DOD REQUESTS PLANS TO CLOSE STATESIDE COMMISARIES

[warrior1972]

As long as I've been alive, the FIRST thing the military cuts back on is our benefits.


The FIRST thing.


Tasked by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to find ways to preserve force readiness amid sharply falling budgets, his comptroller and the Joint Staff have asked the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) for a plan to close all stateside base grocery stores, say military resale community sources.

Time will tell if this is just the loudest warning shot yet fired by a department desperate for budget relief, or if stateside commissaries, still enormously popular with military families and retirees, are viewed by current military leaders as a costly relic burdening a financially stressed force.

Under Secretary of Defense Robert Hale, the department's top financial adviser, and Air Force Lt. Gen. Mark F. Ramsay, director of force structure, resources and assessment for the Joint Staff, reportedly requested the plan in a meeting with military personnel policy and commissary officials.

It was to be briefed soon to Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Adm. Adm. James Winnefeld, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.


www.military.com/benefits/2013/11/21/dod-requests-plan-to-close-stateside-commissaries.html

[101ABN]

This is just wrong.

[Sailor]

Agreed. And the people it's going to hurt most are the young junior enlisteds with families.

Assholes.

[peck]

Instead of closing services beneficial to GI families,  why not cut our foreign forces by 50%.  There is a savings.  We can take 50% of our people out of Germany,  shrink the base and have no operational deficiencies.  If we need massive bases in the future when another "artist," becomes a dictator, then we can quickly reopen the base.  It is nonsense to keep some of this crap open.  Like why the hell are we still on Guam??  DO we really need a military base to protect it?  Couldn't we keep like a skeleton crew there with like 20 Predator drones circling like vultures???