[shawnt64]

well i was a an aircraft sheet metal mechanic for 8 years in the federal civil service at NAS Pensacola before i went to college. now that i have enlisted in the army the recuiter told me that the civil service would apply to my retirement. just wondering how this works, if it actually does, and who should i talk too to make sure? it would be really nice only to have to do 12 years and get a retirement check

[meeko]

I did the opposite. I was military for 13 years and am now a federal civilian. Your civil service time wil not count on your military retirement. You will still have to do 20 years. If you had active duty military befor your time as a civil service the military time counts if you buy it back. For example I have to do 20 years with my agency (I'm on the federal Law enforcement retirement plan a regular civil service might be a little different) I sent in my DD 214 and they calculated what I owed to buy back 13 years based on my base pay. I'ts really cheap like $6,000. That enables me to retire at 20 years with 13% more. basiclly like I did 33 years.

I would call someone in the Department of the Army and ask. I think the recruiter is misinformed.

[JohnNC]

This is absolutely false. Your civilian time WILL NOT apply to military retirement. You must do at least 20 years of military service, in any branch of active service. For example, I have 5 years in the Marines and 14 in the Army. I will be eligible for retirement in another year.

[bharen]

Your recruiter lied. Makes me wonder what else he lied about.

The US military doesn't really have a retirement 'system' in the traditional sense. You are not making payments into a plan, there is no vestiture, you don't get to take your money with you if you leave before you are retirement eligible because there is no money invested in a retirement plan.

When you accumulate 20 years of active federal military service you are eligible to retire. You can hop from one uniform service to another (say, do 5 years in the Air Force, then join the Army) and your time accumulates, but time accumulated as a civilian employee of the government does not count towards military retirement. Two completely different retirement systems. At 20 years the DoD simply 'gives' you 50% of your base pay for the rest of your life. If you leave at 10, 15 or even 19.9 years you get nothing. When you reach 18 years of active federal service you get 'locked-in'; it damned near takes a felony conviction or an act of Congress to get you tossed our before you make the magic 20 mark. It CAN happen; every once in a while you read about some moron who got kicked out on a drug, drunk driving or wife beating charge at 19 and a half years of service.