Air National Guard Benefits & How to Join

hey guys welcome back to airman vision and if you're new consider subscribing today we talked to andre acosta who is a tech sergeant in the air national guard as a recruiter we asked him a bunch of questions that you guys asked us on this youtube channel about what all the air national guard has to offer and this is what he had to [Music] say all right so you are in the air national guard and we are going to have you tell us a little bit about yourself before we jump into these questions so what is your name what are you currently doing for the air national guard and how can people contact you hey everyone i'm andre acosta i'm a tech sergeant in the california air national guard but primarily i'm a recruiter and the best way to reach me if you have questions or any interest about the california air national guard is just call me on my work cell it's 805-415-7269 again 805-415-7269 and then could you give us a quick overview of your career just so people can kind of understand a little bit about you and where you come from yeah absolutely so i've been in the air force 18 years and 13 of those years were in active duty and then the last five i've been in the air guard also known as the air national guard and it's been a a long amount of time but it felt really quick you know just but uh my first duty station was beal in northern california after that i got an assignment to osan air force base in korea then i went to langley virginia then i went to hawaii hickam out there and that's where i actually went air national guard because i was like man i'm going to stay here forever and and live the hawaii lifestyle then i i got a family i got some kids got stationed in wyoming in the wyoming air national guard and now i'm home so i'm born and raised in california and a member of the california air guard this will be my last tour so i really appreciate airman vision giving me the opportunity to just you know just talk to somebody who's looking for information somebody interested about joining and just giving back like you know this is a good opportunity for me to just dress casually answer questions casually and just give you the real and help you guys make some good decisions that's awesome you've been uh a lot of places with the air force so you're gonna have a good perspective on uh future videos if we shoot stuff together i might be interested in actually talking to you about doing future videos of uh you know talking about how that was going to so many bases that are different to what it was like and maybe what what helped you keep pushing through your career with all those different lifestyle changes i'd love to man all right so we're going to jump into the q a section here and the this video is going to be more based on just generic uh air national guard questions but these are all questions that we got from our viewers here on airmen vision the first one is going to be what even is the air national guard mission so the air national guard to put it simply is the state air force so we're not going to look any different than the active duty air force or the air force reserve per se but we're going to serve locally right so the difference in the hierarchy is we also serve you know the governor and then on top of that there's going to be you know the president is one of our bosses but first of all we serve the state so any crisis that happens within your home state and they need air force support we're here to to answer that call this is a huge question that we get a lot is can you choose which base you serve at in the air national guard yeah that's that's the best part like like i mentioned i'm from socal and this is literally like 40 minutes from where i grew up so i chose to be at this space so when you talk to a local recruiter you're going to be assigned to that base so you can control where uh you're getting it where you're getting stationed so that's the main thing with the air guard that differentiates from active duty is control and that and that's why even though i've been in for 13 years in the active duty side i wanted to go guard because for that control so absolutely you control where you're getting stationed right you had mentioned you were in hawaii and you actually got out of active duty to go guard because you got to pick to stay in hawaii as guard exactly like you can be stationed somewhere for your whole tour and then like you could do 20 30 years at one spot so that's that's pretty cool how does getting a job in the international guard work because active duty which is what i was is we kind of fill out a list and say we hope for the best see what the air force wants to give us and then go from there so is it the same process where you make people fill out a list uh based on all the jobs that are available or what they qualify for or how does that process even work yeah so you know us recruiters we we kind of all know each other so i talked to active duty recruiters too so their process is a little bit different than ours because they have a different machine right so anybody familiar with the active duty it'll be like pick your top eight they'll try their best to get you one of those top eight for us we have like my basic for example here in in southern california we have 80 different jobs for the enlisted side so provided that somebody gets the score in the asvab that's our entrance exam and qualifies at meps and we have a vacancy we'll put them in there so i guess the advantage for somebody is it's easier to be picky and get the job you want on the air guard side right and it's also easier to cross train down the road um i know anybody who's been in active duty it's hard to cross train and get the job you want but in the air guard so there's just provided there's a vacancy it's easy to fill with the you said so you guys have 80 jobs available so what are the odds if somebody comes in and they want a specific job and they qualify for it with their asvab and medically are they guaranteed to get that one job that they want or do you guys also have like a listing of what jobs are available at at the moment so rule number one does that job exist at our base so that's what they got to think of because all the bases have kind of different missions and different different air guards have different focus and different mission sets per state like for example here in california we get wildfires every year so we have a mass mission modular airborne firefighting mission right so we have aircraft geared to do that we have different jobs geared to do that job but if in a different state let's say you're in alabama you're not going to have that issue so you're you're going to have different set of jobs right yeah so the first thing to think about is what's what state or what wing within that state has that job a good reference point is goang.com at goang.com so that's going to talk about where the different bases are because we got you know 54 states and territories within america's each one of those 54 uh air guard has their own combination of wings and jobs things like that so reference that website to find out what's available number one and then two like you mentioned if they qualify and there's a vacancy absolutely that's my job to put people in those spots because we need those people to be able to do our mission okay so with the the vacancies there's not all 80 jobs are not vacant all the time though so sometimes you may reach out to an international guard recruiter and they might not even have they they might have the job that you want it's just not currently open can that be something that happens right so like you know there is a lot of popularity in demand when when the with the air guard once people find out about it and some of the benefits so like for us for example we we have about 50 vacancies and it depends if that job is available at that time now i will tell you this it might be a good idea just to get your foot in the door and then three years later you can cross train into that job because we're going to give preference you know to somebody who's already in and has a positive reputation than to somebody that we don't really know that's coming to us brand new right so you know what it's funny is i kind of almost compare that to the civilian world where for instance if you wanted to work at google right and so you like pick a company you want to work for they'd be the air national guard you would go on and