Stop-Loss

Stop-loss is a Department of Defense (DOD) procedure that kept service members on involuntary active duty beyond their otherwise scheduled date of separation. It ended on March 1, 2011.

Stop-loss was first used during the Persian Gulf War of 1990–1991 and was invoked during the various peacekeeping and combat operations in the Balkans throughout the 1990s. However, it has only been applied to large numbers of military personnel over a long period of time since September 11, 2001. All four Department of Defense military services used stop-loss in the initial stages of post-9/11 military operations, but the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force all ended their stop-loss programs by June 2003. The U.S. Army, on the other hand, has used stop-loss on a massive basis ...