1. Indian Express today has published a mischievous article titled “Need to debate the Rising Defence Pension Bill” copy of the Article is enclosed.
2. The timing of the article is a suspect as it appears to put a spoke in the Implementation of the OROP which is in the final stages of execution.
3. Suggestions made in the article are not only inimical to the interests of Armed Forces but have serious ratifications as for as the national interests are concerned.
4. There is need to nip this serious mischief in the bud. You are requested to appropriately responded to the Article to the editor of the concerned News Paper and also send your responses on the Twitter of PM & RM. You may also write articles refuting the scandalous suggestions made.
With regards
Maj Gen Satbir Singh, SM (Retd) Chairman IESM Mob: +919312404269, 0124-4110570 Email ID: satbirsm@gmail.com
Copy to :-
General Dalbir Singh PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, VSM, ADC
Chief of the Army Staff Integrated HQs of Ministry of Defence (Army)
South Block, New Delhi-110011
For information and necessary action as deemed fit.
Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha
PVSM, AVSM, VM, ADC Chief of the Air Staff & Chairman,
Chiefs of Staffs Committee (CoSC),
Integrated HQs of Ministry of Defence (Air Force) Vayu Bhawan,
New Delhi 110011
Our request as above.
Admiral R K Dhowan, PVSM, AVSM, YSM, ADC
Chief of the Naval Staff Integrated HQs of Ministry of Defence (Navy) South Block, New Delhi -110011
There is an urgent need to debate the rising defence pension bill. In 2004, a debate over the mounting civilian pension bill led to the New Pension System for government employees, where pension contributions were defined and not benefits. But the armed forces were excluded from that system. Now, a beginning can be made by including pensions in the official defence budget.
In 1985, when Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister, defence pensions were removed from India’s overall defence expenditure, presumably to assuage global concerns about India’s defence bill, which was linked to its regional ambitions. The defence expenditure was then 3.6 per cent of India’s GDP. When that ratio has now come down to 1.75 per cent, the lowest in the post-1962 era, defence pensions still continue to be excluded from the defence bill. Over the years, defence pensions have grown exponentially — from Rs 1,670 crore in 1990-91 to Rs 15,244 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 50,000 crore in the current year — at a much faster pace than the defence budget. Next year, defence pensions are budgeted at Rs 54,500 crore, placed outside the official defence budget of Rs 2,46,727 crore. The pension bill is likely to rise by another Rs 8,400 crore with the implementation of the One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme for military veterans. Every successive Pay Commission has raised the pension burden exponentially and the Seventh Pay Commission, coupled with the effect of OROP, will hit the exchequer even harder.
Approximately 60,000 soldiers retire from the 1.3 million-strong armed forces every year but early recruitment and retirement age, coupled with increased life expectancy, means that military veterans get pensions for a longer period than their civilian counterparts. Thus India now has 1.7 defence pensioners on its rolls for every serving soldier, compared to civilian employees where the ratio is 0.56 pensioners per employee, and defence pensions will soon exceed defence salaries. Even if military veterans and soldiers can’t be moved to a New Pension System, there is a need to look at other measures, such as reducing the minimum military service period, pushing for early retirement with lateral absorption schemes and identifying a new model of defence pensions for new recruits. These are desirable not only on the grounds of fiscal prudence, but also to keep the military lean and young.
Letter to Hon’ble Raksha Mantri, RRM and three Chiefs regarding: Implementation of OROP for Pre Dec 2004 retiree Majors dt 09 Mar 2015 is enclosed herewith for your information and widest circulation please.
With regards
Maj Gen Satbir Singh, SM (Retd) Chairman IESM Mob: +919312404269, 0124-4110570 Email ID: satbirsm@gmail.com
This has reference to Indian Ex-servicemen Movement (IESM) Delegation meeting with you on 02 March 2015.
As per your directions, a write-up on the implementation of OROP for Pre Dec 2004 retiree Majors is given below:-.