look up their website and see what jobs they have available you might want to be a software engineer but if they don't have any software engineer positions open but you qualify for another one you might be able to join that and then eventually once you're in their system and in the hr system you'll be able to go over and change jobs once you're in so it's kind of like the way because active duty does not work like that right active duty would be like oh you put your application in at google and then you give them a list of all the jobs that you're interested in and they just pick whatever one they want to give you versus air national guard it's more like an actual company where you're like oh i want to work at google but my job that i want isn't available right now so i either join as a different job or i end up waiting until my position opens up that i want and then apply is that that's a good explanation that's exactly it you know you start from the bottom now i'm here right you got to get your foot in the door first the active duty you know it's a different mission they got 300 000 personnel stationed internationally so they they're trying to fill as many slots as they can and it's full time with us we're going to be more you know smaller operation so everybody knows everybody so it's just a different school yeah yeah that's awesome yeah i've never really like uh sat down and thought about it but it's just like uh any other company in in america if you wanted to go and start a job or work for a specific company you kind of have to see what they have available because if they don't have a job available you can't apply for it so and a nice thing too that that we can offer that active duty normally doesn't is a job tour so being that our base is probably close to the member applying like once they do get their go through maps and get their asvab score and their medical examination called the physical we can bring them on the base and they can tour different jobs so you can literally meet your future co-workers you know things like that like to the fire station and like introduce them to all the equipment that you guys would use if they do want to pick that job yeah and then you can yes go on the go on our c-130s things like that i mean it's so much easier to sell the air national guard than it is active duty because especially if you're trying to shop around for a job if you get somebody and they're not like say they're like i want this specific job but you're like but that's not available right now but here's some that are let me take you on base let me show you what it's like right i feel like it's so much easier then they go and they see it they're like i could do this right and it's like yeah i do want to do that but like i just saw this that this is available right now oh let me get that so i'm like active duty is not like that right you're kind of like uh we're buying the car before we even seen it yeah you just get like the pictures on the website you know here with a guard you can literally go on the base with no obligation to commit you can still see the base you can feel it out you know uh yeah that's a big difference maker and i recommend people do that that sounds awesome that's i didn't know that either so i'm learning probably as much as you guys are on this interview because i don't know almost anything about the air national guard so this is going to be a pretty eye opening another question that we got from our viewers was can you only sign a six year contract plus the two years of inactive like that's what active duty allows you to do sign a four or six year but it's a eight year commitment what does the contracts like length look like for air national guard yeah so our initial contract is only six years right so that's the somebody brand new to the to the military to the air force all we offer is that six year contract and i know six years is like daunting right because you're like six years forever but when you you're not you know in the air guards part times you're not wearing the uniform every day when you actually consolidate the amount of days that you're wearing the uniform it's like a year and a half yeah but don't get intimidated by a six year contract you know because it goes by fairly quick and then thereafter upon reenlistment you can do a one year or a three year yeah so yeah like you said six years but it's only part part-time versus active duty four or six years five days a week you know so like the six year it's even uh it kind of goes back to like that car reference where it's like it's almost like test driving it you know uh where you don't have to fully commit to like your whole life to it because you're part-time in the garden so you can live a normal life and just do your one weekend a month so that sixth year really isn't as scary you're just pretty much committing that one weekend a month every single year not yeah exactly try it before you buy it you can you can definitely test drive the car so to speak and and even if you know it's not working out for some reason you know it's only one week in a month and then we're super flexible we want you to be happy so if that means cross train options you know we can definitely entertain that too so that that's why like some of the stuff we're talking about man that's why they say like uh air guard's best kept secret in the air force yeah because you just got so much flexibility so much more control than you than you did uh than you or i did in active duty yeah active duty you you have very little control it's pretty much all that what what they want when they want it and how they want it and because you signed the commitment to say like i'm gonna do this job all the time no matter what you asked me to do right and so like you're saying it's even if things aren't going well at least it's only that one weekend a month and not you know 20 some days that that month where you're you know stuck in that that pattern where you're like i don't like this job right it's a little bit easier just to stomach when it's only that one weekend a month even if it's not something that you want to do super long term so what is a quick overview of the process of joining the air national guard like how would somebody go about joining yeah so the first thing is reaching out to your local recruiter if you don't know where your local recruiter is or where the bases are or what base is closest to you just go on that website goang.com and then they'll connect you you can also you know for you know just look up your state guard that's an easy way to start so here in california you just go california air national guard and then they'll connect you with some recruiters or um you know in your case kyle you know alabama air national guard is just another example and once you connect with your local recruiter then they'll they'll collect your information they'll make sure they'll pre-qualify you essentially and then send you off to to meps to take our entrance exam the asvab and then do a physical which is a medical examination once you've completed both of those pieces the asvab and the physical and you have a qualified rating then you can go shop for jobs and that's the best part that's what i was talking about you can do a job tour you know because you know exactly what your scores are what you're eligible for things like that so that that's that's the fun part and then thereafter it'd be enlistment day one of the questions that we got from one of our viewers which i thought was actually a pretty good question is do you get a military id because you're only working out one weekend a month do you get a military id that would allow you access to an active duty base or other bases and uh basically like active duty gets where they they have a common access car which allows them to get onto all these military installations are you treated the same way an air national guard and getting that same amount of access to military installations yes yes so on the id it will say your branch but it won't say what component so you know the active duty is obviously an active duty component reserve and guard are considered reserve components but on the id cards they don't differentiate and you have full access so like for example out here we have two active duty navy bases which have you know discounted gas they have a navy exchange which is kind of like a like a test like a best buy and a target combined in one store without tax and