<p>Hello, I am a community college student thinking of joining the millitary. I have looked up Internet for the years of service I must do once I enlist, but there are just too many different years from different website.</p>
<p>Here’s the simple breakdown:</p>
<p>Years of service in the US Armed Forces are broken into “contracts”.</p>
<p>The most basic contract, the one that probably 90% of service members’ first contract, is 4 years Active Duty and 4 years Inactive Ready Reserve. Sometimes these first contracts vary depending on the MOS (job) you enlist for: basically some jobs require extensive training, say 1+ years, so the military wants to get enough out of the investment (training) they have provided the new service member. Some of these jobs include intelligence fields etc. In those cases, the service branch requires the member to sign a 5 year AD (Active Duty) with the 4 years of Inactive Ready Reserve (IRR), so now a total of 9 year commitment. Sometimes, and this is highly infrequent these days, and I myself have only met one other service member in this situation, a new service member can negotiate a 2-year AD enlistment (instead of 4) with 2 or 4 years of IRR. Honestly, with cuts in manpower to all the branches the last few years, I’m not sure they even offer that type of contract.</p>
<p>After your first contract, you may reenlist for subsequent years, which again vary depending on your job or if you will be given more training (say, if a service member switches jobs after the first contract - called a “LAT move” for lateral move into another field). The catch here is that your first reenlistment AD years take the place of your original IRR years and you theoretically (by contract) would not be required to participate in IRR. Every other reenlistment after that would typically also only be for AD years. You are eligible for retirement at 20 AD years of service (non-medical retirement).</p>
<p>What is the difference between AD and IRR? Well, AD time is the years you will spend performing your duties in a unit full-time. Often working more hours than a regular full-time job, however, but that will depend on the job (MOS) you enlist for. These will be the years where you go to bootcamp/basic training, attend your job/MOS training, and then serve with your first unit at your first duty station day in and day out (most weekends off if you’re not overseas). IRR is nearly the complete opposite (not to be confused with RESERVE, which IS different) - on the day-to-day scale you will not report to any unit, command, or military superior. You are able to go about your life (look for a job, go to school, hang out with friends and family, travel, etc) as if you were no longer in the military. The requirements of this time focus around events called “musters”. Generally, once a year while you are on IRR, the service branch you were discharged from will send you notice to report to some local muster event. The main objective of these musters are to a) make sure you’re still alive, b) update any personal information (i.e. family additions like marraige and children, home address and/or phone number if you’ve moved), and c) provide support for your service related medical and administrative needs (i.e. enrolling in the Veteran’s Affairs system if you were injured in the military, providing assistance to veteran families in the way of finances if you’ve been out of work and such). They are typically all-day events, but depending how big they are they also provide a meal and they pay you to go, usually a couple hundred bucks before taxes - which you do need to report as income. When your IRR time is up, they stop sending you letters and you are no longer obligated to serve again unless a draft is instituted.</p>
<p>In short, typical first contracts are 4 years Active Duty and 4 Inactive Ready Reserve for a toal 8 year commitment. 5 years AD for certain jobs with longer training. That’s why you might be seeing different numbers - or why a recruiter may be telling you only 4 years when most other places are claiming 8.</p>
<p>Hope that helps.</p>