Posted on Mar 14, 2019
What is the minimum contract length for prior service in active army?
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I've been out of the military for about a year now, but am wanting to go active duty to see if I want to make it a career. My question is what is the minimum length I can enlist for?
Prior Service
Prior Service Recruiter
Re-enlistment
Recruiter
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 9
The shortest time I have ever seen was a 1 year contract...but I think that was a short term program to give people an opportunity to see if they like the Army after one year. The next shortest is 2 years but I think that is a rare chance as well. The standard is 3-4 years.
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SFC J Fullerton
The Army Reserve has 1 year contracts for Prior Service, in select units, but never seen that for the Regular Army.
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Active duty usually requires 3 years. There are exceptions, they are usually reserved for specialty fields. Contact your local recruiter. Thank you for your service.
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I’ve been out a long time, but I think this still applies. If you’ve only been out a year, and you’re a SP4, I’m assuming you have not fulfilled your eight year commitment, and therefore should still be in the reserves (IRR?). If that’s the case, I would check with a recruiter to see what it would take to go active, or talk to your USAR branch to see if they have any one year tours for reservists.
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SPC Erich Guenther
It doesn't matter, they will tear up an IRR contact if he is going Active as it is considered an upgrade. His Active Duty time will count towards his Eight Year Commitment and they will tack on as IRR time at the end whatever part of the 8 year commitment he did not cover with his Active Duty Contract. Thats what they did with me when I shifted from NG to ACTIVE DUTY, I wiped out a year of NG enlistment..........which they replaced with a combo of AD time and IRR time.
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COL David Turk
Not sure I’m reading you correctly. The eight period starts when you first enlist (or ascend if an officer). It’s a calendar event in that at the end of eight years from that start date, regardless of what entity you were in, the eight year commitment is over (but not any ongoing contracts, they are mutually exclusive). Active duty, reserve, National Guard, ROTC, etc. all counts towards the eight years. There is no contract for the IRR. It’s a holding entity.
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I would recommend three years because it takes you two years to get really good at your MOS on Active Duty even with prior NG service. So if they do offer you a 2 year contract which I doubt they will........pick three years at a minimum. The very few folks I know that enlisted for 2 years in the 1980's wanted a little more time on AD.........seriously.
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Regular Army is 2 minimum, but HRC Business Rules apply to Prior Service. Because that changes frequently, the only way to find out is to see a recruiter for the current information.
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The shortest contracts I've seen are 3 years and some change but they're only available for certain MOSs. I would recommend going into a recruiter and actually seeing various contract lengths for the jobs you're interested in. The more popular the job, the longer the contracts are generally. So you have to figure out if a short contract is worth a job you might not want. I took one of, if not the, longest initial enlistment contracts out there but I secured an amazingly rare and highly demanded job. I happened to actually want a long contract so it worked out, but there's usually a trade off.
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I was prior service when I enlisted back into the Army and I had to sign up for 3yrs...
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Contact your nearest recruiting office. They have the latest and greatest since you fall under the Prior Service Business Rules.
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