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Deployment

The Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS) data for Aviators (both air crew and ground crew) contains 1,624,845 records intended to describe service members' times of deployment. The data collection for deployments began during the Gulf War in 1990, and includes deployment time (days from beginning of enlistment to beginning and end of deployment) and country of deployment (not always available).

A service member's deployment may come in from a single deployment record, or multiple records pertaining to the same deployment. It is not uncommon for one record to end and a new deployment record to start on the following day. A new deployment record that begins the day after the previous one ends typically involves a change in the deployment country, though not always.

In addition to the deployment rosters, starting in 1999 service members filled out pre-deployment and post-deployment physical and mental health assessments. The pre-deployment forms assess readiness to deploy, while the post-deployment assessments track physical health, hazardous exposures, lingering symptoms, mental well-being, and life stressors. When able, a link has been provided between the assessment records and service member deployment records.

For more information on Deployment Assessment Forms please visit the Deployment Assessment page.

Summary

  • 1,624,830 Deployment records
  • 436,579 service members (48.8%) have at least 1 deployment
  • The average deployment record length is approximately 30 days, but they range from single-day to multiple year-long deployment records
  • Approximately 45% of all records have country of deployment available
  • Data collection began in 1990 and continued through 2023

Variables

  • Start Day of Deployment
  • End Day of Deployment
  • Deployment Location (country)
  • Deployment Assessment Form Links
A histogram showing the number of deployments by year and military service branch. The bars show most deployments occurring within the air force, with navy being the second most common, and then the marines. Deployments rosters begin in 1990 with approximately 40,000 records, and then reduce to a lower amount in the 1990s. In the 2002 over 70,000 deployments occurred, with the number generally increasing every year, with a peak of over 100,000 deployments in 2012 before declining steadily to approximately 15,000 in 2022, the last year of data collection for the deployment rosters in the MACS cohort