Last year, inside the massive, annual defense policy bill was a measure aimed at making long exercises and deployments easier on families -- a hike in the "Family Separation Allowance" -- but, for reasons that remain unclear, the Pentagon has yet to implement the bump in pay^[1].

The allowance, also known as FSA^[2], is typically an extra monthly $250 that a service member is paid "to defray a reasonable amount of extra expenses" that come with a separation from their dependents that lasts more than 30 days.

Under the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, signed into law in December, the Pentagon is now allowed to increase the allowance to as much as $400. Specifically, the bill says the payment must be "not less than $250, and not more than $400."

Read Next: Some Military Patients Left Without Heat for a Week at Texas Base During Blast of Frigid Weather^[3]

According to an internal Army^[4] newsletter that was sent out to soldiers Friday and reviewed by Military.com, the service described the change in the NDAA as "discretionary" and cited unnamed Defense Department guidance that meant "no increase is being implemented."

Military.com reached out to the Pentagon, and a defense official said in an emailed statement Tuesday that they have "not made any decision to change the monthly amount of Family Separation Allowance at this time."

The official's statement also noted that Congress gave the Pentagon "flexibility over time to adjust payment levels based upon the department's needs and other conditions" but did not offer any details as to what needs are holding back the hike in payments.

The official was unable to offer a timeline on when the increase would be enacted but pointed to an ongoing military compensation review that is expected to issue a final report at the end of 2024.

"The department looks forward to reviewing its recommendations at that time," the statement said, without offering any assurances that an increase in the FSA would happen at that point.

Military Times was the first outlet to report the story^[5].

The NDAA also required that the review, formally known as the Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, include an examination of the FSA.

Amid lawmakers' desire to boost service members' pay, defense officials have repeatedly deferred to the ongoing review. For example, the Biden administration opposed a push to overhaul the pay chart^[6] so junior enlisted service members would make the equivalent of at least $15 per hour by arguing that such a change would be premature during the review.

The version of the NDAA that was signed into law was watered down from the original House-passed proposal. The NDAA that the House passed in July required the FSA to be increased to $400 without any wiggle room. A report accompanying the compromise version of the bill did not offer an explanation for changing the provision to a range.

Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, the original sponsor of the NDAA provision, vowed to continue pushing the Pentagon to increase the stipend.

"Our military families make great sacrifices every day -- it's only fair that we do everything we can to improve their quality of life," Gonzales said in a written statement this week. "That is why I pushed hard to increase the Family Separation Allowance in this year's NDAA for the first time in two decades. I will continue to work with the Department of Defense to ensure this boost is made a reality for military parents across the country."

The confusion and delay from defense officials on a seemingly minor point of service member compensation comes at a critical time for the Defense Department. Most of the services have struggled to meet recruiting goals^[7] -- despite huge bonuses and novel ideas -- in the past year and there are few indications that the situation will improve soon. In response, branches like the Navy^[8] have been heaving huge sums of cash at well-qualified recruits.

Citing tight competition with the private sector for job benefits and perks, Navy officials offered recruits up to $115,000 in 2022 to sign up for the sea service.

"We are offering record-high enlistment bonuses to be competitive with the strong civilian labor market, recognizing that we are in competition for the best and the brightest young Americans from all walks of life," the Navy's Recruiting Command spokesman told Military.com at the time^[9].

Now, that maximum Navy bonus total has grown to $140,000^[10].

Related: The Navy's Personnel Boss Is Confident Data Can Fix the Service's Recruiting Woes^[11]

The Defense Department is doing an about-face on a major component of reforms it launched seven years ago to reduce medical care costs, abandoning a plan to push family members and military retirees to private-sector care.

In a memo sent last month to senior Pentagon leaders, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks outlined an effort to "re-attract" beneficiaries to military hospitals and clinics -- at least 7% of those now receiving medical care through Tricare^[1], the DoD's private health program, by Dec. 31, 2026.

Hicks said certain elements of the DoD's health system overhaul, which was mandated by Congress in 2017, have left military treatment facilities, or MTFs, "chronically understaffed" and unable to deliver timely care to all patients.

