To buy or not to buy

My husband and I are a young military couple and have 2 children. We do very well on one income and it’ll only get better from here on out as he earns his rank and I finish college and get my degree and start my career. We have a down payment for a house, our vehicles are paid off and are 2016/2017 so they’re in good shape and we take care of them. We have a separate savings built up as well. So overall, we do pretty well for a couple of 24 year olds.

The issue is, we will obviously be moving from state to state every 3 years or so and maybe even out of the country. My husband thinks buying a starter house in our home state would be cool because we can rent it out and use the rent to pay off the mortgage and by the time we will move back home and settle our house would most likely be paid off or at least the renters would have helped with the mortgage. Our range is $100-$150k which is very doable where we are from. We have a 20% down payment as well and would use the VA loan.

Would this be a smart idea? It wouldn’t be our dream house obviously. Should we wait until my husband retires from the military? He plans to do 20 years so we won’t be moving back to our home state until we are in our 40s. Has anyone done this? Or does anyone have any advice or suggestions? We will talk to our financial advisor as well before making any decisions I just wanted to know if this was a good opportunity for us to take or not.