Field Condions V Incidental Expenses?
 

I am currently lucky enough to be out here in Arizona at Davis Monthan AFB with the mighty Puma. We are here as part of an exercise which is being run by the Army:\. (Albeit we are only a bit part player with our own ET to carry out) To that end, before we arrived we were told we would get the princely sum of $25 rates and no access to Incidental Expenses. (Yes I know you fast jet boys get $65-75 rates for staying in exactly the same accomodation)
The Army have declared field conditions for the whole exercise and we are no longer receiving the original $25 in fact we are receiving nothing. We will get LOA and LSA upon our return but we have been told we are still not entitled to IE. We have to buy our own phonecards and papers. They do provide laundry facilities and little else.
The JSP states that IE cannot be claimed except in certain circumstances which includes having to buy your own phonecards.
I know there are alot of JPA experts on here. Can anyone clarify the situation?

Be careful of what you wish for....you are receiving field conditions because you are on a pre-deployment exercise. LSSA is not a factor, you receive this regardless, your LOA will be exercise rates. The fact you have access to a phone in the first place is a bonus. Although not a JPA guru or even an adminer, my understanding is that incuded in exercise rates of LOA is "an amount" to allow for calls home. It could be worse, if they had gone hard over and issued an Operational Welfare Package you would be getting nothing but LSSA. Finally, remember, as you sit in your airconditioned room with cable at the southern end of Craycroft Rd, the remainder of the CE troops are nowhere nearly as well off as you. JOINT Helicopter Command.

Thanks for the answers gents. I guess I will have to wait until the JPA gurus who frequent this site return after the weekend and can hopefully help to find any loopholes in the system. Yes I know we have it better off than our brothers down the road but we all would hold out hope if money was due. Wouldn't we?

I wish you luck....having done three of those CE Exercises at two months-ish each, if it transpires you are entitled then by my reckoning, I alone am owed in the region of £2000. When the remaining Ex personnel get hear about it, I can picture the JPA terminals now!

Is'nt that your main role?? Hump and Dump for the Army. My god, you find yourself on an Ex (Once in a Blue Moon) and you think you are still hard done by.

Should have tried harder at school ...then you too could be in the fast jet gang:E

Now now darlings, lets not allow this to decend into a bad tempered series of slanging between services or between types even. There are posts for that out there which attract a far wider audience of extremely vitriolic posters with far more wit. Lets leave it to them.

the $60 something you quote for FJ is not entirely accurate, I have had a few dets to various spots in US and (on one of them) got $7 per day - YES!, someone said if we eat soup and salad at the base diner, that is all you need, (so that is all we got! per day for two weeks), other locations had similat 'rates' because some advanced party discovered that is is posible to survive on nothing. I empathise with your situation, and although illegal, no-one seems to fight this cr@p. Remember the same rule makers say that we can eat in London for £23 per day....!


...BUT the uni district is a nice place to go when in Tuscon.

Mini Gun,

You are of course quite correct, deleted,

HEDP

HEDP,

Thank you. I have done likewise.

MGD

The whole organisations going down the potty. You even have to fork out of your own pocket if they send you on a course now to get some grub in your tummy. For a 3 week course I will have to scrape £70ish of my monthly living budget and with 2 kids about to start senior school and only 1 income this is something that is a struggle.
Can I tell them to shove it????

Daz,
You'd need to check QRs. Look for financial disadvantage etc and legality. If anywhere it would be listed there I'd imagine??

Faithless You tool
 

Faithless, := We are not army air corps. We are the same air force as you, you pleb. And we are used to humping and dumping rubbish army dets. But as soon as we get a good one, we get shaffted all over the show. Why dont you try fighting a war from the front line, and not your hotel 1000 miles away.:D

Jeez Johnsface... That was a major sense of humour failure that dragged you into your first post here... :eek:

That little, evil, grinny thing, ( :E ), is generally an indication that the post is not quite as "nasty" as it might seem. Generally known as banter...

Having lurked on here for a while and seen all manner of advice dished out on how to beat JPA by quoting 'such and such 'remembering to claim this that and the other' there is not one person here with a sensible suggestion to help.

Yes we are very lucky to be here in Arizona. Yes we are a bolt on to an Army exercise therefore we are Army led, but does that mean we have to shut up and put up? Every last one of you on this board would try and get what they are entitled to out of the system instead of rolling over and accepting less. I simply ask from advice from a wider audience and all I get is 'Dry your eyes' and 'fast jet boys don't get this and that'.

