Whether you are new to Reserve Spouse life or you have been around for a few years you might have begun to realize that we speak our own lingo that’s different from the active duty folks.

We’re going to focus on the Reserves and some of the lingo and acronyms that are very specific to Reserves and their families. Our alphabet soup won’t include letters like PCS or MTF because as Reserve Families we usually aren’t moving or seeking medical care on base, although I know that it does happen, but we will save that for another post. 

Instead, we are going to cover BA, AT, TDY, and AGR.

Now there are tons of different reserve acronyms and lingo that I could have started with, but I thought we should at the beginning and make sure we have a solid foundation. 

BA

BA stands for Battle Assembly or the fancy name for drill, drill weekend, or duty weekends that your service member might use.

Now fair warning, if you are new to reserve life, not every BA or drill weekend, is created equally.

Sometimes they are in fact just a weekend, as in Saturday and Sunday, but sometimes they might be four or five days long. It all depends on the type of unit and the training requirements that the unit has for that year.

Usually, in my 13 years of experience, they are two days with one or two weekends that might be three or four days long in a 12-month period. 

AT

AT stands for annual training and it’s the two weeks in the summer you always hear when people refer to the Reserves and National Guard.

This is the big training event that your service member has to participate in and one that they likely have to travel for once every few years, if not annually. I hate to break it to you, but it’s also more like three weeks, not two.

And it’s not always in the summer, although usually for most units and years it will be held sometime between May-August.

I remember one year my husbands was during that time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which was disappointing at the time, but meant that we could take time off in the summer together. 

TDY

TDY stands for temporary duty and is a status that Reservists can be in, usually when they are traveling on orders.

Most often this is related to their job in the military and usually involves traveling to a higher or lower echelon of their chain of command.

For example, when my husband was in a Company he often went TDY to his Battalion to work on a monthly report with his counterparts from other Companies.

This status and lingo are also used a lot when referring to attending a school or short training. 

AGR

AGR stands for Active Guard Reserve and it is a program that the Reserves and National Guard have that allows Reservists and Guardsmen to work on full-time active duty orders in support of unit operations.

So in other words, ARGs help keep the Reserve and National Guard running day to day. If you hear AGR the person speaking is likely referring to a servicemember serving in that program.

If you want to learn more about AGR check out my previous post here.

Bonus Lingo:

With military life, and especially Reserve Spouse life, there’s more lingo that is helpful to understand than just the terms above.

Knowing and understanding the different components and duty statuses of the military is probably one of the biggest ones.

The military is made up of three major components: Active Duty, Reserve, and National Guard.

Each one is referred to as a component or part of our total military force. Each one has different roles and responsibilities that cover all of our military needs. 

Things can get a little confusing because, in our Reserve Spouse world, each of these three components can mean other things too.

For a reservist “active duty” is a duty status or when they are on orders for more than 30 consecutive days, unlike our Active Duty Spouse peers, whose spouse is in an active duty status technically, active duty is referring to the component of the military force that they belong to. 

Now that you know the lingo, don’t be afraid to use it. 

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