U.S. Military: Active Duty vs. Reserves
At some point, regardless of background, we’ve all heard the words “active duty” and “reserves”. Whether it's from a recruiter trying to get you to join, you have a friend or co-worker who disappears for a bit every now and then, or maybe you’re trying to make the decision yourself, we’ve all asked the question: What’s the difference between active duty and reserves? While it's a simple question, it does not have a simple answer. When you start to look at the finer details like the lifestyle, culture, and opportunities, things get a bit complicated.
So what exactly does it mean when someone says they’re on active duty or a reservist? What are the differences? And if you’re planning on joining, you might be asking, “What’s best for me?”
We’re going to answer all of those questions for you, and much more. Whether you’re here to make an important decision, or just here for the information.
Currently, all six branches of the U.S. military afford active duty opportunities to those who wish to serve their country. When it comes to the reserves, that number goes down to 5, because at the time we write this blog post, the space force does not have a reserve component. However, the Army and Air Force offer additional reserve opportunities through the Army National Guard and Air National Guard, respectively. For purposes of this blog post, we will be grouping the Guard with the reserves.
But that’s just the very basics of the two. We’ll break this down section by section, starting with the overview.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: OVERVIEW
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: WHY DO WE HAVE RESERVES?
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: DIFFERENT GOALS AND MOTIVATIONS
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: TRAINING & DEPLOYMENT
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: THE MILITARY JOBS RESERVIST CAN’T JOIN
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: TRANSITION AND OPPORTUNITIES
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: LIFESTYLE & CULTURE
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: BENEFITS
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: CONCLUSION
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: OVERVIEW
Looking at the big picture, someone who is an active duty service member works in the military as their full-time job. They work throughout the year and get 30 days of paid leave. They’re assigned to a base of their choosing, or the military’s choosing, all depending on what branch they’re in, their job, and the luck of the draw. They will either be placed in the barracks, or allotted an allowance to go live out in town depending on if they’re married or what their rank is. They work for the military full-time for the duration of their active duty contract.
As for reservists, they will typically work one weekend a month, and for two weeks during the summer. This is called “drill”. When they’re not drilling, they’re back at home doing whatever they do in their civilian life. Keep in mind that’s an overgeneralization, and every reservist’s experience will vary.
You might be thinking, how does a reservist keep a job if they have to go away every now and then for the military? Well, there are actually laws in place that forbid workplaces to punish those who are in the reserves. At any point under official military orders, reservists are free to leave their jobs for the time duration the military needs them, with no penalties. So your boss can’t fire you if you suddenly get deployed for 6 months and can’t cover anyone’s shifts for a while!
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: WHY DO WE HAVE RESERVES?
So, now that you have a generic understanding of what each of these is, let’s go over why the reserves exist in the first place. Why isn’t everyone in the military on active duty? Reserves actually play a vital role in any country’s military, enabling the country to have extra forces ready for wartime at a much cheaper expense. In addition, reserve forces like the National Guard can be called upon throughout the states to respond to local emergencies and disasters such as hurricanes or the COVID-19 response.
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: DIFFERENT GOALS AND MOTIVATIONS
Whether you’re on active duty or a reservist, you’re a service member of the United States military and are entitled to call yourself a veteran after serving your time honorably. So this begs the question, why does one go on active duty or reserves? It all depends on what each person joining the military wants. Are they 18-year-olds who want to go to college, but still want to serve their country? Are they 22-year-olds fresh out of college wanting to be a pilot? Or are they 35-year-olds with families, who have always wanted to join, but don’t want to spend too much time away from their loved ones? Everyone joining the military has their own story and their own goals.
Going active duty is a huge commitment and, on average, requires much more time served than someone in the reserves. That’s why the reserves are very attractive to people who want to serve their country, but can only commit to it part-time because they want to pursue their civilian careers or stay close to home.
But don’t let the reserves fool you! Active duty personnel go into their contracts knowing how much time they’re going to be committing to the military, but it is very possible for reservists to wind up putting in much more time than anticipated. In fact, they can even be deployed more often than their active duty counterparts, but during peacetime, things are a little bit more stable.
