Days before deployed soldiers were due to begin getting a much anticipated monthly pay bonus, the Army has delayed the payments with no timeline as to when they will debut.
The pay bump was due to begin next Tuesday, but Army officials said that all the details of the bonus had never been sorted, inevitably leading to pay errors if the program was rushed.
Military.com was first to report on a draft memo last week that outlined a plan to pay soldiers between $210 and $450 per month extra depending on rank, a bonus dubbed Operational Deployment Pay, for time away from home exceeding 30 days.
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"The Army is reviewing the Operational Deployment Pay policy and, as such, we will not be implementing the policy on Oct. 1," Bryce Dubee, a service spokesperson, said in a statement. "When the review is complete, we will provide additional guidance."
The memo was widely circulated and briefed to commanders as recently as two weeks ago, service officials told Military.com. At the time, the Army did not respond to requests for comment when asked about numerous uncertainties in the policy -- such as how the service is paying for it or whether it stacks on top of other deployment bonuses, including imminent fire pay for troops in combat zones. The policy also suggested troops who are hospitalized would lose their bonus pay, which was potentially a typo or gross oversight.
"We got ahead of our skis here; it was inappropriate to brief leaders on clearly underbaked policy," one Army official with direct knowledge of the situation told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. "This should've never made it as far as it did."
Traditionally, such huge policy shifts are tweaked for months at the Pentagon and circulated among top brass for feedback, but word of the bonus pay made its way down to the junior soldier level in some units currently deployed -- leading to some commanders having to warn subordinates not to rely on any new money in their pockets, given the uncertainty around the policy.
The deployment bonus was exclusive to the Army. Some services have unique duty pay, such as the Navy's sea pay.
The move to give soldiers a little extra pay comes amid a frantic schedule of deployments that outpaces the cadence of missions from the peak of the Global War on Terrorism. The pace of combat missions has dramatically scaled down in the past decade, but troops are still deployed in combat zones in Africa and the Middle East -- though conventional units are rarely engaged in direct combat operations.
However, the Army is spread thin across two hemispheres: It is maintaining its mission to bolster NATO's front line in Europe amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- as soldiers run prolonged training missions with allies in countries such as Poland, Germany and Lithuania.
Meanwhile, the service is also expanding its footprint in the Pacific with the Biden administration's move to establish a powerful foothold in the region to rein in China's expansionist goals.
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