With the military’s ban on openly gay troops expected to end this fall, advocates for gay and lesbian service members are already looking ahead to the next battle: winning equal benefits for same-sex married couples.

Under current law, particularly the Defense of Marriage Act, the Pentagon is prohibited from giving federally financed benefits to same-sex married couples. In the military, those benefits include base housing and allowances for off-base housing, health insurance, certain death benefits, legal counseling and access to base commissaries and other stores.

No one knows how many same-sex married couples are currently in the military, since existing policy, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” prohibits openly gay people from serving. The number, however, is thought to be small, perhaps in the hundreds.

But with the final repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the coming months — and with the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in New York and the possibility of other states’ following suit — many advocates expect the number of gay and lesbian married couples in the military to rise significantly.