la i don't know if you know anything about la sales tax it's almost 10 so you know you know having no sales tax that's like 10 off on everything so that's a big one and then the gyms i love the gyms out here i say yeah free it's a free membership to multiple gyms essentially is what you're getting at if you're going yeah so short answer you get the id card and it's you you get full access just like an active duty member so i think that was what they were going for is i think people wanted to know like are they able to shop on base or be able to use the gyms because some people especially in the guard you have people that don't live directly next to the base because they only work there one weekend a month so they may live near another base or another installation closer to home so i think that maybe was the reason i got that question is would they be able to basically access the base closest to them if their guard base isn't actually the closest location yeah i'll hear people always trying to get the discount uh disneyland tickets man that's that's hot out here yeah tickets are like 150 dollars each on base you get you get a discount too so that's kind of nice heck yeah the next question that i have is can you choose when you go to basic training because active duty they pretty much just give you a slot and go hey this is when you're going even if it's like six months from now or if it's two weeks from now and you might be like whoa that's really fast but if if you say you're available to go in active duty like any time in that time frame they'll just give it to you do you have a little more control of when you go to basic training when you're in the guard you have a little bit more influence but you know they try to get you to go as soon as you can because you can't start your career to its fullest extent until you knock out basic training and tech school thereby making you a fully trained member of the air national guard right so to give let me take a step back and give you kind of the full perspective of the timeline okay from a recruiter standpoint right if somebody talks to me day one to the point that they're listing on average that's three months right and then for us from the date that they enlist to the date that they're going to basic training on average is about six months so that's a big distinction between active duty right there because active duty day one of your enlistment is basic training for the guard day one is the day you sign the contract so i know if you were like six years yeah but you're not even going to basic training for another six months so you know you're still coming to drill getting paid but you know we we have time to prepare we start getting paid before we even go to basic yeah you get id before you go to basic too dang so yeah see that's different so my wife mckenna is she's actually depth in already so she's already been in maps everything's you know signed that she wants to join been approved we're just waiting for a job and her uh her ship date but she's not getting paid she's not like right we're all we're just kind of like in this abyss of you know when are they going to give us a contract so we're just kind of waiting because she doesn't have that that job start yet or any of those benefits of serving because she's still not that basic and basic like you said that's when that's when it actually starts but regard you guys actually start before basic yeah so the day you sign your enlistment contract is day one of that six year contract that's that's definitely another nice added bonus right there it makes that six years not as not seem as long yeah exactly and then per per regulation we do have to get the member to basic training within a year okay so there are some credible reasons why so we can write into their contract that we can delay you know their basic training some credible reasons are if we're enlisting a high school senior so we do have to wait until they graduate high school so the earliest the high school senior can can join the air guard is september of their senior year so the very start of their senior year they can list into the air guard and we'll write into their contract that they're not eligible to go to basic training until june when they graduate right so that's a credible reason it's all going to be kind of base specific for as far as reasons but if you know if you're having uh the birth of a child for example we'll wait for that till you go to basic training in some cases if you're like in a program you're in a nursing program and you it's hard to get back in that program we can wait till you know until the end of that program but the main thing to keep in mind is we have to get you to basic training within that first year otherwise it could result in an administrative discharge so we definitely want to avoid that we want to get you there within a year but you do have a lot more flexibility a lot of wings are will wait until the end of your semester so if somebody's a college student we can accommodate that in most cases yeah it just just let us know ahead of time and we'll do our best for you okay and so kind of rolling off of that is the next step would be tech school so how does that work can you choose when you go to tech school because you you guys are a little more flexible with uh when you can go to basic training if you have stuff going on what if that same situation is happening happening for somebody after basic training so say like you said the birth of a child say somebody goes to basic training because they know that their wife's pregnant but they're not gonna have the baby yet when they're at basic but then when they get done with basic say they're a few months out and they don't want to be gone at tech school when they have the birth of their child so can they choose can they drag that out as well so in in most cases we try to do it back to back you know so that way they're coming back fully fully qualified fully trained member that's traditional with what active duty does active duty you go it's one two right away but but there are some exceptions to that uh we call them uh break and training so how how we book bait like act here again i'll give you the real real right how we book basic training in tech school is we try to book tech school dates first because tech school dates are harder to fill there's just less slots and then we throw basic training in front of it right so if if somebody picks a afsc that that's a job right that has like the next available tech school day is over a year from now like let's just say you know you choose like let's say flight medic any of the flight jobs usually have longer weights or load master right that next school day that technical date might be over for a year from now so what we'll do to make sure you stay in good standing with us is we'll send you to basic training first and then you'll knock out those eight weeks in basic training in san antonio texas then you'll come back with us to the unit and drill for a little bit until we get you those dates so sometimes we can accommodate that with the scenario that you said where somebody's got an expected birth of their child maybe we can center the basic training really quick and then we can kind of delay uh textual stuff what you guys would do is try to book the tech school based off of when the child supposed to be born you would book the tech school after after that and then you could book the basic training anytime from like now or like immediately to because you if you do that then you're making sure the tech school location is booked it's solidified and it's not interfering with whatever life event that they were trying to not miss in most cases we're just going to try to get them through back to back but there are extenuating circumstances like we mentioned the main thing is we got to get you to basic training within that first year so if we can get you there and then we can wait a little bit for tech school you know that can happen uh a lot more flexibility than active duty right yeah but i definitely think it's the best case scenario to go back to back anyways like yeah you shouldn't want to not do that because that way like it's going to be everything's going to be the most fresh in your mind because when you get to tech school you're going to be with everyone that just finished basic so when you get there it's it's a little less strict than basic but it's still they try to keep things as sharp