US Military Reserve and National Guard Characters

[Icelander]

One new part-time PC is a Captain of the USMC who seperating from active duty for a variety of reasons, one of which is that he has been passed over for promotion to Major.*

What is the impact of being passed over twice** for promotion to O-4 to a hypothetical Marine Forces Reserve career for the officer?

Say he wants to take a civilian contracting job, but still have the option of remaining somewhat involved in the Force Recon community by joining 3rd FORECON as a Captain in the Marine Reserve?

Can he do that?

Would they reject him, on the basis that he has been found unsuitable for service as an O-4 and they need all their O-3 billets for actual promising officers?

Or would they consider making use of a talented Captain of a Recon platoon, accepting that he'd remain an O-3 until he retired from the Reserves, but would provide excellent value until then?

*Not unrelated to the character despising administrative or staff positions, disliking peacetime military constraints and wanting to remain his entire career in an operational, warfighting billet like command of a Scout-Sniper unit, Force Recon platoon or Marine Raider/MARSOC team of Critical Skill Operators (CSO).
**I believe he technically hasn't been passed over again, but the promotion board is coming up and he still lacks a staff rotation and still hasn't completed the Command and Staff College, so he can knows that a second board will reach the same conclusion as the first. Besides, he doesn't want to be a field grade officer, because he's afraid that it would mean an end to his front-line service. O-3 in the Marine Recon and MARSOC community are small unit leaders, who can know all their men intimately, but Major can manage 300-1,200. And with the few Major billets available within MARSOC or Force Recon, promotion to O-4 would almost certainly mean command in a regular Marine unit, where the standards, culture and people are fundamentally different.

[Icelander]

In a previous post, I mentioned an NPC who served as enlisted Special Forces operator, did Nationa Guard or Reserve service during his college education (interrupted some by deployments) and then became an officer of the US Army, serving mostly in the SOF community.

I'm looking to firm up his backstory, trying to have the dates and unit assignments as plausible as possible.

I haven't established Nien's exact date of birth yet, so the dates of when he enlisted, when he went to university and when he was commissioned can be determined backwards from what best fits those facts that the PCs have. That is, that at the end of the year 2018, Nien was an experienced Captain (O-3) in the US Army Special Forces community and had reached a point where he'd be expected fairly soon to either commit to a career with a promotion to Major or seperate from active duty. So, he was commissioned 2008 or later, most plausibly around 2010-2012.

Do any of these time frames look wrong?

1983: Born.
2000: Enlisted on DEP.
2001-2004: Enlisted soldier of the 7th Special Forces Group.
2005-2011: University and enlisted National Guardsman of 20th SFG.
2005-2006: Deployment to Iraq as part of 1/20th SFG.
2008-2009: Deployment to Afghanistan as part of 1/20th SFG.
2010-2011: Deployment to Afghanistan as part of 1/20th SFG.
2011: OCS.
2012: Commissioned 2LT.
2012: Commissioned 1LT (where would the US Army send a 1LT who was a former SOF NCO with 3-4 combat deployments?)
2013: Commissioned CPT, assigned to 7th SFG as ODA leader.
2016: Assigned to CAG/Delta Force as team leader.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Basically, roughly how many O-3 and over billets are there in 3rd FORECON?

I've confirmed that there are five recon platoons in 3rd FORECON and that command of them is a CPT (O-3) billet. Add in the three captains that an independent Force Recon company has on staff and the LTC commanding officer, I'm up to nine O-3 and over billets.

No evidence of an O-4 anywhere on the TO&E of 3rd FORECON. So what does a Marine Reserve Officer of CPT (O-3) rank, currently serving as the Operations Officer of 3rd FORECON, do when it's time for him to be promoted?

Say he's interested in commanding Recon Marines as a reservist and his dream job is CO of an independent Force Recon company of the Marine Forces Reserve, i.e. either 3rd FORECON or 4th FORECON.

Where does he do his Reserve service as a Major?

Edit: I can find a Major Thomas A. Boggs (goes by Andy Boggs) listed as a veteran of 3rd FORECON. His career is listed (1998-present), but that might be his USMC career as a whole, not just his association with a single Reserve unit. I can also discover that his Unrestricted Reserve rank of Major dates from 2010 and that he was considered for Below the zone promotion to LTC in 2013, but I can confirm neither whether he was serving as part of 3rd FORECON at these times nor whether he ended up promoted. Nor can I really find out whether Boggs is still serving, in a Reserve capacity or otherwise, or if he simply failed to update his listing on the 3rd FORECON 'Together We Served' site when he retired.

All in all, he might well have served only as a Captain in the 3rd FORECON. However, this is at least potential evidence that an O-4 billet might theoretically exist with the unit, which would allow that job to be something that new PC Julian 'Dane' Winding might eventually land, assuming the character accepts a measure of administrative boredom in exchange for part-time command of Recon Marines.

