Well would it be different once my contract with the gaurd ends? After its over could I go to active and still have my commission in the army?
To answer your specific question,
I assume you mean you would finish ROTC, finish your (assumed 4-year) ARNG enlistment, and then commission into the Active Duty Army.
First, you cannot simultaneously be in the active and reserve component at the same time.
So, to go AD, you will have to separate (i.e. get a DD-214) from the Guard. That is a given.
After that, understand that going from AD to Reserves or Guard is pretty simple, but only because that is a common practice that has been ongoing for years. Going from the
Reserves or Guard to
Active Duty (and I'm not talking about going on Title 10 for mobilization-- that is a different and finite thing) is a little different because you more or less are treated as somewhere between a non-prior service applicant and an applicant with a break in service. If AD wants/needs your MOS (as is the case in the Air Force right now for certain career fields), then they make it happen. But that is not at all common. Normally, it's a case-by-case thing.
So what do you do to make this easier? I.e. where can you find a "common practice" to go from the Reserve Component to the Active Component?
Getting an ROTC contract allows a normalized channel for that to happen, but you have to check all the boxes
@KuzNROTC is describing above for that to happen. Otherwise, you will finish ROTC with a commission (maybe) in the Guard. The problem there is you need to find an officer billet to commission into-- you don't automatically get a commission without a job to fill. Active Duty doesn't have this problem because they don't let people in without a projected opening for them. You are currently putting the cart before the horse here by charging ahead with the commissioning program without applying for an MOS in the Guard that requires a commission.
There are folks in the Active Duty Army or Air Force that started out in ANG or ARNG. However, they had to separate from the Guard prior to enlisting/commissioning into Active Duty. Like a Coast Guardsmen or Marine would have to-- meaning they occasionally had to go to Basic again or some form of officer basic familiarization course (or sometimes even full OCS or OTS). It's treated more like a break in service than a transfer.
Does that make sense?
To further explain the difference between Guard and Active Duty commissioning approaches for anyone else that is curious:
For AD, the process goes like this: (1) Big Army says we need 4,000 O-1's in 2024 to fill a variety of jobs. (2) You get awarded a spot in ROTC-- say 1 of 6,000 awardees, which assumes 33% washout rate-- that is slotted against that projected shortfall. (3) You finish ROTC 4 years later and Big Army assigns you your MOS and gives you a commission.
For the Guard, the process goes like this: (1) A Guard unit says we have 20 different jobs coming open
this year that require officers to fill them
this year. (2) The call goes out first state-wide, and then nationally, that this specific unit needs 20 officers to fill a variety of MOS's or AFSC's. (3) Some officers come over from AD, some come from other states, and about 10 of those jobs get filled. (4) The local Guard unit then asks who already has a degree locally and just needs to go to OCS/OTS this year to commission to fill those spots. This fills up around 3 more of those spots with enlisted folks sitting with degrees. 1 more gets filled by a civilian applicant wanting to come into the Guard and already has their degree. (5) There is still one slot open, so the local ARNG unit can then look at other options like Minuteman, SMP, etc (I am not aware of any ANG equivalents, but will ask my Guard recruiter friends--perhaps there are). These are not ideal because they need those billets filled by the end of
this year-- not in 4 years. So, unless they
really want a specific applicant (or the position requires a certain license or degree), odds are they won't hold the position open for several years for one Guardsman to slowly bump their way through school. It's much easier to just pay for their school (through tuition assistance or state-level scholarships) and then have them wait around (on enlisted pay) for a job to open that requires a commission. Then they select a qualified Guardsman send her off to OCS or OTS and bam! the spot is filled.
In the ARNG and ANG you will always need to have a specific job to commission into in order for the ARNG or ANG to send you to OCS/OTS. The upside is that you know what you will do once you commission. The downside is that you have to wait around on a spot to open up for that commission.
Hence the reason it's tough to just start going to ROTC as a Guardsman and then commission into the Guard at the end of it without being SMP or Minuteman or having a pre-existing arrangement with either big ARNG or your state.
The big confusion for most folks is that they forget that the National Guard is a
separate organization from the Army and Air Force. Sure, the Army and Air Force can gain Guardsmen to augment their regular forces, but those Guardsmen automatically revert back to State ownership after the augmentation is finished. The Army and Air National Guards fall under the National Guard Bureau (which has its own 4-star in the Joint Chiefs now)-- not under the Dept. of the Army or Air Force. The existence of the Air Force Reserves and Army Reserves further confuse because they look similar at first (1 drill/month, 2 weeks annual training per year, similar retirements, etc.)-- but in reality they are quite different.
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TL;DR--> Yes, talk to your ROTC cadre, but just as important (if not more), talk to both your current command staff in your Guard unit
and your local Guard recruiter that handles ISR (in-service recruiting, aka AD-to-ARNG) and internal commissioning. Everyone has to be on the same page and aware of your intentions for the process to go smoothly. Be up front about your desire to go Active Duty and ask how to best pull that off. Likely a conditional release will be involved, but only if you are on scholarship/contracted, like what
@KuzNROTC describes. You cannot simply finish ROTC as a Guardsmen, non-contracted cadet and then expect a commission into either the ARNG or AD-- that likely will not happen.
And a side note for anyone else for whom "talk to your recruiter" is a trigger word, understand that Guard recruiters handle a lot more functions than just enlisting folks into the Guard. They also handle officer accession, SMP, cross-training, re-enlistments, and intra-service transfers. OP will
have to coordinate with their local Guard recruiter during this process for as long as they are a Guardsman.
