Strategic and intentional nutrition is a key component of human performance optimization for military operations as well as readiness, resilience, lethality and health of the soldier athlete population. Military missions, including training, combat, non-combat, foreign disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, present unique opportunities and challenges for meeting the dietary requirements of soldiers at home station and deployed around the world.

With recent and projected job growth in the military/tactical athlete setting, performance dietitians can expect greater opportunities to support soldiers and units with feeding in complex environments where they must identify and correct nutritional shortfalls to improve the health and performance of soldiers, and in some cases the local population as well.