A friend recently graduated from college, and having gone through 4 years of ROTC, was granted a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Air Force. He was initially scheduled to enter tech school in September, but was later delayed until May 2021 due to Covid19. In the meantime he is left hanging with no assignment, salary or benefits.
I am wondering if the same situation applies to this year’s Service Academy graduates, or were they given immediate assignments in the military or treated differently in some way?
I can’t speak to 2020. But it was certainly that way when I graduated ROTC in the early 1980s.
The difference is that a service academy cadet is already on active duty and getting a paycheck as a member of the military for all 4 years they’re at school. Yes, at some low pay rate as an enlisted person. But at graduation they turn into shiny new O-1s who are still on active duty. So their pay bumps, their bennies continue, and because that costs Uncle Sam money, he’s anxious to give them first dibs at all the tech schools for whatever their officer job is going to be.
Meanwhile, ROTC cadets are reservists; hence that R on the front. Upon commissioning, they’re still reservists. And not on active duty. So no pay, no benefits, no nothing. Just an obligation to go to school later when told and to enter active duty that day, whenever it may come.
I completed undergrad & commissioning in early June like normal. And did not go on active duty until the very end of the following March, just shy of 10 months later. When things got really backed up the delay could extend over a year. Although normally they work hard to avoid that.
But every year somebody gets to be the guy who waits 51 weeks before going on active duty just before the next crop of academy grads a year younger slides in next week.
All perfectly normal practice back then and as far as I’ve ever heard from younger ex-officers I work with now, it’s still the current practice.
COVID may make 2020’s delays worse, but it didn’t start this practice of different treatment for academy grads vs ROTC.
When I commissioned (2005) that was the first year in a long while (maybe ever?) of “Everyone, USNA and NROTC, commissions directly into the regular Navy.” So I commissioned through NROTC, but never held a reserve commission, much less had to spend time in the inactive reserve.
With that said, at some, point a few years ago (circa 2012 I think, but maybe later), with flight schools plagued by delays and a glut of new Ensigns, they decided to start doing this thing described in the OP. That is, commissioning some Ensigns (mostly the ones waiting for a spot to open up at flight school) into the inactive reserves rather than try and find a way to stash them (and have to pay them) for months or a year or more, almost literally just handing out basketballs. This was mostly reserved for naval aviators and flight officers.
What I cannot recall, though, is if this was applied only to NROTC grads waiting to class up, or if it was applied to USNA as well.
Since I missed the edit window:
The transition back to the reserves for some, pending a school opening, happened sometime (perhaps not coincidentally) after: Men accused of killing wading birds were Navy officers in training
Spoilered because there’s dead birds if you click that link.
But I think it was still a couple years between that incident and the decision to stop paying people to sit around doing nothing at best, or killing birds on the government dime at worst.
My bro was USN AOCS. Back then “stashing” seemed to be a Navy term & practice that USAF/USA just didn’t have. I first learned about it from his experiences.
Although as I dimly recall, stashing was more common between service schools vs. between commissioning and the first day of the first school.
It was like the Navy just couldn’t figure out how to run a training pipeline. There must have been some countervailing factor that made their pipelining less seamless than USAF’s.
All very interesting what changes and what’s (semi-)eternal. NROTC directly into a regular commission. Hmm. Will wonders never cease!
I was commissioned out of NROTC as a Line officer in ‘86. That was normal, then. My understanding was that it was unusual for the AFROTC cadets on campus to get anything other than a Reserve commission. We didn’t have AROTC.
The relatively small number of midshipmen not on scholarship were commissioned into the Reserves. In those days, if you were a male on scholarship, you went Line and if you were female it was fairly unlikely you’d get a Line commission. That had all changed within a couple of years.
Confused… You can be a line officer in either the reserves or regular component, right…? Being unrestricted line vs restricted line vs staff corps doesn’t say anything about whether your commission is regular or not.
Yeah, I didn’t say that very clearly. Men on scholarship got regular, unrestricted, line commissions. Men not on scholarship, as I recall, got reserve line commissions, but I think some of them had the option of EDO and the like. Women on scholarship got regular commissions, but more often than not into restricted line billets. I don’t recall any women not on scholarship, but I’d guess that they’d have gotten reserve restricted line positions. This was a long time ago, so I undoubtedly still don’t have it right.
My brother took ROTC through college and when he got his Bachelors he also was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant (Field Artillery) in the Army Reserve . This was in 1969. He requested a 2 year delay to attend graduate school and it was approved. After he got his MBA he requested a transfer to Adjutant General or Finance Corps. They replied with a set of orders to Ft Sill for Basic Officers Field Artillery School. So he went about hitting the local Army surplus stores filling his duffle bag with the proper uniforms, the proper number of uniforms, and getting them tailored. And getting a AAA triptik to Oklahoma. 2 weeks before he was going to leave, he got another set of orders to Ft Benjamin Harrison for Basic Officers Finance school.
Ken was on a partial scholarship for the last 2 years of ROTC. Back in those days ALL male college students had to take ROTC their first 2 years. They had no military commitment after those 2 years. After Advanced ROTC, you owed time. 6 years total. But if you were a reserve, you could finaggle it. Ken signed up for 2 years active duty and 4 years inactive. So that 2 year delay was half of his inactive duty. No meetings and no paycheck.