We are in southwest Missouri, heat and humidity are normal, along with tornadoes.
So DS set me straight, after re-counting conversations I remembered the service commitment requirements. Guess I had a brain cloud yesterday.
As far as commissioning into the guard from a traditional ROTC program, I cannot find anything to contradict what Jcleppe said. Your service obligation starts with BOLC which counts as active duty time.
As for ECP, what DS told me matches information I found on a Valley Forge power point and MMI website for ECP Scholarships.
The cadet will enroll in National Guard after passing their APFT. They will commission upon graduation from their MJC. They will then attend a follow-up school that has a ROTC program where they will continue to drill with a guard unit as an officer and participate in pt with the rotc program. The pms at that school is urged to utilize them as a leader in the program.
Upon graduation with their BS/BA degree (they have up to 3 yrs to do this) they will be promotable 1st LT and attend BOLC. They can either assess active duty upon graduation based upon their OML score with all the traditional ROTC graduates or remain in the guard/reserve. They will either have 6 yrs of guard time left or 4 yrs of active duty. If they remain in the guard and there is a delay in reporting to BOLC, this time counts towards their commitment also.
The exception to this is if they utilize the advanced education assistance program (Ike Skelton Scholarship) at their follow up school. According to some information, for every year of assistance used = 1 yr of ADSO. Therefore if you utilize this, they would graduate with their BS/BA degree and still have 8 yrs of reserve time left, not sure if you went active duty.
**DS's ROO said this is not accurate, but maybe because he is in-state on all his schools and is an ROTC ECP Scholarship recipient. Might depend on MJC attended and follow up school.**
To summarize, an ECP candidate would have 12 yrs of service in, 10 as an officer, by the time they fulfilled their service commitment if they remained in the guard/ reserve and utilized the education assistance program. If they went active duty and did not utilize the education assistance they would have 8 yrs of service in. (4 reserve and 4 active)
Stay in for 8 more years and by age 38 you have enough time to qualify for the guard retirement pay and benefits, whatever they might be at that time.
This is the information presented to DS and what I found on the all-knowing internet.
There is someone from NMMI that posts here on occasion, perhaps they provide some insight if any of this is not accurate.