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Air Force’s new job assignment policies aim for flexibility, stability

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Enlisted airmen will eventually be able to trade job assignments in an effort to offer troops more career flexibility, the Air Force’s top enlisted leader said here Wednesday.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass also announced several other policy changes in her keynote address at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual conference outside Washington.

The Air Force is starting to hash out the details of how the swaps would work. Airmen could volunteer to take the place of someone else chosen for a particular assignment, or trade upcoming jobs among one another, the service said.

Here’s how the Air Force could change its job assignment process

Air force leaders are sifting through a list of proposed changes to how airmen are assigned new jobs, and may announce updates by the end of september..

Enlisted airmen other than chief master sergeants, or E-9s, can take advantage of the program. To trade jobs, airmen must hold the same Air Force job and special experience codes, and have reached the same grade and skill level.

“We are in the early stages of establishing the assignment swap program,” Air Force Personnel Center spokesperson Toni Whaley said Wednesday. “We are working with our partners to build out the process and identify business rules to make the program more inclusive with minimum restrictions.”

Whaley didn’t say when the option may become available.

Enlisted airmen will also get at least four months after returning home from an overseas deployment to readjust to life in America, Bass said. That can ease pressure on families to quickly find a place to live, and avoid putting airmen back to work before they are reunited with their household goods.

The Air Force will also issue final decisions during that same four-month period on where returning airmen will work.

Bass wants to make it easier for those who pause their regular jobs to spend time as military training instructors and leaders, as well as enlisted recruiters, to return to those careers.

She intends to clarify the process for how deployed airmen with pregnant spouses can ask to come home and start a new job; clear up confusion about the paperwork needed to base dual-military spouses in the same area; and start sending up-to-date information on assignments to local support staff.

And the Air Force will allow airmen seeking an emergency transfer, such as sexual assault victims, to move regardless of how long they were at their base. Airmen acquitted of sexual assault claims in court-martials can request expedited transfers now as well.

Air Force reverses plan to cut special duty pay for enlisted airmen

Hundreds of enlisted airmen in nearly 30 fields stood to lose $75 to $450 a month in bonus pay..

“Big kudos to our airmen … who came from across our Air Force to look at assignment policies, to dissect that 571-page [Air Force instruction] to identify and make recommendations that will make assignments better for all of us,” Bass said.

As for the Space Force, officials are trying to bake personalization and flexibility into the assignment process as the newest service matures.

“Choice and control are important to people,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger Towberman told reporters at a roundtable on Wednesday. “Blanket policies — in particular, across a small group of people — one, aren’t necessary, and two, can be not all that helpful.”

Military space missions are spread across fewer installations than those of the Air Force. Some are as far-flung and remote as Greenland or Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. That can complicate matters for guardians with children, for instance, or who would prefer to live somewhere other than the major military space hubs in the continental United States.

Towberman said listening to people’s preferences and concerns can lead to happier troops without sacrificing military capability. The service is learning how to have those conversations, one grade level at a time.

More senior airmen, fewer overall enlisted expected in next few years

The shift to more e-4 billets, and fewer e-5s, marks the first major change to how enlisted airmen are spread across the ranks in nearly 20 years..

“The early returns are, ‘Wow, you called me up. You asked what I wanted to do. You cared about what my family wanted. And then you worked with me to find a way that the Space Force gets what the Space Force needs, and I felt like I was invested,’” Towberman said. “The mission is getting done, readiness is high and morale is high.”

Related issues, like how long a guardian should be required to stay in their job before moving to a new unit, are still under discussion.

It can be easier to put down roots while serving in the Space Force, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John “Jay” Raymond added.

“There’s a Colorado hub, a California hub, a Florida hub and a New Mexico hub,” he said. “Because of that, you can stay in one spot ... and still develop in your career field.”

Rachel Cohen is the editor of Air Force Times. She joined the publication as its senior reporter in March 2021. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Frederick News-Post (Md.), Air and Space Forces Magazine, Inside Defense, Inside Health Policy and elsewhere.

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First Duty and Future Assignments in the Military

There are circumstances where military members can request assignment

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Future Assignments

Follow-on assignment, hardship assignments, joint spouse assignments, permissive reassignments, base of preference, travel entitlements, privately owned vehicle shipment.

Rod Powers was a retired Air Force First Sergeant with 22 years of active duty service.

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First duty station selection is made (in either basic training or technical school/AIT/A-School), based ​upon your preferences, and the needs of the service. While the services will consider your preferences, the overriding deciding factor is where the military needs you the most.

