The more passive approach (buy and hold) may be appealing since you can purchase as primary residence with nothing down, lease if you are restationed or deployed, and use property management if you're not able to be fulltime landlord. 

Odd hours, long hours, rapid deployments, kids, spouse, basically 24/7 commitments.

This question was about where to deploy the cash in this hot market without taking too much risk..

Your first testing date is 6 mos after creation of the qualified opportunity fund, so maybe that's ample time to deploy the capital you plan to spend on improvements. 

Don't deploy everything in 2020.

I also told her that it would be worth it when I was done because I would potentially be able to leave my job flying planes for the Navy, not deploy again, and be home to help raise our family. 

If you were to deploy all of your capital to get into a new multifamily property, how would you pay for repairs should an AC unit go out?

You want to be sure you deploy that money in the most effective way possible. 

Right now I'm considering selling and redeploy OR cash out refi and deploy.

This assumes I could deploy other limited resources to buy deals over the next three years while waiting to sell.