What to download before you turn in your CAC

Your CAC is shut off in DEERS once it's collected at check-out, and every system that needed it closes to you. Almost everything behind it can be requested again later, but only through new accounts and a wait.

If you're getting out in the next few months, your CAC is probably how you sign in to your records, your mail and many of the military's websites. That ends at check-out. Your command collects the card as part of checking you out, its status is ended in DEERS and RAPIDS, and the certificates on it, including any for signing and encrypting email, are revoked.

Very little is lost for good. Your personnel file and your health record are kept, and veterans can request copies of both later. But later means new sign-ins, request forms and waiting: the National Archives says records usually take up to six months to reach its records center, though newer files are stored electronically at the services.

Below is what to set up and download while the card still works, where it lives for your branch, and how to get it back if the card is already gone.

What stops working when the card goes

The rule is the same in every branch. ID cards are taken back when the holder is no longer affiliated with DoD, and a CAC is taken back as part of your unit's or command's normal check-out. Its status is then ended in DEERS and RAPIDS. So the day to plan around is your check-out, not your separation date. If you're taking terminal leave, you keep active-duty benefits while you're on it, so ask your unit whether your check-out, and the CAC turn-in, comes before it starts.

Some people keep a different card, a DoD ID card applied for on DD Form 1172-2 at a RAPIDS office. VA says you may be eligible if you're retired, or in the Guard, the Reserves or the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), which VA's page calls "Inactive." Military OneSource's list is longer. It says those eligible for the Next Generation Uniformed Services ID card include certain service members, retirees, veterans and affiliated personnel, such as:

• Members of the Individual Ready Reserves and Inactive National Guard
• Non-common access card-eligible civilian noncombatant personnel deployed in conjunction with military operations overseas
• Retired members entitled to retired pay
• Members of the Temporary Disability Retired List
• Members of the Permanent Disability Retired List
• Retired members of the reserves and National Guard
• Medal of Honor recipients
• Veterans with a 100% disability rating (DoD's manual adds: honorably discharged)
• Former members in receipt of retired pay
• Transitional health care members
• Full-time paid United Service Organizations personnel when living abroad
• United Seaman's Service personnel living abroad
• Officers and crews of Military Sealift Command vessels deployed to foreign countries

The page adds that eligibility may vary based on individual circumstances. Transitional health care is the law's name for TAMP, which gives some separating members 180 days of health care after regular TRICARE ends.

Family members whose eligibility ends with your separation return their ID cards to any office that issues military IDs. Military OneSource's family list includes dependents of transitional health care members and of veterans with a 100% disability rating, who DoD's manual says must be honorably discharged.

The sign-ins that replace your CAC

After the card, you'll need two accounts: one for DoD's sites and one for VA's. Neither replaces the other.

myAuth is DoD's login, created by the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC). TRICARE's September 17, 2026 page says it is replacing DS Logon. Its table lists milConnect, ID Card Office Online, the TRICARE East, West, Overseas, For Life and pharmacy portals, and dental portals as migrated. MHS GENESIS is listed as still to move. Use the portal's sign-in; this dated table does not establish its live status.

Military OneSource says DS Logon "has been retired and replaced with myAuth" for its own sign-in, as of January 19, 2026. The same page says DMDC is moving to myAuth in phases, and every DoD site that uses DS Logon will move in time. To get myAuth, you must be affiliated with DoD or VA and listed in DEERS in an eligible role. Veterans are one. So are service members, retirees, family members over 18, and DoD civilians and contractors.

Login.gov or ID.me is what VA uses. VA removed DS Logon from VA.gov on November 18, 2025, and the My HealtheVet user ID on March 5, 2025. Either account needs a unique personal email that only you use, multifactor authentication, and an accepted ID, such as a valid driver's license, state ID or passport. Login.gov can verify you online or at a participating post office. ID.me can verify you online by video call or in person at participating UPS Store locations.

ID.me has one more job. The National Archives' online request system, eVetRecs, requires ID.me to verify who you are. If you set up only Login.gov for VA, you'll need an ID.me account too, or a paper SF 180, to request records from the Archives.

Set up and test each account before you turn in your card. DMDC says a myAuth username and password lets you continue using services after separation without a CAC. Use a personal email address you will keep. If you are already out, follow myAuth’s current registration instructions or contact its help desk.

Use a personal email for every one of these, not your .mil address. Login.gov's own guidance puts it plainly: if you leave your job, you lose that address, and proving who you are gets much harder if you ever need to reset your password. If you lose the email and forget the password, Login.gov says you'll have to open a new account with a different email and verify your identity again.

