Lawmakers in Congress have introduced new legislation aimed at fixing a complex system that has many times prevented Airmen serving on Air National Guard and Reserve duty status from getting the same benefits as their Active-duty counterparts.
The bipartisan Duty-Status Reform Act—sponsored by Reps Gil Cisneros (D-Calif.) and Jack Bergman (R-Mich)—would streamline the number of Guard and Reserve duty statuses from 30 to just four main categories, a move that former Air National Guard Director Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh said could be the “game-changer” needed to fix an overly complicated management system that often shortchanges Guard and Reserve members of benefits such as Tricare.
“To finally have the congressional sponsorship of duty-status reform is absolutely awesome,” Loh, now retired, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It’s absolutely necessary for our Guard and Reserve.”
Loh has been long-time advocate for streamlining the dozens of duty-statuses that Guard and Reserve members are placed on for taskings ranging from drill weekends to disaster-relief missions. On top of that are mobilizations to support real-world missions like Operation Midnight Hammer, the bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear sites, and Operation Absolute Resolve, the recent mission to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“This gets hugely complicated,” Loh said, adding that there have been past attempts to push duty-status reform legislation through Congress, but efforts have never gotten this far.
The 30 separate duty statuses in place currently are the “result of patch fixes done by Congress spanning from World War II to the Global War on Terror,” according to a fact sheet on the legislation.
“The current framework is confusing, difficult to administer, and results in unnecessary administrative burdens,” the document states. “Most importantly, it fails to provide equitable benefits and does not align with the needs of our Guard and Reserve units.”
The four proposed duty status categories in the act are:
- Category I: Contingency Duty that involves missions such as military operations and national emergencies such as natural disasters. This also covers post-deployment activities.
- Category II: Training and Support activities that include required training, administrative assignments and other support missions.
- Category III: Reserve Component Duty Blocks of time that involve partial-day duty and are dedicated to readiness training and support to prepare individuals and units to be ready for future use and mobilization. This category would include training periods, flight training, administrative activities, and support activities such as funeral honors support.
- Category IV: Remote Assignments that involve online learning and individually assigned duties that are completed virtually.
“Efforts to simplify the complex duty status system began over two decades ago. We owe it to our service members to deliver this much-needed change and ensure they are receiving equitable pay and benefits,” Cisneros, a Navy veteran and former Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, said in a news release on the effort. “This was my number one priority returning to Congress. Having worked on this issue during my time at the Pentagon, I learned about the complexity of the current duty status system and how it hurts our readiness and quality of life for service members.”
To Loh, the Guard and Reserve members suffer the “biggest pain point” when they have to change from one status to another on back-to-back assignments such as ordering a Reservist to transition from training to support a real-world operation.
“They changed from one status to another, so it would kick them off in Tricare,” Loh said. “They could be deployed, doing this over in Europe, the Middle East, or somewhere in the Pacific, and the next thing you they’re getting calls from their family saying ‘Hey, I just got a medical bill, and they said we didn’t have Tricare.”
Bergman said the proposed legislation is a “common sense win” for Guard and Reserve members.
“It cuts through decades of red tape to make sure those who serve get consistent benefits, clear orders, and the support they’ve earned—whether they’re responding to disasters at home or missions abroad,” Bergman, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and former commander of Marine Forces Reserve, said in the release.
The bill is endorsed by a number of service associations that support the Guard and Reserve.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Francis McGinn, president of the National Guard Association, praised the proposed legislation as a “long overdue step forward for our force and the nation.”
Miliary Officers Association of America Director Jimmy Santos, who has served in the Air Force, the Air National Guard, and now the Air Force Reserve, pointed out that the reform act also “simplifies the Pentagon’s access to the Reserve Forces, helping maintain mission readiness and enhancing force posture.”
Loh made a similar point by saying he has spent “painstaking hours” trying to explain the different duty statuses of the Guard and Reserve to Active-duty commanders to ensure they have the right mix personnel for a particular mission.
“It would be so confusing, they didn’t understand,” Loh said.
To Loh, making it easier to access the Guard and Reserve is critical to maintaining force readiness. “The way you increase readiness is you make a much more simplistic system on how you access approximately 40 percent of the force because we need a Guard member that’s ready to go and that doesn’t have to think about what type of status they’re on or what benefits their family members going to get,” Loh said. “We need them to focus on the mission.