or like it was at basic where everything is very precise and and so i think if you have that gap you know you might get a little rusty on some of the stuff that yeah remembered in basic and you don't want to be the guy that shows up to tech school and you're standing out for not good reasons because you're not as sharp or you know you don't have the the marching skills that you did right from basic so i think that might be uh you know something that's important too is definitely you shouldn't want to have that gap between the two yeah and we get that question a lot the most common reason why is because somebody's in college right and they're like hey can i go to basic training in the summer and then go to tech school the following summer because they don't want to fall behind in college now what i recommend for that type of enlistee is just you know sacrifice a an extra semester maybe do a summer and semester and knock them both out because you're not going to get the educational benefits until you're fully trained yeah so i would much rather go back to back get it done and then have that full ride maybe to college than trying to spread it out over you know and it's like a year year and a half and then you still don't have that funding for college money right so yeah so definitely that's what i encourage people knock it out or take a gap year right after high school and then go in college yeah definitely smart because like you said uh with the college benefits and tuition we're actually going to be covering that in a separate video so stay tuned for that where we talk about the uh the benefits of college and tuition that air national guard has to offer can you pick which weekend you do drill or like which weekend out of the month that you serve you said it's that one weekend a month that is your obligation do you have the choice of what weekend that is in most cases your your whole calendar year is forecasted out the weekend is assigned and and that's because the whole base comes together on that weekend normally that base would not be occupied to the extent that it is unless it's that drill weekend it's like the whole base comes alive on drill weekend but there are you know um alternatives so like out here in socal a lot of people were like man i got to go to coachella right uh you know that big festival they have so what you would do in that scenario if it did fall on a drill weekend you know you could talk to your supervisor see if you can take a drill absence so maybe like hey can i can i reschedule and maybe or just not get paid for that drill weekend you actually don't have to attend every drill weekend you know you you really to meet the minimum you only have to go to 8 out of 12 per year uh we do encourage you to go to all 12 and of course you'd be nice to get paid right because you're going to get paid for each time you wear the uniform but or you can do drill makeup so maybe the the following month instead of doing two days you do four days so there's definitely so much flexibility like that there's even scenarios where people maybe live or or work or go to school internationally so they're out of the country or out of the state and we'll do something called power uh drills so they'll do their six weeks back to back and they'll suffice for the whole year thanks so you wouldn't have to report for for 11 months well yeah like 10 and a half months at that point if you do all six weeks all in one go yeah so you just gotta talk to your unit make sure they know what you're doing and you have an approved reason but i i've heard of those reasons uh you know like like somebody's going to school in europe things like that or maybe you just want to take six months off and backpack right or something like that in active duty at all you definitely can't do that in active duty so that is definitely a huge benefit to that where you know some people like you said might not want to have to do that one one weekend a month if they have certain things that they were doing like taking a semester abroad you know it's like exactly that's it you don't have to forfeit that that experience or that opportunity they can still do that and still meet their obligations with the international guard just by compiling all of their drills into like one section exactly exactly yeah man best kept secret in the air force i'm telling you lots of them that's that's really cool actually i should have gone guard it's not too late ah i don't i don't want to lose this though this is the thing i'd enjoy so we just mentioned the uh one weekend a month where you can kind of adjust that based on if you have an approved reason what about your two weekends uh or your two weeks of drill that you have to do per year of training is that the same concept you can you pick when you do that or is there like a set time where you have to follow that obligation yeah and you're talking about we call it annual training when you hear like one week in a month two weeks a year we're talking about that two weeks a year most people do it in the summer and we can accommodate that now there's a lot of trip opportunities sometimes your your annual training is like a tdy that's a temporary duty to some different location to to do that job so if you're let's say a med tech which is like a medic you could do that job you know we're on the coast here in in california so a lot of times we'll go to hawaii and we'll we'll train over there so you might do a medical mission out there and that'll be your annual training so there is flexibility you know we we do try to get you on these trips because i think learning to do that job elsewhere is super helpful but if you can't do that like jump on that trip we can just host you at the base and we can accommodate that so yeah again super flexible most people do end up doing it in the summer i find that just because maybe it's a break between college or spring break is another popular time but it's probably the easiest time for most people especially if you have families or something where you're not going away during the school year during certain activities where you know they need to be present for that how does promotion work when you're in the air national guard compared to active duty you are in active duty so you definitely understand that aspect of promotion is it the same in the guard or do they have this separate criteria of how they promote you guys so so the prerequisites are the same like like for somebody who's never been in the air force right there's going to be expectations of a certain proficiency in that job and then how much time you've held the previous rank so like for example to make sergeant you know there's an expectation that you're have that certain skill level at that job which would be a five level which would mean you've been in the career field and you met the checkpoints things like that and then also you have to have worn the rank for a certain amount of time now the big difference is you don't have to test in active duty there's a test that you have to take to promote right in the guard you don't have to take that test now to be fair and once you start getting up in the higher ranks in the guard side that person has to be a vacancy so that's the challenge there like um you know there's no vacancy like that let's say that you want to promote to master sergeant but the person there's a person in the massacrum bill it and they're not going anywhere anytime soon then unfortunately you're not going to be able to promote even if you meet all the other criteria so it's a give and take there so once you get up there you're waiting for like somebody to retire and then everyone kind of shifts up a level yeah hopefully and then you can fill in that lower slot and then just keep going there so but but it is nice not to have to test i know on the active duty side i tested for a lot of promotions so this that the whole testing site is gone so that's kind of the advantage there another huge question that people ask a lot is deployments so does the air national guard deploy at all and if so what is that tempo like how often is it which i know might depend on your base's mission or the job that you have specifically but can you shed some light on that with do you guys even deploy like active duty devs yep we do deploy and so when you when you talk about hierarchy of deployments versus going to be active duty then it's going to be reserved and then guard so we're third in that