Sorry for the indelicate question, but I couldn’t figure it out from the pay charts I found. Is it far and away from their brethren in the regular forces? I was thinking of American forces (all branches), but if others want to pipe up for comparison purposes, feel free to do so.
Thanks,
Rob
What kind of money do SF operators make?
Here ya go: SF operators
All Service Members get paid based upon rank. All Service Members of the same rank get paid the same regardless of their job. Thus, a Special Forces Soldier E-7 will get paid the same as an E-7 Navy Seal, or an SP in the Air Force. Hell or even a cook E-7 gets the same pay. Granted, SF Soldiers will tend to deploy more, and there are some pay incentives for that, and must be on Active Airborne status, and that pays an extra $225 a month, but that pay is the same for everyone in the Military.
SSG Schwartz
The short answer (for the US military) is that yes, they are paid more than a regular soldier with similar time in service. The reasons for this include faster promotions, more time deployed (equals more money earned tax free, and more hazard pays), guaranteed jump pay, etc. In addition up until recently, (and maybe still, despite cuts to regular army bonuses) enlisted members of the Army SF community where offered bonuses of 80,000 - 100,000 dollars to reenlist, which is more than the army will have paid me for 4 years as a regular soldier.
Pay for the a member of the US Armed Forces is determined by a number of factors:
[ul][li]Pay Grade.[/li][li]Time in Grade.[/li][li]Time in Service.[/li][li]Previous Enlisted Service (for certain Commissioned Officers).[/li][li]Special Duty Pay.[/li][li]Hazardous Duty Pay.[/li][li]Presence in a Tax Exemption Zone.[/li][li]Station Allowances (Single Cost of Living Allowance/Cost of Living Allowance With Dependents, Housing Allowanes).[/li][li]Bonus Pay.[/ul][/li]Those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. As each person’s situation is different, the pay is usually different from the Servicemember next to them.
A key point to remember is that retirement pay is based on Base Pay (which is computed based on the first four items in the list above).