During the time that President Bush was flying for the ANG at Ellington, that whole group was under Air Defense Command (ADC) out of Ent AFB, CO. Last time I checked ADC, as known in those days, was all active duty Air Force.
Air Force is one service that have activated Reserve and Guard units for years and in some cases, the Guard and Reserves are active duty all the time like the Reserve Squadron of C-5's out of Lackland AFB and the F-16 TANG group at Lackland AFB. A lot of their people are their full time and are part of the active force even though they are Reserve or ANG. The Tulsa ANG was deployed many times to fly the no-fly zone in Iraq.
I worked with a Lt Colonel, USAFR, who was an active duty L/C but when he retired under a Reserve program he was going to be a Full Colonel. Cannot remember the name of the program BTW. At that time they had the choice of staying Reserve for their years or going over to the Regular AF. Some stayed Reserve because they could then take AF Civil Service appointments and not get penalized on their retirement.
This latest attack of Pres Bush not being in the Air Force really bugs me out of the RATs. I know nothing about the other services but I know when our Mobilization Assistants came to our Command they were on ACTIVE DUTY while there and they were not Regular AF.
Well, I'm harkening back to '71 when I knew several members of the Montana Air Guard while in technical training at Lowry AFB in Denver. I was regular USAF and they were obviously ANG, but the general conversation was that they were "active duty USAF", chain of command was "ATC" not Guard and uniforms were all identical. They had NO insignias indicating they were Air Guard at all.