Considering the small size of 3rd FORECON and the fact that it seems a plausible background for numerous 'Night Rider' NPCs in Kessler's employ, perhaps the senior leadership of this Marine Forces Reserve independent Force Reconaissance Company might be sympathetic to Kessler's goals. If anywhere up to 10% of the reservists in the company work for Kessler in their civilian lives, among them 25% of the officers and most senior NCOs, I'd expect that these men might all have close friends and colleagues in the unit in whom they could confide about the supernatural threat if it was a matter of life and death.

The PCs and their allies haven't had success convincing the authorities as a whole, but explaining things to individual cops or similar individuals who've already come to doubt the Facade has worked well. Maybe the same principle holds true with individual military officers...

It would certainly be very cool if 3rd FORECON had a close relationship with Kessler's occult network of academics, security personnel, various corporations and widespread influence. With both veterans of the company and many current members working for Kessler, I'm sure he'd explore every legal avenue (and even less--than-legal, if it's sufficiently unlikely to be discovered) to make use of the training, facilities and contacts of the Force Recon company for his crusade against supernatural evil. Even if the only impact this has is that 3rd FORECON does some extra training that might be useful if and when the US military must face supernatural threats in battle, it's still pretty cool.

The Holy Grail for the PCs would be gradually extending influence over the reservists in charge of 3rd FORECON until scheduling training operations with an entire platoon or two of occult-aware Recon Marines beomes a realistic possibility. If there's ever something sufficiently nasty and supernatural afoot in the swamps of Louisiana or somewhere, the PCs might be glad to have that kind of backup available...

[Icelander]

Much the same considerations as those for the Marine Forces Reserve independent 3rd FORECON company of Recon Marines apply to the company of the 19th SFG that was founded as part of the Texas National Guard in 2008.

Did J.R. Kessler's influence have anything to do with the establishment of a local National Guard Special Forces company and how many of Kessler's 'Night Riders' and other security force personnel are part of that company?

It's established that Kessler's organization favors recruiting 'Night Riders' from the 7th SFG and the National Guard 20th SFG, because of their linguistic and cultural skills in relation to the Caribbean.*

So far, I've penciled in their backstories that they've mostly served in the Alabama, Florida or Mississipi National Guard (the 20th SFG has drilling stations in all three states). However, that was before I knew about the 2008 establishment of a company of the 19th SFG in Texas (as well as another company later, both stationed at Bullis, near San Antonio). Now, I'm thinking it would make sense for a number of USASF veterans among Kessler's people to transfer to the 19th SFG, at least those who plan to live in the Houston area for any significant part of the year. Like, say, SGM Danny Daniels.

Which, in turn, could mean that in the ten years that this National Guard company has existed, the several senior NCOs and officers from Kessler's organization might have established significant influence within the company. Enough so that they might be willing to aid Kessler's people in ways that they foresee being able to get away with, especially if Governor Abbot** authorizes it.

*Where the 'Night Riders' often have to operate in secret, to deal with serious supernatural threats no one else knows about or has the wherewithal to tackle.
**Greg Abbot went to school with Ms. Marchant, Kessler's formidable execitive 'assistant (she runs pretty much all of his business interests) and was Kessler's attorney while he worked at Bracewell & Giuliani. He won't break the law for Kessler, but he'll do any favor that doesn't look politically hazardous.

[Icelander]

Is there any barrier to serving in a Reserve Component of the US Armed Forces while holding a full-time job as a civilian employee of federal institutions or agencies like the DoD, various military or civilian intelligence agencies (DIA, CIA, NSA, etc.) or working for any of the above as a contract employee?

I know that various federal law enforcement agencies tend to have rules about favoring military veterans and sometimes make a point of accomodating reservists or Guardsmen, but I don't know whether the Department of Defense allows people to simultaneously hold positions as civilian employees and members of the armed forces, albeit in a reserve capacity.

Also, what kind of federal service, if any, allows you to combine earned pension rights on active duty and reserve military service with the other federal pension rights?

Say we've got a character seperating from active duty in the US Army in 2008, after 20 years on active duty, leaving as a CW2. He's eligible for a 50% pension at that point. If he starts working for the CIA Special Activities Division (SAD) as a Paramilitary Officer (PMO), will that federal service add to his military pension rights or does he need to accumulate enough years there to qualify for a separate pension scheme?

In either case, would enlisting in the National Guard when he seperated from active duty have any realistic beneficial effects on his pension rights?

What if his CIA work is as a contract employee? Would that make National Guard service worthwhile, to increase his pension rights?

I realize that retiring earlier and going into security contractor work might be more lucrative than any bump in pension rights earned by further federal service, but contrary to movies, most of the lucrative security contractor jobs are performed from air conditioned offices, by guys in suits with MBAs, for all that they were previously members of various SOF units.