Your personnel file, while the card still works

Your official military personnel file, or OMPF, holds most of what you'll want later for job applications, school and VA. DMDC sorts it into four groups:

• Service computation: your DD-214 or DD-215, orders and endorsements, and related service documents
• Performance: evaluations, fitness reports or effectiveness reports, plus commendatory items such as award documents, and derogatory items
• Professional history: promotions, education, training and your list of assignments
• Administrative: including medical, physical and exam findings

Download the whole file, not just a few documents. Every request route after you leave sends you copies of what's in your OMPF, so anything that never made it into the file won't come back that way. If you have certificates or letters that exist only on paper or in your unit's files, get your own copies now.

How you download depends on your branch.

Navy. MyNavy HR says active-duty Sailors and drilling Reservists use OMPF - My Record to view and get copies of their record. After you separate, the same page says former members who separated after 1995 mail or fax a written request with their name, signature, rank, SSN and mailing address, or view the record online through milConnect.

Coast Guard. The Coast Guard's records page says current active and reserve members, and anyone who separated on or after October 1, 2006, can get their electronic record through Coast Guard iPERMS or milConnect. That page still names DS Logon as the sign-in, but TRICARE's September 17, 2026 update says milConnect now uses myAuth.

Army. HRC lists iPERMS for your record documents and IPPS-A for your Soldier Talent Profile. Save both while you have access and ask your personnel office about corrections.

Marine Corps. The records office identifies MOL’s OMPF Viewer and Online Records Management Application (ORMA). Review and save your file, then use that office’s current correction instructions.

Air Force and Space Force. Ask your servicing personnel office to help you download your complete personnel file and confirm which access continues after separation. AFPC identifies the servicing Military Personnel Section as the starting point for current-member records help; this guide does not promise that a particular portal will remain available. For former members, follow the service and National Archives records-location guidance.

Your health records

TRICARE's advice is direct: before you retire or separate, request paper copies of your medical record and your family members' records. It also says that when you leave, DoD sends "some information" to VA, which isn't the same as everything.

Military OneSource's separation checklist says your final medical and dental exams come no later than 90 days before you separate. DoD's instruction on the separation exam is narrower. Its 90-day point is for members filing a VA claim, who do the exam with VA when possible. Otherwise, it places the exam immediately before separation. Either way, that appointment is a good time to ask for copies.

Where you get them depends on where you were seen. If your military hospital or clinic uses MHS GENESIS, sign in to the MHS GENESIS Patient Portal, open the Health Records tab and choose the records you want. Prescriptions are under the More tab, then Medications. If the facility isn't on MHS GENESIS, ask its records management office. For care from civilian doctors, including overseas, ask each provider. You may have to pay a fee for copying or mailing. But TRICARE says active-duty members aren't responsible for fees charged for copying records of authorized care. Use the sign-in the GENESIS portal offers; TRICARE's dated migration table still lists it as due to move to myAuth.

What VA gets without you

In most cases you don't have to send VA your service treatment record yourself. DoD's health record instruction, DoDI 6040.45, has each DoD service compile the record into an archival copy and, for active-duty members, make it available to VA on timelines counted from the separation date. Paper records are digitized and uploaded within 45 business days after you separate. A DD Form 2963, "Service Treatment Record (STR) Certification," is the last document added when the record is archived.

Since January 1, 2014, DoD has uploaded service treatment records to HAIMS instead of mailing paper records to VA. Keep your own copies too: VA’s online pre-discharge claim process obtains your service treatment records, but VA may ask you for evidence it cannot obtain.

Your own copy still matters. If you file a pre-discharge claim, known as Benefits Delivery at Discharge (BDD), any way other than online, VA says you'll need to send a copy of your service treatment records with it. BDD claims are filed 180 to 90 days before you leave. With fewer than 90 days left, you can file a standard claim instead.

Keep the copies yourself, on paper as TRICARE suggests or on a device or drive you keep. Don't upload them anywhere except an official system that asks for them for its own purpose.

Your .mil email

No DoD or service source gives a grace period, so plan as if the account ends when you out-process.

Any email signing or encryption certificates on your CAC are revoked along with the card.

Before final out-processing, change the email on every account that uses your .mil address. That means banks, insurance, schools and job sites, plus the government accounts above. Update the email, phone and address DoD holds for you through milConnect's Update DEERS page. Send your contacts your personal address, and save any messages or files you'll need.

ID cards, base access and shopping

If you separate without retiring, getting on base becomes the exception. The current rules are in a fact sheet dated February 2026. They let on veterans with a service-connected disability, Purple Heart recipients, former prisoners of war and approved primary family caregivers. Veterans enrolled in VA health care can also get on for a VA or military medical appointment on that installation.

