As I out-processed in 1999, I remember the ‘warning’ given by the personnel ‘kid’....’keep your uniform’. There was some regulation that I’d never heard of, which detailed for a period of something like 12 to 24 months, where they could recall you. I brought this up in the office, and no one had dealt with this before. Somewhere in the basement, I still have a duffle-bag with $700 of uniforms probably sitting there.
My take....maybe you could do this with 40-year old folks...on up to 45 years old. Beyond that? No, physical stuff starts to come up. All of these people would be mid-management types.
As for reasoning? That comment by Putin last year of creating two new Army Corps got people hyped up. This week, the Russian General said the two new units (in the region of 400k men each) would become active by the end of 2024. On paper, it may exist, but I don’t see how you’d reach nearly a million new members....without drafting a lot of Russian women, or just saying billets exist but are never filled. Some speculation that the two units would be placed along the borders of Finland, the Baltic, and Poland.
They don't care. Look at what they're doing in Ukraine. Both sides are conscripting men well past their prime and are starting to consider women. The elites need a global meat grinder to bring down the population. That's their goal, and WWIII is how it'll come about.
For us USAF guys, it was 10 years for retirees. I was sweating getting called back, for the Gulf War. Fortunately, the call never came.
“As I out-processed in 1999, I remember the ‘warning’ given by the personnel ‘kid’....’keep your uniform’. There was some regulation that I’d never heard of, which detailed for a period of something like 12 to 24 months, where they could recall you. I brought this up in the office, and no one had dealt with this before. Somewhere in the basement, I still have a duffle-bag with $700 of uniforms probably sitting there.
I’m not sure if that transferred over to the retiree community, and I was in the Coast Guard but we had no stipulations such as that? The Navy had a bunch of stuff like the TAR program and a few other confusing stipulations that I was not at all familiar with but basically it was up to 24 months after the EOE that you were still “eligible.”
And then there’s the officer equivalent which was you servr at the pleasure of the president so I guess they could occasionally get called back from retirement if National Security necessitated it. From what I understand officers that get called out of retirement fill support jobs such as training bases or supply... regional staff offices, recruiting et al... basically SLJO work...they are not going to the line right off the bat.
I remember after 9/11 the USAF was looking for military retirees who have been out less than five years to return as part of the AF Reserves.
Try 65 years old and recalled to AD.
I was medically retired from the Army in 1997 (tip: NEVER take mefloquine for malaria prophylaxis), at a time when I was on the short list for promotion to Major. I took the medical as the least of two evils in that my next duty station - 1 year unaccompanied - was Korea, Guatemala, or Bosnia and with an 18 month son and daughter incubating, nah, I pushed for the medical.
I was told, had I taken the field grade promotion, I would have been recallable for life and it would have extended my service obligation to 6 years but there WERE circumstances where I could still be recalled.
Fast forward to Saddam Hussein, GW Bush, Halliburton,, GWOT and WMD’s and the “services” needed bodies to fill TO&E billets.
I was in civil service from Y2K to 2006, one of my jobs was clinical consultant to the Army’s Alcohol and Substance Abuse Program at a local post. Sometime around 2003 the clinic got a “new” doctor, a Psychiatrist and I got to know him well enough to know he - a Lt. Colonel Medical Corps - was recalled to active duty at the ripe young age of SIXTY-FIVE!
He joked that he was almost old enough for social security but his uniforms still fit; he’d retired back when I was in medical school sometime in the late 1980’s and was surprised to find himself getting a letter recalling him.
There were others. Surgeons - orthopedics and otherwise - who, comfortably ensconced in their $600,000/year jobs, chief of clinics, part hospital owners, who were also recalled to active duty by order of Secretary of the Army et. al., who were none to happy to take a 90% pay cut (but with housing and other benefits making it more like an 83% cut) for “such time until determined by the Secretary or the Department” yadda yadda.
I’m barely older than that psychiatrist was and have been reassured by several people in personnel command in the NCA that due to my disabilities, while I’m not LIKELY to be recalled at 100% rating, weirder things have happened.
So yeah, not grunts, DATs, combat arms/SF types, but managerial, medical, personnel?
A recent discussion with my local VA chief reminded me in his words “you’re still in the Army.”
FUBAR.
I out-processed in 1999 also. I spent my off duty time around the greens near the White House. They were having the demonstrations against Clinton attended by the women who sued him for rape.