Some Navy jobs  allow your assignment to be based on your class-standing in "A-School." And of course, it goes without saying that assignments are based on valid vacancies. If you have the job of tank-fixer, you're only going to be assigned to bases that have tanks to fix.

After the first duty assignment, subsequent assignments are done a little differently. In most cases, you'll have a little more say in future assignments, than you have for the first duty assignment . There are a few restrictions, however.

First-term (those in their first enlistment ) enlisted members assigned to a continental (CONUS) U.S. location must have 12 months time-on-station before being eligible to move to an overseas location and must have 24 months time-on-station before being allowed to move to another continental U.S. location.

Career (those who have re-enlisted at least once) enlisted members assigned to the continental U.S. must have 24 months time-on-station to move to an overseas location and must have 36 months time-on-station in order to move to another continental U.S. location.

The length of time one spends on an overseas tour depends on the location. For example, most of Europe and Japan are considered standard overseas tours. The length of the assignment is 24 months for single people, or those with dependents who elect not to bring their dependents, and 36 months for those who bring their dependents.

Another type of overseas assignment, like most assignments to Korea, is considered remote. On a remote tour one cannot bring their family at government expense, and the tour-length is 12 months. On the other hand, those returning from a remote tour usually get assignment preference over those returning from a standard tour.

For standard overseas tours, one can generally increase his or her chances of being selected by volunteering for the extended tour length. This is the standard tour, plus 12 months.

Of course, one can be involuntarily assigned overseas as well. In general, this is done based on the military member's last overseas return date. 

A follow-on assignment is an assignment after a remote tour. Those with orders for a remote tour can apply for their next assignment before they even depart to the remote tour.

When is assigned to a 12-month remote tour, military members can move their dependents anywhere they want to live in the United States, at government expense, while the member is away. The government must then pay again to relocate the dependents from where they are living to the new assignment when the member returns from the remote tour. Single people, even though they don't have dependents can use the follow-on program, as well.

It's important not to confuse assignments with deployments , which are of course based on many factors such as geopolitical situations and the need for U.S. military troops around the world. 

Each of the services also has procedures for hardship assignments. This allows a military member to apply for reassignment to a specific area/base, due to a valid family hardship. The military's definition of hardship is when there are extreme family problems such as illness, death, or extremely unusual circumstances that are temporary in nature and the specific circumstances necessitate the military member's presence.

If the problem is not one that can be resolved within one year, a  hardship discharge  will be considered, rather than a hardship assignment.

When one military member is married to another military member, both must apply to be assigned together. This is called a joint spouse assignment. The military will try to assign spouses together, but there are no guarantees. The success rate for joint spouse assignments is about 85 percent.

Joint spouse assignments are obviously much easier to accommodate if both spouses are in the same branch of the military. 

A permissive reassignment is one that doesn't cost the government any money. Most permissive reassignments are in the form of swaps, which is when one military member finds another with the same rank and job, currently assigned (or with orders) to a base they want to go to.

Both members who agree to swap must pay for their own move. This includes shipment of personal property. Usually, military personnel offices maintain lists of military people worldwide who are looking to swap. In order to be eligible for a swap, one must have the required time-on-station mentioned above. In other words, a first-termer must have 24 months time-on-station to swap with someone at another continental U.S. location.

Before a military member re-enlists, he can apply to move to a base of his choice. The military, of course, wants this person to re-enlist, so they try to accommodate such base of preference requests. If approved, the member must then re-enlist to accept the assignment. 

When you graduate technical school, the military will pay the authorized costs for you to go to your next duty assignment or, to the port of your military flight for overseas assignments. 

The military does not pay you for travel on leave. They pay you for direct travel from your old duty assignment to your next duty assignment. If you travel home on leave, any additional cost is out of your pocket.

If you own a vehicle and get an overseas assignment, the military will either ship the vehicle for you or store it while you are away. 

Some locations don't allow the shipping of a personal vehicle and others restrict this privilege to certain ranks. In these cases, the military will store the vehicle for you for free while you are assigned overseas.

The military will pay to move your personal property from your home location to your first permanent duty station, or, you can rent a truck, move it yourself. In such cases, the military will reimburse you a portion of what it would have paid a contractor to move the vehicle.

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Air Force delays bonuses and new assignments amid political feud over Space Command’s new headquarters

The U.S. Air Force is delaying re-enlistment bonuses and planned moves for its personnel after Alabama lawmakers blocked funding for the service amid a political quarrel over the location of Space Command’s new headquarters .

The Air Force is taking actions “to avoid exhausting funds” and is putting off orders for planned change of station moves for personnel as well as bonuses for airmen who re-enlist, the Air Force said in a statement Monday.

