How to apply for CRSC by branch: the 2026 step-by-step guide

The short version: to apply for CRSC you (1) confirm you're eligible — military retired pay, a VA rating of at least 10%, and at least one disability your branch will accept as combat-related; (2) fill out DD Form 2860 completely and sign it; (3) attach copies of your DD-214, VA rating decision, and the records that tie the condition to combat; and (4) send the packet to your own branch's CRSC office — not the VA, and not DFAS. Your branch decides; DFAS then audits and pays. Below is the 2026 step-by-step, including the exact office for the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard.

Information verified through July 20, 2026

Combat-Related Special Compensation (CRSC) is tax-free money that gives back the retired pay the VA waiver quietly takes away — but only for the injuries your branch agrees are combat-related, and only if you ask. Unlike Concurrent Retirement and Disability Pay (CRDP), CRSC is never automatic. There is no box to check at retirement, no letter that arrives on its own. A retiree can be plainly eligible for years and never see a dollar simply because no one ever filed the form. That is the gap this guide closes.

First, confirm you're eligible

Per DFAS, four things must be true before CRSC can be paid:

• You are entitled to and/or receiving military retired pay. That includes 20-year (length-of-service) retirees, Chapter 61 medical retirees, TERA retirees, and Reserve/National Guard retirees drawing retired pay.
• You are rated at least 10% by the VA.
• You waive VA pay from your retired pay — the standard VA waiver nearly every disabled retiree already has in place.
• You file a CRSC application with your branch of service.

On top of that, at least one of your rated disabilities has to be combat-related. That is the piece that separates CRSC from ordinary service connection — and it is narrower. A condition can be fully service-connected by the VA and still not qualify for CRSC if it can't be tied to combat. Confirm the basics on our CRSC eligibility page before you invest hours in paperwork.

What "combat-related" actually means

Your branch will accept a disability as combat-related only if it was incurred as a direct result of one of four categories:

• Armed conflict — wounds or injuries from actual combat (the classic Purple Heart case).
• Hazardous duty — airborne/parachute duty, explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), flight duty, diving, and similar.
• An instrumentality of war — injuries caused by a weapon, combat vehicle, or other war materiel, including exposures such as Agent Orange and, after the 2026 Smoke v. Driscoll settlement, combat-zone burn pits.
• Conditions simulating war — live-fire ranges, field training exercises, combatives, and other realistic training.

If you hold a Purple Heart, the path is more direct: conditions attributable to the Purple Heart event are treated as combat-related, which is one reason documenting that award matters so much.

Step 1 — Complete DD Form 2860

DD Form 2860, "Claim for Combat-Related Special Compensation," is the application itself. Download the current PDF from the DoD forms library or your branch's site and open it in Adobe Acrobat or Reader so it fills and saves properly. Then:

• Fill in every section — name, address, Social Security number, date of birth, retired grade, contact information, and each disability you're claiming as combat-related. If you truly don't know an answer, write "don't know" or "DK" rather than leaving it blank.
• Name the category for each condition. For every disability, point to which of the four combat-related categories applies, and in the narrative explain briefly how the injury happened.
• Sign it. An unsigned DD Form 2860 will not be processed — one of the most common reasons a packet stalls before anyone even reads it.

Our DD Form 2860 walkthrough covers the blocks retirees get wrong most often.

Step 2 — Assemble the evidence

CRSC is won or lost on the nexus — the documented link between the disability and the combat-related event. Attach copies (never originals; they aren't returned) of the records that build that link.

The stronger and cleaner this evidence, the less the board has to chase — and the faster your claim moves. Our CRSC packet preparation page shows how we build the nexus for each condition.

Step 3 — Send it to YOUR branch (not the VA, not DFAS)

This is where retirees most often go wrong: CRSC is decided by your branch of service — not the VA that rated you, and not the DFAS that pays you. Send your completed DD Form 2860 and evidence to the CRSC office for the branch you retired from:

NOAA and U.S. Public Health Service commissioned-corps retirees apply through their own service's personnel office. Addresses and online options change over time, so confirm the current one on your branch's official "Apply for CRSC" page before you mail. Our branch guides keep the live links and details: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force, and Coast Guard CRSC.

What happens after you file

• Your branch's CRSC board reviews the packet and decides which conditions are combat-related, assigning a combat-related percentage. This is a separate determination from your VA rating.
• If the board approves, it sends the award to DFAS.
• DFAS audits your pay account, sets your monthly CRSC — the lesser of the VA-table value of your combat-related percentage or the retired pay you waived — and determines any retroactive amount. We break the math down in how CRSC is calculated.
• Your monthly CRSC is tax-free and paid alongside your retired pay.

Timelines vary by branch and by packet quality. A clean, well-documented claim moves faster than one the board has to send back for missing pieces.

The 2026 change that makes filing worth it now

For years, retirees were told CRSC back pay was capped at six years. That is no longer true. In Soto v. United States (June 12, 2025), a unanimous Supreme Court struck the Barring Act's six-year limit on retroactive CRSC. DoD briefly tried to re-impose application-date limits through guidance in late 2025, then rescinded those limits on May 14, 2026, and the Army began automatically re-reviewing roughly 7,000 existing awards to correct their effective dates.

Two things follow for anyone deciding whether to apply:

• The old "file within six years or lose your back pay" deadline is gone. Don't let a stale warning talk you out of filing. Retroactive CRSC can reach back to your statutory effective date — generally the latest of your retirement date, the date the VA service-connected the condition, or January 1, 2008 for medical retirees.
• The automatic review only fixes dates on awards that already exist. If you never applied, no board is looking at your file and DFAS has nothing to audit. Every month without an award is tax-free money you don't recover by waiting.

What this means for military retirees

CRSC rewards the retiree who files — completely, correctly, and to the right office. The benefit is generous, and for Chapter 61 medical retirees who usually can't receive CRDP, it isn't a tax swap — it's new money. But no part of the system reaches out to start it for you. The Army's automatic review, welcome as it is, is not an application; it's a correction to claims already in the system. The action item hasn't changed: file a strong packet with your branch.

What you should do now

• Confirm the basics — retired pay, a VA rating of 10% or more, and at least one condition you can tie to a combat-related category. Start on our eligibility page.
• Estimate what's at stake with our free CRSC calculator before you invest hours in paperwork.
• Download DD Form 2860 and start the narrative for each condition while the details are fresh.
• Pull your evidence — DD-214, VA rating decision, medical records, and award citations.
• Send the packet to your branch's CRSC office — not the VA, and not DFAS.
• If a condition's category is unclear, or a prior claim was denied, get experienced eyes on it before you file. A free 15-minute review costs nothing and can be the difference between an approval and a rejection you have to appeal.

Frequently asked questions

The bottom line

CRSC won't find you. The retirees who collect it are the ones who confirmed eligibility, proved combat-relatedness on DD Form 2860, and sent a clean packet to the right branch office. Do those three things — especially now that Soto has removed the six-year cap — and you put yourself in position for both a tax-free monthly check and the back pay that comes with it.