Change in the Govt Policy for promotion to the rank of Major & Lt Col was introduced on 16 Dec 2004 consequent of acceptance of recommendation of Ajay Vikram Singh Committee constituted to enhance promotional avenues in the Armed Forces. All officers with 6 years of service were promoted to the rank of Major and 13 years of service to the rank of Lt Col.
Consequently, no officer of the rank of Major would have retired post Dec 2004.
Officers of the rank of Major who had retired prior to the change in policy that is Dec 2004 and had put in more than 13 years of commissioned service, therefore, would need to be given the pension of Lt Col and the grade pay of Major. The Hon’ble Supreme Court repeatedly ruled that one homogeneous class cannot be divided on the basis of an arbitrary date when dispensing a benefit to a part of group and denying the same to other part of the same group as it violates law of equality enunciated under Art 14 of Constitution. The case of Maj Gen SPS Vains Vs Union of India is a case in point. In another instance, Hon’ble Supreme Court observed that benefit of disability should not be denied to one part of homogeneous group on the basis of arbitrary date for implementation of such benevolent policies of the Government of India. It is submitted that Majors are one class. Judgement exists where no date lines are to be fixed to pass any benefit to the Govt employees.
Therefore, any benefit of Pay & Pensions needs to be passed to all similar class of officers, in terms of rank and total services for the implementation of OROP. If officers of 13 years commissioned service are given the benefit of promotions to the rank of Lt Col and consequently the Pay & Pensions of the rank of Lt Col, all officers of the rank of Major with more than 13 years of commissioned service who retired prior to Dec 2004 fulfilling condition of qualifying service of pension would also qualify to be considered for the grant of pension for the rank of Lt Col. Such officers can be notionally placed in the rank of Lt Col for the implementation of OROP.
The number of such officers in the rank of Major who had put in minimum 13 years of commissioned services and retired with pension is a finite small number ie approximately only 900. It will be only just and fair if they are also given the pension of Lt Col and grade pay of the Major for implementation of OROP.
Since there is no officer of the rank of Major who would have retired on 01.04.2014, the effective date of implementation of OROP, there will be no bench mark/equivalence to work out the pension of Pre Dec 2004 retiree Majors for the implementation of OROP.
The funds required to grant Lt Col pensions to a small number of Pre Dec 2004 retiree Majors will be very small. The Service Headquarters are also of the same view as above and the DGL prepared by them for the implementation of OROP takes the above into account. They have also recommended that Pre Dec 2004 retiree Majors be granted pension at par with Lt Col, with grade pay of Majors. It is obvious that DESW has once again not looked after the welfare of soldiers.
From the administrative point of view, only the length of qualifying service (which is a total of Commissioned Service and Pre Commissioned Service) is mentioned in the PPO. It will be administratively difficult/not feasible to ascertain the length of commissioned service from the old records of several decades. It will only be fair to grant one time dispensation to the Pre Dec 2004 retiree Majors who had earned their pension with total qualifying service of 20 years and above because pensions have historically been granted based on qualifying service.
Officers of the rank of Majors Pre Dec 2004 retiree had carried out their assigned responsibilities of Sub Unit Cdrs during most difficult times of WARs between China/Pakistan in 1962, 1965, 1971, 1999 and insurgency operations in the J & K and North East. The duties of sub-unit Commanders, earlier performed by pre-2004 retiree Majors, are now being performed by presently retiring Lt Cols. Granting them the pension of Lt Col will therefore be justified.
In view of the foregoing, it is strongly recommended that all Pre Dec 2004 retiree Majors who had earned their pensions based on the qualifying service for pension be granted the pension of Lt Col with the grade pay of Major for the implementation of OROP.
With regards
Maj Gen Satbir Singh, SM (Retd) Chairman IESM Mob: +919312404269, 0124-4110570 Email ID: satbirsm@gmail.com
Copy to :-
Shri Rao Inderjit Singh Raksha Rajya Mantri C-1/14 Lodi Garden New Delhi - 110 003
General Dalbir Singh PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, VSM, ADC
Chief of the Army Staff Integrated HQs of Ministry of Defence (Army)South Block, New Delhi-110011
For information and necessary action please.
