Armed Forces Pension Scheme: AFPS 75, 05 & 15 explained

The thing nobody tells armed forces personnel about their pension is that they don’t pay anything for it. Not five percent like a civil servant. Not ten percent like a teacher. Not thirteen percent like a police officer. Zero. The Ministry of Defence covers the entire cost, and the value of the pension is built into the way pay is set. That’s the deal, and it’s been the deal in some form since Charles II founded the Royal Hospital Chelsea in 1682.

That single fact, non-contributory, is unique to the armed forces among major UK public service pensions, and it changes how you should think about everything else in this guide. Hold the figure in mind: 0%.

Beyond the contribution rate, things get complicated. There are three armed forces pension schemes, AFPS 75, AFPS 05 and AFPS 15, and most current and recently-retired members will have benefits in two or three of them at once. Layer in the Early Departure Payment system, the McCloud remedy that’s still rolling out years late, and the alphabet soup of acronyms (IP, EDP, RSS, JPAC, JSP), and it’s not surprising that a lot of members never quite work out what they’ve got. The aim here is to fix that, in plain English, for the 2026/27 tax year.

What the Armed Forces Pension Scheme actually is

It’s a defined benefit occupational pension. That means you’re promised a known income in retirement, calculated using your service and your pay, rather than a pot of money whose value depends on investment performance. Defined benefit schemes have become rare in the private sector but remain the standard for UK public service workers.

The AFPS is unfunded and pay-as-you-go. There isn’t a fund of money sitting somewhere being invested on your behalf. Pensions in payment today are paid from current taxation. Employer contributions, paid by the MoD, are nominal in the sense that they’re more about accounting than building up an asset base. The Treasury stands behind the promise.

It’s administered by Defence Business Services (DBS), the part of the MoD that handles pensions and compensation, working under the Veterans UK brand for member-facing services. The Joint Personnel Administration Centre (JPAC) at Kentigern House in Glasgow is the contact point for forecasts, applications and queries. The Secretary of State for Defence is the Scheme Manager, advised by a Pension Board and a Scheme Advisory Board. Detailed scheme rules are published on gov.uk.

What members tend not to realise: the scheme rules are scattered across several different documents (JSP 854 for AFPS 75, JSP 905 for AFPS 15, the AFPS 05 Order for the middle scheme), and benefits at retirement may draw on more than one of them. Working out what you’ll actually get often means combining figures from two or three calculations.

Which scheme are you actually in?

That depends entirely on when you joined.

If you enlisted or were commissioned before 6 April 2005, you originally joined AFPS 75. Anyone who didn’t take the optional 2006 transfer offer to AFPS 05, and who was within ten years of normal retirement age on 1 April 2012, kept their AFPS 75 transitional protection until the McCloud remedy was implemented. Everyone else moved to AFPS 15 on 1 April 2015. Following the remedy, the period from 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022 has been rolled back to AFPS 75 with a choice to be made.

If you joined between 6 April 2005 and 31 March 2015, you started in AFPS 05. Same transitional protection rules applied. Same McCloud rollback for serving members.

If you joined on or after 1 April 2015, you’ve only ever been in AFPS 15. There’s no remedy choice for you because all your service is in the reformed scheme.

If you’ve been serving since 1 April 2022, regardless of when you originally joined, you’re accruing in AFPS 15 only. All five legacy schemes (AFPS 75, AFPS 05, FTRS PS 97, RFPS 05 and the Non-Regular Permanent Staff Pension Scheme) closed to new accrual on 31 March 2022 as the second part of the McCloud remedy.

AFPS 75 and the Immediate Pension nobody else has

Of the three schemes, AFPS 75 is the most distinctive and the one that’s most often misunderstood. Two things make it unusual.

The first is the way pension is calculated. For all ranks at OF6 and below, that’s everyone up to and including Brigadier, Commodore and Air Commodore, your pension is based on the representative rate of pay for your rank, not your actual final earnings. Two members of the same rank with the same length of service get the same pension regardless of what they earned, where they served, or what specialist allowances they received. It’s called the “band of brothers” principle and has been a feature of the scheme since at least 1940. For more senior officers (OF7 and above) the calculation switches to actual final pensionable earnings.