Read Next: Some Military Patients Left Without Heat for a Week at Texas Base During Blast of Frigid Weather^[2]

The goal for the new plan would be to review current staffing and potentially shift providers among facilities, or add new personnel as needed in order to provide improved access to care and bring back patients, according to the memo, provided Monday to Military.com by request.

In the memo, Hicks said the circumstances at military hospitals have not only affected beneficiaries, they have hindered providers, depriving them of opportunities to maintain their skills.

"Realignment of medical personnel, coupled with a challenging health care economy and ambitious private-sector care capacity assumptions, led to chronically understaffed [military treatment facilities] and [dental treatment facilities, or DTFs] that at times cannot deliver timely care to beneficiaries or ensure sufficient workload to maintain and sustain clinical skills," Hicks wrote.

The fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act gave the Defense Department leeway in reorganizing the military health system^[3] to address rising costs and ensure the readiness of military health care providers to support combat operations and training.

As part of the reforms, management of the military services' 51 hospitals and 424 health and dental clinics shifted to the Defense Health Agency, which also was responsible for overseeing the massive plan to realign staffing at and consolidation of military health facilities while transferring an estimated 200,000 non-military beneficiaries^[4] to the Tricare network for private care.

Under the plan, the services were to cut roughly 12,800 military health billets, while the DHA would close or realign 50 facilities, including 38 that would serve military personnel only.

The DoD hoped that the consolidation and restructuring, which would require non-active-duty families to pay^[5] a larger portion of their health care costs, would curtail the military health system's now $54 billion budget.

Senior health officials said the reforms would be conducted so that patients still were able to access care within standards and, in some cases, have even better access.

But this did not prove to be the case.

In 2019, lawmakers began complaining that their military constituents were unable to get medical care in the private sector^[6] as a result of oversaturated markets and shrinking Tricare networks.

In 2022, evidence began emerging that staffing cuts at military health facilities and inflated estimates of the number of available physicians in civilian networks were affecting patient care in North Carolina, New York, the Pacific Northwest, California and Japan.

In some cases, patients drove an hour each way to receive quality care^[7].

"We are really concerned about access to care overall, those within the direct care system and the purchase care system," said Eileen Huck, senior deputy director for government relations at the National Military Family Association, referring to the military and Tricare health systems, respectively, in an interview Tuesday. "We've been concerned about the erosion of the purchase care network, the lack of providers and specialties in some locations."

Hicks said the key to bringing patients back to military treatment facilities is building and staffing a dependable, high-quality workforce at these hospitals and clinics.

Under the plan:

• DoD must identify its military medical requirements -- including casualty care, combatant command and military department needs -- by July 2024.
• The under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness is to complete a comprehensive review of all medical manpower and staffing.
• The Defense Health Agency and the military services are to identify the capacity of each military treatment facility and the needs for military staff and civilian manpower by July 2024.
• DHA must be able to bring back at least 7% of beneficiaries to military treatment facilities on average by Dec. 31, 2026.
• The services and DHA must come up with a plan to realign staffing and prioritize assignments to ensure that facilities can take care of patients and support operational needs.

"Re-attracting and caring for more beneficiaries in MTFs and DTFs means that DoD needs to increase capacity and improve access," Hicks wrote. "To do so safely, MTFs and DTS must be staffed to provide quality patient care as well as career development, education and training opportunities for medical and dental personnel."

The effort to draw patients back to military treatment facilities echoes a major initiative launched a decade ago by Dr. Jonathan Woodson^[8], then the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, to attract patients to military treatment facilities in the waning years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

For more than a decade, deployments^[9] of medical staff to combat zones made it difficult for many non-uniformed beneficiaries to get appointments at base hospitals and clinics, forcing them to seek care in their communities.

Citing data that showed direct care at military facilities cost about one-third less than Tricare purchased care, Woodson set a goal to ensure that base hospital usage reached 70% capacity.

At the time, some were running at just 33% capacity.

Woodson now serves as president of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the Defense Department's medical school and research university, which, while not mentioned in the memo, would likely contribute to the new efforts given that the school is responsible for educating a portion of the U.S. military's physicians.

Karen Ruedisueli, director of government relations for health affairs at the Military Officers Association of America, remembered that effort and said MOAA is not opposed to the new emphasis on military-provided care -- if the DoD can ensure that the system has the capacity to take new patients.