If you qualify, bring a VHIC or a REAL ID-compliant license or ID. Enroll at the visitor center on your first visit to each installation. You'll get an on-the-spot criminal record and terrorism check, and enrollment lasts up to one year. To buy at the commissary, exchange or MWR, your VHIC has to show your eligibility status, such as Purple Heart, former POW or service-connected disability. Without a VHIC, bring a VA service-connected disability letter or VA Form H623A with a REAL ID. Guests have to stop at the visitor center themselves.

Every veteran with an honorable discharge can still shop the online exchanges, but not the stores, and not for uniforms, alcohol or tobacco. That has been open since November 11, 2017.

VA offers two cards, and neither replaces your CAC. The Veteran ID Card is for veterans with an honorable or general discharge. It's a photo ID for discounts, and VA says it can't be used to get on a base or into a commissary or exchange. The Veteran Health Identification Card, or VHIC, requires enrollment in VA health care. You request it online or at a VA medical center, and it arrives in 7 to 14 days in the U.S. The online request goes through AccessVA, which accepts a CAC as well as Login.gov or ID.me. To enroll in VA health care, call 877-222-8387.

If you've already turned in your CAC

You haven't lost your records. Veterans can use every route below.

Start with VA.gov's records page. Its link "Request your military records (DD214)" sends you to milConnect if you were discharged after your branch's date below, or to the National Archives, online through eVetRecs, which needs ID.me, or on a paper SF 180.

Then milConnect. Sign in with myAuth, or create a myAuth account if you don't have one; veterans listed in DEERS are among those eligible. Then choose Correspondence/Documentation, then Defense Personnel Records Information (DPRIS), then the Request Personnel File tab. Select "Request my Personnel File," pick the document groups you want, and select "Create and Send Request." When the response arrives, download it within 10 days, because milConnect deletes it after that. VA says this route covers anyone discharged after these dates: Army, October 1, 2002; Navy, January 1, 1995; Marine Corps, January 1, 1999; Air Force, October 1, 2004.

Or the National Archives. Request online through eVetRecs, which needs ID.me, or send an SF 180 by mail, or by fax to 314-801-9195. Basic personnel and health record copies are generally free for veterans. The Archives' records center holds the files of people who are fully discharged with no remaining reserve commitment, or retired, and records usually reach it within six months. Newer files are stored electronically at the service, and the Archives still handles those requests. If you still have a reserve commitment, such as time in the IRR, start with milConnect.

Two branches have their own routes too. MyNavy HR says Navy veterans who separated after 1995 can mail or fax a written request. The Coast Guard's records page says veterans who separated on or after October 1, 2006, can use Coast Guard iPERMS or milConnect. VA's page, though, tells Coast Guard members who served from 2008 to the present to contact their personnel command.

For health records, sign in to the MHS GENESIS Patient Portal using its current sign-in option, or ask the facility's records management office. And while you sort it out, Military OneSource stays open to you and your family until 365 days after an honorable discharge. Its accounts close after 395 days without use.

One example, start to finish

Example (fictional) Petty Officer First Class Renee Castillo is a Navy hospital corpsman leaving after 10 years, with no reserve time left to serve. Her separation date is Wednesday, March 31, 2027. She isn't taking terminal leave, and her command has set her check-out, where her CAC is collected, for Friday, March 26. Her husband, Mark, is covered by TRICARE as her dependent.

She has her final exams on December 8, 2026. That week she creates a myAuth account with her personal email, uses the sign-in offered by the MHS GENESIS Patient Portal, and saves her records from the Health Records tab. She also requests paper copies of her own and Mark's records, as TRICARE advises.

In January she sets up Login.gov with the same personal email and verifies her identity at a participating post office. She opens an ID.me account too, so she can use eVetRecs later if she needs it. In milConnect, she changes the email on her DEERS record from her .mil address to her personal one.

In February she opens OMPF - My Record and downloads her whole file: evaluations, award documents, training and education entries, orders. Through March she moves her bank, school and job-site logins off her .mil address, sends her contacts her new one, and saves the messages she wants to keep.

In June her laptop fails, taking the only digital copy of her evaluations with it, just as a job application asks for them. She signs in to milConnect with myAuth, requests the Performance group through DPRIS, and downloads the response the day it arrives, well inside the 10 days before it's deleted.

This is general information, not legal or claims advice, and it doesn't yet cover every branch's own records system. Before you separate, ask your installation personnel office how your branch's system works after you leave. For sign-in problems, call VA.gov at 866-279-3677 (TTY 711), or DMDC, which created myAuth, at 800-368-3665. Military OneSource stays open to you and your family until 365 days after an honorable discharge.