The window is closing rapidly for soldiers to extend their contracts by a year and score a $10,000 bonus.
The Army has been offering the incentive since January as part of a range of initiatives to bring its active component end strength up to 476,000 by Oct. 1. But, per a recent Military Personnel message, that bonus will drop down to $5,000 on March 24.
"We need soldiers to re-enlist, but we do have a finite budget," Sgt. Maj. Mark Thompson, a senior career counselor, told Army Times on Wednesday. "If they want to take advantage of it, they can."
Soldiers willing to extend for two years or more can take home $7,500, according to the MILPER message.
The past two months have seen a healthy amount of extensions, Thompson said, prompting the Army to shift its focus to re-enlistments.
To do that, the Army created a new selective retention bonus tier especially for soldiers with an ETS date through September of this year.
Now, soldiers who choose to re-enlist can net $10,000 for a new three-year contract, $15,000 for four years, $20,000 for five years and $25,000 for anything longer than that.
"The goal is to keep soldiers on a long-term basis," Thompson said. "It’s more advantageous for the Army for soldiers to re-enlist rather than extend."
Still, the extension bonus — worth $5,000 — is still available at least until April 24, according to the message. It's possible that it will be reduced again or done away with after that point, Thompson added.
"We had a significant number of soldiers take the extensions as an option," he said. "It was definitely worth doing to get a catalyst of soldiers that would not necessarily want to commit to three years or longer on very short notice."
But looking into the future, leadership wants to put more stock in retaining soldiers for the long-term as the Army looks to grow even more.
"It’s a short-term solution," Thompson said about extensions. "We want to make sure that we keep Army end strength going for years."
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.