“The Air Force continues to work through additional options to avoid the funding shortfall and will provide more information when available,” it said.

The decision came after Alabama lawmakers moved to curtail funding for the Air Force until the service’s secretary makes a public announcement on the location of the new Space Command headquarters. The facility originally was planned for Colorado but during the administration of President Donald Trump, the Air Force revised its plans and opted to place the headquarters in Alabama after reviewing six possible locations. Trump has claimed credit for the change in plans.

The Air Force said it faces “higher than projected personnel costs” but did not say why that was the case and did not mention recent moves in Congress to curtail funding.

NBC News previously reported  that Biden administration officials have signaled privately to Defense Department leaders and lawmakers that they are considering reversing the planned move to Alabama over concerns about the state’s strict anti-abortion laws. 

Lawmakers from Colorado, meanwhile, have pushed to build the Space Command in their state. The command’s temporary headquarters is currently in Colorado.

Under the actions announced Monday, Air Force personnel who already have orders to move this month will be able to go ahead with their new assignments, but all other change-of-station orders after July will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis and some planned departures will be postponed, the Air Force said.

Citing the funding shortfall, the Air Force also said it will suspend re-enlistment bonuses for airmen for the fiscal year ending in the fall. But the service will allow airmen to extend their current enlistment into the next fiscal year of 2024 to permit them to secure a bonus at that point.

The funding squeeze also meant the Air Force will have to temporarily pause a new bonus program for aviators, the service said. The program plans to “restructure” the program and reopen it within two weeks, it said.

Dan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. 

Courtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.

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First flight of new Air Force One jet slips to 2026, Air Force says

Boeing is currently revising the schedule for the presidential jetliner once again, which is expected to be updated later this summer, according to an air force spokesperson..

A VC-25A Air Force One aircraft sits on a ramp at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska during a brief stop Jan. 22. The aircraft is one of two modified Boeing 747 Airliners that serve as a transport aircraft for the President of the United States. (U.S. Air Force Photo by Josh Plueger/Released)

WASHINGTON — Boeing’s long-delayed Air Force One replacement, known as the VC-25B , is facing new headwinds as the first flight for the program has now been pushed back another 16 months to March 2026, an Air Force spokesperson told Breaking Defense. 

Although the program’s schedule was rebaselined in 2022, it appears even more delays lay ahead. According to a previous report in Bloomberg, the program was tracking delays on top of previous schedule slips for two key objectives. The first is to “power on” the first aircraft, which consists of ground-based testing of subsystems and was most recently planned for last month. The second is the aircraft’s first flight previously expected in November of this year, according to Bloomberg.

But the Air Force now expects the power on step won’t be reached until July 2025, and that the first flight won’t take place until March 2026. Officials expected the program to be about two-to-three years late under the revised 2022 schedule, which set the delivery of the first jet for September 2026 but with a year of schedule margin. The second was set to be delivered in February 2027 but with a full year of wiggle room. 

Boeing is once again “in the process of updating” the program’s schedule, the Air Force spokesperson said, “which may result in changes to any dates provided.” The next schedule update is anticipated later this summer, they added, and it’s not clear what impact this may have on expected delivery dates. Boeing declined to comment.

Alongside staggering losses on programs like the KC-46A refueling tanker , the VC-25B program has been a poster child for what Boeing executives have admitted were ill-advised, fixed-price agreements with the Pentagon. Negotiated under the Trump administration with previous company leadership, incumbent CEO Dave Calhoun told investors in 2022 that the VC-25B program represented “a very unique set of risks that Boeing probably shouldn’t have taken.” 

Boeing has lost over $2 billion to date on the presidential airlift recapitalization effort alone. The aerospace giant was originally expected to deliver the first airplane this year.

Issues like workforce disruptions previously prompted the schedule rebaseline for the behemoth effort to militarize two commercial 747s. The program experienced a major disruption when a subcontractor hired to furnish the jets’ interiors went bankrupt and Boeing had to transition to a new supplier. Pandemic impacts on the labor force, such as stiff competition for workers, also hampered Boeing’s plans. The company additionally had to confront a peculiar workforce issue where certain employees didn’t have proper clearances but worked on the program anyway, prompting Pentagon scrutiny.

There have also been developmental woes, the Government Accountability Office reported last year . For example, “Boeing identified a large number of unexpected design errors, which led to suspension of wiring fabrication in March 2022,” the watchdog found. 

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Questions about my first assignment...

I'm in tech school right now. I just logged into the portal and saw that my first assignment is going to be McChord AFB in Washington It says I will be reporting there a month after I graduate. I've heard that this could be subject to change. What are some reasons that this would change?