Newbie question here - what does "flex drill mean?" I'm a brand new DCO, it was suggested I join a particular unit at my NOSC, I looked up the unit and it shows they "flex drill" with three day drills three months per year. That's 18 drill periods, so what happens to the other 30 drill periods?
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What is flex drill?
- Thread starter TheClyde
- Start date
A drill day is generally 2 drill periods so that's 6 drill periods per month. That gives you an opportunity to miss drill and still get your points.
You can also do what we call RDUs or RSDs in the ANG- you come in and use a drill period not on a traditional drill day. There is a form to fill out and get signed but it's pretty painless.
You can also do what we call RDUs or RSDs in the ANG- you come in and use a drill period not on a traditional drill day. There is a form to fill out and get signed but it's pretty painless.
Specific to the Navy Reserve, some units only meet a few times a year for 'mandatory' drills while the rest of the drills you reschedule and perform for various reserve related tasks from training and medical to supporting your unit and everything in between. The unit CO should lay out their expectations of what they expect you to do those drills you don't utilize on the mandatory drill weekends.
Most unit CO's I've dealt with had the pretty reasonable approach to flex drills, allowing folks one or two to take care of their annual medical and dental requirements and a few to deal with GMT and personal administration stuff (ID Cards, preparing for promotion boards, etc). As long as you were just generally reasonable and didn't schedule 8 drills to do your medical, 11 drills to do your GMT or 20 drills to 'do admin' most CO's were pretty flexible with 'flex drills'. That said, I've known guys in units where it has been a much more rigid and inflexible approach, but those were usually not 'flex drill' units which are inherently more...flexible overall. That is usually, I had a buddy in a flex drill unit that was anything but flexible for several things, helped him to decide to retire a little earlier than he planned rather than put up with the BS.
Other than those 'administrative' drills most units I've dealt with usually want you to use the flex drills to support the unit or the supporting command your unit is attached to in some fashion, in what fashion is usually up to the CO or may be delegated to your department head. My last unit supported numerous exercises and many folks would reschedule drills to support an exercise, utilizing IDTT if available. Sometimes we would also have training related to the unit, not GMT, and folks would often utilize their flex drills for that as well.
Finally as you get more senior you will find yourself utilizing those flex drills to perform your unit job like CO, XO, admin officer or even resked officer (big enough units with max flex drill often needs someone to herd the cats with rescheduling). In several of my reserve jobs I would often do 1 to 3 drills a month just to handle unit administrivia.
So ask the unit CO what the expectations are for the unit and the flex drills, there is usually no issue in emailing them directly to ask about a unit, and once you get in a unit ask the other folks what they do.
With so little formal training on the ways of the Navy Reserve asking reservists what their own experiences are is usually the best way to learn so if you've got more questions ask away as we have several experiences reservists here.
Think AM/PM. One drill (point) for each per day. Flex drill when you are in direct support of the gaining command is a sweet deal. If you can swing your civ job to make it happen, it means working shoulder to shoulder with the active duty guys with regularity. Next to actual flying, most rewarding work I did in the Reserves, and it was just staff.
Thanks @Flash this is very helpful. So typically outside of the designated meet in person time, a certain amount of drill periods you use for your general Navy responsibilities, the remaining drill time will be used in ways to support the unit (and not necessarily on the NOSC 's general drill weekends, and possibly depending on the work to be done you wouldn't need to come into the NOSC for every drill period)?
I will also reach out locally for some more information, just wanted to make sure I understood the background of how flex drill works.
Flash nailed it for the USNR scenario. Flex drill means the unit leverages telework and the unit can be fairly strict or liberal on its use, depending on the culture of the unit and the CO/XO expectations. Telework can be abused and in units where that becomes obvious, the CO/XO may be "guidance" from above to get their folks in line.
You pretty much got it, though to be clear you drill on your unit's schedule and not necessarily the NOSC's though they usually match up. While the unit will usually drill on the NOSC's drill weekends, which for the NOSC's I was attached to always had two of them since they had so many units, the unit CO often has some flexibility on when and where to drill especially if a supporting command wants them to drill there.
For a flex drill unit like the one you described they probably will do two drill weekends to take care of all the administrivia to include PT tests, miscellaneous administrative stuff you have to handle through the NOSC and general unit housekeeping for the unit and will likely do it at the NOSC or somewhere on the same base to help facilitate that. Time at the NOSC should be minimized since it gradually drains your soul the longer you stay there, most CO's are of the same mind and like it as much as every other reservist.