You are requested to jointly and strongly take up the issue with the Govt.
Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha
PVSM, AVSM, VM, ADC Chief of the Air Staff & Chairman,
Chiefs of Staffs Committee (CoSC),
Integrated HQs of Ministry of Defence (Air Force) Vayu Bhawan, New Delhi 110011
Our request as above.
Admiral R K Dhowan, PVSM, AVSM, YSM, ADC Chief of the Naval Staff Integrated HQs of Ministry of Defence (Navy) South Block, New Delhi -110011
Meeting of IESM Delegation with RM Sh Manohar Parrikar on 2 Mar 2015
Dear Members
IESM delegation of five members met RM Sh Manohar Parrikar today at 1400 h. The salient points of the issues discussed in the meeting are given below and are attached. I am sure this will satisfy most of the queries of veterans arising out of budget speech given on 28 Feb 15. This is now clear that one needs to be optimistic and OROP will be out soon. However hold your celebrations till Notification of OROP is out as there is many a slip between the cup and the lip.
Meeting of IESM Delegation with RM Sh Manohar Parrikar on 2 Mar 2015
IESM contacted Sh Manohar Parrikar Raksha Mantri at the end of the budget presented on 28 Feb 15 and communicated to him that ESM in general are disappointed because OROP has not been mentioned in the budget speech of Finance Minister and allocation of funds for OROP has not been announced. RM explained on telephone that OROP has been approved in two budgets and hence it is considered approved and therefore there was no need to mention in the budget speech. He was kind enough to invite the IESM delegation at 1400h on 2 March 15 to clear any doubts if we had any.
Following five members of IESM met Sh Manohar Parrikar RM at 1400h on Monday 2 March 2015.
Maj Gen Satbir Singh SM
Col Kirit Joshipura
Col Anil kaul VrC
Wg Cdr CK Sharma
Gp Capt VK Gandhi VSM
Major DP Singh was also invited by RM for discussion on disability pension issue.
RM made everyone comfortable in the beginning itself that OROP for Armed Forces and Ex-servicemen is NDA Government’s commitment and he has worked out the expenditure for the OROP. He advised that there was no need to cover this issue in budget presented by NDA Government on 28 Feb 15 as it already stands approved by Parliament as part of budget for financial year 14-15. He confirmed that he had discussed the issue with officers of MOD and ironed out all issues of OROP. He also confirmed that OROP is genuine demand of Armed Forces and must be met in full; hence there is no difference in thinking of Armed Forces and MOD. Accordingly file has been prepared and is in process for approval from Ministry of Finance. After approval of the file from Finance Minister, it will be put up for approval of CCPA (Cabinet Committee for Political Affairs). RM has confirmed that MOD has recommended giving OROP for X group and Y group separately. He also confirmed that all ranks including widows have been included in the OROP. He further confirmed that he is attempting to meet the date line for issuance of Government letter (OROP Notification) given by him on 1 Feb 15 meeting with IESM delegation.
There was no doubt left in our minds after such a clear statement by RM and IESM delegation was convinced that OROP is now in safe hands will see the day light soon. General Satbir Singh thanked him and told him that it is first time that the demands of ESM are being given proper consideration and attention. IESM delegation then discussed following issues with RM.
Increase in Widow’s pension w.e.f 24 Sep 12; General Satbir Singh informed him that widow’s pension was not increased in 2012 when pension for all ranks was increased as per recommendations of 6 CPC. Widows must be given that increase in pension. RM expressed concerned on this issue and asked the delegation to give him the note for his consideration.
Major’s Pension Retired pre 1996; It was brought to RM’s attention that MOD is not paying Lt Col pension to Major rank officers who retired pre 1996 on completion of 21 years of service. Major Thomas of pre 1996 retirement had gone won the case in AFT and had been paid enhanced pension. It should be applicable for all Majors who had retired pre 1996 and had completed 21 years of service. RM asked for a detailed note on the issue for his consideration.