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: TRAINING & DEPLOYMENT
You’re probably surprised to hear that a reservist, who works part-time in the military, can deploy more than someone who’s full-time active duty. That’s the beauty of the U.S. military, every experience is different. There’s no one-size-fits-all. Depending on the circumstances, a reservist who gets placed in a highly deployed unit will be going overseas much more often than someone on active duty who’s in a non-deployable unit. It all depends on the branch, but some deployments, active duty or not, can last up to or over 12 months. Reservists who get activated to deploy will receive active duty pay just like those who are already on it, and transition back to the reserves once they come back home.
When you deploy on active duty, you’ll be spending a lot of time on the workups and preparation leading up to the deployment, and you’ll go do your time and come back to your unit post-deployment to start the cycle again. But that’s not ALL the time. And by that, we mean that when you're active duty, you will be stationed at units where you won’t be deployable for a few years. An example would be a schoolhouse or boot camp instructor, you’re in a non-deployable unit, and your job would just be training up new members of the military… Boot camp instructors aren’t prepping for a deployment like the 101st Airborne is.
Essentially, everyone’s time on active duty or reserves will be on a case-by-case, unit-by-unit, MOS basis. Some can spend years on active duty with zero deployments under their belt. And the same goes for those in the Guard or Reserves… or you could work your ass off.
An example of a reservist deploying more than someone on active duty would be a National Guard Special Forces operator. While they’re a reserve component, they’re Green Berets. Operators deploy. And it’s not just the deployments, there’s a lot of time allotted for training, which they’ll be activated to do. Green Berets in the reserve don’t really follow the whole one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer stuff like most reservists do.
And speaking of training, that brings us to our next point. Every military service member, whether active duty or a reservist, has to go through boot camp and some sort of MOS training at the beginning of their contracts. In fact, for most jobs, the training they receive is identical, and they can train alongside one another.
At this point, both active duty and reservists who just started their contracts will be giving the same time commitment to the military. There are exceptions to this, where the training can be different if you’re joining as a reservist, such as PSYOP in the Army, but you can do your own research on that. So if you’re joining as a reservist, don’t think there are part-time options for boot camp! You won’t be going home on the weekends at boot camp just because you’re a reservist. You’ll be doing the same one as those who join as an active duty.
The true separation begins once their entry-level military training is over. To give you an example, an active duty marine infantryman who just finished SOI will get orders to their unit and begin to work there full time, whereas the reservists will go home and report to the units they’ll be drilling at. Once they’re back, they’ll go to their old job, school, or whatever they were doing before they joined, and begin reporting once a month.
But here’s the thing, there’s more training in the military than just what you do at the beginning of your contract. There are numerous schools and training opportunities afforded to you throughout your military career. And that’s an added bonus for those who are active duty, they generally have more opportunities and funding for schools than reservists do. That should make sense because, on a practical level, the military needs to invest more time and resources into personnel who serve full-time as compared to those who work part-time.
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: THE MILITARY JOBS RESERVIST CAN’T JOIN
And that’s not the only limitation for reservists.
There are some jobs reservists just can’t join. A huge example of this is most special operations jobs. While there are reserve SEAL teams, don’t think they initially joined as reservists, they had to do their time on active duty first. That’s a big consideration to factor in when you’re picking a job in the military, will it be available to you as active duty, reserves, or both?
This brings us to our next point…
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: TRANSITION AND OPPORTUNITIES
It is much easier for an active duty service member to transition to the reserves than it is for a reservist to transition to active duty. You might be asking, why? Well, there are a lot of hoops you need to go through to go from reserves to active, which we won’t get into, but it does occur and plenty of people have done it. It’s much easier to go from active to reserves because the military has the infrastructure set up to facilitate a smooth transition. Bottom line, if you’re flirting with the idea of joining the reserves with the intention of going active duty later, it’ll be much easier for you to do things the opposite way.
And going from active duty to reserves happens more than you think. A lot of people do it because it's a great way to stay involved with the military without giving as much of a commitment. They can also work towards their pension and collect a bit of extra money each month.
