Senior enlisted leaders tell Congress that Pentagon should learn from civilian world

Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer said that as a former "Army 
brat," he remembers growing up in a pre-9/11 world where military 
installations didn’t have gates and fences separating them from the 
outside world.

“We shut ourselves in for all the right reasons, and there's still reasons 
to maintain some of that,” Weimer said. “It really changed the dynamics.” 

But Wiemer was one of six senior military leaders who told Congress 
Wednesday that quality of life issues as well as recruiting efforts could 
improve by bridging that gap between military bases and local communities.

The top enlisted leaders of all five active duty branches testified to the 
House Armed Services Committee's Quality of Life panel about pay, child 
care, and spouse employment and its effect on retaining active duty 
troops, and recruiting. The panel included the top enlisted troop from the 
Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Space Force and Sergeant Major 
Troy Black, who was recently installed as the Senior Enlisted Advisor to 
the Chairman, or SEAC, the Pentagon’s most senior enlisted role.
The senior enlisted leaders told members of the House Panel, who craft 
budgets for the armed forces, that the military needs to take lessons from 
the civilian world in its approach to quality of life issues like 
competitive pay for specialized jobs and broader childcare options.

Community

Several of the senior advisors said they had recently visited Fort Bliss 
where they’d found a strong relationship between the Army base and the El 
Paso community.

“I'm relatively sure that if you are in El Paso, you're very familiar with 
what's going on on Fort Bliss,” said Black. “That connection between 
community and the base or the installation is huge because that will 
increase understanding and knowledge of what goes on within our U.S. 
military writ large.”

Weimer commended the Fort Bliss garrison leadership and said the service’s 
need to grow the strong base-community relationship model. One of the 
successful collaborations Weimer highlighted was the agreements with off-
base Child Development Centers for increased childcare access. 

“At Fort Bliss, there are five different CDCs, their average wait time was 
three to five days which is pretty remarkable,” Weimer said. 

Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Joanne Bass noted that childcare 
access problems across the country are also impacting the military. 

“The childcare issue is not one that the military is going to be able to 
get out and get after by itself. We are going to need our communities 
outside the fence line to help us,” Bass said.

Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Virginia) also recommended that the branches look at 
adding childcare options at military gyms – a service that already exists 
in many private gyms.

Pay Parity

Officials testified that pay needs to mirror the private sector but should 
be commensurate with the expectations for certain jobs and 
responsibilities in the military. 

Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John F. Bentivegna said that it's 
getting harder to compete with the private sector to retain troops with 
specialized skills that the military has funded to train.

“If you're an enlisted service member and work in cyber,” he said, “That 
individual can practice within authorities that no civilian, or the PhD 
and many zeros after their paycheck can ever execute. How do you reward 
that? And what's the attraction to stay other than pride of service and to 
your nation?”

Recruiting

The enlisted chiefs also tied recent recruiting misses to better 
connections to local  communities.

Black said that “nationwide engagement” across the federal government, 
private media, sports and entertainment industries and public education 
institutions would “increase the desire to serve” and widen the pool of 
candidates that can meet the recruiting requirements.

The Navy recently announced it would allow recruits to join without a high 
school diploma or GED.

It also goes both ways. In order for the military to attract more talent, 
its policies need to reflect American society, said Master Chief Petty 
Officer of the Navy, James Honea. 

Honea noted that the study that launched the all-volunteer military, the 
1970 Gates Commission, found that quality of life was one of the five 
pillars for the U.S. to sustain a force without a draft. Quality military 
pay, health care, housing, retirement plans are supposed to ensure “the 
military remains a reflection of our society,” he said. 

“The American people need to trust that we have the best interest of their 
sons and daughters in mind and that they will be taken care of while 
serving their country,” he said.

Softball questions

Previous public hearings by the House Armed Services Committee’s Quality 
of Life Panel heavily focused on housing, a damning Government 
Accountability Office report, and soldier’s experiences with moldy and 
unsafe barracks. Wednesday’s hearing shied away from those topics, which 
didn’t please everyone. A chorus of vets and military advocates who 
watched the hearing said it was full of softball questions and lacked 
solutions from the services going forward.

“I wanted a bit more from todays hearing on QOL from the @HASCRepublicans 
panel,” said Robert Evans, creator of the Hots&Cots app, which has 
chronicled troops’ struggles with moldy and outdated barracks. “I felt 
like there was no hard pressing questions asked and no clear plan on 
resolving some of these QOL issues.” 

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