Major’s Pension who had retired on completion of 20 yrs but with less than 21 yrs of service; RM was informed that there will be only few hundred Majors who will fall in that category and MOD must consider giving them Lt Col Pension with Major’s grade pay as a special case. RM demanded a paper on this issue also for his consideration.
IESM will be sending the detailed paper on above issues to RM at the earliest.
IESM delegation was encouraged with the response and encouragement given by RM. One can now say that OROP is in safe hands will soon be approved.
The voice on the other end of the radio said: “There are two people digging by the side of the road. Can we shoot them?”
It was the middle of the night during my first week in Afghanistan in 2010, on the northern edge of American operations in Helmand Province, and they were directing the question to me. Were the men in their sights irrigating their farmland or planting a roadside bomb? The Marines reported seeing them digging and what appeared to be packages in their possession. Farmers in the valley work from sunrise to sundown, and seeing anyone out after dark was largely unheard-of.
My initial reaction was to ask the question to someone higher up the chain of command. I looked around our combat operations center for someone more senior and all I saw were young Marines looking back at me to see what I would do.
I wanted confirmation from a higher authority to do the abhorrent, something I’d spent my entire life believing was evil. With no higher power around, I realized it was my role as an officer to provide that validation to the Marine on the other end who would pull the trigger.
Photo
Credit Brian Stauffer
“Take the shot,” I responded. It was dialogue from the movies that I’d grown up with, but I spoke the words without irony. I summarily ordered the killing of two men. I wanted the Marine on the other end to give me a reason to change my decision, but the only sound I heard was the radio affirmative for an understood order: “Roger, out.” Shots rang out across the narrow river. A part of me wanted the rounds to miss their target, but they struck flesh and the men fell dead.
When I originally became an infantry officer, increasing my Marines’ ability to kill was my mission, and it was my primary focus as I led them to Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, as a young lieutenant, I had faith in my Marines; I trusted them and looked up to them. But in the back of my mind, I always wondered whether they would follow my orders in the moment of truth. As the echoes of gunfire reverberated and faded, I received my answer. Yes, they would follow me. I also received affirmation to a more sinister question: Yes, I could kill.
II.
The primary factors that affect an individual’s ability to kill are the demands of authority, group absolution, the predisposition of the killer, the distance from the victim and the target attractiveness of the victim.
So began the essay I wrote during my Marine Corps infantry officer training in 2008. The assignment said, “Discuss the factors that affect an individual’s ability to kill.” I focused on lessons I had learned reading Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s book “On Killing,” which deconstructs the psychology of taking human life. It explains how, throughout the past century, military social systems and training evolved to make humans less reluctant to take a life. But while Mr. Grossman’s work was descriptive, my training was prescriptive.
Before I was given the authority to order a kill, I trained to do it by hand. I practiced the techniques of killing for more than a year before taking command of a platoon. I became the master of my rifle, thrust my bayonet through human-shaped dummies, and only then learned the more advanced methods of modern warfare: how to maneuver a platoon of 40 Marines and call for artillery barrages and aerial bombardments. But mastering the tactics of killing would have been useless if I wasn’t willing to kill.
In war, of course, there are many ways to kill. I did so by giving orders. I never fired my weapon in combat, but I ordered countless others to fire theirs. It was a disorienting sort of power to have: I would speak a few words, and a few seconds, minutes or hours later people would die. Of course, our snipers became the celebrities of our deployment because they were the best killers. They would perch in their hide, watching the villagers through high-powered optics that allowed them to see faces from hundreds of yards away. They would watch and wait until the moment when they could identify an enemy among the civilians. The fighters would fall before the echo of the shot reached their dead bodies. They would truly never know what hit them.
Before killing the first time there’s a reluctance that tempers the desire to know whether you are capable of doing it. It is not unlike teenagers longing to lose their virginity but also wanting to wait for the right time to do it. But once killing loses its mystique, it no longer becomes a tool of last resort.
