Deploy Early and Often

It's official. You will deploy and you will deploy more often. Though the Army will be pulling out of Afghanistan and Iraq, we will still be there and probably in larger numbers than during "active combat operations." It used to be that chaplains were vulnerable to deploy every 18 months for 4 months at a time. That was the under the old Air Expeditionary Forces model, or AEF. Now we use "blocks and bands." See picture below.

Chaplains used to be in what we now call Band "A." You were assigned to and AEF and then you were vulnerable to deploy each time your AEF cycle came up. Each job in the Air Force had a different dwell rate which meant that depending on your job you might go every 6 months for 6 months or ever 24 months for 4 months. The lag between deployments was called "dwell time" and there was not a good system for tracking and planning this. Enter the bands and blocks. For your purposes as  a future chaplain we are in Band "C" and our dwell time is 6 months deployed and 18 months on station before you are vulnerable to deploy again for 6 months. We still deploy less than Navy and Army chaplains although we are deploying now, more than ever. This needs to be a part of your prayers and consideration as you explore your call to the chaplaincy.