"It's our concern that ... these folks are going to have trouble getting an appointment," Ruedisueli said. "We think there are a lot of question marks about what this looks like for military families."

She added that MOAA is advocating for beneficiaries to have a system for reporting problems, including access issues, with their health care to the DoD and have more flexibility in changing health plans.

Currently, beneficiaries can change plans only during open season or in a major qualifying life event, such as a marriage, divorce, birth of a child or move on military orders.

Ruedisueli said military families deserve more flexibility to choose plans, something that may be required if the Defense Health Agency wants to bring beneficiaries who use Tricare Select^[10] -- a flexible fee-based plan that lets beneficiaries choose their own doctors but does not let them use military treatment facilities -- back into those hospitals.

"The messaging has been for so long ... 'We're moving people out to the network,' which was all about readiness, and now, it's bringing people back in to support readiness, so there has been some whiplash for us," Ruedisueli said. "At the end of the day, there's still so many details we don't know."

Hicks said the department will move ahead with its plans to ensure that the U.S. military is medically ready to fight a war and all beneficiaries have access to care.

"Our service members, their families, other beneficiaries and all those cared for by military medicine will be better served when we rebuild MTF capacity," Hicks wrote.

Related: Denied Care, Deaths in Japan Result from Lack of Emergency Medical Services for American Personnel^[11]

JERUSALEM — Two American-flagged ships carrying cargo for the U.S. Defense and State departments came under attack by Yemen's Houthi rebels on Wednesday, officials said, with the U.S. Navy intercepting some of the incoming fire.

The attacks on the container ships Maersk Detroit and Maersk Chesapeake further raise the stakes of the group's ongoing attacks on shipping through the vital Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The U.S. and the United Kingdom have launched multiple rounds of airstrikes seeking to stop the attacks.

Meanwhile, Qatar^[1], one of the world's top exporters of liquified natural gas, warned that its deliveries were affected by ongoing Houthi attacks over Israel's war on Hamas^[2] in the Gaza Strip.

Danish shipper Maersk, in a statement to The Associated Press, identified two of its vessels affected by the attacks as the U.S.-flagged container ships Maersk Detroit and Maersk Chesapeake. It said the U.S. Navy was accompanying its ships at the time.

“While en route, both ships reported seeing explosions close by and the U.S. Navy accompaniment also intercepted multiple projectiles,” Maersk said. “The crew, ship, and cargo are safe and unharmed. The U.S. Navy has turned both ships around and is escorting them back to the Gulf of Aden.”

Maersk said both vessels carried cargo belonging to the U.S. Defense and State Departments, as well as other government agencies, meaning they were “afforded the protection of the U.S. Navy for passage through the strait.”

The ships were operated by Maersk Line, a U.S. subsidiary of Maersk that is “suspending transits in the region until further notice,” the company said.

The U.S. military's Central Command in an online statement blamed the Houthis for the attack, saying they fired “three anti-ship ballistic missiles.”

“One missile impacted in the sea,” the statement said. “The two other missiles were successfully engaged and shot down by the USS Gravely,” an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer.

Central Command did not respond to further questions from the AP.

The Houthis, who have been launching attacks on ships since November over Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, did not immediately acknowledge the incident.

Since November, the rebels have repeatedly targeted ships in the Red Sea, saying they were avenging Israel’s offensive in Gaza against Hamas. But they have frequently targeted vessels with tenuous or no clear links to Israel, imperiling shipping in a key route for global trade.

The U.S. and the U.K. have launched rounds of airstrikes targeting suspected missile storage and launch sites used by the Houthis in their attacks. The rebels now say they’ll target American and British ships as well.

Meanwhile, Qatar announced its shipments of liquified natural gas had been affected by the Houthi attacks. Previous shipments had been delayed previously before heading through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.

Qatar, which has served as a key mediator between Hamas and Israel, has yet to see any of its ships attacked, however. A statement from its state-owned QatarEnergy producer said that its “production continues uninterrupted, and our commitment to ensuring the reliable supply of LNG to our customers remains unwavering.”

“While the ongoing developments in the Red Sea area may impact the scheduling of some deliveries as they take alternative routes, LNG shipments from Qatar are being managed with our valued buyers,” the statement said.

The statement suggests QatarEnergy’s cargos now are traveling around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, likely adding time to their trips.