In Marine officer training we were taught to be decisive. Even a bad decision, I was told, is better than no decision at all. But the combination of imperfect judgment, the confidence of authority and absolute decisiveness does not produce measured outcomes.
For a while after I ordered the Marine to take that first shot, everything we did seemed acceptable. It revealed that killing could be banal. Each day would bring a new threat that needed to be eliminated. Bombs would drop, Marines would fire and artillery would blanket hills with explosions. I had a rough estimate of how many people we killed, but I stopped counting after a while.
III.
I spent every day of my seven-month deployment in Afghanistan trying to figure out how to kill the Taliban commander in my area. He lived and operated to our north and every day would send his soldiers down to plant bombs, terrorize the villages and wrestle with us for control of the area. Our mission was to secure the villages and provide economic and political development, but that was slow work with intangible results. Killing the Taliban commander would be an objective measure of success.
I never killed him. Instead, each day we would kill his soldiers or his soldiers would kill our Marines. The longer I lived among the Afghans, the more I realized that neither the Taliban nor we were fighting for the reasons I expected. Despite the rhetoric I internalized from the newspapers back home about why we were in Afghanistan, I ended up fighting for different reasons once I got on the ground — a mix of loyalty to my Marines, habit and the urge to survive.
The enemy fighters were often young men raised alongside poppy fields in small farms set up like latticework along the river. They must have been too young and too isolated to understand anything outside of their section of the valley, never mind something global like the 9/11 attacks. These villagers fought us because that’s what they always did when foreigners came to their village. Perhaps they just wanted to be left alone.
The more I thought about the enemy, the harder it was to view them as evil or subhuman. But killing requires a motivation, so the concept of self-defense becomes the defining principle of target attractiveness. If someone is shooting at me, I have a right to fire back. But this is a legal justification, not a moral one. The comic Louis C.K. brilliantly pointed out this absurdity: “Maybe if you pick up a gun and go to another country and you get shot, it’s not that weird. Maybe if you get shot by the dude you were just shooting at, it’s a tiny bit your fault.”
My worst fear before deploying was what, in training, we called “good shoot, bad result.” But there is no way in the chaos and uncertainty of war to make the right decision all the time. On one occasion, the Taliban had been shooting at us and we thought two men approaching in the distance were armed and intended to kill us. We warned them off, but it did no good. They continued to approach, and so my Marines fired. What possible reason could two men have to approach a squad of armed Marines in a firefight? When it was over and the two men lay dead we saw that they were unarmed, just two men trying to go home, who never made it.
On most occasions, when ordnance would destroy the enemy or a sniper would kill a Taliban fighter, we would engage in the professional congratulations of a job well done like businessmen after a successful client meeting. Nothing of the sort happened after killing a civilian. And in this absence of group absolution, I saw for the first time how critical it actually was for my soul and my sanity.
Nobody ever talked about the accidental killing. There was paperwork, a brief investigation and silence. You can’t tell someone who has killed an innocent person that he did the right thing even if he followed all the proper procedures before shooting.
When I returned home this group absolution was supposed to take the form of a welcoming society, unlike the one Vietnam veterans returned to. But the only affirmation of my actions came through the ubiquitous “Thank you for your service.” Beyond that, nobody wanted to, or wants to, talk about what occurred overseas.
IV.
The first Marine to be grievously injured on our deployment was shot in the neck during a firefight exactly nine years and nine days after the Sept. 11 attacks. He was a 19-year-old from Mississippi on his first tour after enlisting straight out of high school. Under enemy fire, the Navy corpsman and Marines in his squad gave him medical care as the evacuation helicopter raced to get him to the field hospital in the critical “golden hour.”
When he was transported onto the helicopter 40 minutes later, the squad reported that he seemed in good spirits. He would make it to the hospital, receive emergency surgery and then be transported through Germany back to America for a long recovery at Bethesda. Except that didn’t happen. Ten minutes later the call came through the radio that he had died.
