The Pentagon is asking the services to come up with plans that would limit the number of moves that military families make every few years, officials announced.
The Department of Defense is asking the military services to determine which permanent changes of station are lower priority and would help families “seeking greater geographic stability” and provide “efficiencies” for cost cutting, according to a memo released Wednesday by Tim Dill, who is performing the duties of the deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness.
Dill told reporters Wednesday that the policy changes are directed at both improving military families’ quality of life and “being efficient with taxpayer dollars.”
“The most important thing in this policy is that we’re taking care of service members and their families. If we thought it’d be detrimental to them, we wouldn’t even pursue it,” he said, adding that they want to make sure they’re also “deliberate” with spending taxpayer dollars.
Joining the military comes with the expectation that service members and their families will need to pick up their lives and move between states or even countries every few years. Military family advocates have long asked for a change, citing challenges like finding new child care, the disruption caused by having kids change schools, or forcing spouses to find new jobs, on top of needing to find a new home.
“While these permanent change of station (PCS) moves support mission requirements, the frequency can reduce quality of life for service members and their families, harm spousal employment, and disrupt functional communities, unit cohesion, and long-term talent management,” the memo states.
In the Blue Star Families 2024 survey, a third of active duty service members and spouses cited PCS moves as one of their top issues with military life.
The memo directs the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Reserve, and National Guard to submit plans that consider how reducing the number of PCS moves might impact the careers of officers and noncommissioned officers, since they would be able to live, and work, in one place longer. The memo calls for recommendations that would allow NCOs to “to specialize in lieu of gaining generalized experience.”
Dill told reporters that the changes could mean fewer PCS moves for both single service members and those with families.
“It impacts all of them when they move. There are some impacts that are additional for a family,” he said. “For those with families, it’s a huge factor when they’re making a retention decision. If their family is enjoying military service and wants to stay, if their family is not supported, if the service member is staying in service, that’s a very high predictor of whether or not [the] service member will decide to stay.”
Each year, the department spends nearly $5 billion on PCS moves, according to the memo. In order to reduce costs, each of the branches are directed to develop plans to curtail PCS “discretionary move” budgets with proposed percentage cuts for travel within the U.S., overseas, and to training sites.
Dill said the Defense Department estimates that about 80% of PCS moves are “in the discretionary category” and 20% are mandatory. Officials did not immediately respond to requests following the press briefing for examples of discretionary PCS moves.
The memo calls for the plans to account for PCS budget cuts over the next few years that are based on the fiscal year 2026 budget and account for inflation. The cuts should equate to 10% in fiscal year 2027, 30% in fiscal year 2028, 40% in fiscal year 2029, and 50% in fiscal year 2030, according to the memo.
While the memo lays out prescriptive cuts by fiscal year, Dill said they’re leaving it to the services to tell the Pentagon what cuts are actually doable without negatively impacting troops.
“We want them to come back and tell us if that seems like the right number for them because again, on top of being efficient from [a] fiscal perspective, the other goal of this policy, as a people-driven policy, is to ensure that this works well for service members and their families,” he said.
At the same time, the memo says that the services should weigh whether any proposals would lead to increased costs for the military, like temporary lodging reimbursements or dislocation allowances for moving costs.
For military families, beyond the stress of moving, finding new schools, new housing, and employment for spouses, and then settling into a new community — all of which can place significant stress on a family — there are also underlying costs that come with a move. The Military Family Advisory Network recommends that families attempt to save $10,000 for each move to account for multiple security deposit and rent payments, furniture and wardrobe changes, depending on how far afield the move is, among other costs. Even so, the organization acknowledged that the recommended savings are not realistic for most.
In the Blue Star 2024 survey, more than half of active duty family respondents who had out-of-pocket expenses said it would take a year to return to their “pre-location financial state.”
“When relocating every 18-36 months, military families need to begin preparing for the next relocation almost as soon as they arrive in their new community, something that is difficult to do given the amount of time it takes to regain financial footing from the most recent PCS,” according to the survey report.
The issue of moving every 18 to 36 months is one of the top sources of stress for military spouses because of the impacts on their careers and child care.
In the Defense Department’s 2024 active-duty spouse survey released last week, one in three spouses said they’d prefer their family separate from the military, with one of the top reasons for dissatisfaction being the frequent moves. The survey found that spouses who moved within the last year and had children younger than six were more likely to be unemployed.
The services are required to submit their official plans by Sept. 25, only five days before the end of the 2025 fiscal year.
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