A Benefit Denied

The Pentagon report to Congress on Space-A travel says the program is primarily for the active components and it’s going to stay that way. It appears the Guard will be screwed by the Pentagon policy makers.

Members of the National Guard and Reserve, Guard and Reserve retirees (including those under age 60) and their immediate families are all now supposed to be eligible for worldwide space-available travel.

This is what Congress intended when it passed the fiscal 2013 National Defense Authorization Act in December 2012.

That it’s not happened—and may never happen—is a product of an 11th-hour provision inserted in the legislation by the Pentagon’s friends on the defense-committee staffs.

Unfortunately, this happens sometimes in the rush to complete work on the annual defense-policy bill. Staffers make tweaks behind closed doors that alter the intent of elected representatives.

In this case, Congress wanted Guard and Reserve members, all retirees and their families to be able to travel anywhere in the world for free in unused seats on military aircraft. It was meant to recognize reserve-component contributions since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The last-minute language, however, left final decisions to the Defense Department, which adamantly opposed any expansion of the program.

Nevertheless, we had been led to believe the Pentagon understood and would abide by clear congressional intent. We now know this will not be the case.

A 16-page space-A report DoD sent to Congress late last year embraces the status quo. It indicates the Pentagon will add “no new passenger categories.” This means the program will not be expanded to Guard and Reserve family members.

And we suspect that when final regulations are issued later this year there will be no expansion of the benefit to serving Guard members, Reservists and “gray-area” retirees beyond the current domestic travel.

The Pentagon argues that adding new categories of passengers would increase competition for seats. Yet tens of thousands of seats go unused every year, according to DoD’s own figures.

This is also puzzling since the space-A system is self-regulating, first, by the availability of seats and then with its list of prioritized categories that would automatically exclude Guard and Reserve dependents if seats were not available.

The report specifically mentions the program “manifests” passengers to their final destination, which prevents a passenger from being bumped at an en-route stop by someone with a higher priority. This could keep a Guard spouse on an aircraft, for example, while an active-component member has to wait for another flight.

The Pentagon’s draconian solution here is to exclude the Guard dependents on all flights. A more reasonable answer would be to limit all low-priority travelers to nonstop flights.

The Guard was supposed to have the full space “A” benefit a year ago. When that didn’t happen and members on Congress began to hear from some of you, 17 senators wrote to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel seeking an update.

They also said in their April 1, 2014, letter that they expected him to ensure “the Space-A benefit is equally applied across-the-board to all those who served, along with their families and survivors.”

The October report, which Hagel signed, says the Space-A program is primarily for the active components and it’s going to stay that way.

This decision reflects a lack of empathy for the Guard family that copes with deployments without the costly 24/7 support system that is a feature on every active-component installation. Pentagon officials have until October to finalize how the program will operate. This gives them time to do the right thing.

Quite honestly, it’s the least they could do.

This article comes from the January 2015 issue of National Guard magazine. The author, Colonel Pete Duffy (Ret.), is the NGAUS legislative director. He can be contacted at pete.duffy@ngaus.org.