Which is cheaper to maintain, a Guard/Reserve unit or Active Duty unit?

The question of whether a Guard/Reserve unit or an Active Duty unit is cheaper to maintain is an overly simplistic question that requires explanation and clarification.
- Assumptions. If one assumes that a Compo 2 or 3 unit will never activate or mobilize then of course they are cheaper than a Compo 1 unit. It is the difference between paying for 39 days a year vs 365 days a year in personnel costs alone. This is a bad assumption, however, so the issue becomes is it cheaper to have a compo 1 unit essentially mobilized all the time or a compo 2/3 unit which is cheaper generally but more expensive to mobilize and takes a longer time?
- Time. Alluded to above but boils down to "you get what you pay for". A compo 1 unit can be deployed within 18 hours to about 90 days while a compo 2 or 3 unit would require 30-180 days to mobilize.
- Fixed Costs. Costs for facilities and equipment are generally fixed regardless of component. The main difference is having equipment vs maintaining the equipment vs using the equipment.
- Flexiable Costs. There are several flexible costs that obviously vary among the components such as personnel (wages), medical insurance, medical care, operations, readiness, maintenance, etc. Compo 2/3 are cheaper when not mobilized but generally more expensive to mobilize.
- Capability and Capacity. Simple way of asking "what can a formation or organization do" and "how much of that thing can a formation or organization do". The capability and capacity of Compo 1, 2, and 3 varies by branch but it can be said that compo 1 has a mix, compo 2 (NG) is combat heavy, and compo 3 (Reserve) is CS/CSS heavy.
- Natural Strengths. Not sure if true for all branches but the natural strength of the Engineer Regiment in compo 1 is tactical while the natural strength of the Engineer Regiment in compo 2/3 is technical. Both are required within the Engineer Regiment.
- At the end of the day, the American military system is built upon not having all of our eggs in one basket. Having a mix of capability/capacity spread among the three components is a way to achieve this with a variety of costs to achieve a good balance. In other words; Good, fast, and cheap. Pick two.

Everything I've read says that, overall, RC formations cost about 1/3 of AC formations.

I'm in a RTI unit, we teach. We are finding that Big Army (AD) is tasking small Army (Guard) with much more, because it saves them oodles of money.

I know this is a bit off your topic...but wanted to add my .02. Even the active guys are impressed with the quality of NCO and ease of getting onto a Guard school. For example ALC is over a month for active duty...but for the Reserve component, it is only 3 weeks.

I would say Guard because there is state money as well as federal money involved. A lot of "full time" Guardsmen are actually state technicians paid by the state not federal $. The equipment is owned and maintained by the state and the armories and physical facilities are state property with some federal subsidy. Reserve and AD are all federal funds

I could see this on both sides. However, to maintain a Guard/Reserve unit, there are added costs that someone doesn't always think of.

Active duty Army trains everyday for ther jobs. They are a force ready, so to speak. The Army Reserves/Guard would take much more ramp up time in order to prepare to respond to a situation (time is money). When the Guard trains during their Drills, many those units need to travel to another post in order to carry out the training.

Aside from that, I would be interested to see some stats showing the difference in costs.

I would say it is more expensive in the guard. The reason being attaining a reasonable tempo for the standard maintenance, most of the times those deadlines are not met. In the active army, you go weekly, monthly quaterly. In the guard/reserve when you drill, once a month, in addition to all the rest of what goes on. Translates into not ideal condition for usage, maintenance, training, and the elements tend to damage stuff that just sits there.

Just my 2 cents.

SPC (Join to see) - which is cheaper depends on how you're measuring. Last statistics I saw, it's less expensive to keep an Army Reserve unit than either National Guard or Active Duty. That was one of the debates raging throughout Congress back in the mid-90's when they decided to move reserve combat arms to ARNG and support missions to USAR. That said, I can't believe it's less expensive to run a Bradley squadron under Active Duty than ARNG. I think there's more going on behind the scenes that you're not being told

At home personnel costs are much cheaper, equipment is near the same. During Mobilizations Reserves are much more expensive, everyone gets BAH and the Active Duty personnel costs are sunk so you have to pay them either way.

The real reason the state wanted to give up the brads is probably just the maintenance and procurement costs. It's not really cheaper to give them to AD, but it is MUCH cheaper to reclass your unit from HBCT to light infantry simply to not pay for the Bradley's. So the AD needs to pay for the Bradleys and your state doesn't have to pay for anything other than boots.

Cost is a variable in itself. Monetary value alone should be relatively comparable, however, when you factor in such things as maintenance, billeting, and subsidence, one component may appear to spend more than another. Personally, I believe costs could be lowered if more things were done with integrity rather than various attempts at shortcutting. In the long run, those quick solutions, while Garrison, can cost a unit way more than ever intended or necessary to begin with. Doing things the right way may take a little longer but in the long run you save money, time, resources, and build quality Soldiers to continue the cycle. Cost generally isn't measure by a number, rather, by an amount only relative to the spender/buyer.

Depends if you are fully funded with what you are supposed to have, from all classes of supply, all of your troops and support. It may be cheaper, but what is the quality of the equipment and age of the equipment? You work with it two days a month and spend 30 minutes in the motor pool actually working on it and 2 hours screwing off avoiding real work. So is that equipment ready to roll or ready to break? My guess it is waiting it is a stones throw from a ride on the back side of an M88.