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Tens of thousands of Army National Guard Soldiers mobilized under authority 12304b will now receive full credit toward early retirement retroactively to 2012, thanks to a NGAUS push for the Pentagon to adhere to applicable law.
“For too long, thousands of Guardsmen have been the denied the early-retirement credit they earned due to a misinterpretation of the law,” said retired Maj. Gen. Francis M. McGinn, the association president.
“We couldn’t let that stand,” McGinn said. “We appealed to Defense Department officials, and now the matter has been corrected.”
The early retirement program enables Guardsmen and Reservists with 20 qualifying years to receive their pension three months earlier than the traditional age of 60 for every 90 consecutive days mobilized since January 2008.
But Congress failed to include early credit when it created the 12304b mobilization authority in the fiscal 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. The new authority was intended to give the services easy access to the Guard and Reserve for so-called preplanned overseas missions.
Premobilization and transitional health care or credit toward GI Bill educational benefits were also left out of the new mobilization status.
Such benefits are included under other mobilization authorities, and Guardsmen and Reservists and their families had come to rely on them to ease the burdens of overseas missions.
Active-component members receive health care and credit toward the GI Bill and retirement even when not deployed.
Enter NGAUS.
Congress, at the behest of the association, added education benefits and premobilization and transitional health care to 12304b in the fiscal 2017 NDAA and credit toward early retirement in the fiscal 2020 NDAA.
Lawmakers were clear that they intended the credit added to authority 12304b for education benefits and early retirement to be retroactive.
But Army Human Resources Command has routinely denied Guard Soldiers early credit for 12304b service before Dec. 19, 2019, the enactment date for the fiscal 2020 NDAA.
That has now changed. Earlier this year, the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Army concluded that service performed under all 12304b orders may be credited toward early retirement.
The Defense Department agrees, according to a memo last month from Stephanie P. Miller, the deputy assistant secretary of the defense for military personnel policy.
“This is just in time,” McGinn said. “A generation of Guard Soldiers is nearing retirement age. Now, they and their families can be confident that all service overseas is eligible for early retirement credit.”
—By John Goheen
