On 1 August, DoD issued an update to its “deploy or get out policy” announced in February of this year. Key points of the updated policy are as follows:
– All service members are expected to be deployable to ensure our military is ready to fight today and in the future. As the secretary of defense said, “every action will be designed to ensure our military is ready to fight today and in the future.”
– DoD’s objective is to reduce the number of non-deployable service members, which improves personnel readiness and lethality across the joint force.
– The policy on retention is a matter of treating every service member fairly. Those that can deploy take additional deployments for those that cannot deploy.
– The retention instruction is a standardized, department-wide policy that establishes guidance for retaining non-deployable service members.
– While pregnant and postpartum service members are the only group automatically exempt, special consideration will be given to combat wounded non-deployable service members whose reason for non-deployability is a direct result of their combat wounds. The Secretaries of Military Departments will have the authority to retain combat-wounded service members.
You can view the updated policy in its entirety by clicking here.