hierarchy now it's going to be more volunteer based with the guard side because we're primarily you know a state organization and it is part-time so if you know if somebody's really focused on not deploying or then they have a credible reason a lot of times that'll that'll be fine like if somebody's a student or things like that but we do of course encourage the experience it's it's it's a good experience it's actually kind of competitive on the guard like um you know it's all going to come down to that job because first of all like security forces member isn't going to have the same deployment tempo as an administrative person right so each job is going to have a different tempo but on average you know we have access to deployments at about a four four year window so every four years you your office might have an opportunity to deploy and they might let's say there's 10 people in an office one person will get that slot so a lot of times you know guys will be competing for it guys and gals will be like hey i want to go like that's good tax free money i get to go out maybe it's the desert you know i get to free food i get to work out you know get some extra stack some extra money for six months so um if somebody doesn't want to deploy it's a high likelihood they probably wouldn't never need to but if you do want to deploy there might be a wait list you know just kind of interesting you know because people do want to go there's a lot of benefits you know there's some good money to be had so then if if you do have a job or a mission where there's lots of deployments like you said with the wait list so they might go okay you three want to go but you two already went on the last one or youtube went you know back to back and so like we're gonna let this third person go now is that kind of how they would uh organize that if it's like well this person still hasn't had the experience yet you guys have already been on two or three recently exactly exactly you know spread the wealth you definitely want to diversify the experience in an office things like that and of course who's the most qualified who has the most experience who's most applicable but yeah yeah it's crazy some people are like man i really want to go let me get on this next one so it's a lot different than active duty right because active duty people were like i don't want to go anymore stuff like that yeah we uh we had thankfully the units that i was in we had a little more say uh because the units that i was in one of them was non-deployable and the next one that i was in we would only deploy two guys at a time and we had a shop of about 13 guys and so some units will deploy like half the shop but for us we would deploy like just over 10 of our shop at a time and we would do two deployments in a row and then have a break and then two deployments in a row and a break so in like a two year time period we would only send six guys out of our 13. and so sometimes guys are only there for two or three years so you could be there and then not even deploy at all but they would um in my unit they were allowed to go hey i want to be the next up or i want to go here so i actually had a wedding coming up and they had slotted me for deployment and i had asked to not go on it because i had two weddings my friends had planned their weddings back to back so i could go to both of them so and we had like four or five other guys in my shop alone that wanted to go on the deployment so they ended up letting me step aside and let somebody else fill that slot so pretty much like we had like um like a list an order that they were gonna send people and so then like it was my turn but then i was like i have all this stuff going on so all right they moved me to the bottom of the list and then they just went with the next guy so uh that was a nice thing about my i've seen some active duty units where you know you don't have a choice they're like you 12 are going good luck you know and you're like okay like i don't have any choice at all but so yeah and it it's so my experience was pretty similar to the guard is what i i'm understanding from this is you're saying that you know you you have the opportunity to ask if you can be the next one it's not just uh you're told you're voluntold and you don't have a set exactly and it's a and that's kind of nice right i think to to have that consideration and then uh you know some flexibility there so yeah you sound like you had a good shot man yeah yeah it definitely takes away a lot of anxiety and stress of like not knowing or knowing you know the moment they want to pull the trigger like you don't have a say in it so that was definitely something that was was good about the units that i was in um but i've you know i've heard different stories with active duty so that's kind of like a hit or miss in activity but air guard you know it's a kind of a standard what do you want to do oh i got school going on right now or you know i'm about to graduate i'll go after i graduate but right now let me knock out this last semester i don't want to go on this deployment and as long as i have somebody else that can fill that slot then then you'll be good yeah and then usually like like i mentioned a lot of people want to go so yeah especially if you're working part-time like sometimes like you said that's tax-free money it's active duty pay so you're making like pretty good money when you go over there for that that period of time so it's like some people you know it's a opportunity to you know build up their savings account and and you also get access to some different benefits the longer you have active time uh we could probably shoot a whole another video on that one too but yeah so there's some incentives too for for guard members to to get on those deployments uh really interesting question that we got was can you choose to serve your one week in a month at another base not your base because somebody the reason why they asked they said what if i want to go on vacation with my family to florida right and you're stationed in california the air national guard would you be able to go hey i want to like parlay my my vacation with my drill weekend but in florida because that's where we're going to be on vacation is that an option i didn't think so and so i'm not for sure it might be but i was just like man that's a really good question like that's not something i would have thought of but the way they laid out the question i really liked it so i wanted to make sure to ask you is that even something that is possible possible yes uh definitely uncommon realistic maybe not you would need approval on both sides okay and your justification can't be like i need to parlay my vacation you know what i mean kind of thing but but if you can justify it properly like you want to do your drill weekend with another uh out of state unit same job of course and you can usually a good justification would be like training purposes maybe they work on the same aircraft or the same thing you want to get their their take on it where they do different style of repairs and stuff yeah it's doable i've heard of circumstances like that usually it'll be when somebody's transitioning from like a different state to this state yeah in the process or they're still living in their local state and they want to get drill credit for that weekend and then on the state guard unit so i mean like i said i wouldn't use my vacation as a justification but it is it can happen the answer is that's actually a really interesting concept is you can maybe travel around a little bit to different bases with that intention if you reach out and find other bases that work on different airframes for instance if you're i was aircraft structural maintenance when i was in so if your unit works on the f-15 and there's another unit that works on the f-16 and you're interested in learning a little bit more about that airframe you could pitch that as an idea of hey it's actually a good idea to let me go and do drill weekend here because i'm going to get experience on an additional airframe which is going to help me serve the air force better i do have a question with that like you said that's probably like a rare instance like that's not very common um but how would the travel work for that because i'm like man if if they pay for it all and they cover it right like i feel like people would be like yo i'm trying to be like training here training there i'm trying to go everywhere