National Guard Officers In Active Service?

Greetings ,

Does anyone know if it is common for US Army National Guard officers with special qualifications to be activated long term in Federal service. For example, I'm always reading about how chronically short the Army always is on translators for such languages as Arabic, Dari, Pashtun, etc. Let's say there was a National Guard officer who, for whatever reason, was proficient in one or more of these languages. Would it be possible for him/her to be nationalized and spend years in active service?

I've heard that this is not uncommon for Reserve officers, but I have no idea what the rules are with the National Guard.

Thanks

All right, so how reasonable is this?

A male character attends Valley Forge Military Academy in the 1980s. He does his junior (high school level; VFMA's a junior college as well) year as a House of Representatives Page in Washington, DC and follows that with a year as an exchange student in Israel. I know that's catching a lot of breaks; he has connections.

In '87, at age 18, he joins the PA National Guard and is assigned to the 111th Infantry in the Philidelphia area, while attending college. In '89, he's commissioned under the Early Commisioning program as an Intelligence officer, still in the Guard. His choice of the Guard is philosophical. He's not a believer in the excessive power of the modern federal gov't and, while he wishes to serve in uniform, prefers his primary allegance to be to his state.

Since childhood, he's been fascinated with the Indian Northwest Frontier, particularly of the 19th century (big Flashman fan, among others ;-) ) and as he also has an interest in languages, he was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to learn some of the languages of the region (Urrdu, Pashtun, Dari). Once commissioned, he expresses a desire to serve overseas and is assigned as a translator in support of the the US component of Operation Salam in Pakistan which is, among other things, providing demining training to the Afghans.

Any obvious flaws?

Richard White said:

Usually, active reserve/guard is a privileged position. Not many active slots for officers outside of the ones who get commissioned in the regular army.

Click to expand...

That's why I figured the (then) exotic language proficiency would be an "in".

Another question: How does it work when a unit in one state's NG is a component of one in another state's? In my research, I've seen this happens a lot, with some units (like the 300th MI Brigade, which I was researching for later in this character's career) having subordanite units in multiple states all over the place?