Photo Credit: DVIDSHUBOn August 29, President Obama sent a letter notifying Congress that he is using his authority under law to cap the active duty military pay raise at 1 percent in 2015.

Typically the active duty pay raise is determined by private sector wage growth, measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Cost Index (ECI). The ECI calls for a 1.8 percent pay raise in 2015. [In other words, Obama’s unilateral action has created a .8% pay reduction (1.8% – 1%) for our troops]

However, the President has executive authority to make an alternative pay adjustment if he considers it necessary due to national emergency or economic concerns.

This is the second consecutive year the President used his authority to implement a lower pay raise.

From 2000 to 2012, Congress worked hard to eliminate a 13.5 percent military pay gap with the private sector caused by repeatedly capping military raises in the 1980s and ‘90s.

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The recent results of a survey by Feeding America (page 16), the largest domestic hunger-relief charity in the U.S., suggests that 620,000 households containing at least one currently serving military member utilize food banks and other food assistance programs.

That’s a staggering statistic – 25 percent of the currently serving force.

Pentagon officials were quick to refute the validity of the report’s statistics, but regardless of the actual number, the survey reflects many military families are using food banks to help make ends meet.

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Photo Credit: DefenseOneHow well can you predict your next mood swing? How well can anyone? It’s an existential dilemma for many of us but for the military, the ability to treat anxiety, depression, memory loss and the symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder has become one of the most important battles of the post-war period.

Now the Pentagon is developing a new, innovative brain chip to treat PTSD in soldiers and veterans that could bring sweeping new changes to the way depression and anxiety is treated for millions of Americans.

With $12 million (and the potential for $26 million more if benchmarks are met), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, wants to reach deep into your brain’s soft tissue to record, predict and possibly treat anxiety, depression and other maladies of mood and mind. Teams from the University of California at San Francisco, Lawrence Livermore National Lab and Medtronic will use the money to create a cybernetic implant with electrodes extending into the brain. The military hopes to have a prototype within 5 years and then plans to seek FDA approval.

DARPA’s Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies, or SUBNETs, program draws from almost a decade of research in treating disorders such as Parkinson’s disease via a technique called deep brain stimulation. Low doses of electricity are sent deep into the brain in somewhat the same way that a defibrillator sends electricity to jumpstart a heart after cardiac arrest.

While it sounds high-tech, it’s a crude example of what’s possible with future brain-machine interaction and cybernetic implants in the decades ahead.

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