House subpanel would reverse troop cuts

A House military subcommittee would reverse planned active-duty troop cuts across the Army, Marines and Air Force under a draft released Tuesday of its portion of the National Defense Authorization Act.

Defense hawks have argued the planned cuts don’t take into account recent world events such as the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and a resurgent Russia.

{mosads}The biggest change under the subcommittee’s draft would be for the Army, which would increase from 475,000 authorized active duty personnel in 2016 to 480,000 in 2017. That’s also 20,000 more than the Pentagon requested for 2017.

The Marines would bump up by 1,000 to 185,000. The Pentagon’s request was for 182,000.

Air Force active duty would also get a small bump, from 320,715 in 2016 to 321,000 in 2017. The request was for 317,000.

The Navy’s active-duty troop level though would be the same as requested, 322,900, a drop from 329,200 in 2019.

The draft bill also calls for a 2.1 percent pay raise for troops. The administration had requested a 1.6 percent raise.

“That’s our starting position,” a committee majority staffer said at a background briefing for the press.

Last year’s NDAA did have not language on a pay raise because the annual raise is already established by law, so long as the president doesn’t act to change it, the staffer said.

“This year we’ve put in the percent that’s calculated to take effect; we’ve made the positive decision on the pay raise regardless of what the president chooses to do later,” the staffer said.

The bill would also make a slew of changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Among the changes would be establishing new offenses for retaliation, sexual misconduct committed by recruiters and trainers, and fraudulent use of credit cards, debit cards and other electronic payment.

The bill would also give more rights to victims and standardize the votes required by a court-martial panel for conviction to 75 percent.