WASHINGTON (AP) — It sounds like a pretty good deal: Retire at age 38 after 20 years of work and get a monthly pension of half your salary for the rest of your life. All you have to do is join the military.

As the nation tightens its budget belt, the century-old military retirement system has come under attack as unaffordable, unfair to some who serve and overly generous compared with civilian benefits.

That very notion, laid out in a Pentagon-ordered study, sent a wave of fear and anger through the ranks of current and retired military members when it was reported in the news media this month.

If pensions are to be cut, Congress should go first, one person said on the Internet.

"Obviously, we're concerned about it," said retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan, an Army chief of staff in the 1990s who heads the nonprofit educational group Association of the United States Army.

The Defense Department put out a statement this week stressing that it was only a proposal and no changes will be made anytime soon.

"While the military retirement system, as with all other compensation, is a fair subject of review for effectiveness and efficiency, no changes to the current retirement system have been approved," Eileen Lainez, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said. "And no changes will be made without careful consideration for both the current force and the future force."

The upset was sparked by a nonbinding recommendation from the Defense Business Board, the Pentagon's private sector advisory panel. A July 21 draft report that could be finalized this month recommended pensions be scrapped and replaced with a 401(k)-type defined contribution plan.

The board members are from big businesses — experts, the Pentagon says, in executive management, corporate governance, audit and finance, human resources, economics, technology and health care.

Their report was strictly about dollars and cents, part of a review of Pentagon spending started under Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's predecessor, Robert Gates.

That certainly is a great deal!  Join the military and put your life on the line getting shot at at a pay grade that requires a Sgt. with 2 kids to supplement his "salary" with food stamps because he makes so little he not only qualifies, but it is expected to be a part of his remuneration.  All of this so that after 20 years, being wounded 2-3 times and suffering from PTSD, then "retiring" because he cannot pass the physical and is unqualified for anything other than menial wages he should be told he is not worthy of the pension promised for serving under with low wages on the promise that he and his family will be cared for through the rest of his life.  Oh, while you are at it, take away his health care and tell him to buy his own insurance too!

jc

My husband served 8 years in the Navy.  We had four young children. He even had a part time job...and we still qualified for public low income housing before military housing!! So that is where we lived, low income housing. Sad but true.  I also shopped at the damaged food store before the commisary, then what I didn't get, I would pick up there.

Almost all of our brilliant keepers of the flame are millionaires too and can afford it.

Charlie