8 years of service?

Question

This is my b/f situation:

3 years - enlisted
5 years - commissioned officer (1 yr in Iraq)
1.5 years - as civilian after resigned

Now he's called back to active duty and will be sent to Iraq for 1 year. He told me he has in total 8 years of obligation to fulfill but the first 3 years as an enlisted won't count.

My questions are:
1) Is it true that his first 3 years don't count?
2) what about the 1.5 years he's not in military?
3) how soon can he resign if he is willing?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Here is how it works.

When you get your comission you accept a service obigation. It can be served in either in the Active Army, or the Reserve Component. His 8 year obligation came from/with his comission. (Did he get an ROTC scholarship?) That is why his 3 years prior service do not count toward the obligation. He did them BEFORE he assumed his 8 year obligation, and no it isn't retroactive.

He served his first 5 years on Active duty. That left him with 3 years to go.

He did NOT "resign". Resign is a term of art.
What he did was "leave active duty". (Important difference). You CAN NOT resign while you still have time left on your obligation. He still had 3 years left to serve on his obligation. This time would be served in the Reserves.

The Reserves consist of The National Guard, the Army Reserve, and the IRR. It is up to you which one you join.

The National Guard and the Army Reserve are known as "Drilling Reserves', or Active Reserves. These are the folks that belong to Reserve/Guard units and do their one weekend a month and two weeks a year training.

The IRR is the "Individual Ready Reserve". If you don't join a National Guard or Army Reserve unit you are AUTOMATICALY put into the IRR. It is, more or less, the Army's Little Black Book. They keep your records and your name is on a list. You aren't required to do anything, they aren't required to pay you, and no the time does NOT count towards "Federal Service".

When you are in the IRR the clock IS still ticking on your service obligation. This means the 1.5 years he spent in the IRR has counted towards his 8 years.

5+1.5 = 6.5 This means he still has 1.5 years left to go. Yes they can call him up. (They can call you up at any time until you have the discharge certificate.)

He can resign as soon as his 8 year obligation is up, AND he is not "on orders". If you are on orders you CAN NOT resign. They get really upset if you try to go home and quit half way through the war, it's called disertion.

Resigning is easy once your obligation is up and you are off orders. They can't keep you (unless there is a stop-loss on, and that is a rare thing) once your obligation is up. You just have to contact the Army Personel Center in St. Louis. It takes about two or three weeks, which is lightning fast for St. Louis. Your discharge certificate comes in the mail. Unless you screw up badly it is an honorable discharge.

And before you ask, no, sadly having already gone to Iraq won't count for a lot. Most of the Army has already been rotated through Iraq or Afghanistan once, sometimes twice by now. Some of the Marines are on their third combat tour. (Marine tours are shorter, only 7 months). This is why people are saying the Army is "broken", there is to much work for too few people right now. One of the reasons Rumsfeld was so unpopular as Secretary of Defense was that he didn't want to expand the Army and blocked efforts to do so. Now that he is gone this is starting to change.

Don't worry, he'll go in, do his preliminary training, get deployed somewhere, do 12 months "boots on the ground", (get a leave 1/2 way through), come back to the states, outprocess and be done. He should be able to resign not long after that.

Take care and give him my best.

Answer 2

Every time you sign a contract you get a new 8-year obligation. So it looks like he has 1.5 years left on his commissioning oblication.

He can resign his commission any time after he has finished service obligations for school and such -- but it isn't something to do lightly. Far better to be an inactive officer than not an officer at all.

Answer 3

I'm in the Air Force and this is how we do it:
If you enlist for six and complete those six years you then have two years of inactive reserve duty, which equals eight...you can and will be called back at anytime if needed during those two inactive years...Now my question is at what point did he "resign" (FYi you don't resign from the military you are discharged, be it honorably, unhonorably, admisnistratively, or generally). Now when someone becomes commisioned that's another bowl of spaghetti because officers are different when it comes to joing the servie and getting out of the service. Hope this helped....

Answer 4

1) It depends on what he did in the first 3 years. If you mean enlisted as in just signed up and willing to serve, but didn't actual do anything military wise, those don't count.

2) He'll probably have to take some kind of test when he gets back. Both Intellectual and Physical tests.

3) After those 3 years or, god forbid, he gets hurt.

Answer 5

The first 3 yrs does count- however getting a commission may have added more time to his obligation- keep in mind the pentagon is using a back door draft to keep people in the military and are using fraudulent means to go after people who service obligations are long over.

Answer 6

Not sure I understand? The 1.5 as a civilian don't count for anything except federal service.They have nothing to do with the 8 years he must complete in service. I would think the 3 years enlisted counted toward his 8 years. Very strange.

Answer 7

Officers can be held indefinitely.. there is no automatic out after 8 years of service. If his community was stop lossed or his skills are in great demand, the military can and will recall him for as long as they deem necessary.

Answer 8

Just take the day he got his commission, add 8 years, presto, he is done.

Answer 9

Perhaps the b/f went bootstrap? did the military pay for him to go to school full time? if so the commitment starts from the time he gets his commission. Why would he lie to you?

Answer 10

I think officers can be called back at any time regardless of service committments. I could be wrong.