What are the similarities and differences I will encounter in serving as a 12B squad leader after transitioning from active duty to the NG?

Yes. The most common thing I hear from 11Bs who transitioned in the NG from the RA is - "This is not the Army".
Meaning, there is a standard for what you expect an AD infantry unit to meet, you will not see that at your average NG infantry unit. Your average NG Soldier has Basic/OSUT and a deployment every few years for experience. Your average RA transitioning Soldier expects to show up to a drill and see a unit running just like any other day at their old AD unit, with the same level of training, discipline, and technical expertise. That's not what the NG is.

That's not to disparage the NG, they're civilians for four straight weeks and Soldiers for two days. But they bring their wealth of civilian skills with them when they deploy. You deploy with the AD Army and you have a bunch of 20 year old kids who only know how to do their one job. You deploy with the NG and you're taking medics who are full time paramedics, engineers who are construction foremen, common who are professional IT and Cable installers, PAs who are ortho and surgical specialists, paralegals and JAGS who are licensed in your state to help you with your real legal issues, cooks who run restaurants, as well as the whole assortment of police, firefighters, business owners, teachers, and every other skill set and connection you could ever hope to use in an austere environment

Yup. I did ACRC training or rather trying to train the NG. You will have all the same issues. But you will have some old farts hanging around stealing oxygen. They will be your biggest issue. Usually the SFCs more so than any other rank. 54 days of training a year will be a total nightmare in getting your blocks checked in training. Good luck. You'll need it

12b to infantry won't be that big of deal. If anything you will bring knowledge of the 12b job to the infantry company you are with that they won't know otherwise. Cross training with different MOS isn't something that happens all the time in the guard, so your joes will be ahead of the game when/if you have to work with Sappers at JRTC or NTC or if/when you deploy. Working with the infantry as a 12b was my favorite thing I ever did in the guard, it was awesome all the time every time.

But also you might want to see if their is a 12b unit anywhere close to you if you are already a SL. NG is slot based for NCOs and I doubt any unit would be willing to let a mos transfer jump into their leadership spots instead of promoting in house. Despite having WLC very early in my transition to 12b, I had to wait about a year for my 5 to be offered to me because the leadership didn't want a former Redleg to get the slot before some of their joes had a chance to go to WLC themselves.

The coming from AD to RC will be much more of a shock to you because there is generally a lack of discipline in comparison to AD units. I was never AD, but had the chance to work with quite a few overseas and in various training situations and they definitely know the x's and o's better than RC if you were to just pick up a NG/Reserve unit and drop them in the mix overseas. This doesn't happen of course, because every NG unit has months and months of training beforehand before they can deploy, but even then AD will still have more hours in their job than RC will and are always more hardcore on disciplining their troops. At least the combat arms ones.

I think lots of it has to do with the core of every national guard unit is like every two years 10 or so guys from the local armory community join up together, went to school together, live in the same town together, join the army and go to osut/ait together, get married and have kids at the same time, and have generally know each other or have known of each other for a super long time and that lifelong friendship of brodom make it hard to smoke the shit out of each other because the armory had a couple of pieces of tissue that fell out of the trash can. Some guys that are local to the community will head off for further armories with more opportunities, but generally you get the same guys hanging around the same armory for years. Where you might be shuffled halfway across the US in AD to move into a leadership spot.

Most of the time, the former AD guys hate it for the lack of discipline, then end up pretending they hate it, and then end up staying and becoming integral parts of the armory for years to come because it allows them to scratch the military itch every once and a while, be a subject matter expert, but still be around family and enjoy civilian life.

We partnered with the 1/149th once for AT, which had a former joe from the 75th. Now maybe I was caught listening to him on a bad day or something, but generally I got the impression that he didn't want to be there and that he had put in his resume to contractors to try and pick him up. Eventually we split off from them to do more sapper related task and I didn't see him again, but left with the impression that the dude was gonna bail as soon as he could. Then randomly a couple of years later on FB I got a KYARNG notification and low and behold there was this same Joe now a senior NCO in the 1/149th. The NG had even corrupted the ultimate hard charging Ranger.



I always look at NG as being kind of like cowboys. We can ride around and do crazy things and shoot big guns, and blow stuff up, but we have more fun doing it than AD does.