The obvious downside of the bonus approach, aside from it being expensive, is that it could radically skew the pay structure of the force. Depending on how many years the bonus is spread out over, you could have private E-1s making more money than bird colonels.

In private industry and as a mid-level manager for one of those contractors receiving an, ahem, princely wage (even though it never did allow me to be able to afford to buy a house in NOVA), albeit not as a linguist, I would just note that I always had people working for me that made more than I did, as did the folks I reported to. You pay for talent, and not all talent has an interest in moving up the ladder, being responsible for other people, or doing the business development tasks necessary to be a manager in that industry. If this is a problem with the force pay structure, maybe it is the apparent requirements of a strictly hierarchical force pay structure that is the problem.

(Hey.... Someone hadda say it)

An instance is my nephew-by-marriage (i.e., the son of my brother's wife, through her first marriage). The young man, now in the US Army in Iraq, holds both American and Moroccan citizenship. He was raised in Morocco and is very much a native speaker of Arabic.

I'm sure both he and his parents and step-father are delighted that this little windfall is heading in his direction. I suspect his sister may be rethinking her career choices about now, too!

American employers, generally, not just the military prefer native speakers of their target languages even if their command of English is less over native speakers of English who've studied the target language.