About VetAtlas

Our Mission

VetAtlas exists to put everything veterans have earned in one place. No login, no paywall, no bureaucratic language — just clear, practical information with direct links to official sources.

My Story

I'm Stephen Litzinger. I joined the Army in 2003 as a 71L in the Pennsylvania Reserves. In 2005 I went active duty as an 88M, stationed at Fort Hood, Texas with the 4th Infantry Division, attached to 7-10 CAV as part of D Troop.

We were a support unit attached to a Cavalry squadron — not the kind of unit that usually gets recognized inside a Cav formation. We did our job well enough that our squadron commander awarded us our Spurs. That's a Cavalry tradition not normally extended to support troops, and it remains one of the things I'm most proud of from my time in.

I deployed to Iraq twice — once in support of OEF and once in support of OIF — and left active duty in 2009.

After getting out, I started the long process of figuring out what the VA actually owed me. It took years to get rated at 100%, and almost all of that delay came from one problem: the information was scattered everywhere. The forms I needed lived on three different websites. Where to send them lived on a fourth. More than once I filled out the wrong form, or sent the right form to the wrong address, and started over.

C&P exams were the worst part. I would sit in front of a doctor trying to describe what was wrong with me, knowing I needed specific words to make my conditions register on paper, but having no idea what those words were. Nobody handed me a phrasebook. Nobody handed me a single map.

I had to draw one myself, one frustrating dead-end at a time.

That's why VetAtlas exists. Not because there isn't already information out there — there's a flood of it, on VA.gov, state agency sites, military.com, DAV, every veteran forum, scattered PDFs from a hundred different offices. The problem isn't that the information doesn't exist. The problem is that nobody has gathered it.

VetAtlas isn't trying to be one more guide. It's trying to be the place where all the guides live, so the next veteran in my position doesn't have to spend years figuring out what should have taken weeks.

What VetAtlas Is Trying To Be

There's an old saying: there are things you know, things you know you don't know, and things you don't know you don't know.

VA.gov can help with the first two. Search engines can help with the second. VetAtlas is built for the third.

Most veterans come looking for one specific thing — a form, a benefit, an answer to a question. What they often don't realize is that there are dozens of other programs, protections, and benefits they qualify for that they've simply never heard of. State property tax exemptions. Secondary service connection rules. Dependent education benefits. Retroactive PACT Act eligibility. Free hunting licenses. Adapted housing grants. Disabled veteran homestead protections. The list is enormous, and it keeps changing.

The goal of VetAtlas is to be the place where everything is accessible — not just so you can find what you came looking for, but so you can stumble onto what you didn't know to look for.

How We Research and Verify

Veterans make life-altering decisions based on the information on this site. That's a responsibility I take seriously. Every factual claim follows a strict research methodology:

• Primary government sources first. Dollar amounts, eligibility thresholds, and legal citations are traced back to their highest-authority source — the CFR, USC, or the official VA program page — before they go on a page.
• Two-source verification for critical claims. Eligibility thresholds, dollar amounts, and legal requirements are cross-checked against at least two independent primary sources whenever possible.
• State data verified against state sources. Every state-level claim is confirmed against the state's own .gov site, not federal compilations that often lag behind state legislation.
• Numbers are copied, not calculated. Pay tables, compensation rates, grant amounts — every figure is copied directly from the authoritative source rather than calculated, to eliminate rounding and arithmetic errors.
• Annual values are tagged. Dollar amounts that change each year are marked with their fiscal year so they can be reverified when new figures publish.
• High-impact claims are flagged for re-review. Anything that determines whether a veteran receives compensation — eligibility cutoffs, disability rating thresholds, dollar amounts — gets a second look before publication.

If a claim cannot be traced to a primary source, it is either flagged as unverified or it does not get published.

What VetAtlas Is Not

Not a government site. VetAtlas is not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or any government agency.

Not legal, medical, or financial advice. The information here is for general guidance. For decisions specific to your situation, talk to an accredited Veteran Service Officer, a VA-accredited attorney, your VA healthcare provider, or a tax professional.

Not a substitute for an accredited representative. If you are filing a complex claim or an appeal, work with an accredited VSO, attorney, or claims agent. VetAtlas helps you understand the process; an accredited representative can advocate for you inside it.

How We're Funded

VetAtlas is funded through contextual display ads and affiliate links. We may earn a commission from some links at no cost to you. Sponsored content is always labeled. Editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.

Where This Is Going

Right now I am building VetAtlas solo. The eventual goal is for it to grow beyond me — for other veterans who care about this kind of work to contribute, review content, and help expand it into a true comprehensive atlas. If that is you, I want to hear from you.

The roadmap from here:

• Coverage. Expand into every category of veteran life — claims, healthcare, education, careers, housing, family, legal, financial, end-of-life — until "everything that has to do with veterans" is genuinely accessible from one place.
• Discovery. Build better tools for surfacing the benefits and protections veterans don't know to look for.
• Verification. Continue the source-rigor discipline as the site grows. Accuracy can never become optional.

Get In Touch

Questions, corrections, suggestions, or just want to talk shop?

Email: contact@vetatlas.org

If you spot something on the site that is wrong, outdated, or could be clearer, please tell me. Veterans deserve information that's right.

— Stephen