The Army National Guard has made major strides in clearing a mountain of unpaid enlistment bonuses that had lingered for years, new service component data shows.
As of January 2024, it owed bonuses to about 56,000 soldiers -- incentives worth up to $20,000 that are largely used to attract recruits to high-demand positions.Today, that backlog has dropped to under 13,000 soldiers, with Guard leaders aiming to fully wipe the slate clean by October, according to Lt. Col. Carla Raisler, an Army National Guard spokesperson.
Military.com first reported the extent of the problem in October 2023 and found the delays became so pronounced that an estimated 4,000 service members completed their contracts -- typically four years -- without ever receiving the promised payments, drawing the ire of lawmakers and spurring the National Guard to quickly reach out to thousands of soldiers who it may have owed money to.
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Enlistment bonuses are supposed to be paid out in two installments within 30 days of two milestones: one after a soldier completes initial training and another halfway through their contract.
At the center of the issue is the Guard Incentive Management System, or GIMS, an online platform developed to administer bonus payments. The system, described by officials as cumbersome even by government standards, became a bottleneck after a series of technical failures.
In 2018, a fire at the Pentagon damaged key servers, halting bonus processing for 10 months. Another crash in 2021 caused nearly a year of further delays.
Meanwhile, state Guard offices across the states and territories were left to manage bonuses with minimal staffing and ad hoc systems -- some resorting to tracking bonuses with paper files and dry-erase boards. Top generals in some states reported to Military.com of staff being poorly manned and having no systemic means of tracking who was paid.
In a joint letter to National Guard leadership in 2023, Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.; Rep. Trent Kelly, R-Miss.; and Mike Waltz, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser who, at the time, was a Florida Republican congressman, wrote that "civilians are not required to navigate through an extensive, monthslong claims process just to get the payments they were promised doing their job."
After Military.com reported on the backlog, the Army National Guard reached out to thousands of soldiers whose service spanned the past 20 years and may have been owed bonuses. In some cases, the backlog may have consisted of soldiers who were ultimately ineligible, such as troops who left the service early.
In an effort to modernize its processes, the Army National Guard recently completed a pilot of a new platform, GIMS 2.0, in Texas. The updated system is designed to streamline the bonus payment process and reduce bureaucratic obstacles.
Training for Guard personnel across the country is expected to begin in the coming weeks, with a full rollout scheduled for June.
The original GIMS system was developed in response to a fraud scandal that engulfed the California National Guard between 2004 and 2012, during which millions of dollars in improper enlistment bonuses were issued. One of the state's incentive managers, Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for fraudulent bonus payments.
In the years that followed, the state sought to recover improperly issued bonuses through aggressive means, including tax liens and wage garnishments. Those efforts, targeting soldiers who had enlisted or reenlisted during a period when the military was under intense pressure to sustain troop levels for overseas conflicts, ultimately sparked public outrage.
After sustained media scrutiny and bipartisan pressure from Congress, the Pentagon halted the collection efforts and forgave much of the debt.
