Please expand on what constitutes those "100 deployments." Are some of theme a contingent of 7 Marines guarding State Department personnel at an African consulate? Does it include Navy and Air Force members who by the very nature of their service support global mobility? By that I mean, we have a handful of Air Force personnel in the Azores, but they are only there to support the refueling and maintenance of Air Mobility Command aircraft that transit through there for fuel or as a weather divert for Spain. Most of the personnel we have stationed overseas today are in Korea (which remains highly volatile), Afghanistan (which is still a war zone), and other locations. When you see Mr. Joe Sixpack complain that we have troops "defending Europe" that is a huge misnomer. We have personnel in England, Italy, and Germany that mainly support what is left of our European enroute bases that are a shadow of what they were in 1990 - and they have to exist to support our operations in the Middle East (same as what is left of our dwindling enroutes in the Pacific).
The O&M account you mentioned was raped during Sequester. That is because personnel and most procurment dollars were off limits - Obama fenced off military salaries, but the thousands of DoD civilians (doctors, nurses, technicians, maintenance, intel, engineers, etc) were furloughed for weeks. That little exercise destroyed morale and caused the DoD to lost thousands of experienced personnel such as medical staff that directly support the uniformed military and their families.
Military civilian medical workers quit after furlough
A large chunk of the procurement dollars could not be touched 1/2 into a fiscal year, but with Sequestration dragging on, procurement is beginning to see detrimental effects, which is now bleeding American jobs and the high tech and defense industries.
Next, cuts to military personnel would be by slashing “double dipping”. For example, an Army LTC gets full retirement, at the same time as laterally transferring to a Government Service job on the same post, at the same pay as an active duty LTC. After a limited number of years in the GS job, he gets retirement both from the military and his GS job, both paid for by the Pentagon.
The military actually had the policy in place you mentioned - and it was disastrous. There was no rationale for it, other than some people thought it was "unfair" that a military veteran used his or her experience after their uniformed service to be employed again and be of service to their country. The number of people who actually serve in the military and make it to the 20 years retirement is 17%, and of that retired officers in the single digits. The vast majority of the 44% of the DoD workforce who are now civilians did not retire, but they still are veterans. On top of that, we always hear politicians every Veterans and Memorial Day preaching about how they want to help veterans, but they had no problem furloughing hundreds of thousands of them with Sequestration and taking 20% of their pay while Congress and their staff took zero salary cuts due to Sequestration. What the DoD found when it had the previous policy in place was that retired military who were highly experienced simply shunned the DoD as an employer, even when the military recruited them. Further, why should members of our military, who served 20 years or more in combat zones, through 5 or 6 deployments that many times ripped their families apart or caused hardship, be penalized by a system that rewarded other Americans who didn't serve the same benefits? Was their work to the nation of a second class citizen after the age of 42 if they served their nation in uniform? Moreover, their military retirement is not their full salary, only 50% of their base, not including housing or other pay, which is a large portion of their total salary. This is completely different from say a State worker or policeman in a local town. Their % is a real percentage (and let's not even discuss the overtimes scams in the last year many States pull), for a military person they are generally only earning about 1/4 of their salary in retirement.
It was that insanity that caused the policy to be reversed, however, I see that same policy coming back, along with an end to the 20 year military retirement. Our society seems to have no problem handing out $135 Billion a year to 49 million (and climbing) Food Stamp takers, but it seems "outraged" that a retired Army E-6 would dare to work for the DoD after he retired and obtain civilian benefits.
I believe we will see the 20 year retirement for all military disappear within 2-3 years. With that, our military quality will suffer even more.
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Several things here. To start with, the bulk of the deployments around the world are not legitimate, from a military standpoint.
They began with Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State, who just sent military detachments, large and small, hither and yon, sometimes for a short term mission, and others for “decorative” purposes. In either case, they were pretty much abandoned there, never recalled. And once the service obligation of a soldier was up, he left, but was replace, out of inertia.
One such deployment I was familiar with was an Engineer bridging battalion sent to Africa. Their mission was to temporarily bridge a river, using boats to keep the bridge together, so that trucks carrying humanitarian supplies could cross. They were to do this twice in six months. A 2 to 3 day mission. The rest of the time they were idle.
After their mission ended they waited for a recall order to return to Europe. It never came. Finally, after repeated inquiries with no response, their brigade commander ordered their recall. And nobody did anything.
The cost to this battalion was enormous. Their morale was shot, their equipment no longer combat serviceable, and many soldiers had become ill with permanent diseases.
And while this is perhaps an extreme example, there are many deployments that are equally useless and need to end. Some did end during Afghanistan and Iraq, but only because they were searching for personnel who had never rotated through either place, while some personnel had rotated through a dozen times. This was when, for example, the platoon sized unit of Marines guarding the tomb of John Paul Jones at Annapolis were finally replaced with cadets.
As far as military retirement goes, while some will argue about retirement after 20 years, the truth of the matter is that these personnel should definitely be encouraged to move into government service. But instead of getting both retirement and a GS paycheck, they should not be considered as retired until they actually retire, with their retirement reflecting *both* their military and GS service.
So, for example, if they retire again after 10 years of GS service, they should get the same retirement as if they retired after 30 years in the military or GS. So they are not losing a legitimate dime, but they are no longer double dipping.