Originally Posted by rickair7777

Yes. Active duty time spent for initial training (ie flight school) is exempt from the five year calendar. AD obligation incurred from training is exempt.

So two years for wings followed by ten years wings obligation means 12 years freebie before you burn a minute of your AD clock. If you then take a retention bonus and incur an obligation that time would not be exempt as far as I know. You could however go to war college or PG school, and that obligation should be exempt. Switch airframes, same deal. Obligation incurred due to training is exempt, doesn't matter if you volunteered for the training.

People think of USERRA as a reserve/guard thing but it was apparently also designed to allow you to leave an employer to serve a voluntary first-term AD enlistment and then return to your job. It was not specifically intended to allow you to do a full 20-year AD career and then return but it also does not forbid that... so it possible with an MOS with a very long obliserv (ie aviation) to get to 15 years AD without touching your five-year clock. Then you can run out the clock to 20 years.

It's an irrelevant technicality for most folks, since they'd be lucky if the employer still existed in 20 years, and they would only be entitled to return to a position equivalent to the one they left... a retired O4 or O5 could get a better job than the one he had as a new college grad, and probably would have other interests and geographical constraints. But in our seniority-based industry, it could be a huge windfall... you could literally do 20 years and come back as a line-holder widebody CA. In this climate you could probably get hired at a major while young enough to still go to UPT. All you have to do is show up on day one of class and collect your seniority number.