The U.S. Government Accountability Office on Friday released a report recommending that the Navy and Marine Corps improve their tracking of humanitarian reassignments and safety transfers. A Senate report accompanying a bill for the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act directed the agency to review military policies for these relocations.
Between 260,000 and 280,000 service members and their families relocate each year for assignments at new duty stations, according to the GAO. The Department of Defense allows exceptions to the standard two-to-four-year schedule for special circumstances. Humanitarian reassignments are granted based on factors like a family emergency or hardship, while safety transfers are used when service members or dependents face threats of bodily harm or death and local authorities cannot ensure their safety.
From fiscal year 2022 through 2025, over 15,000 service members requested humanitarian reassignments, according to available data. The Army and Marine Corps approved at least 95 percent of these requests each year. Approval rates for the Navy ranged from 74 to 84 percent, and the Air Force approved 66 to 83 percent. Nearly 400 service members requested safety transfers during the same period, with an 87 percent approval rate across the military branches.
The GAO found that the branches track these requests differently. The Army and Air Force centrally track humanitarian reassignments, and the Army tracks safety transfers. Air Force officials said the branch plans to centrally track safety transfers by September 2026.
However, the Navy only tracks humanitarian reassignments for enlisted personnel in a spreadsheet and does not centrally track officer requests. Navy officials suggested officer requests are rare but lacked documentation to support that, the report said. The Marine Corps does not clearly define what qualifies as a safety relocation or track the associated data, though officials from the Marine Corps said creating a tracking process would not be hard.
Without centralized tracking, the GAO said the Navy and Marine Corps lack a complete view of how many members ask for these transfers. Central data would help the military branches monitor trends, assess processing times, and address program challenges, according to the report. The GAO recommended that the Navy develop a process to track officer requests and that the Marine Corps define and track safety relocations, which the Department of Defense accepted.