For new Air Guard members, the commitment involves working one weekend a month and a few weeks a year at a minimum for a period of either 3 or 6 years. You must attend Basic Military Training at Lackland AFB in Texas for approximately 7 weeks, followed by Technical School for the career field they have chosen. Tech schools range in length from 6 to over 50 weeks, depending on the job.

One of the primary benefits of joining the Air Guard is being part of your Hometown Air Force. Ordinarily, you would join the unit closest to where you live, and after the initial training you would return to begin working one weekend a month and a few weeks a year from that location. On occasion - typically during the annual training periods (two to three weeks a year) - units try to travel to varied locations to complete a more comprehensive training program. When this occurs, all of our members are provided transportation to and from that location as well as room and board.

If you are interested in joining the Air Guard having never served before, you must be between the ages of 17 and 34. You will be required to pass a written examination called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) as well as an Entrance Physical Examination. Additionally, you can only have limited law violations and must pass a background check. All of this is performed as part of the screening process before you can actually join the Air Guard.

Once you complete the screening process and are determined eligible to join, you begin the job selection process, in which you and your recruiter will begin to discuss your areas of interest. Using the results from the ASVAB test and physical, the local recruiter reviews positions available within the local unit to match your areas of interested with what is currently available at the unit you’re looking to join. Once a job is selected, you will be scheduled to enlist. This is the point where your membership in the Air Guard begins; everything prior to swearing in is just preliminary processing and does not obligate you to join.

There is always the possibility of being tasked for deployment. The current posture for the Air Guard is to support the needs of the Air Force on an as-needed basis. It is almost impossible to predict or determine whether, when or for how long you could be deployed. Every effort is made to use volunteers first, and in some cases you may be tasked to deploy when volunteers are not available to meet the mission’s requirements.