WASHINGTON — The Defense Department today announced a new series of initiatives aimed at improving the welfare and well-being of service members and their families.

In a memorandum published today, titled “Our Enduring Duty to America’s Service Members and Their Families,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III announced a new set of initiatives which are part of his ongoing “Taking Care of Our People” priority that began three years ago.

The latest initiatives include:

• Establishing Health Care Flexible Spending Accounts for service members 
• Providing greater access to free wireless internet in unaccompanied housing 
• Decreasing the cost burden associated permanent change of station moves 
• Lowering the cost of procuring uniforms for enlisted service members 
• Expanding spouse employment and professional development opportunities through the My Career Advancement Account, or MyCAA program 
• Increasing access to affordable quality childcare and early childhood education 
• Improving quality of life conditions at remote and isolated installations

The new initiatives, along with initiatives over the past three years, were developed after assessing the experiences of service members. Taken together, the efforts are meant to ensure the well-being and success of Service members, enabling them to better focus on their part of the defense mission.

“Early in my tenure as secretary of defense, I made taking care of our people a top priority,” Austin said in the memorandum. “Doing right by our all-volunteer joint force and their families is a core readiness issue. Taking care of our people is fundamental to the department’s ability to recruit and retain the most talented American patriots and to ensure that the U.S. military remains the most lethal fighting force on the planet — and it is simply the right thing to do.”

As part of a focus on service member and military family health, the department plans to offer service members the ability to contribute up to $3,200 in pre-tax earnings to pay for eligible healthcare-related expenses through a Health Care Flexible Spending Account, or HCFSA.

With the HCFSA, service members will be able to contribute up to $3,200 each year in pre-tax dollars to their accounts and spend that money on things such as insurance co-payments and cost shares, deductibles, braces and other orthodontia, glasses and contact lenses, prescription drugs, and wellness treatments such as acupuncture, massage, and chiropractic care. It’s expected that the HCFSAs will be available to service members for the first time in March 2025.

To keep junior, unaccompanied service members connected to the wider world while off duty, the department has directed the military departments to carry out a series of pilot projects to provide wireless internet connectivity to enlisted service members who reside in military barracks.

While access to wireless internet will allow those junior service members access to personal email, banking and entertainment options, the department also expects access can be used to help service members connect with mandatory online training requirements and other health and life related resources such as telehealth appointments, Military OneSource, and military and family life counselors.

According to department documents, the DOD has long-term plans to establish a “WiFi-connected force.” For service members in unaccompanied housing, there is not expected to be any cost to access the provided internet services.

Service members make frequent permanent change of station moves during their careers. To ease the burden of moving themselves and their families from one military base to another, the department is working with partners to adjust the number of days associated with both the Temporary Lodging Expense, or TLE, and the Temporary Lodging Allowance, or TLA.

The new effort extends TLE from 14 days to 21 days for moves within the continental U.S. For moves that originate outside the continental U.S., TLA will be extended to as many as 60 days on the departure side to match the 60 days already authorized on the arrival side. Both the TLE and the TLA allow service members and their families to live in temporary quarters, such as in hotels, while looking for homes at their new duty station, or after they have checked out of their homes at their existing duty stations.

To ensure enlisted service members are best able to maintain their uniforms, the department has directed a review of the quality of uniforms that are issued to and are available for purchase by service members. Additionally, the department has directed another review that will look at the annual clothing replacement allowance to determine not only if it is sufficient, but if there are better ways to provide that allowance to service members.

The new initiatives also include efforts to improve the recruitment, retention and working environments of DOD child development professionals; expanding eligibility for participation in the My Career Advancement Account career development program to spouses of active-duty service members serving in grades E-7, E-8, E-9, and W-3; and assessments of three remote and isolated installations via the “On-Site Installation Evaluation” process. Those three installations will be identified in the fall, with the evaluations taking place in 2025. This particular initiative advances efforts to understand capabilities and needs regarding the well-being of service members at remote and isolated installations.

This latest salvo of efforts, the third in the department’s effort to improve the lives of service members and their families, comes as part of an ongoing nearly three-year long effort which began in 2021.

In November 2021, for instance, Austin addressed economic concerns faced by service members. Then, the department provided relief for the high cost of housing and housing shortages with a temporary increase to basic allowance for housing in some areas, and an extension of temporary lodging expenses where Service members had a difficult time finding housing due to shortages.

At that same time the secretary also pushed to extend tour lengths for service members at both overseas and U.S. based assignments as a way to minimize hardships associated with permanent change of station moves.

In September 2022, Austin continued that effort by directing a review of basic allowance for housing to ensure what was being paid to service members accurately reflected fluctuations in the housing market, and also directed increases in basic allowance for housing for active-duty service members in 28 military housing areas that had experienced an average of more than 20 percent spike in rental housing costs.

The September 2022 effort also included direction to fully fund DOD commissaries as a way to cut register prices with a goal of providing service members a 25% savings over private sector grocery stores, and also directed creation of a “Basic Needs Allowance,” which began in January 2023, to supplement the incomes of qualifying service members.

The cost of household moves was also addressed by Austin’s September 2022 memorandum, which directed a permanent increase to standard TLE. Also included was an increase to the dislocation allowance for service members up to E-6 to offset the personal expenses associated with a permanent change of station move.

In a memo from March 2022, Austin directed implementation of universal pre-kindergarten at Department of Defense Education Activity schools, and the creation of dependent care flexible spending accounts to enable service members with dependents to set aside up to $5,000 in pretax income through payroll deduction for eligible dependent care expenses such as child care, preschool, before or after school programs, and summer camp.

The March effort also included additional support for those with exceptional family members. As part of that effort the department established a standard process to enroll and disenroll families from the program, require that support personnel make personal contact with each enrolled family at least once a year, better coordinate the way support personnel are assigned to families, and ease the transition between support personnel.

The Department’s March 2022 effort also addressed the challenges of ensuring military spouses can find meaningful employment. Through the My Career Advancement Account program, for instance, eligible military spouses became eligible for up to $4,000 in financial assistance to earn a license, certificate, or associate degree.

Advancing military spouse employment efforts, the president in January 2023 signed into law an amendment to the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, which requires that professional licenses be portable, except for licenses to practice law, for service members and their spouses as they move between states.

By C. Todd Lopez, DOD News