Air Force Reserve

[seahawks7757]

I am seriously considering enlisting in the air force reserve. Anyone here a member of it and would you recomend it?

[USAF Pilot 07]

I'm not a member of it, but I guess my advice to you is find out more about the unit to which you want to join. Which one specifically are you interested in?

The reserves are usually a good deal (at least on the aircrew side of things). They generally work when they want, get all the good trips, and don't deploy as much as active duty, and when they do it's usually for shorter periods of time than the AD guys. Plus, the reserves have all these rules they go by, which generally means they won't get stuck out on the road and have weird but many times beneficial pay systems. Of course, this is the "grass is always greener on the other side" viewpoint from a lowly AD guy.

The Air Force has transformed itself recently into a "full force" incorporating all components of the ANG, AFRC, and AD. If you're in a reserve unit on an active duty base, depending on your job, you can expect to work alongside the active duty guys, share the same aircraft as the active duty guys and fill traditional active duty roles (especially if you on active duty orders but still belong to the reserves).

This means that there will be deployment taskings and opportunities that drop down fairly frequently. If you're on active duty orders (i.e. a full time reservist) you may be tasked to deploy. A lot of units will open these opportunities up to volunteers first though, but there's no guarantee. I would expect to deploy at least once (time period and location all depends on your job and unit). A lot of the flying reserve squadrons are doing traditional deployments alongside active duty squadrons, and if not are flying a lot in support of deployed operations.

Again, I'd go talk with a reserve recruiter, but take what they say with a grain of salt. I think your lifestyle/ops tempo will be determined primarily by the unit you join, so you may want to talk with some of the guys in that unit before applying as well. Also, there are some online resources that you can check out (I don't know all of them, but I know the message boards on baseops.net has some FAQs etc.. about reserve life).

[seahawks7757]

Cool, thanks for the info. I was looking at ATC at McChord.