FormerRecruitingGuru
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Being that you're a brand new DCO/Reserve Officer, strongly suggest you reach out to your sponsor, or request to have a sponsor if you have not yet been assigned one.
Pretty sure I'm in a "flex drill unit". Meaning I do rescheduled IDT's and add-AFTP's on weekdays to fly, a few RMPs on random days to do admin crap, and then the standard Mando (2 per year) drill weekends. Aside from those weekends, all my drilling (or AT orders) are weekdays based on my supported active command's schedule. In other words, you are only useful to them outside normal NOSC delineated monthly "drill weekends", and you will not generally participate in the NOSC's drill weekends. I'm sure there are variations of this, including units that have less then 100% flexing norms, and may sometimes experience the NOSC life.
As an aside, do you guys also get 73 ATFPs per year at no more than 24 per quarter?
Flying units have long been by default ‘flex drill’ well beforehand it was a thing in the reserves.
Same amount of AFTPs (I thought it was 72 perhaps?) but no restriction on how many used per quarter that I know of, other than the potential for that pot of money to dry up towards the end of the FY (haven't seen that yet in my time). There is a (newish) business rules policy that says you can't move all your IDTs to Q4 I believe, without NOSC approval (or maybe it is moving them outside the originally scheduled QTR, can't remember.....though I believe the overall intent is to preclude guys from reskeding all their IDTs to Sept and then not executing them). My first year, I did like 83,000 AFTPs in Sept to burn them out and max out my points. It was like 4 weeks straight of AFTPs every weekday. A fairly lucrative month to be sure.
"Flex drill" generally means any nonstandard drill schedule where you don't have to show up at the NRC every month. As an example, I work for a unit supporting a four-star staff. We drill at our NRC once a quarter for a standard drill weekend. Once a quarter, we also do IDTT at our supported command for 4 days. One Friday to sync up with the AC and hopefully get some sort of science project to keep us busy, Saturday/Sunday to work on it, and Monday to turn back over and go home. The third month is off/telework. Grow your beard if you want (technique only). You're expected to do at least 2-3 IDTT periods a year and then scatter your other drills as appropriate to do the work that needs to be done.
I've also seen some units that do a strict once-a-quarter mooshing-together of drills and then break for 3 months. YMMV.
I've also seen some units that do a strict once-a-quarter mooshing-together of drills and then break for 3 months. YMMV.
@AllAmerican75 . . . this is a shining example of proper Navy Reserve gamesmanship. Read and heed if you can ever pull such a stunt. You need 50 points of work for a good retirement year. You get 15 for fogging a mirror, so that's 35 points you have to earn for yourself. Active duty days are 1 point/day. Inactive duty drills are 2 points/day (2x 4-hour drill periods).
For "satisfactory participation" in the SELRES, you need to perform 40/48 drill periods in a fiscal year. Let's take 2 days a year for the PFA and 1 day a year for your PHA or flight physical. That's 34 other drills you have to do to support your unit. @MIDNJAC, assuming he worked 1 full work week and then Monday-Wednesday for the second week, bought himself 16 points, or 47 percent of his yearly participation, in just a week and a half outside his AT. Assuming he already did his AT, this is a smart and savvy use of drill periods to support the AC, in line with VADM Mustin's Fighting Instructions, and much better than dicking around at the NRC if one can avoid it. If he'd have caved and taken AT or ADT orders for that support, he'd have gotten half the credit AND had to burn those drills somewhere else. Worst case, showing up at the NRC to dick around for two days and do nothing because it was That Weekend.
Now, to be sure, you have to be an officer in your unit, which means making sure the requisite PPT slides and arrangements for your troops are squared away each and every month. But you can also burn drills doing these things. Paid drills, if your CO and RPD are worth a shit. Bottom line, know what you do for the Navy, log it, claim it, and good years are not that hard to come by. And the best thing that's happened to the Navy Reserve in the past 2-3 years of COVID is the appreciation for telework and the cultural loosening of restrictions on getting credit for it. The rules are still borderline dumb, but they're still malleable enough that a good CO can go to bat for his/her people to get them paid (or at least points) for keeping the unit running day-to-day from their home offices.