for training like but with that pocket for you yeah so in in most cases it that the travel would be out of pocket and of course we have to uh make sure that both units the leadership are signing off on this to begin with you're not just randomly choosing locations uh but provided both units are good with this right the member would probably be responsible for travel but then like a hotel state if that unit regularly gave hotels for people who were out of the area like our unit does like if you live an hour away from from our unit we'll provide you a hotel so that hotel would be complementary but your flight or the drive wouldn't be but the hotel would be covered right so it might not be worth it to try to go all over the place to do these trainings if you're having to pay for your plane tickets to fly all over for it yeah you've got a balance so we can pay right there just in that plane ticket what i would try to do honestly is again talk to your leadership and just get a tdy like a temporary duty and it'd be longer than that one week and it might be a week and those are more than you're trying to do those are through the base as a whole not just you doing it one off right right and then you know you could bring some of your buddies from the office to with you so yeah i mean if you're really doing it for the purposes of like i want to get better at my job talk to you know you can talk to your supervisor talk to your leadership they're looking for those opportunities anyway so that'd be a great way to to do both right get to travel to that destination and get paid the whole way so that's what i would recommend heck yeah that's that's awesome i know we uh kind of went like down a little rabbit hole there and it was uh maybe more of a tough question but i thought it was an interesting question so i wanted to make sure i asked it to you yeah i was definitely curious about that answer too i know we kind of answered this earlier but i want to hit on it again is one of the questions that people asked was can the air national guard work around your work schedule one of the examples one of our viewers gave was going to the academy for the police department that's like several months sometimes so how how does that work with your one weekend a month i know we kind of already hit on it but i wanted to uh just kind of have you reiterate does it work around if you have a career and you join the air national guard part-time are they flexible with you having a career that sometimes might have dates that are set in stone that you cannot change they they are and it's all about having a credible reason so the police academy scenario is is one that we get because police academy is like six months right and you have to do it consistently like there's no breaking that up so we do get members who are full-time law enforcement or or applying to be full-time law enforcement right the air guard by the way is a great resume booster to get into these law enforcement organizations so you know once they do get in you just let your supervisor know and we can either do kind of like what we were talking about we could consolidate your drill days either pre academy or post academy you know to make sure you have what we call a good year where you meet the minimum criteria of days that you showed up for that year but yeah we're absolutely flexible with things like that things that benefit both sides you know your law enforcement side and your air guard side that's the whole that's the whole like appeal to us to begin with like uh we would love to do that so like it's gonna benefit both organizations so pretty much what you're saying is it comes down to just a credible reason if you have a legitimate reason as to why you can't do drill weekends you can shift them off to another weekend versus just saying i just don't feel like coming in this weekend right yeah this is gonna get approved but if you're like no like literally i have like this is like going on like this is a big deal you know they'll they're going to meet you halfway on that where they'll exactly yeah i mean and it's just nice to have those options right so you can you can have like your full-time career or ambition or full-time life and then you have this this air guard part-time thing in the background you know that's that's going to complement whatever you're doing full-time next question i'm sure you get this question all the time but it's can you change your air national guard location so if you if you want to move or say well if you just want to move to a new state or a new location or your spouse or you get a new career and that relocates you are you able to transfer to a new unit or do you have to keep commuting all the way back to where you had signed short answer yes you know the big takeaway uh with the air guard is control so you're going to be able to control your pcs at your permanent change of station that's moving from place to place we get transfers all the time it's easy to transfer from guard to guard or any other reserve component and vice versa so we get transfers from the reserve we get people moving from guard to guard to guard so the short answer is yes it's so much easier than like moving in active duty so yeah if your spouse moves like it's easy to move with them things like that also your life situation changes uh that's the whole appeal because you know the air guard is a part-time organization primarily so they they can't hold you to a full-time expectation right so if you need to move for like let's say you're getting married or a better job opportunity on the full-time side yeah they're absolutely gonna work to accommodate that so then uh you would have to if you did do that like you said earlier in this interview certain bases have certain jobs though based on their uh their mission so you may not be close to another base that has the exact job that you have but you could still get transferred to the nearest unit possibly rather than right if you went from california to new york because of a job opportunity there's hopefully another base somewhere in between there at least that would have the same job uh so even if it's not you know in new york you might be able to transfer so good follow-up questions here the first one uh yeah you the easiest way to make that transfer is keeping your job and and finding that vacancy in the next state that you're transferring to right if if for some reason you have to move and there isn't that job at that new base that you're trying to go to then you you'd have to look at other job options you know if you have to make that move so then we'd cross train you that's changing jobs and of course you'd have to go back to tech school and kind of get your currency and proficiency up on that job so that's going to take time but again we're flexible and we're open to that option because we know you have a full-time life outside of the guard right so you might be married you might have a family might have a spouse there's all types of things that are going to change um so we're open to that well this would be a question on top of that is can you serve in a unit that you aren't living in that state so like if i'm a resident of new york would i be able to serve in the air national guard from you know vermont or massachusetts nice yep short answer yes and and we do see that a lot in uh between neighboring states so when i was a member of the wyoming air national guard we had members who lived in colorado and vice versa there are people who lived in wyoming residents of wyoming and then served in colorado a lot of it's just going to be dependent on the job opportunities at that particular base and state and then how close you live to that base because sometimes you might be on the border of one state but then that base is is a lot closer like let's say colorado right you know it might have a closer base you might live in colorado on the border of colorado and wyoming but the base on the wyoming side is so much closer than the base would be on the colorado side right i hope that makes sense but a lot of it's proximity and then job options so you don't you don't have to be a resident of the state that you're serving the guard for because i think that was like one of the big questions is like if i'm a resident of this state am i allowed to serve in another state's guard unit um because like you said if you're what if you live on the border and you don't want to drive eight hours to get to this