I am currently a National Guard officer in IERW at Ft. Rucker, but am finding that the National Guard was not the best route for me.

What is the likelihood of being able to switch to Active Duty as an officer? What are the catches?

What is the likelihood of being able to switch to Active Duty as a Warrant Officer? What are the catches?

What are the catches of switching to Warrant in the Guard?

I'm just trying to get a better understanding of all of my choices, and if I have any at all.

Thanks for your help.

Sir,

While I cannot give you a definitive answer, I would imagine that your Guard unit isn't going to let you go after paying for all your flight training. You're likely going to be "stuck" in the Guard for a while.

At least you get to fly; the Army doesn't think we old guys can learn to fly.

Good Luck, sir!

Matt
SPC, AV
US Army
OCS Selectee
Class 303-10

I know when I was looking into the guard they were pretty adamant about, "if we send you to flight school, you're going to do the six years with us and not transfer elsewhere." It's going to depend on your state and how they feel about it. Now the RLO to Warrant or Warrant to RLO thing might be doable depending on, again, your state's needs.

I believe the commitment is a 6 year Army commitment, not necessarily state specific.

Technically, as long as your not going to have the army send you to flight school and say, so long, then you can go A.D.

Some states who are being drawn down a bit, are actually looking for people to leave.

With that being said...You better have your ducks in a row prior to bringing it up with anyone at your unit, because despite the fact that the commitment is not necessarily to the state, you more than likely will blackball yourself.

I'm a WO here at rucker, had some family stuff go down while I was here and decided that maybe AD would be a better route for me. Went in to talk to the NG liason and hit a brick wall. She told me under no circumstances will they release you to AD in the middle of training due to the issues of slots available. They would have to release your NG slot and try to pick up an AD slot for you while you are not MOS q'd. I know its been done, I had a reserve friend of mine do it. It was a long drawn out process and a huge pain in the ass for both him and the liason that did it for him. He lost his warrant and had to revert back to E5 while he was waiting for the paper work to go through. You run the risk of not being able to pick up a slot as well, which as an RLO can be dangerous, cause then you may end up at the mercy of the army as far as branch assignments. I was told that the best bet is to finish school get mos q'd and then when you get back to your home unit, you can start working on an xfer from there.