What We Know: Pentagon pushing more family-friendly military

Defense Secretary Ash Carter today encouraged U.S. Cyber Command to “intensify the fight” against the Islamic State of Iraq the Levant, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said.

“This puts DoD in the top tier of institutions nationwide and will have significant influence on decision-making for our military family members”, Carter said.

Carter said they will also seek the authority from Congress to increase paid paternity days for new fathers from 10 to 14. Carter said members of those services who are now pregnant will be granted 18 rather than 12 weeks.

Carter’s maternity leave announcement means that all services will have the same number of weeks for maternity leave, reducing the leave for the Navy and Marine Corps from 18 weeks and boosting that for the Army and Air Force from six weeks.

“We are not Google, we are not Walmart”.

— Carter says the changes should be balanced against the need to maintain a strong and ready fighting force. Carter said women are “retained at a rate 30 percent lower than men across the services”. And officials said Carter wants to expand the current three-week leave for an adoptive parent, and allow the second parent to take two weeks off, if that person is also are in the military.

Among the benefits are paid maternity leave of 12 weeks, extended paternity leave, expanded adoption leave, longer childcare center hours, installation of mothers’ rooms, and egg and sperm cryopreservation.

They are one more tool, he said, to make the military a family-friendly employer that honors the desires of those who want to commit fully to their careers or serve courageously in combat, while preserving their ability to have children in the future.

According to Carter, 52 percent of the military’s enlisted force and 70 percent of its officers are married, and there are about 84,000 marriages where both are in the service.

– Allowing family members to remain at a station of choice in exchange for additional active duty service.

Numerous changes are an effort to align the Pentagon with the corporate world, strengthen ties with high-tech companies and bring the best from that field into the Defense Department.

As these prospects unfold, the Pentagon is also taking new measures to intensify the cyber-fight against ISIS and successfully target their expansive social media propaganda operations, among other things.