base and you know it's only two hours to this one uh i think that was like one of the concerns that one of our viewers had was what if another state's unit is closer than my state's closest unit does that affect you but you said it doesn't it's actually common practice for people to sometimes serve in a unit that they're not actually a resident of exactly and and you know the whole thing too with residency time you join the military you you can be a resident of a state like your home state and then serve in a different state so that's you're probably familiar with that kyle from active duty that extends to the guard too okay so for example uh you know you can be a resident of nevada but then serve in california or or you know and things like that so it's super accommodating awesome yeah you guys seem uh you're like the uh the chill uncle of the military yeah like you always want to you you you always have like the coolest experiences you're like the most laid-back the most chill so i'm like yeah it sounds you weren't joking when you said it's like that air force is best kept secret yeah you know i was active dude so the primary for me like i joined the air force over a lot of the other branches right was because i wanted something that was like technical academic and and pretty chill overall like for me the the strictness of the military it wasn't appealing right i wanted something that i could grow but wasn't going to be like barking at me and all that so but then we i'm active duty we're talking about you know 15 10 15 years ago and i meet guard guys and i'm like what's the guard what's the air guard and they were so chill like they came in after us in the morning like they came in like like a couple hours after us and they had they all had starbucks and they were so happy and then they left before us too and i was like man what's the guard they look even way more they're like the air force of the air force you know super chill it's a long story short that's why i'm here now that's awesome you're like yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna go take that route now yeah that looks really nice this is a question that i'm sure you get uh maybe not entirely that often um well you might because you're in the california air national guard but joining with a green card so i we get that question i would say maybe like once every few weeks on airmen vision is joining the military in general with a green card but are you able to join the air national guard if you have a green card yes absolutely so you do have to have a green card and be a permanent resident right and there are some limits to some jobs like you you can't you don't have access to every job like security forces and then some of the jobs that work on the planes you wouldn't uh be able to get into until you got your citizenship but you can absolutely join you can actually even like the best job i've seen as a permanent resident is flight medic which is incredible you can be a flight medic or a medic and be a permanent resident and so that's like phenomenal i was like wow that's incredible right there also the next question we usually get is you know will that expedite their citizenship and the answers indirectly it will we we don't directly handle their citizenship you know that's a different government organization but having you know being a member of the air national guard on your application that's of course going to be helped put you in good standing and then i've heard that they do waive a lot of the fees involved so it's about 300 in fees to transition from a permanent resident to a u.s citizen so a lot of those fees get waived when you're a veteran okay yeah that's that's some money well it's a question we get but i don't know anything about that process because you know i've never dealt with helping people join with that situation so um that's definitely a good thing because i think there was another question i don't think i'd put it down it might have been on that same question does does it expedite it and you kind of hit that too so that was perfect it was like you were thinking what they were thinking because uh i'm sure a lot of people would want to know yeah can i join at all and then okay if i can join does that help with me becoming a citizen sooner and i personally have had three enlistees who were green card holders so yeah it's so rewarding i i think it's a phenomenal opportunity is it difficult to get a full-time slot in air national guard because we've been talking about how guard is you know it's like pretty flexible you can work part-time so i'm sure that we could probably just make a whole video on this topic alone of just the whole going active guard but how does that process work if we were to like sum it up that's a popular question man so we call them agr active guard reserves so as recruiters like myself i'm an active guard reserve so it's going to be like active duty where you're full-time each state will have their own website where they advertise those vacancies usually those slots are for in order to keep experience so it's not something that you would start with so somebody wouldn't enlist into an agr but if somebody had been in that career field for several years and they needed let's say a supervisor for an office usually that's the person though they'll put in that agr slot that's the person who's going to be there monday to friday and making sure that everything runs properly and they keep experience in that office so i think it's about putting in your time and being persistent with it making yourself available that's really how you get those slots on the guard side it is a big contrast to active duty where in active duty everybody is essentially agr you join fresh off the street and you're a full-time employee right full-time member of the active duty air force but in the guard the reason we're putting somebody on that full-time status is usually because we're trying to keep that experience yeah you know we need some experience in the office and we want to keep them full time so you have to of course be on be on board for usually a little bit of time and build up that experience in your career field and then you can apply to each state website that they advertised it on and that was kind of uh you had touched on earlier how like on weekends you know that one weekend a month that's when the base comes alive and you know the rest of the time the base really doesn't have a whole lot going on but there are some active guard reserve members that are manning the base it's just at a lower capacity than on that one weekend a month when like everyone's there so the mission still is happening it's still being able to go it's just that like an idol i guess where you know you have you have this set people in place that are active that work there you know they're normal every week and they're what's keeping you flowing and to give you some numbers kyle because i know you said you like numbers man yeah so our base we have a thousand and fifty personnel at our base assigned three hundred of them are full-time okay you're away how many you know yeah thirty percent so drill weekend when we come alive it essentially triples in size so your guys's base you know that one week in a month is a hundred percent and then the rest of the time you're maintaining that thirty percent uh exactly yeah activeness so that's that's good information because like i always wondered like how many people are active because it's like you gotta have enough people to like have the base still function when you know not everybody's there on that one weekend so that's something that i'm sure other people were curious about is if everybody works at one weekend a month what happens to the base you know the other 27 days out of the year or out of the month and then you know that's a lot of time out of the year that the base is just sitting there with nobody there yeah and the and the jobs that have the most agr slots are security forces and aircraft maintenance okay yeah gyms yeah security forces definitely because you need somebody to guard the base at all times no matter what and then maintain you can't just work on uh you can't work on a airplane or a helicopter you know one weekend a month and expect it to fly yeah exactly i mean those are each we have uh eight c-130s at our base and each one of those are 80 million so we're definitely we want those aircrafts maintained well and of course we want uh