U.S. Air Force to deny early retirement benefits to some transgender service members : NPR

Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, attends an event to mark the National Purple Heart Day in the east room of the White House on August 7, 2025, in Washington.

Mark Schiefelbein / AP

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Mark Schiefelbein / AP

Washington – The US Air Force said Thursday that it would refuse all the transgender soldiers who served between 15 and 18 years old the possibility of retiring early and would rather separate them without retirement services. An Air Force sergeant said he was “betrayed and devastated” by the move.

This decision means that transgender soldiers will now face the choice of taking a lump sum payment offered to junior troops or to be withdrawn from the service.

An Air Force spokesman told the Associated Press that “although the soldiers with 15 to 18 years of honorable service have been authorized to ask for an exception to politics, none of the exceptions to politics has been approved”. A dozen members of the service had been “prematurely informed” that they could retire before this decision was canceled, according to the spokesman who spoke under the cover of anonymity to discuss the internal policy of the Air Force.

A memo published on Monday announcing the new policy, which was examined by the AP, said that the choice to deny retirement services was made “after having carefully examined individual requests”.

All Air Force transgender members are separated from the service as part of the Trump administration policies.

The separation process has struck certain bumps

This decision comes after the Pentagon was authorized in early May by the Supreme Court to move forward with the ban on all the transgender troops which are used in the army. A few days later, the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegsethann was a policy which would currently offer transgender troops the possibility of volunteering to leave and take a large payment of single separation or be partially separated on the later date.

A Pentagon official told journalists in May that they considered politics to be dealing “anyone affected by him with dignity and respect”.

However, at the end of July, the transgender troops told Military.com that they found the entire separation process, which included the return of their service files to their birth, “dehumanizing” or “open cruelty”.

Shannon Leary, a lawyer who represents LGBTQ + people in employment discrimination cases, says that she expects the proceedings to dispute the decision on Thursday. “It seems quite arbitrary on her face and cruel,” she said. “These soldiers have devoted their lives to the service of our country.”

Normally Leary said that when early retirement is offered in the army, it is available for all members who have served more than 15 years. She said she expects other service branches to follow the Air Force path.

A member of the Air Force service says he is “devastated”

Logan Ireland, a US Air Force chief sergeant who has 15 years of service, including a deployment in Afghanistan, is one of the airmen affected by politics. “I feel betrayed and devastated by the news,” he said.

Ireland said that he was told that his retirement was refused Wednesday when his chain of command, “with tears in the eyes,” said the news.

The officials said that on December 9, 2024, 4,240 soldiers had diagnosed a “gender dysphoria” in active service, in the national guard and in reserve. Pentagon officials decided to use the state and its diagnosis as the main means of identifying the TRANS troops.

However, the two are not an exact correspondence – not all transgender people have the condition. Consequently, there is an understanding that the real number of transgender people in the 2 million soldiers of the military can be higher.

Under the last policy, the troops in active service had until June 6 to identify themselves voluntarily and to receive a payment while the troops of the National Guard and the reserve had until July 7. Pentagon officials previously declared to journalists that they planned to rely on existing annual commanders and medical projections to find transgender soldiers who do not manifest themselves.