Home › Military DUI costs

Military DUI costs: when the price is pay, rank and the discharge itself

A service member's DUI can be priced in a currency no state page on this site uses: pay and allowances, reduction in grade, and the character of a discharge. Our CDL guide prices a civilian licence at risk; this page prices the Uniform Code of Military Justice route — Article 113, the Manual for Courts-Martial maximum punishments, and the components that carry no dollar figure because the Code expresses them in pay rather than in fines.

Article 113, formerly Article 111

Drunken or reckless operation of a vehicle, aircraft or vessel was Article 111 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for decades. The Military Justice Act of 2016 renumbered the offence to Article 113, codified at 10 U.S.C. section 913, effective January 1, 2019 — older guides, and many unit briefings, still cite Article 111 for the same conduct. The statutory text covers a person subject to the Code who operates or physically controls a vehicle, aircraft or vessel in a reckless or wanton manner, while impaired by a substance described in Article 112a, or while drunk or at or above the prohibited alcohol concentration shown by chemical analysis.

The alcohol concentration rule borrows the civilian map. For conduct inside the United States, the prohibited level is the blood alcohol concentration prohibited under the law of the state where the conduct occurred; for conduct outside the United States, the level stated in the Article or a lower level prescribed by the Secretary of Defense — published summaries of the Article give the overseas figure as 0.10 grams per 100 millilitres of blood or 210 litres of breath. A service member can therefore face the military charge for conduct on or off an installation, and the military case is separate from any civilian case arising from the same drive: the state prices its own components in its own court, and neither system credits the other's fine.

Disposition is the commander's first cost decision, and it is not a dollar decision. A case can be handled administratively, at nonjudicial punishment under Article 15 — Captain's Mast in the sea services, Office Hours in the Marine Corps — or referred to a court-martial. The maximums in the table below are the court-martial maximums published in the Manual for Courts-Martial summaries; nonjudicial punishment carries its own lower statutory ceilings on restriction, extra duty, reduction and forfeiture, which vary by the grade of the commander imposing them and are not tabled as a single figure here.

The published military maximums

There is no fine schedule in this system to reproduce. A court-martial sentences in confinement, forfeiture of pay and allowances, reduction to the lowest enlisted grade, and punitive discharge — and the dollar weight of a forfeiture depends entirely on the member's own pay grade and allowances, so no honest page can convert it to a dollar amount for a reader whose grade it does not know. What is published, and tabled, is the frame itself.

Sources: 10 U.S.C. § 913 (Article 113, formerly Article 111); Manual for Courts-Martial maximum-punishment summaries for the Article as reproduced in published UCMJ references. Last verified: October 2026.

The components no table can price

The heaviest military costs are the ones with no published amount at all. A punitive discharge ends the career the sentence is imposed in, and a dishonorable or bad-conduct discharge can affect veterans' benefits eligibility — a determination made by the Department of Veterans Affairs on its own rules, not priced by the Manual. Reduction in grade lowers future pay for a member who remains in service. Security-clearance consequences follow their own adjudicative process. Each of those is real, each is described here, and none carries a dollar figure in any source named on this page, so none is estimated.

Installation driving privileges are a separate administrative layer: a commander can suspend or revoke the privilege of driving on the installation independently of the criminal disposition, and a member who must reach a duty station without that privilege bears commuting costs that no regulation publishes. State licence action can follow the same incident through the civilian system as well, which is why this page pairs with our federal-land guide — a DUI charged on a federal installation can touch the park-and-enclave rules, the UCMJ, and a state licence record from a single stop.

A note on dates: the Manual's sentencing framework changed for offences committed on or after December 27, 2023, moving many offences into sentencing categories. The maximums tabled above are the widely published Article maximums from the Manual's maximum-punishment summaries, stated as the frame those summaries publish; a member facing a current case should confirm the framework that applies to the offence date with the defence counsel the military provides.

Common questions

Is a military DUI Article 111 or Article 113?

Both numbers name the same offence at different times. The Military Justice Act of 2016 renumbered drunken or reckless operation from Article 111 to Article 113 (10 U.S.C. § 913), effective January 1, 2019.

What is the maximum for a military DUI with no injury?

Under the published Manual for Courts-Martial maximums: a bad-conduct discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for six months. With personal injury, the maximum rises to a dishonorable discharge, total forfeiture and 18 months.

How much is the fine for a military DUI?

The system does not publish a fine figure for this offence. Its monetary punishment is forfeiture of the member's own pay and allowances, which depends on grade and cannot be stated as a single dollar amount.

Sources: 10 U.S.C. § 913 (UCMJ Article 113); Manual for Courts-Martial maximum-punishment summaries. Last verified: October 2026. This page is educational information about costs only — not legal advice. Laws and fees change; confirm current figures with your court and your state's driver-licensing agency.