There is a MOU 24 at end of the contract called Military Pilot Vacation. It’s a confusing read so I’ll sum it up from my experience coming off 7 month deployment a little bit ago. If you don’t submit any bids, when you return to active status you have to contact United (start at CPO or PSC) IOT cancel any auto-awarded vacation and then select the weeks you want. You will ONLY be able to select a week that someone junior to you received.

The assumption and default position is that, while deployed, you don’t have either the time or means to submit vacation bids. They might be able to tell you which weeks you can choose from when you return or you can do your homework by looking at the final vacation awards on Flying Together and seeing what people junior to you got. I recommend the later since you can’t just take screenshots and email them in and tell them what you want. It went very smoothly for me.