Reply #2: Non-Deployed. You are NOT away from your "home base."

[MADem]

Say you are assigned to Installation X. You get PCS orders there, for two or three years. During that two or three years, you are shlepped over to Eye-Rack a time or two. During those times, you are DEPLOYED.

If you are Navy, or USMC assigned to a vessel, you are NOT deployed when your vessel is tied up to the pier, or operating in the general area of your HOMEPORT (farting around doing shakedowns to test readiness, or doing exercises, for a day or a week, for example). If you are steaming around in circles in the Gulf, or off to visit foreign ports in the Med, the Western Pacific, or anywhere, then you're 'deployed.' If you're on a sub, when you go out for months at a time, you're 'deployed.' If you're with an aviation unit, and your people and aircraft pack up and go work somewhere other than where your orders say you are homeported, you are deployed.

People who are wounded and hospitalized are NOT deployed, too. They're assigned to the hospital if they're gonna be there for a long time. Otherwise, they're TAD from their unit, but they, too, are not "deployed."

The word has an OPERATIONAL connotation. You are 'deployed' when you are away from where your PCS orders assigned you, AND you are performing duty in support of the national defense. Off to a class on how to be a Legal Officer? You are not deployed. Part of the Air Force Bowling Team going to the Armed Forces Championships at the Bowling Alley in Okinawa? NOT deployed. Clearing mines in East Jesus? Deployed. Off to a hellish hot nation to do paperwork for military people who are assigned to humanitarian work in Africa? DEPLOYED. A chaplain sent to Bosnia? Deployed. A doctor sent to Iraq? Deployed. A doctor assigned to Rota, Spain, at the hospital, for a three year tour with his family? NOT deployed.

Probably too much info. If you give me a specific situation, I can give you a specific answer.