We presented the military deployment cycle earlier in the paper. It consists of five very distinct stages which are specific to the military situation. We suggest that it can inform international human resource management theory on short-term international assignments in that it draws attention to the relevance of organizational support for the assignee over different stages in the assignment; that all assignments and individuals are different and so different support requirements may be needed, rather than a one-size fits all approach across organizations. We suggest that in order to develop what is known about short-term international assignments in international human resource management, that learning from other fields, such as the deployment cycle from military literature, is possible.