First, consider that many of the veteran advisors on this board learned about the Reserves during the Cold War. It's a whole different Reserves today, and that's not necessarily a good thing. You want to get your AF Reserve advice from someone who's been doing it
since 9/11, not before.
Each service's Reserve forces (and their National Guards, if applicable) are much different in policies & implementation. So your best advice would come from someone in the Air Force, and it'd be even better if they were Reserve or ANG. Guys like me are way too quickly out of our depth. With that disclaimer, here goes:
Ouch! I don't mind marketing hyperbole or even a little blatant false advertising, but that [-]truth[/-] slogan really hurts!!
I'm going to take the AFOQT soon, but studying for that and the E-5 promotion test while deployed sucks right now.
I'm afraid the only consolation I can offer is that the alternatives suck even worse.
Too many times I've seen 8+ year NCO's hate life, and I don't want to be in that position.
Again, small consolation, but this is also very common. For many people, both officer & enlisted, the fun dries up after a few promotions. Achieving objectives as a team member is concrete and tremendously self-satisfying. Doing it as a team leader is frequently not so tangible or psychically rewarding. What an E-3 or O-2 could previously accomplish through direct hands-on action, E-6s & O-4s should only do by building teams and influencing people. Unfortunately for most that's nowhere near as enjoyable and not always why they joined the military. It doesn't carry enough improvements in pay or [-]duty rotation[/-] privileges, either.
Navy submarines are commanded by "junior" O-5s with about 16-17 years of service. That career achievement is at least three years short of the earliest retirement and barely halfway to 30, let alone a flag officer's 35-year career arc. Yet I've heard dozens of submariners say that the most enjoyable job they ever had was in command. (Others say it was the
only enjoyable job.) Maybe that's good to anticipate, but not so great in the rearview mirror. And when you're in the trenches as an O-2 division officer or an O-4 department head, it's really hard to see how the CO & XO are having such a fun-lovin' wild-eyed hard-partyin' time.
So when the fun stops for you, don't stick around longer than the end of the obligation. That's true in every service.
Would any of this continue? What are the changes from AD to reserves if there are any?
The active-duty merry-go-round of benefits basically screeches to a halt. Unless you're on active duty for at least 30 days or longer, you generally no longer have health care or dental. (No complaints-- many civilians live with this every day.) You have medical/dental benefits when you're drilling (or proceeding to/returning from) or during your annual active duty. You still retain SGLI year-round but, if you're not getting paid for your Reserve duty, then you have to send SGLI the payments instead of having them deducted from your direct deposit.
You may still retain access to bases in America (not always overseas, and not in Japan or other countries with restrictive status-of-forces agreements) and you may still retain privileges at exchanges & commissaries. Navy used to restrict Reservists from exchange/commissary use but a few years ago they totally opened it up. I don't know if the AF Reserve ever had these restrictions or whether they still do. So my advice to an AF Reservist would be to go to Navy Exchanges...
The biggest difference is that you largely become your own assignment officer. You may have to commit to a deployment, either solo or with a unit, but you can pretty much choose what unit you join and how often (above the minimum requirement) you drill. If you'd prefer to avoid drilling or deployments for a while, you could always go to the Inactive rolls and later re-apply to return to drilling status. However there have been exceptions to this for people in niche skills.
Another nice benefit is that your active-duty time counts toward a Reserve retirement. The retirement starts paying at age 60 (instead of the day you retire from active duty) and the calculation is a little different, but you are protected against inflation. When your retirement pay starts, it's based on the pay scale in effect that year, and it's based on the maximum longevity scale for that rank. So if you retired from the AF Reserve in 2025 as an O-5 with 20 years of service and started collecting your retired pay in 2047, your retirement pay would be based on the 2047 pay tables at the rank of O-5 with over 22 YOS.
Every Reserve career is very different, but many Reservists drill for the equivalent of 90 days per calendar year, more if they're mobilized, until they reach 20 years of service. They collect an age-60 pension that's approximately one-quarter to one-third of their active-duty contemporaries (who started collecting immediately at retirement). Not as good as active duty but it beats the snot out of counting on Social Security.
Due to the Navy's promotion-tracking system, getting promoted as a Reserve officer is much much easier than getting promoted on active duty. I'd call this unfortunate in a few cases, but my spouse has personally benefited from the system so I'm not gonna complain. It might be similar in the AF Reserve.
I have also paid off my MGIB payments, but the new educational benefits are supposed to kick in sometime Aug 2009. I have read that I would need to stick around for 10yrs before I could give the benefits to my kids (if I ever have any). I'd like to have that option so I don't have to save for their education, and it is unlikely I'll use them. Is this even a reason to stay AD though?
No. Your parents didn't pay for your college degree, and mine didn't pay for mine. In general you should not sacrifice your health (or your saving for retirement) for the sake of your kid's college educations. For your kids, maybe, but not for their educations. It'd be very convenient if your life worked out to provide for their college costs, but it's in no way necessary.
Imagine yourself during an IED attack thinking "My kids will thank me for taking care of their college tuition!"
In my line of work I have been told (aka military rumors) that if I could get a civilian career at a Joint Operations then the likely hood of getting AD orders is pretty high. I wouldn't mind it since I was also told that if I go on AD I would still get my civilian paycheck in addition to my AD Reserves check. Does this have any truth to it? Would I be able to pick where I want to go? I was hoping to pick up another Fed job while I was in the Reserves (as an "O" I hope).
I'm from Texas, but I wouldn't mind being stationed in Hawaii or any of the other big time places for my career field.
Funny you should mention Hawaii. PACOM HQ fills over one-third of its active-duty billets with Reservists on orders. Reservists occupy most of the watch floor and nearly all of the crisis-action team watchstanders. Some of them skip from one 29-day assignment to the next while others have elevated it to an art form consisting of years of consecutive 179-day orders or even mobilizations. In between orders, many of them work in the same spaces as civil-service or contractors. The corporate memory is incredible-- far better than most active-duty commands.
One Navy Reserve O-4 teaches at Iolani High School and drills on weekends. During summer & winter breaks he picks up active duty orders. If he finds something interesting, like a hard-fill request for 180-day staff duty in Kosovo (perhaps with European travel opportunties) then he takes a leave of absence from the school. I've heard urban legends of another O-4 who's a ski instructor in the Colorado Rockies and spends the rest of the year on 180-day hard-fill overseas assignments. Of course this is a lot easier without a spouse or kids.
Another Navy O-5 works as a PACOM contractor and drills on the side. He's gone back & forth between active-duty stretches and contractor jobs. His spouse just retired from active duty and their two kids are finishing high school. They've been here for over a decade.
An AF Reserve E-6 has been in one office more or less continuously on active-duty orders of one kind or another for over four years, starting when she was an E-5.
If you have a brain and work well with others, the jobs are there. Once you get into the network you have no problem putting together a string of short-term assignments... or even getting mobilized. During spouse's two-week stints of active duty, she used to be pouty-faced if she wasn't offered a civil-service job or contract by day three.