Until that moment, our deployment in Afghanistan had been exhilarating because we felt invulnerable. This invulnerability in an environment of death was the most powerful sensation I’d ever experienced. I felt favored and possessed with the power to do anything. Instantly, those feelings were replaced by uncertainty and impotency. The initial report that we lost our first Marine stunned everyone who heard it, but soon after came another call about men planting a bomb on a nearby road
.
Seeing the enemy so quickly after our Marine was killed was the perfect opportunity for revenge. I watched the missile strike the men’s car on the gritty gray-and-white footage of a surveillance drone’s camera and then watched one of them run away on fire and collapse. This was accompanied by the exultation of everyone around me. High-fives. Cheers. Fist pumps. If we couldn’t bring our Marine back to life, at least we could take a life. The power returned to us a little bit. It was an illogical equation but in the moment it rang true.
V.
I could look you in the eye and tell you I’m sure that the two men we killed right after our Marine died were planting a bomb. I remember watching the drone surveillance video as they dug and appeared to drop an explosive device by the side of the road. At the same time, doubt creeps in. The emotions surrounding loss and revenge can distort reality. Maybe it’s too convenient to believe that after losing our first Marine we just happened to find a couple of members of the Taliban planting a bomb. The fog of war doesn’t just limit what you can know; it creates doubt about everything you’re certain that you know.
The madness of war is that while this system is in place to kill people, it may actually be necessary for the greater good. We live in a dangerous world where killing and torture exist and where the persecution of the weak by the powerful is closer to the norm than the civil society where we get our Starbucks. Ensuring our own safety and the defense of a peaceful world may require training boys and girls to kill, creating technology that allows us to destroy anyone on the planet instantly, dehumanizing large segments of the global population and then claiming there is a moral sanctity in killing. To fathom this system and accept its use for the greater good is to understand that we still live in a state of nature.
If this era of war ever ends, and we emerge from the slumber of automated killing to the daylight of moral questioning, we will face a reckoning. If we are honest with ourselves, the answers won’t be simple. I don’t blame Presidents George W. Bush or Barack Obama for these wars. Our elected leaders, after all, are just following orders, no different from the Marine who asks if he can kill a man digging by the side of the road.
The US government's growing reliance on aerial drones to pursue its war on al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere is proving controversial – as evidenced by the international reaction to recent drone missile attacks along the border with Pakistan. But Barack Obama's administration is undeterred, favoring the technology more and more because it reduces the need for American troops in those countries and the risk of politically unpalatable casualties. But this strategy is giving rise to anxieties that conflict is becoming just a big computer game, in which 'desk pilots' in air conditioned bunkers far from the battlefield can kill a few enemy fighters and then go home to their families, remote from the human consequences of their actions or the anguish of associated civilian casualties.
Watch the full documentary now
NOW WATCH & SEE THE ACTUAL ATTACK OF DRONES
The drone has changed the entire concept of war that most of us have not fully realized. This is at night - in the dark.
There are a bunch of ISIS fighters there that missed breakfast. Note how clearly the bad guys are seen - great advantage in this type of war.
Centcom attack on ISIS fighters. Hope they don't see this video, lest they dress up like donkeys to escape the fire.
What level of sophistication without collateral damage. The women and children and even the mules & donkeys are spared. A must view 15 minute clip by USA forces a few nights ago.
Thorium is readily available and can be turned into energy without generating transuranic wastes. Thorium's capacity as nuclear fuel was discovered during WW II, but ignored because it was unsuitable for making bombs. A liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) is the optimal approach for harvesting energy from Thorium, and has the potential to solve today's energy/climate crisis. LFTR is a type of Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (Th-MSR). This video summarizes over 6 hours worth of thorium talks given by Kirk Sorensen and other thorium technologists. Thorium is a naturally-occurring mineral that holds large amounts of releasable nuclear energy, similar to uranium. This nuclear energy can be released in a special nuclear reactor designed to use thorium. Thorium is special because it is easier to extract this energy completely than uranium due to some of the chemical and nuclear properties of thorium.
