More than 900 airmen were selected for 10 hard-to-fill special duty assignments in the second round of commander nominations, the Air Force announced this month.
Of the 923 airmen chosen, a quarter will become recruiters. Many in that particularly stressed career field will continue receiving the highest special duty pay the Air Force offers — $450 a month — while the service cuts back on others.
Commanders began nominating airmen for developmental special duty jobs a year ago after struggling to find enough volunteers to take them on. The positions include military training instructors, first sergeants, professional military education instructors and recruiters, among others.
"We have looked at those because they touch the broad base of the institution," Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force James Cody said in a September roundtable with reporters. "It is in the interest of the Air Force and the airmen and the airmen they will touch that we have a very deliberate process that nominates the right people at the right time."
Airmen interested in the jobs can still let their supervisors know, Cody said. But "every airman, every person, is not the best judge of their own abilities. It takes outside people sometimes to tell you where your strengths and weaknesses are. And that's what this process does for us."
In the first round, commanders nominated 7,500 airmen, 1,000 of whom were tapped for special duty; commanders recommended 5,810 in the second round.
In addition to the 247 recruiters, the Air Force assigned:
■110 first sergeants
■87 PME instructors
■82 military training instructors
■32 military training leaders
■20 airmen and family readiness noncommissioned officers.
The selected airmen have already been notified of their new assignments, Air Force spokeswoman Rose Richardson said. The nominations will occur twice a year, she said, with the third having begun in August.
"This is exciting," Cody said. "If you were to look across our Air Force — you can go back just a few years — you would see a disproportionate representation of our career fields in some of these special duties. A large population from certain communities [were] performing most of the special duties and other communities [were] not involved in them at all. This is giving greater opportunity for airmen to be considered, greater opportunity for us to tap in the talents of the entire enlisted force."
A draft plan for special duty pay earlier this year had outlined cuts to recruiters and MTIs, but the Air Force kept the incentive intact. In addition, the Air Force Personnel Center announced Oct. 2 that it was offering new special duty assignment pay to military training leaders, airmen in the Guardian Angel Operations Test Program, Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff executive communications team members and airmen assigned to the newly established Air Force Special Operations Command unit.
Officers and enlisted airmen in 10 nuclear-related career fields have also been approved for an extra $300 a month. Those career fields are missile launch, security forces and missile maintenance for officers and command post, nuclear aircraft maintenance, security forces, missile maintenance, aircraft armament, nuclear weapons, Intercontinental Ballistic Missile support, for enlisted airmen.
The Air Force dropped from the list of jobs eligible for special pays defense courier operations and airfield management career fields. Those airmen will receive half of their original special pays for 12 months; after that, it will be eliminated entirely.
"If you look [at special duty pay] historically, it has consistently gone up and down. Some have come and gone and come back again. It's about timing, skill set, the availability of that skill set. All those play into it," Cody said. And "it's always been impacted by budget. We're in a significantly challenging environment, and we will balance every dollar we spend in the Air Force against priorities."
