Army Reserve & Army National Guard: Pros and Cons / Which is better?

2015-10-21T19:42:46-04:00

I have a cousin who's trying to get his shit together and is interested in joining the Guard or the Army Reserve and asked me for advice and I'd rather not point him in the wrong direction being a Sailor and not a Soldier. Any advice for an aspiring service member?

Response by MSgt Private RallyPoint Member made Oct 21 at 2015 7:51 PM

2015-10-21T19:51:22-04:00

The main difference is the reserves only have a federal role and the Guard has a duel role, federal and state.

Response by SGT Private RallyPoint Member made Oct 21 at 2015 8:09 PM

2015-10-21T20:09:37-04:00

there are cons and pros either way.
reserve falls under the active duty promotion system whereas guard has a moderately different system. reserve seems to have more flexibility with slots and promotions, guard has x slots in x unit.

guard will get activated for state missions, we did the last couple presidential inaugurations, Sandy, Lee, the pope.

dependant on state, varying educational benefits, pa has free tuition to state colleges.

there are more mos diverse units in the guard, my experience anyway. guard side has combat and support aviation, construction engineers, combat engineers, light and mech infantry, signal, mp, trans, maintenance, finance, medical.

to my knowledge the reserve units in pa consist of engineer, trans, maint, and mp. there's another bn but I don't remember what they do.

from the reserves there is more likely hood of direct activation.

ultimately, it's up to john q recruit to decide for himself after listening to whatever lies the recruiters tell him.

Response by 1LT Private RallyPoint Member made Oct 22 at 2015 12:39 AM

2015-10-22T00:39:19-04:00

They are different, one isn't necessarily better than the other.

As far as benefits, SGT Shimmel already stated the fact that in the Guard you may be entitled to additional benefits (dependent on the state) on top of regular Reserve benefits.

A major difference is the job availability between the components. Basically, the Reserves are support oriented and the Guard contains the combat reserve force (although there are some caveats to this, ex. the Reserve has an infantry BN in Hawaii).

A suggestion would be to google what units are near your brother to get an idea of his initial job prospects and see what options he has that interests him.

Response by MSG David Johnson made Oct 22 at 2015 12:59 AM

2015-10-22T00:59:10-04:00

After being in both, I will advise you to get him into a Reserve unit.
This is my experience with the Guard. The National Guard is a state entity, they answer to the Governor, but can be called to active duty.
I was an E4 and wanted to get promoted to E5, the problem there is that if the person above you doesn't move up the ranks, neither do you. The E5 above me had been in his slot for 10 years and had no desire to get promoted or to retire in the next 10-15 years. So I was stuck.
Now, on the Reserve side of the house, they are Federal so there are positions and slots that you can get promoted into, and don't necessarily need to wait for someone to retire, or die to get a promotion.

I spent 1 year in the National Guard with NO chance of advancement, and I had no desire to retire with 30 years as an E4.

I was in Desert Storm in '91, my unit from Germany deployed. Each platoon had a medic, I actually ran into my 1991 platoon's medic while in Iraq in 2006. He was still an E4, he liked where he was at with little to no responsibility and said he would retire with 30 years as an E4 because he liked where he was. I was an E8 at the time, I was an E5 when I knew him in 1991.

Just a few words to help in the decision making process. I hope I was able to help out a bit.

Good luck.