Does years spent in the inactive reserve count as years towards military retirement?

Public Comments

1. Not unless you drill with a regular reserve unit. (Depending on your exact status, you may not be able to do this.) You'd have to drill enough to get a minimum of 50 points per anniversary year for that year to count towards retirement. You may or may not be paid; you may only be drilling for points. If you're called to active duty, every day counts.
2. Yes they do, though they may not be considered "good years" meaning you don't get full credit. To be a good year, you have to get 48 (I think) points in the retirement year. The easy way of doing that is correspondence courses (3 ch = 1 pt) but you can also get it by volunteering for drills or active duty time (2 weeks to more than a year at a time.) Bad years count for pay purposes but not as a retirement qualifying year. Five bad years in a 26 year retiremment would mean you could retire with a pension of a 26 years of service but not until you had completed 20 good years.