Air Reserve Technician - Full time "civilian" job usually only available to Reservists in their own unit. Basically doing the full time work that's needed to keep the squadron running day-to-day. Can wear civilian clothes to work, although I heard that that may change this month...back to wearing uniforms everyday.

 

Big difference between an AGR and ART.

ART - well, I don't know if that's such a great deal. Yeah, you're a full time dude and you get your little GS nest egg, however doing the same shizzle for 30 years plus can get old really quick. Any guy worth his salt will give you mixed reviews on being an ART - it's a double edged sword, for both you and the squadron.

AGR - very good deal. Much more prevalent in the ANG vs. the Reserves. The Reserves tend to carry most of their full timers as ARTs. Most ANG squadrons have a mixture of ART's and AGR's to a higher percentage of AGR's. Essentially an AGR parallel's a full time guy on AD...retire after 20, military retirement and health care, etc...

Back to the AD after the ANG/Reserves? It ain't all that crazy. As I've said previously, being AD does have a lot of benefits. No offense Slice, I think you're a great dude, but as a guard baby never served on AD, you'd have a hard time understanding. If you have a few rotten eggs with you in your squadron in the ANG...it can get stagnant and old really fast....and they ain't going anywhere anytime soon. The AD has a lot of queep, but it certainly has a lot of great TDY's, young dudes rotating in/out, and a lot of innovation.

Again .02.

 

Well, I was AD enlisted(different service, long time ago), but I understand what you're saying. In fact, under the current budget and ops tempo I'm against hiring guys off the street for UPT. The new guys coming back (and I fell under this category too) are not nearly as experienced as their AD counterpart. The resources are just not there. The best thing to do would be to send dudes off to training and then have them do a 2-4 year tour AD then come back. At least for fighter types, I know it would be beneficial. This is even before getting into the challenges of being a traditional ANG pilot.

 

I don't know how a Guard LT can be any less experienced as their Active duty counterparts (at least on the heavy side), in most cases, they're more experienced in terms of time before UPT, when a zoomie only has 40 hours. I know that I've flown more hours since UPT than my active duty buddies. Again, it may be totally different for Fast Movers.

 

During my 3 year fleet tour, I got an average of about 12-14 hours a month. Some months were 2-3 times that on deployment or contingency, others were only 5 hours or so. One of the reasons I'm looking at getting out and going to a guard or reserve position is that I can get almost the same hours flying guard or reserve in 4-6 days per month as I was getting AD, and not have to put up with the 14 hours of crap the rest of the month that we had to do. Guard/reserve seems like the best of both worlds, you get to fly the same amount, no BS to put up with, and you still get the chance to deploy if that's your thing.

Of course the grass is always greener on the other side...

 

Hey vandal, I heard that some of the 130 units that were BRAC'd (ie. Wisconsin) were trying to move all of their dudes to Pope (the base where the gov't decided to move the airplanes)...they might be looking for some 130 reserve guys to go back to AD, but I don't really have anything concrete on that...but I know a contact or two that I can ask.

Most 130 buds of mine who are AD are trying to get out. Life sucks right now for your AD 130 driver...these guys are even stoked to get a UAV, if you can believe it!

 

It's a lot different on the fighter side. In general, it will take longer to upgrade to flight lead in a guard fighter unit compared to AD. Prior experience may help for the IFR portions of the sortie, it doesn't do much for the tactical side.

 

Why are they asking reservists to go AD? Too much Force Shaping in the Herk world?

 

Proffessional internet surfer,

Smoke break taker

Non initiative having scammer

They do make a lot of money though.

 

I like to think of the ART gig like this:

Both the ART job and prostate check have great benefits, but I would not want either one on a daily basis.

I was an ART for 5 years. Good job, great benefits. 10% of the people do 90% of the work. You can get overworked if you let mgmt get away with it.

Seriously, if I would not have gotten hired at FDX I would still be in the ART program. Very stable and secure career.