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Veteran Notes

Every year, roughly 200,000 service members leave the uniform. The military has a sponsor system for every permanent change of station. It does not have one for the biggest move of a career: the move out. Onward Ops was built to close that gap.

The program lives at onwardops.org. It is free. It is built by veterans for veterans. And it treats the first year after separation the way a good gaining unit treats an inbound service member: someone on the other end already knows you are coming.

How it started

Onward Ops is the public face of the Expiration Term of Service Sponsorship Program, or ETS-SP. The organization began with an Army focus, as a public-private partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs, and registered as a veteran-owned nonprofit. Federal registration records list the ETS Sponsorship Program as founded on November 24, 2019, headquartered at 2600 Virginia Avenue NW, Suite B200, Washington, D.C.

The idea was simple and military. On a PCS, a sponsor answers the kitchen-table questions before you arrive: schools, housing, clinics, the layout of the town. Separation is a PCS into civilian life, and most people make it alone. ETS-SP set out to put a trained sponsor in the destination community and a single platform under the mountain of transition information that usually arrives too late.

On May 2, 2023, ETS-SP publicly launched Onward Ops as the all-service brand. Executive Director Brigadier General (retired) Mike Eastman put the shift in plain language: the program began with the Army, and once the tools and the outreach reached the other branches, it was time for a name and a model built for everyone in uniform. The launch announcement described Onward Ops as building on six years of work with people leaving the service.

Eastman came to the job after thirty years in the Army, including command of Train, Advise and Assist Command-South in Kandahar and duty as Deputy Commanding General of the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum. He holds advanced degrees from MIT and the Command and General Staff College, and he is married to a Navy veteran. In later interviews he has been direct about why he took the work. As a commander he sat in the back of a Transition Assistance Program classroom, watched people pass through, and concluded he had not done enough to fix what he was seeing. He has also said the harder truth out loud: it is not the veteran who is broken. It is the system that is supposed to prepare them for life after the military.

The Onward Ops Foundation, the program’s public-charity arm, was later stood up so donors could fund tools, resources, and mentorship directly. The foundation carries a memorial to Colonel Howie Cohen. Board members have included retired Lieutenant General Ken Tovo. John Hoffman has served as foundation director.

The mission

The mission statement is short: empower every transitioning service member with the support and information needed to achieve success as a veteran. Four years or forty, the exit is hard.

The vision is more specific. Onward Ops argues that the current handoff is broken because there is too much information, delivered too late, to produce a smooth landing. The fix they are building has two sides. The new veteran gets tools, information, and a guide at the moment they need them. The destination community knows the veteran and the family are coming, and can receive them on purpose instead of discovering them in crisis.

That is the service. Not a ball. Not a fun run. Eastman has described the culture in one line: they do not do balls, they do not do fun runs, they just do work.

The work is aimed at the twelve months between leaving the military and actually landing in civilian life. Support can start as early as a year before separation. Eligibility, per the program FAQ, covers all currently serving members and veterans separated within the last 90 days, including Reserve and National Guard, across the services.

Reported scale, as of a May 2026 account from the Special Operations Association of America: more than 17,450 transitioning service members and families enrolled, about 2,500 volunteer sponsors nationwide, and roughly 60 percent opt-in among service members leaving partnering installations. Partners named by the organization include Google, the VA, the PenFed Foundation, and USAA’s Face the Fight Foundation, with presence reported in all 50 states. The same SOAA report noted screening of departing members at installations including the Army’s III Armored Corps, which matters to anyone transitioning out of Fort Cavazos. Confirm the current local process with your transition office. Installation participation changes.

The organization has pointed to 13 peer-reviewed studies of the program. Reported findings include a 30 percent increase in feelings of connectedness to community and a 30 percent decrease in negative outcomes. SOAA also reported forthcoming findings of nearly an 80 percent reduction in suicidality among participants. Those figures come from the organization’s reported research, not from an independent audit on the public site. Worth knowing. Worth reading in the original studies before anyone treats them as a guarantee.

