What's the difference between the Army Reserve and Army National Guard?

[Airbound Gabe]

anyone that can answer please do so

thanks

[djack]

There's no real difference in the job itself.

The guard will be called up by the state for disasters, homeland security, etc where the reserve won't, but that stuff is really fun & rewarding.

The guard tends to be mostly combat oriented units, where the reserve is almost all support units.

In the guard you'll train with your friends & then when deployed will tend to stay together as once cohesive unit. Where the reserves tend in a lot more cases to pull individuals here & there to fill openings in other units (active or guard), so you're going to war with complete strangers a lot of the time.

And then there's benefits. The federal benefits are exactly the same, but guard gets additional benefits from the state. Now, those do vary considerably from state to state (particularly education funds), so it may be a really good deal or not very noticeable depending on where you live.

And finally, if you're an officer or senior NCO, as you move up you have to promote to specific job opening that's authorized to have someone of that rank in it. That's going to be within your unit at the lower levels, but if you stay on for 10-15-20 years, then it's going to be in higher level units. In the guard that still means within your state, so you may be willing to commute. In the reserves, that may mean a unit several states away, which may not be reasonable to do. So it can be limiting in some ways.

[blaster]

as far as training its about the same they both do one weekend a month and then annual training in the summer (unless you go on deployment) but the reserve is run by the army and the national guard belongs to each state so sometimes the reserve have better equipment because they are federally funded but the guard is state funded, but on the flip side of that the benefits from the guard are better (schooling and things like that). its mostly just a matter of preference..the guard has been around longer than any other military organization

[Al W]

They both are under the Department of the Army but the National Guard falls under state jurisdiction and can be activated by the Governor of a state. The reserves only fall under the Department of the Army and can not be activated by anybody at the state level. Both the National Guard and the Reserves are currently serving in IRAQ and Afghanistan.

[lashontiara j]

I dont think its a difference. It looks all the same to me.