How an RAF pension actually works
Your Royal Air Force pension comes from the Armed Forces Pension Scheme, the same set of rules that covers the Army and the Royal Navy. There is no separate RAF scheme. What matters for your figure is when you served and which scheme you were in: AFPS 75, AFPS 05 or AFPS 15. The calculator on this page lets you pick the scheme that matches your service and estimate your annual pension, any lump sum and, where it applies, an Early Departure Payment.
The three schemes work in very different ways. AFPS 75 and AFPS 05 are final-salary schemes, so the pension is worked out from your pay at the end of your career and your length of service. AFPS 15 is a Career Average Revalued Earnings scheme, known as CARE, which banks a slice of your pay every single year and revalues it for inflation as you go. Two airmen on the same final pay can end up with quite different pensions depending purely on which scheme they built their service in.
From 1 April 2022 every serving member of the RAF builds AFPS 15, whatever their cap badge or trade. That is the practical reality for anyone still in today. If you joined before then, you may have a mix: some years in a legacy scheme and the rest in AFPS 15. The calculator treats each scheme on its own so you can model the part that applies to you, then add the results together for the full picture.
A serious caution before you start. This is an independent education site, not the Ministry of Defence, Veterans UK or JPAC, and the figures here are estimates to help you understand the shape of your pension. They are not regulated financial advice and they are not an official forecast. Treat every number as a guide, then confirm it against an official statement before you make any decision about leaving, transferring or commuting.
AFPS 75 for RAF officers and other ranks
AFPS 75 covers regulars who joined between 1 April 1975 and 5 April 2005. It is a final-salary scheme, but with a twist that catches a lot of people out: the pension is based on the representative pay rate for your final rank, not on the exact salary you happened to be drawing. Members with the same rank and the same length of reckonable service normally receive the same pension. Accrual starts from age 21 for officers and from age 18 for other ranks.
The pension builds towards a maximum of 48.5% of representative pay over a full career. A full career for this purpose is 34 years for officers and 37 years for other ranks, and the calculator builds the percentage up evenly across those years. On top of the annual pension, AFPS 75 pays an automatic tax-free lump sum of three times the annual pension. You do not have to give anything up to get that lump sum; it is built into the scheme.
AFPS 75 also has its own early-payment route called the Immediate Pension, which is not the same thing as an Early Departure Payment. An officer can draw an Immediate Pension after 16 years' service from age 21, and an other rank after 22 years' service from age 18. The pension is then held flat until age 55, after which all the inflation built up since you left is applied and it rises with CPI each year. The normal pension age for anyone who leaves earlier with a deferred AFPS 75 pension is 60.
Because the official figure depends on rank-by-rank representative pay tables that a public tool does not hold, this calculator uses the pay you enter as a sensible stand-in and tells you so on screen. That is fine for getting a feel for the numbers, but anyone near a pay scale boundary should treat the AFPS 75 result as indicative only.
AFPS 05: the 1/70th final-salary scheme
AFPS 05 covers regulars who joined between 6 April 2005 and 31 March 2015. It is the cleanest of the three to picture. For every year of reckonable service you earn 1/70th of your final pensionable pay, and the calculator simply multiplies your final pay by your years and divides by 70. The pension is capped at 57% of final pay, which you would reach at 40 years' service.
Like AFPS 75, AFPS 05 pays an automatic tax-free lump sum of three times your annual pension, so there is no need to surrender income to get cash at the point you leave. The normal pension age is 65. If you leave before then without qualifying for early payment, your pension is preserved and revalued, then paid from 65.
The early-leaver route here is the Early Departure Payment, EDP 05. You qualify if you leave at age 40 or over with at least 18 years' service. EDP 05 pays a tax-free lump sum of three times your preserved pension, plus a taxable monthly income to pension age. We model that income at the scheme's published headline of around 50% of the preserved pension; the exact award rises with service and is CPI-uprated from age 55, so treat the EDP figure as a reasonable estimate rather than a precise quote.
AFPS 15: the CARE scheme everyone now builds
AFPS 15 is the scheme every serving member of the RAF has been building since 1 April 2022, and the only scheme for anyone who joined from 1 April 2015. Instead of looking at your final pay, it banks 1/47th of your pensionable earnings each scheme year into a running pension pot. Each year's slice is then revalued so it keeps its value over time: while you are still serving the pot is revalued in line with earnings, and once you leave or it comes into payment it rises with CPI.
Because the in-service revaluation tracks earnings, each past year of accrual is kept broadly in step with what you earn now. That is why this calculator asks for your current pensionable pay rather than a true career average, which almost nobody can produce from memory. As a simple model, your AFPS 15 pension is roughly your current pensionable pay multiplied by your years of service and divided by 47. You need at least two years of qualifying service to earn a pension at all.
AFPS 15 pays no automatic lump sum. If you want tax-free cash you create it by commuting, which means giving up some annual pension in exchange for a one-off sum. The rate is fixed at about 12:1, so roughly £12 of lump sum for every £1 of annual pension you surrender, and you can commute up to 25% of your pension benefits. The reduction to your income is permanent, so the slider on the calculator is there to help you weigh cash now against income for life.
