Questioning the rationale for FLPB

According to the 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation (June 2012), the military has six reasons for offering its special and incentive pays. [Source, p. 108]

1. Extraordinary civilian earnings opportunties. Applicable particularly to health professionals.
2. High training/replacement costs. Pilots and nuclear trained personnel.
3. Rapid demand growth. To improve retention and improve acquisitions.
4. Dangerous service conditions. Combat pay, sea duty, or working with hazardous materials.
5. Special skills or proficiency. To encourage acquisition of a skill (or improvement).
6. Performance or productivity. Rare in practice because of the difficulty in measuring productivity in many military areas.

Of these reasons, my guess is that the military offers Foreign Language Proficiency Bonus (FLPB) for accession and retention (#3) along with acquisition and improvement (#5). Put more simply, it's to get people who already know a language, keep them, have people learn another language, and/or have them improve in it.

When I first came in, the Army (under AR 11-6) offered incentives for all the languages I happened to know: French, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. I had high hopes for one day reaching the monthly maximum $1000 FLPB payment. Reality set in after I took the Korean exam in 2010, and I realized even reaching Level 2 ("limited proficiency") would be a challenge. It was going to take several years of dedicated study to even come close to my $1000/month goal.

Since then, there have been a lot of changes to the languages the Army will pay to non-language specialists (which includes company grade commissioned officers). Nowadays, it wouldn't matter if I spoke any of them perfectly -- the Army wouldn't offer me a dime. Here's the ALARACT 031/2013 list of languages the Army currently pays non-linguists for knowing:

Payment List A
Baluchi
Pashto
Persian (Farsi & Dari)
Somali
Urdu
Arabic

Payment List B (Emerging)
Amharic (Ethiopian)
Azerbaijani
Bengali
Hindi
Punjabi
Ukrainian
Uzbek

Payment List B (Enduring)
Hausa, Igbo, & Yoruba (Nigeria)
Georgian
Serbo-Croatian
Indonesian & Javanese
Cebuano, Maguindanao, Maranao, Tausug, & Yakan (Philippines)
Turkish & Turkmen
Kurmanji & Sorani (Kurdish)
Tajik

Summarized geographically, that's:

1. The big Middle East languages of Arabic and Persian, along with lesser ones like Turkish, Kurdish, and Pashto.
2. South Asian languages Hindi, Urdu, Baluchi, Bengali, & Punjabi
3. Central Asian languages Tajik, Uzbek, and Turkmen
4. African languages from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Nigeria
5. Southeast Asian languages from Indonesia and the Philippines
6. Eastern European languages Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, Azeri, and Georgian

As you can understand, ALARACT 031/2013 was really disappointing for me. While the Army may be shifting focus to the Pacific, it seems to mean Southeast Asia -- a place I have little to no experience with.

It also makes me wonder how the FLPB relates to its purpose in 1.) the accession and retention of personnel skilled in these languages, and 2.) the acquisition of (and improvement in) these languages by non-native speakers. Does the FLPB influence a critical language-speaking U.S. permanent resident or citizen to join the Army? Does it help in retaining such a soldier? Similarly, does it give an incentive for a person to learn a critical language or improve in it?

In my mind, the answer to all these questions is no. The annual revisions and minimal dollar values involved make no difference -- either a person happens to know a language or they don't, and whatever retention incentive FLPB provides is dwarfed by other factors. I can't imagine someone investing a significant amount of their personal time in learning a language the Army might not pay for a year or two from now.

For linguists, this is less of an issue. ALARACT 031/2013 §7(C) states "soldiers with a language dependent MOS ... will be paid at the A-list level." (See AR 11-6 Table 6-2 for the pay table.) Foreign Area Officers would fall under this category. West Point language professors are covered by §7(E), "Qualified soldiers who are attending or instructing a professional military education ... will be paid FLPB for the language of instruction."

So while that's some comfort to me as possible future career paths, FLPB means nothing to me at the moment. I'm not about to spend two years of my time here in Korea learning Hindi just so I can maybe make a couple hundred extra dollars per month after I leave.

To some degree the government recognizes this dilemma, though a test for the real thing they're looking for -- regional expertise -- is more difficult to measure. Even more problematic is determining whether the military already has enough of it or not. Consider the following statement from one of the 11th QRMC's supporting research papers.

"Should the Department consider new incentives to encourage the acquisition and retention of regional expertise and cultural awareness? The obvious first step is to determine whether there is a supply problem. If so, is the problem primarily related to acquisition, retention, or maintaining proficiency?" [Source]

Without a way to test regional expertise or even a way to incentivize its development, it seems the military will continue with FLPB as its nearest proxy.

The Defense Language Institute's GLOSS and Headstart are great resources and specifically target the knowledge modes (listening and reading) the DLPT tests, but I still question the rationale behind the FLPB.

I just don't see how it provides a real incentive for non-linguists to either join the Army, stay in, learn a new language, or improve in it. I may be good at foreign languages, relatively speaking, but until the Army provides a real incentive (or I become eligible for a job I want), I'm not going to bother with anything the Army considers critical.