Mattis: Service Members Need to be Deployable or Find Another Job By Bridget Johnson
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/mattis-service-members-need-deployable-find-another-job/
Defense Secretary James Mattis said the new Pentagon policy that will remove service members who have not been deployable for a year or more is about fairly sharing the burden within the forces.
The deploy-or-leave policy includes exceptions for pregnancy and wounded warriors. Robert Wilkie, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee last week that “on any given day, about 13 to 14 percent of the force is medically unable to deploy.”
En route to Washington on Saturday, Mattis told reporters that there is a “higher expectation of deployability by our forces” and the policy isn’t “to make change for change’s sake,” as he vowed when coming into the department.
“The Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness about a week ago came out, having defined the problem that initially was brought to his attention by the U.S. Army, where they had many nondeployables on their rolls. You may say, what’s this? People who’ve been injured and not returned to duty. People who have — and I’m not talking about combat injured now. That’s a separate category. But people who are, just for one reason or another, are not able to deploy with their units. It was a significant number, and the Army brought their concerns forward. The other services also highlighted the concerns,” he said. “They’ve come out with a policy that if you’re not deployable for a year or more, you’re going to have to go somewhere else.”
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