Dirty Sanchez - A fast Jet Sqn was here only as matter of months ago with a good friend of mine on it and he was given $65 a day rates operating from exactly the same building and sleeping in the same on base hotel so it is not ''bolleux'':ugh:

Faithless - Obviously I am not going to get into the slanging match that these boards generally decend into but please read people posts before replying. Execrcises are a frequent occurence on an already overstretched Puma force. This is in addition to ongoing Ops. An exercise like this is a real bonus for us, and dare I say it a little reward for our ongoing efforts to maintain the Pumas at home and abroad? To that end I would like to make the most out of it personally and, if entitled, financially. And yes I did work hard at school that is why I am on helicopters, tried fast jets and found it most unrewarding.:ugh:

Sloppy Link - Thankyou for being the most sensible poster on this thread.:D

L J R - I realise that some locations in the US have attracted less rates than others. As a direct comparison between us heli boys and FJ boys operating from the same location, facilities etc and the only factor that has changed is the Army influence and a loss of $65 a day seems like an injustice somewhat. You are right though the Uni district is great:\

dazjs - You are quite correct. Unless people like me ask the questions, we are always going to accept second best.

I can only hope now that people realise that this isn't a 'Poor pumaengineer in Arizona with no rates dry your eyes and get on with it' thread and more of a 'Help me get what I am entitled to instead of letting the b@^$%^&*s get away without paying what is due' thread.

Finally, we know we are not going to get rates (even though we were told $25 a day was the rate in the Ex order). My question is still about claiming IE when under Field Conditions. Over to the experts out there.

Puma Ginger Beer,
JSP 752 explains all, I gained access through ArmyNet, I guess your service has an equivalent. I quote....

INELIGIBILITY
03.0115. Ineligible Personnel. Subsistence is not payable in the following
circumstances:

b. When Service personnel are living under Field Conditions, no matter
what the type of accommodation, there is no entitlement to claim either
subsistence or IE.

Not what you wanted to hear but there you have it.

SL

Death By A Thousand Cuts
 

Yes I know we are in the JOINT Helicopter Command and we all suffer together, but this seems like another way for the MOD to get a quart out of a pint pot and not having to pay for it.

Why should we be out of pocket when we are on company business?

Why is there a retention problem in the military?

The Puma chums have been hard at it for several years and some have paid the ultimate price, this just seems like another way to cheese people off and look at their options.

Seymour,

Shouldn't there be a n in the final word of your post title?

Oh well,

I deleted earlier but I guess the only response now as one of the b@^$%^&*s that pumaengineer refers to would be to remove the puma detachment from their air conditioned base accomodation with the contract provided, air force feeding arrangement and put them into the same tented accomodation as the rest of the Joint exercise at Gila bend.

That would make an even playing field for all.

I would have thought that the access to this accomodation and feeding would have been looked on as a bonus compared to the rest of the exercise but if it is such a drag not having IE then you could always be placed where you would be unable to claim or spend it.

FJ rates I would suspect would be primarily for feeding and given that this is provided and a contract let centrally then............

Dry your eyes up doesn't quite match what I would like to communicate at this moment so I shall bite my pen..............

HEDP

You think you have problems - my son having arrived home 2 months ago after his 6th tour in Iraq (yes 6th!) is still waiting for the MOD to pay him his 'extras' due for his efforts. OK I accept he's Army, based somewhere on the Welsh/English border ending with D, but come on lads in the pay-office in Glasgow or wherever you may be based now - cough up. :ugh:

HEDP,

I infer from your last post that you have been involved in organizing either this exercise or others like it?

If so, may I ask why the Puma detachment were placed in on-base type accommodation rather than under canvas like the rest of the exercise participants? I suspect that the decision would've been made for flight safety reasons, and not simply to give the hard-worked Puma force an early Christmas present. Once this decision is made it is churlish to expect them to happily give up any expense entitlements associated with their situation just because others are in more uncomfortable conditions.

To draw a parallel, when you went to the area for exercise planning you would have stayed on-base or in a hotel (rather than in a tent) because that was appropriate for your job at the time. I would be very surprised if you refused to claim your receipt-based expenses and IE on the basis that you were simply grateful for staying in better conditions than other colleagues may have been experiencing at the time.

Pumaengineer has queried the lack of entitlement to IE, and although he knows that others have had it better (and worse) he simply wants to improve his own lot. I find his attitude a marked contrast to that often found within the services that prefers to complain about or deride those that have better conditions, rather than seeking to improve their own.

It would be very disappointing if the organizers of this exercise had decided to manipulate the regulations to block IE being paid as a response to the Puma personnel being grudgingly accommodated in conditions commensurate with sound flight safety practices.

As a final point, if field conditions apply and pumaengineer and his colleagues are not eligible for IE then surely there should be a welfare package in place. Simply declaring that they should be grateful for their comparatively better conditions and suggesting that those who seek their correct entitlements should be removed and placed in tents is not a very impressive argument.