defenders that social security forces personnel to take care of our base and our people to be so we can do that mission something that many people are interested in which you actually touched on in your own story was going from active duty to the guard when i was active duty that was something so many people would talk about because you said you know it's more flexible it's more chill people are like dude i'm gonna get out and go guard well what is that process like like is it is it easy is it seamless is there multiple ways to do it how would somebody go from active duty to join the air national guard good question so we we have a recruiter assigned to every active duty base they're called in-service recruiter air national guard in-service recruiter or isr for short and keep in mind that one isr might be responsible for three or four bases so if you don't see them at your base they're probably they should have flyers around or contact information just reach out to any air national guard recruiter and we have access to to give you the point of contact to who that person is but they would start you on the process of either palace chase or palace front palace chase means uh ending your contract early that's palace chase and then palace front means transitioning at the end of your enlistment okay so so right now the activity air forces over man so they're actually authorizing like excessive amounts of palace chase so it's a great time for people to transition and palace chase from active duty into the air guard we're getting a lot of uh transfers that way so that's where you said if if you're not you haven't fulfilled your active duty contract yet you might have you know a few years left or a year left and you don't have to you don't have to wait to finish out that contract you can actually roll that contract into the air national guard is what that is that that's kind of essentially in a nutshell what that's exactly so when i was active duty i still had a year left in my contract with active duty but i palace chase so i left a little bit early and transferred into the hawaii air national guard at that point so how did that work with your contract did you have to roll that one year over and then sign an additional six on top of that so so right now it's it's doubling so whatever you have left so if you have one year left on contract you're you're expected to serve at least two years in the air national guard and that criteria will change from time to time we're shooting this video in 2021 yeah but right now they're just doubling that that time frame whatever's left on your contract so it's a little bit different than somebody that has no prior service and they're they're joining um if you palace chase you just double that you just roll that over and then double it but what about a palace front would you have to sign a full six-year contract no for palace front we have either a one-year option where we call it like try it where you can try that one year in the air guard or is so chill that is crazy or you can do a three-year option which is probably the most common if you do cross-train you do have to do at least a three year so that one year is going to be if you just keep your same job well we'll uh we'll definitely keep our options open for mckenna with her joining because she's already discussed the potential if we start a family or she wants to start a career as a civilian right like there's still benefits of going guard so that might be something you know even if you know we decide to start a family and she wants to start a career she still has two years left on her contract if she were to palace chase then it's like she'll just have four years left she basically just added an additional two years onto her contract if she had two years left um four years as part time or two more years of active duty it's like which which option do i want so that's a nice backup option to be able to you know you don't have to fulfill your active duty contract if if they're offering that in the moment because it's a and especially like you said if you palace front you get out after your contract or you transfer at the end of your active duty contract you do the one or three years that's a lot better of a commitment than you know six versus somebody that's brand new especially in that transition phase because sometimes people just might need that you know that one year where they're transitioning from active duty to a civilian career but they still want some of the benefits that the military might offer but they they want their time back so that's actually a really good flexibility i would like to maybe do a future video talking about palace front and palace chase with you because i think you know you probably go into more depth on on some of those and how the process works potentially or maybe it's just that easy and the guard makes it more simple than uh than we would i'd love to i'd love to do that video yeah yeah that's uh definitely a huge option i i heard it thrown around so much when i was active duty you know i'm a palace runner i'm a palace chase you know 90 of the guys wouldn't end up doing it anyways but it was like always something that they would think about or talk about but i never considered it so i never looked into it so uh to me it's you know this foreign world to understand so yeah where's this palace at you know a big question that a lot of people have with joining the guard is you know why should i join guard or why do i why should i join guard over active duty or why should i join the military in general so kind of spill all those reasons as to you know why somebody should choose this route yeah so the biggest thing that i've learned since you know i've been in and uh it's been 18 years now it's been a great ride i i think why join the military at all is career development and experience but why go air guard specifically is control if i had to summarize everything into one word is control it's controlling how much air force you participate in so that is the part that i love that's why a lot of guys go from active duty to air guard it's just controlling your career and being able to serve when you want to how you want to and having that flexibility to balance with your with your civilian life so that that's the the best part for me having that control and i will i will uh say that almost everyone that i know that went from active duty to guard when i was in absolutely loved the new lifestyle and the new transition i don't think i knew anybody that liked their life less after they left active duty for the guard uh because it was kind of a nice change of pace uh for them and then they could start to finally go back to school full-time or pursue the career that they wanted to do as a civilian so yeah i definitely think it's a great option just based off of everything that you've explained and even the guys that i know that had gone guard uh i've only heard great things about it so that's definitely uh something if you're interested you can go ahead and tell them again where they can contact you if this video helped convince them to be like man i gotta do what this guy does uh how can they reach you and contact you and possibly you know uh start in the direction of joining the air national guard yeah so so i'm a california air national guard recruiter so if you're if you're looking at california feel free to give me a call or text me 805-415-7269 again eight oh five four one five seven two six nine but i do encourage you wherever you guys are at reach out to that local air national guard recruiter or check out goang.com g-o-a-n-g.com and thanks to airman vision for for allowing us to shed some light and and showcase the opportunities that we have for all y'all in the air guard definitely yeah i'm glad we could uh i'm glad you reached out to do an interview with us it definitely helps get good information out for people that are interested in you know taking this opportunity up [Music] you

Channel: Airman Vision

Views: 14,427

Rating: 4.9136071 out of 5

Keywords: air force, us air force, airforce, joining the airforce, military, usaf, air national guard, air guard, ang, joining the air national guard, join the air national guard, air national guard recruiter, air guard recruiter, california air guard, california air national guard, air force national guard, usaf guard

Id: T9V1lxncJJI

Length: 68min 32sec (4112 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021