Excargodog

The interesting thing is to consider what would happen if this were NOT an all volunteer service. What if the draft really returned? Would discharges for refusing an immunization be a ‘get out of jail free’ card if this precedent were followed.

And please realize - those of you that have never served - that NONE of these people are antivaxxers. Trust me, they got a buttload of shots (well, an armload anyway) when they first signed on. What they aren’t convinced about is THIS immunization. And the fact that most of them have already had COVID and are as immune as many of the vaccinated is being disregarded.

Now worst case scenario, there is a change of political party and someone issues an order to upgrade the discharges or return them to service with credit for time spent ‘furloughed’. And we end up with a partisan military.

Moonbeam

More guys to join the "Mayonnaise Militia's" and they can now grow out their Taliban beards.

block30

That is not what was briefed at my base by both the wing and later vice wing commander. Other than honorable discharge is likely the discharge to be given. My base is doing a standard briefing for the refusers, which is again, to expect an other than honorable discharge.

DeltaboundRedux

Non mil pilot here:

Does a less than honorable discharge affect things like tri-care eligibility? Access to veteran hospitals? That sort of thing.

Quite an iron fist in the velvet glove.

CX500T

Lose eligibility for retirement, VA benefits (health, disability, school, loans)

On many job applications it asks if you have anything other than an honorable discharge.

Might as well be a convict on parole.

Yes, they are going full punitive.

I think an ineligible to re enlist or promote would be as much as would be morally correct but the high command is a bunch of bootlicking politicians with rare exceptions.



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CX500T

You are only tricare eligible if you retire.

I'm retiring but they are slow rolling my retirement to after the deadline. I had an approved retirement date of 1 November 2021 before the mandate.

They waived my mandatory separation for high year tenure. Seriously. Without a waiver by law 31 October was supposed to be my last day in the Navy unless I promoted.



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rickair7777

I would expect political pushback on that, precedent for this sort of thing is really General Under Honorable, which legally preserves almost all bennies.

GuH is for minor, somewhat understandable misconduct (ex. bar fight, pos for weed). Dishonorable character is for real screwups. DoD is going to have legal trouble altering that precedent on a dime.

But there's another possible snag for VA bennies, law says that you cannot have been separated for failure to obey a general order. That's separate from discharge character requirements.

Honorable gets you all bennies. General Under Honorable gets you almost all bennies, but you lose one of them (VA loan or GI Bill, one of those IIRC).

Anything less loses all bennies, although you may still be able to get VA medical care for service-connected health issues.

But that's all for someone who leaves without meeting retirement eligibility.

If you achieved retirement eligibility, then you still get retirement pay, Tricare (which is totally separate from VA), and access to DoD facilities like gyms, exchange, etc. That assumes that you satisfactorily completed all required service time prior to getting in any trouble or committing any offenses. Only way that could be in question is if you hit your 20 years after the vaccine mandate date had come and gone because they could argue that your last days of service were not satisfactory. Even then I doubt they would really get away with denying retirement over a few days or weeks. But if you hit 20 in Dec 2022, yeah that could be a problem.

The key for retirement is to complete 20 years before any misconduct. They can and have gone back and done things like reduce retirement pay by one or two paygrades for people who got 20 good years but then committed some infraction after 20 but before actual retirement... you lose longevity and paygrade after the infraction. That's for serious stuff which comes to light later on (fraud, rape, etc). I think that applied to some of the Fat Leonard people. Exception IIRC is espionage, I think congress passed a law that remove all VA and retirement bennies for those who commit espionage, regardless of how much good service they may have accomplished, and rightfully so.

Famously, Lisa Nowak had her retirement grade reduced from O6 to O5.

Drum

Having been formerly on G series
This is ludicrous.

Other than honorable were given to heroin, meth and other drug users popped on the wiz test. Even then the Art 15 to CM process was long.


Giving otherwise honorably serving military members a LTH shows you where military "leadership" is at and one if the reasons I retired than continuing to serve.


Truly sad

rickair7777

Did you ask for a waiver? I do know a bunch of O5/O6 who got HYT extensions just for the asking within the last year, USNR must have been short senior O's because it's normally not that easy.

Drum

He did.


See post #5


It was denied.