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WASHINGTON - Just when the U.S. military needs them most, senior Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other elite forces are leaving for higher-paying jobs.
After getting years of training and experience in the military, they leave for other government jobs or for what defense officials said Tuesday has been an explosion in outside contractor work.
"What makes them so valuable to us makes them highly marketable on the outside," said Chief Master Sgt. Robert V. Martens Jr., senior adviser at the U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, which also oversees equipping and training elite Army Rangers and Air Force special operations commandos.
Better salaries, retirement benefits and educational opportunities are among incentives that might help stem the problem, defense officials said as they met with lawmakers to discuss ways to keep forces who have become so crucial to the war on terror.
A soldier, sailor or airman gets $60,000 per year at 18 years of service - a figure that includes housing allowance and some types of special duty pay. Troops who go to work for civilian contractors can make up to $200,000 a year, one official has said.
Officials with the Special Operations Command didn't give specific numbers but said the Army, Navy and Air Force are all seeing an increasing trend in which senior people are retiring at their 20-year mark, though they could remain on active duty for several more years.
It can take four years just to train a special operations soldier and another few years of field experience before he or she is top-notch.
The Special Operations Command has been working with the services and the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to identify incentives to keep senior people, Martens said.
To some extent the government has helped create the growing market outside its doors. Both the Defense Department and the CIA have hired private contractors to cover their own man power shortages, especially in skills such as linguistics and prisoner interrogation.
There are currently less than 50,000 special operations troops, including reservists, and there are plans to increase the total by a few thousand over the next several years.