The second is the Immediate Pension. If you reach the Immediate Pension Point, you can leave the armed forces and start drawing pension and a tax-free lump sum on the day of discharge, even if you’re in your late thirties. No actuarial reduction. No waiting for normal pension age. No other public service pension scheme has anything like it.

For officers, the Immediate Pension Point is sixteen years’ reckonable service from age 21. So an officer commissioned at 21 reaches the IP at 37. For other ranks, it’s twenty-two years from age 18, which means an Other Rank enlisted at 18 reaches the IP at 40. The pension is paid at a flat rate from discharge until age 55, at which point CPI increases are applied retrospectively from the IP point and continue annually for life. The lump sum is automatically three times the annual pension and is tax-free.

For someone leaving at the IP, the proportion of full career pension awarded works out at roughly 56% (16/34 for officers) or 59% (22/37 for other ranks). Each additional year served beyond the IP point adds to the pension proportion, up to a maximum reckonable service of 34 years (officers) or 37 years (other ranks).

A few important AFPS 75 quirks. Service before age 18 (other ranks) or 21 (officers) doesn’t count, regardless of how long you served, a frequent source of complaint. AFPS 75 doesn’t allow you to nominate the recipient of any death benefit; if you’re legally married when you die, the pension goes to your spouse. There’s no pension for an unmarried partner, and a children’s pension is only payable if the child was born of a marriage that took place before you left service.

AFPS 05: final salary, with the EDP attached

AFPS 05 looks more like the public service pensions that other workers have, with one major addition.

The pension itself is straightforward final salary. You earn 1/70th of your final pensionable earnings for each year (and day) of reckonable service. Hit the qualifying period of two years and you’ve vested. There’s an automatic tax-free lump sum of three times the annual pension on top.

Final pensionable earnings is the best 365-day pensionable earnings figure from your last three years of service, with the earlier two years revalued by CPI before comparison. So if you had a higher-paid year two or three years before discharge, that year may produce your figure rather than your final year.

What AFPS 05 added that AFPS 75 didn’t have is the Early Departure Payment, payable from the 18/40 point: at least eighteen years’ regular service and at least age 40 on discharge. The EDP is a separate benefit from your pension. The pension itself is preserved until age 65 (you can take it from 55 with reduction). The EDP bridges the gap from the day you leave through to the day your pension starts.

AFPS 05 also introduced support for unmarried partners (eligible partners) for the first time in armed forces pensions. Eligible partners need to have been in a substantial and exclusive relationship with the member, financially dependent or interdependent. The same rule applies under AFPS 15.

AFPS 15: what every serving member is in now

This is the only scheme accruing benefits today.

It’s a Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) scheme. Every scheme year (1 April to 31 March), the MoD adds 1/47th of your annual pensionable earnings to your CARE pension pot. So if you earn £40,000 in a scheme year, £851.06 is added to your pot for that year. The pot is then revalued annually until you leave the armed forces.

Here’s where AFPS 15 is structurally distinctive. Most CARE schemes (NHS, Teachers’, Civil Service alpha, LGPS) revalue the in-service CARE pots using the Consumer Prices Index, sometimes with a small premium added on top. AFPS 15 uses Average Weekly Earnings instead, the whole-economy measure of earnings growth published by the ONS. AWE typically tracks faster than CPI, which makes AFPS 15 noticeably more valuable in real terms than first appearances suggest. The 2026 AWE revaluation, applied from April 2026, is 4.8%. The 2025 figure was 4.5%, and 2024 was 7.7%.

Once you leave service, your deferred AFPS 15 pension grows by CPI rather than AWE until pension age.

The Normal Pension Age for AFPS 15 is 60. If you serve to that age with at least two years’ qualifying service, your pension comes into payment immediately on discharge. If you leave before 60, your pension is deferred to your State Pension Age (currently 66, rising to 67 between April 2026 and April 2028, and to 68 thereafter). You can apply to take the deferred pension early from age 55, but the actuarial reduction is significant, around 35% if claimed at 60 against an SPA of 68, and around 48% if claimed at 55. The reduction is permanent.