The normal pension age for AFPS 15 is your State Pension age, which is later than the age 60 or 65 of the older schemes. You can leave earlier and keep a deferred pension, claimable at State Pension age on top of your State Pension, or draw it from age 55 with a permanent actuarial reduction. The EDP 15 route, covered below, is the main way to get money flowing earlier.
Early Departure Payment for RAF leavers
Most people who leave the RAF before pension age but after a long career are interested in the Early Departure Payment, because it is the bridge between handing in your kit and your pension proper starting. EDP is not a full pension; it is a lump sum plus a taxable monthly income paid from when you leave until you reach pension age, designed to soften the transition to civilian life. AFPS 75 does not have EDP at all, using its Immediate Pension instead.
On AFPS 05 you reach the EDP point at age 40 with at least 18 years' service. On AFPS 15 the bar is age 40 with at least 20 years' service, often called the 20/40 point. The AFPS 15 EDP income starts at 34% of your deferred pension and grows by 0.85% of that pension for every whole year you serve beyond 20, so staying on past the 20-year mark lifts both the income and your underlying pension.
The lump sums differ between the two schemes. EDP 05 pays a tax-free lump sum of three times your preserved pension. EDP 15 pays a tax-free lump sum of 2.25 times your deferred pension. In both cases the monthly income is taxable and is held flat until age 55, then uprated for the inflation built up since you left. Set your scheme, your service and your leaving age in the calculator and it will show whether you qualify and what the EDP could look like.
A worked example, illustrative only
Here is an illustrative example to show the method, using round numbers and not anyone's real award. Imagine an RAF senior aircraftman, now a sergeant, on AFPS 05 with final pensionable pay of £42,000 and 24 years' reckonable service. The annual pension is £42,000 multiplied by 24 and divided by 70, which comes to about £14,400 a year. The automatic tax-free lump sum is three times that, around £43,200.
Now suppose the same person is on AFPS 15 instead, with current pensionable pay of £42,000 and the same 24 years. The CARE estimate is £42,000 multiplied by 24 and divided by 47, which is roughly £21,400 a year before any commutation. There is no automatic lump sum, so to raise tax-free cash they would commute. Giving up the maximum 25% surrenders about £5,350 of annual pension and, at the 12:1 rate, produces a lump sum near £64,200, leaving an annual pension of about £16,050.
The point is not the exact pounds, which depend on your real pay and service, but the shape. AFPS 15 accrues faster per year at 1/47th, yet has no free lump sum and is paid later at State Pension age, while AFPS 05 accrues more slowly at 1/70th but hands you a tax-free lump sum automatically and pays from 65. Which looks better for you depends on your pay, your service length and when you plan to leave.
Where the McCloud remedy fits in
If you were serving across the 2010s you will have heard about McCloud, the legal ruling that some members were treated unfairly when the schemes changed. The remedy period runs from 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022. For service in those seven years, affected members get to choose whether that period counts as legacy benefits, meaning AFPS 75 or 05, or as AFPS 15. You make that choice using a Remediable Service Statement, and from 1 April 2022 onwards everyone simply builds AFPS 15.
This matters for an RAF pension because the right choice is personal and can be worth real money. Benefits you built in a legacy scheme before the move are protected as accrued rights and paid when they were originally due, linked to your pay or rank at the point you actually leave, not frozen at the 2015 or 2022 transition. So your final figure may be a blend: a legacy slice for the early years, your remedy-period choice for 2015 to 2022, and AFPS 15 from then on.
The calculator on this page does not make the McCloud choice for you, because that needs your member-specific data and the official comparison from your statement. What it does do is let you model each scheme separately, so you can see roughly how the legacy and AFPS 15 versions of your remedy years compare before you read the official figures. Use that as background, then let your Remediable Service Statement be the decider.
Tax treatment and how to check your figure
On the tax side, keep two things straight. The automatic lump sums under AFPS 75 and AFPS 05, and the lump sums you create by commuting on AFPS 15, are tax-free within the normal pension rules. The annual pension itself is taxable as income, and so is the monthly EDP income, even though the EDP lump sum is tax-free. That mix catches people out, so when you budget for life after service, count the pension and EDP income as gross figures that tax will come off.
Pensions already in payment and preserved pensions are protected against inflation. The relevant uprating is 3.8% from April 2026, which is the CPI increase applied to pensions in payment and to preserved benefits. The calculator gives you a snapshot in today's terms; over a long retirement, indexation is what stops your pension losing its value.
To check your own position, get an official forecast rather than relying on any calculator, including this one. Veterans UK provides these: serving members request a forecast using form 12, and those with a preserved pension use form 14. Your Remediable Service Statement covers the McCloud choice for the 2015 to 2022 period. Use this page to understand how your pension is built and to sanity-check the order of magnitude, then make decisions on the official numbers.