent -- or well over 200,000 service members -- of the 2.1 million personnel serving on active duty, in the reserves or National Guard are currently non-deployable on any given day, hindering military readiness.

    The new policy will have exceptions such as pregnancy while medical boards will continue to be able to grant exceptions for wounded personnel.

    “The situation we face today is really unlike anything we have faced, certainly in the post-World War II era,” Wilkie told the Senate panel. “On any given day, about 13 to 14 percent of the force is medically unable to deploy. That comes out to be about 286,000 [service members].”

    The official asked the panel to imagine Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, walking into his company on Christmas week and finding out that 14 percent of his workforce is unable to work. “He would no longer be the largest company in the world,” Wilkie said.

    Command Sgt. Maj. John Troxell told the Times earlier this month that nearly 100,000 are non-deployable because of administrative reasons like not having all their immunizations or their medical exams.

    Another 20,000 are not deployable due to pregnancy while the remaining service members are non-deployable because of short or long-term injuries. But Troxell said that very few of those injuries “are related to combat injuries.

    Or battle injuries. It’s related to everyday, doing their job, or during physical training that they were injured.”

    “If you are going to serve and continue to want to serve, and if you want to make this a career, you’re going to have to learn that path of recovery and get back to being healthy. Because we need healthy, fit warriors to defend this nation,” Troxell added.

    Wilkie admitted the military shares responsibility for reaching such high numbers of non-deployable personnel, as unit leaders often did not ensure those under their command received all required medical examinations and care.

    “The other thing we’ve seen is that in the down years of recruiting for the military, we offered too many medical waivers,” the official said. “The medical conditions ... have followed them into the service as they progressed through their careers. We have to address that.”

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  2. #2
    how long have we had a "nondeployable" status, I've never heard of it before, I always thought everyone was deployable, with certain conditions nondeployable such as Sevier medical, or pregnancy exemptions... huh who'd-a-thunk...


  3. #3
    Marine Platinum Member Zulu 36's Avatar
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    My oldest daughter serves in a non-deployable billet in her unit right now. She's the squadron training and education NCO. As a medical unit, she has a ton of training schools and courses to make sure people are getting. We're talking physicians, nurses, and med techs of various kinds. The unit she is in, is one of those that provide the ICU level medical flight crews that handle the critically wounded from the sandbox to Landstuhl, and back to the States from there. They also provide the staffing for the sub-unit that actually administratively and physically handles the wounded on to and off of evac aircraft from sandbox to Landstuhl and then stateside.

    She did serve in a deployable billet before she switched AFSCs (MOS) and did two deployments to Germany at Ramstein/Landsthul and one to Bagram, Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, her main job was getting the wounded troops belongings and gear together, and putting them through customs (run by Army MPs), and making certain they got on the right aircraft with the owners. She found a lot of ammo and some grenades doing this (screwups by the wounded man's unit).

    Her unit itself is not a deployable unit, they provide ICU teams and other qualified medical personnel packages for deployment. Her job is to make certain they are all qualified. The Air Force Reserve expects her to do this all on one two-day drill weekend a month. Realistically, she does three day drills and gets a lot done from home in between for free to the taxpayer.


  4. #4
    They don't mean non-deployable as in reference to the unit. They are referring to the individual meaning if you are light duty, limited duty, people who stay pregnant for their entire enlistment. The thing that could make you non deployable is being class 4 dental, or something silly like that. They are trying to get the people who are always hurt out or the people who are deployment dodgers. I think it is a good system to get people who cant hack it or sont want to deploy to get them the heck out. Who joins the military to not want to go help others die for their country?


  5. #5
    Marine Free Member m14ed's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MunkyVsRobot View Post

    They don't mean non-deployable as in
    reference to the unit.

    They are trying to get the people who are
    always hurt - or people who are deployment dodgers.

    I think it is a good system to get people who cant hack it or don't want to deploy to get them the heck out.

    Who joins the military to not want to go
    help others die for their country?



    Well Spoken-

    sorry I don't know anything about
    sperm catchers or unit "pumps"-

    "people who stay pregnant for their entire enlistment."

    "




  6. #6
    In today's Army.....being pregnant your entire enlistment, is both a male and female problem. However, the top Army Brass are working to fix this problem...transgender-military.jpg


  7. #7
    Marine Platinum Member Zulu 36's Avatar
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    I know they don't mean non-deployable like my daughter and her unit's infrastructure, but not everyone does. Her unit provides a critical part of the medical evacuation process. Wounded troops survive horrible wounds because of them. They'd die in-flight otherwise. She told me of some of the nasty, multi-amputations, that came into the Bagram hospital, including many quads (most of whom did not survive). She may have been a medical admin type then, but sometimes it was an all-hands, get people out of bed, type of evolution.

    She got her hands bloody plenty of times between Bagram and Ramstein. Many times, she helped get the wounded off the dust off helos while they were still bleeding all over and screaming in pain, crying for their mothers. Even SEALS and Delta people cry for their mothers when they're that hurt. She knows how to put on a tourniquet way better than I do. Because she wasn't a med tech, often she was tasked to just hold hands (if they had one) and talk with the critical and expectant patients (even those unconscious). More than one died while she was holding their hand. She doesn't want to remember their names.

    She was a terrible mess emotionally when she got back from Afghanistan and we spent a lot of time together talking through it all. In fact, we spent a lot of time on Skype while she was there talking about it. She couldn't talk to her husband, he couldn't understand. He wanted to, but couldn't grasp it. She just clammed up with him and almost lost her marriage over it. I had to play shrink to her husband as well. They both did get professional counseling after she came back.

    She just wasn't emotionally suited for a job in a combat hospital. She wasn't the only one, they lost a lot of med techs, nurses, and even physicians after their contracts expired.

    To stay in the Air Force she recognized that she had to change jobs to the one she has now. She probably wouldn't have survived another trip to the sandbox. The Air Force would have lost a hard, dedicated worker without that non-deployable billet, either to her quitting or a suicide. I would have lost a wonderful daughter.

    She's a lot better now and does well in her current AFSC. If she passes the tests on the senior NCO course, she should make MSgt early next year. Having a baby seems to have also made a big, positive difference for her. She's a great mom and her hubby is a great dad too.

    She did say, that of the less critically wounded that came though, she enjoyed Marines the best. They had good attitudes about their situations, were very polite, and often tried to hit on her even when they were a mess of bandages and IV tubes. I wasn't surprised to hear that (proud actually). She thought it was pretty funny and not offended at all.

    A Marine may have saved her life (certainly serious injury) when she was at Ramstein, as the ambulance bus she was working on as a patient handler, suddenly lurched forward, the back door popped open, and she was on her way out. Suddenly a hand grabbed her and pulled her back inside. It was a wounded Marine, who had somehow jerked himself off his stretcher and grabbed her. And the arm he used was injured too. She was thanking him profusely, but he just poo-pooed it all. Said she'd have done the same for him. She was going to write him up for an atta-boy, but didn't know his name and as she wasn't handling the records for the trip, she couldn't get hold of them in time to find out.

    Anyway, my point is that some non-deployable billets are a good thing. Non-deployable sluggards are not.


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