There’s no automatic lump sum under AFPS 15. You can elect to commute up to 25% of your pension benefits at retirement, exchanging £1 of annual pension for £12 of tax-free cash. That’s a meaningful change from the AFPS 75 and AFPS 05 worlds, where the 3x lump sum was automatic and members didn’t have to think about it.

The 1/47th accrual rate, combined with zero contributions and AWE revaluation, makes AFPS 15 the most generous CARE scheme in the UK public sector on paper. Whether it’s the most generous in practice depends on how long you serve and what your career path looks like. For shorter careers, the legacy schemes’ Immediate Pension and EDP arrangements often deliver more total value.

How AFPS stacks up against other public sector schemes

Adjusting for the zero contribution rate matters when you compare like with like. Here’s how AFPS 15 sits against the other major UK public sector schemes for current accrual:

How AFPS 15 compares with other UK public sector schemes (2026/27)

Scheme	Accrual rate	Member contribution	Death-in-service lump sum
Armed Forces (AFPS 15)	1/47	0%	4× pay
Civil Service alpha	1/43.1	4.6% to 8.05%	2× pay
Police 2015	1/55.3	12.44% to 13.78%	3× pay
Firefighters 2015	1/59.7	11.0% to 14.5%	3× pay
Teachers’ 2015	1/57	7.4% to 11.7%	3× pay
NHS 2015	1/54	5.2% to 14.5%	2× pay
LGPS	1/49	5.5% to 12.5%	3× pay

The headline accrual rate for AFPS 15 is the most generous of the bunch. Adjust for the contribution differential and the gap widens further. There are trade-offs, though. The other schemes’ lump sums are typically built in (3x pension under most legacy schemes, 2x or more death-in-service). AFPS 15 has no automatic lump sum at retirement, you need to commute pension to generate cash. The legacy AFPS 75 and AFPS 05 schemes do have automatic 3x lump sums, but those only apply to your pre-1 April 2015 service.

The Early Departure Payment, in plain English

The EDP is the single feature most affecting financial planning for service personnel leaving before normal pension age. It exists because the armed forces can’t realistically offer most personnel a career to age 55, let alone 60. The EDP compensates for the truncated career and provides a bridging income from discharge to pension age.

Two important points get missed all the time.

First, the EDP is separate from your pension. The pension itself is fully preserved and is paid in full from normal pension age. The EDP doesn’t reduce your eventual pension. It sits alongside the deferred pension and stops when the pension starts.

Second, the EDP is only available to regular service personnel. Reservists, including those on Full-Time Reserve Service or Additional Duties Commitment terms, don’t get an EDP, though they do accrue pension on the same basis.

The qualifying point and amounts differ between schemes:

• AFPS 05 EDP, at least 18 years’ regular service and at least age 40. Tax-free lump sum of 3x the deferred pension. Income of 50% of deferred pension until age 55, then 75% until age 65. CPI applied from age 55.
• AFPS 15 EDP, at least 20 years’ regular service and at least age 40. Tax-free lump sum of 2.25x the deferred pension. Income of 34% of deferred pension paid until State Pension Age.

If you’ve got service in both AFPS 05 (or AFPS 75) and AFPS 15, and you meet both qualifying points, you can be paid both EDPs at the same time. The numbers add up. A Warrant Officer Class 1 leaving at 42 with twenty years in AFPS 05 and two years in AFPS 15 might receive an AFPS 05 EDP lump sum of around £34,000 plus £6,000 a year of AFPS 05 EDP income running to 65, on top of an AFPS 15 EDP lump sum of around £17,000 and £2,700 a year of AFPS 15 EDP income running to State Pension Age. That’s separate from the deferred pensions waiting in the background.

Decisions around the EDP can have meaningful tax consequences, particularly the option to surrender the AFPS 15 EDP lump sum to boost the EDP monthly income. Modelling matters. The Forces Pension Society publishes useful comparison material for members.

Death in service and your dependants

The death-in-service lump sum under AFPS 15 is four times final pensionable earnings, paid tax-free. That’s the most generous multiple of any major UK public service pension. Civil Service alpha is 2x. NHS 2015 is 2x. Teachers’ is 3x. Police 2015 is 3x. Fire 2015 is 3x. LGPS is 3x. AFPS sits on its own.

A surviving spouse, civil partner or eligible partner under AFPS 15 receives a pension for life, paid for as long as they live. There’s no abatement on remarriage. Eligible children receive pensions on similar terms.

AFPS 05 is similar in shape: 4x final pensionable earnings death-in-service lump sum, with a survivor’s pension at 62.5% of a Tier 3 enhanced ill-health pension calculation, or 62.5% of the deferred pension if death occurs after leaving service.

AFPS 75 is more restrictive. The death-in-service lump sum is three times representative pay for the rank rather than four. Survivor pensions are payable only to a legally married spouse or civil partner, there’s no provision for unmarried partners. Children’s pensions require the child to have been born of a marriage that took place before the member left service.

If your death is attributable to service, caused, hastened or significantly aggravated by your military duties, the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (or the War Pensions Scheme for service before 6 April 2005) provides additional benefits on top of any pension scheme award.

McCloud and the RSS that hasn’t arrived

If you served between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022, the McCloud remedy probably affects you, and you’re probably waiting for a Remediable Service Statement (RSS) you should have received by now.

The short version: when AFPS 15 was introduced, members within ten years of their normal retirement age were given transitional protection, they stayed in their legacy AFPS 75 or AFPS 05 scheme rather than moving to AFPS 15. Younger members had to move. The Court of Appeal in December 2018 ruled that this transitional protection was unlawful age discrimination. The remedy gives affected members a choice: for service in the period 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022 (the “remedy period”), you can choose to receive legacy scheme benefits or AFPS 15 benefits, whichever works out better. The choice is exercised when benefits become payable.

The RSS is the document that tells you what each option produces in your specific case. Without it, you can’t make an informed election. The MoD originally promised everyone affected would receive their RSS by 1 April 2025. That deadline was missed and pushed to 30 September 2025. That deadline was also missed and pushed again, to 31 December 2025 for “non-complex cases” and 31 March 2026 for “complex cases” (those involving pension tax charges, pension sharing orders on divorce, medical awards, added pension benefits or FTRS service).

The 31 March 2026 deadline has now also been missed. As of February 2026, the Forces Pension Society confirmed via Freedom of Information request that the MoD will not meet the deadline, and that all outstanding cases are now classified as complex. The next MoD update is scheduled for April 2026, with a comprehensive completion schedule expected then.

If you’re affected and waiting, what does it mean in practice? Your benefits aren’t going anywhere. They’re still being accrued, you’re not losing anything, and on retirement you’ll get either the legacy or AFPS 15 calculation depending on what you elect. But you can’t do detailed financial planning around the choice until the RSS arrives. If you’re still serving, that’s frustrating but not urgent. If you’re imminently retiring or already drawing pension, the delay matters more, and the Forces Pension Society and Veterans UK both have escalation routes.

For a fuller picture of how McCloud works across all public service schemes, see our McCloud Remedy explainer.

Annual Allowance: the senior officer headache

A non-contributory pension still attracts the Annual Allowance, the cap HMRC applies to how much your pension can grow in a tax year before tax kicks in. The standard AA is £60,000 for 2026/27, with tapering for those on adjusted incomes above £260,000.

The growth in your pension benefits each year, called the Pension Input Amount, is what’s measured against the AA. For most service personnel, the PIA is well below the limit. But senior officers approaching the end of long careers, those on bespoke pay spines, those with significant promotions in the year, and those with added pension contracts can all see PIAs that exceed £60,000.

If your PIA tips over the AA, DBS automatically issues you a Pension Savings Statement in October following the end of the tax year. You then either pay the tax through self-assessment, or you elect for the scheme to pay it on your behalf, known as Scheme Pays, in exchange for a permanent reduction in your future pension benefits using GAD-set actuarial factors. Carry-forward of unused AA from the previous three tax years is also available and often resolves a one-off spike caused by a promotion.

Members affected by the McCloud remedy may receive a Remedial Pension Savings Statement (R-PSS) where their tax position changes following election. HMRC’s online “Calculate your public service pension adjustment” tool handles the recalculation. The pension tax piece is rarely simple in remedy cases. Taking advice is usually worth it.

Reservists: a quick word

Before April 2015, part-time reservists weren’t eligible for any pension scheme at all. Full-time reservists had the Full-Time Reserve Service Pension Scheme 1997 (until April 2005) and then the Reserve Forces Pension Scheme 2005. Both were modest defined benefit schemes designed around shorter service patterns.

From 1 April 2015, all reservists, full-time and part-time, became eligible for AFPS 15 on the same terms as regulars. The Public Service Pensions Act 2013 made this happen.

The historic exclusion of part-time reservists came back to bite the MoD in August 2024. An Employment Tribunal in Major C Milroy v Advocate-General for Scotland (case 4103202/2020) found the exclusion to have been unlawful age and part-time worker discrimination. The MoD’s argument that allowing reservists to join “would have brought relatively few benefits whilst being disproportionately expensive to administer” was rejected. Implications for historic reservist service are still working through.

One important point that catches people out: the EDP is only payable for regular service. Reservists on FTRS, ADC or part-time terms accrue pension benefits but don’t qualify for EDP. If you’ve a mix of regular and reserve service, your EDP qualifying years are your regular years only.

The Armed Forces Compensation Scheme is separate

People often confuse the AFPS with the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme. They’re different things, administered separately, paid separately, and operating to different rules.

The AFPS is your pension. It’s based on your service and pay.

The AFCS pays compensation for service-attributable injury, illness or death, a no-fault scheme that sits alongside your pension. It pays in two main ways: a tariff-based lump sum for pain and suffering, and a Guaranteed Income Payment (GIP) for serious cases involving loss of earning capacity. GIP is tax-free, index-linked, and payable for life.

Crucially, AFCS awards don’t reduce your pension. You can be drawing AFPS Tier 2 ill-health pension, an AFPS lump sum, an AFCS Tariff award and an AFCS GIP all at once. The schemes pay alongside each other. For service-attributable conditions caused before 6 April 2005, the older War Pensions Scheme applies instead of AFCS, again administered by Veterans UK.

If you’ve a service-attributable injury or illness, applying to both schemes may be appropriate. The pension scheme handles the medical discharge and ill-health award. The compensation scheme handles the no-fault award for the underlying condition.

How to get information about your own pension

You can request a free pension forecast from Veterans UK once a year if you’re a serving member or hold deferred benefits. The forms (Form 12 for active members, Form 14 for deferred members) are on the Veterans UK pensions forms page on gov.uk. Forecasts come from JPAC at Mail Point 480, Kentigern House, Glasgow. The free phone number for pension queries is 0800 085 3600.

Active members also receive an annual Benefits Information Statement around their birthday each year. This sets out what you’ve accrued and what you’d receive if you stayed in service to a given date.

The official Armed Forces Pension Calculator is hosted by the MoD and includes the side-by-side AFPS 15 vs legacy comparison for those affected by the McCloud remedy. It’s worth using to model different leaving dates, but pay attention to the disclaimer, it’s illustrative, not a financial advice tool, and certain cohorts (Special Forces members commissioned from the ranks, members with pension sharing orders affecting the remedy period) are currently excluded. Access it through the gov.uk armed forces pensions page.

The Forces Pension Society is an independent membership organisation that gives bespoke advice to members, campaigns on policy, and runs roadshows around the UK and at military bases. They’ve been the most prominent public voice during the McCloud RSS rollout. Annual membership is modest. Worth considering if you’ve complex circumstances or you’re approaching a major decision point.

For free, regulated, government-backed guidance on what to do with a pension at retirement, MoneyHelper is the official service. For complaints you can’t resolve through Veterans UK’s Internal Disputes Resolution Procedure, the Pensions Ombudsman is the next step.

One word of warning. There are plenty of third-party pension calculator sites that show up in search results promising AFPS estimates. We’ve checked a number of them while researching this article, and they get basic facts wrong with worrying frequency, everything from claiming AFPS 15 normal pension age is 68 (it’s 60) to conflating commutation rules across schemes. Stick to the official MoD calculator, Veterans UK forecasts and the Forces Pension Society for figures.

Common questions