What the program actually does

Onward Ops is a sponsorship program with a dashboard under it, not a job board with a slogan.

You choose a route.

Solo is self-guided. The dashboard personalizes tasks from your enrollment form and gives you resources for career options, local services, and the adjustment itself. You can request a sponsor later if solo stops being enough.

Co-Op pairs you with a sponsor from the community you are headed to. Sponsors are veterans and civilians. The requirement is that they care about service members and have time to give. Every sponsor completes certification training sponsored by the VA, offered as cohort training, a daylong course, or an accelerated course. Once matched, the sponsor contacts you by email, text, or phone, shares what they know about the local area, and helps you turn goals into an action plan. If you do not yet know where you are going, the program can still start you and connect a local sponsor once you pick the community.

The platform breaks the transition into domains rather than dumping a binder on you. Public materials list employment, education, medical and disability, family and legal, housing, finances, networking, and career exploration. Inside that you get an action plan, career tracks, progress tracking, a timeline, and community events.

Enrollment also comes with a tool most transition briefs never mention: a free Gmail account in the form firstname.lastname@onwardops.org, plus Google Workspace access to Docs, Sheets, Meet, and Drive. The organization states that data sits on Google Cloud, that the environment is DoD-certified to Impact Level 4, that identifiable data is not sold, and that personal information is not shared without consent.

The tone of the model is proactive on purpose. Eastman has described the alternative as a system that arms people with benefits information too late, when they are not in the right frame of mind to receive it, and then leaves them to find help after something has already gone wrong. For most people the help is ordinary: a job, a clinic, a school, a lease. For the smaller share in real crisis, the reported model includes a path to no-cost care within 24 hours through the VA or a local provider, kept confidential if the member asks that the unit not be told.

How to use it

If you are still in, or inside 90 days of separation

1. Go to onwardops.org and enroll at signup.onwardops.org. The program is no cost.
2. Complete the enrollment form honestly. The dashboard uses it to personalize tasks.
3. Choose Solo or Co-Op. If you want a human on the other end, choose Co-Op. You can add a sponsor later if you start solo.
4. Use the Workspace account they issue. Put the action plan, the timeline, and your document packet in one place: DD-214 worksheet, medical records request, VA claim intent, housing leads, school contacts.
5. Work the domains in order of consequence, not comfort. Medical and disability handoff, housing, and income come before optimizing a LinkedIn banner.
6. If you are at a partnering installation, ask your transition office whether Onward Ops is already in the pre-separation brief. At Fort Hood, ask the transition office and the III Armored Corps channels directly. Do not assume a booth will find you.
7. Stay in the relationship for the year. The dangerous window is not the final formation. It is month three through month twelve, when the structure is gone and the new town is still a stranger.

If you are a veteran or a civilian who can sponsor

1. Start at the sponsor path on onwardops.org. Military service is not required. Time and follow-through are.
2. Complete the VA-sponsored certification. Cohort, daylong, or accelerated.
3. Expect to be matched to someone inbound to your community. Your job is local knowledge and a steady contact rhythm. You are not their therapist, their employer, or their chain of command.
4. Use the program’s regional contacts when you are stuck.

If you lead a unit, a family readiness group, or a local veteran organization

Brief Onward Ops in the year before separation, next to TAP, not instead of it. TAP remains the official conditions check for benefits and basic skills. Onward Ops is the sponsor and the personal plan. Destination communities can also plug in as community coordinators and national partners through the site.

What this is not

It is not a promise of a job, a rating, or a house. It is not a replacement for the VA, TAP, or a local veteran service organization. It is a coordination layer: one secure plan, one trained sponsor in the town you are actually moving to, and a twelve-month window treated like a deployment with a defined end state.

Eastman has said that a few people need a tremendous amount of help, and almost everybody needs some. That is the right standard. Transition is not a character test. It is a handoff. Handoffs work when someone on the far side is already waiting.

Enroll or sponsor at onwardops.org. Questions go to contact@onwardops.org. The foundation is at onwardops.foundation.

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