Among the personnel provisions in the just-passed Fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill, the measure would boost military pay by 3.4 percent (0.05 percent higher than Administration request); extend Tricare eligibility for reservists from 90 days to 180 days before they go on active duty; temporarily suspend DOD’s authority to initiate new so-called A-76 public to private competitions and limit those competitions to two years; and, as we reported earlier, kill the National Security Personnel System, effectively directing DOD to start over not just make patches and, in the interim, to transition all employees already shifted to NSPS back to the General Schedule system by January 2012. The bill also wants DOD to improve its work in locating and identifying those military members listed as missing in action, starting with World War II; lawmakers want DOD to increase the annual number of those identified to 200 within five years.
Army Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, head of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, warned that Russia would remain an enduring threat to NATO and global security, regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine.