Three significant gaps were identified: the lack of research on short-term international assignments; the lack of research on international assignments beyond multinational corporations; the lack of questioning of the current conceptualization of short-term international assignments. We reviewed existing literature on short-term international assignments, international mobility and expatriate assignments in the international human resource management domain. We then considered the existing international human resource management literature in the context of an exploratory study we conducted within the Irish Defence Forces. In so doing, we addressed the first two gaps (a research focus on short-term international assignments in international human resource management, research on organizations beyond the multinational corporations in the international human resource management field). We suggest that what is known about military deployments through the deployment cycle (Pincus et al., 2007) could be useful in developing the conceptualization of short-term international assignments in international human resource management.