An added perk to that is you get to keep your rank when you transition from active to reserves. The same usually applies to going from reserves to active duty, but it gets a little messier that way. All ranks hold the same weight in the military regardless of whether you’re active or reserves. If you’re a part-time 2nd lieutenant with two drills under your belt, you still outrank the sergeant major of the army who has decades of time in the military. So don’t think that active duty personnel automatically outrank reservists.
It’s important to note, that whether you’re contemplating making the jump from active to reserves, vice versa, or choosing between the two, the lifestyle and culture are going to be completely different. So that leads us to our next section.
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: LIFESTYLE & CULTURE
It should come as no surprise that active duty and reserve personnel, on average, have different lifestyles and cultures. Think about it, one side works with each other every single working day throughout the year, whereas most reservists only see each other once a month. You have one group of people who live, eat, and breathe the military, and the other shows up every now and then to drill. Reservists are still more or less involved in what active duty people call “the civilian world”, which has a gigantic impact on how they carry themselves. This doesn’t mean reservists are any less worthy of saying they’re a service member, they just serve a different purpose and function in the grand scheme of things.
You also have to consider why each person is in their respective component. People join active duty because they want to serve their country full-time, and are heavily influenced and molded by spending the majority of their time with the military. For reservists, you’re going to be dealing with a group of people who are done with the active duty life, they might have a really nice civilian job, or they have other things going on with their life where they can’t give 100% of themselves to the military.
Being active duty, as compared to the reserves, can be hard on someone. A lot is asked of you, and not everyone is in a position to do that.
For example, on active duty, you’ll be expected to move around a lot more than if you’re a reservist.
You’ll typically have to move around every few years. One billet you could be in California, and three years later in Virginia. So this is something important to factor in if you have a family, or a spouse, or family members you need to stay nearby for. Moving around a lot can be stressful for a family, and that’s not even factoring in the time you’ll be away for deployments.
As for reservists, you will get assigned to your unit and drill there for the whole contract. But what if you want to move? Let’s say you live in the middle of Nowhere, Kentucky, and you just got a great job offer in Washington State. You can’t just up and move without letting the military know. This is where a unit transfer comes into play. Upon approval, you’ll get sent to another unit to drill at. This is an important factor to consider if you’re joining as a reservist, you might have more flexibility than someone on active duty, but not as much as a civilian.
The bottom line, active duty personnel typically move around a lot, and reservists stay in the same area. But don’t think you’ll be drilling in your backyard. There’s a chance you may have a multiple-hour commute. No worries, the government may pay for that if you’re over 100 miles away, and they may also pay for lodging.
We’re sure you’re starting to see by now that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Both reserve and active duty have pros and cons. The same goes for their benefits.
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: BENEFITS
Active duty personnel and reservists are entitled to different benefits. While we encourage you to do your own research on this, we’ll give you the basics that a lot of people tend to consider when deciding between the two. You’ll come to see that the same principle from earlier applies here, the military is willing to invest more in their full-time personnel.
Active duty personnel get free healthcare, free housing or an allowance to live out in town, GI Bill benefits after serving three years, and a nice pension if they serve for twenty years that they start collecting once they get out.
Reservists, when they’re not activated, still get a decent healthcare plan, but it’s not free. As far as housing goes, that’s your responsibility unless you’re on orders. GI Bill Benefits slowly accrue the more you serve, but you won’t be getting 100% of it in just three years like those on active duty do.
Another thing you can get, depending on how much time you serve in either component, is the VA home loan. But let’s talk about retirement.
As far as retiring from the reserves, which can be covered in its own blog post, the only difference is once you have twenty “Qualifying” years, you can begin to collect a pension once you’re of retirement age. Again, we encourage you to do your own research on what’s most important to you when it comes to benefits because there are a lot of cool perks you can get from serving in the military and we did not cover them all.
And let’s be real here, one of the biggest benefits when you join the military is the benefit of getting to serve your country. Whether you’re joining as active duty or reserves, it is a highly commendable, respectable, and patriotic act. Making the decision to either go active or reserve is very difficult, and one not to be taken lightly. Do your homework, look at your personal situation, and see what’s best for you.
ACTIVE DUTY vs. RESERVES: CONCLUSION
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