Air Force rescinds 135 promotions after scoring error: 'We owe it to those affected'

ARLINGTON, Va. - The Air Force is correcting a mistake that affected hundreds of Security Forces Airmen during this year's technical sergeant promotion process.

Dig deeper:

Officials discovered that an outdated answer key was mistakenly used to score the written test for Security Forces members who were eligible for promotion. The error affected only the Security Forces career field and no other Air Force jobs.

The mistake was found shortly after the promotion list was released by a member of the enlisted promotions team at the Air Force Personnel Center.

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What they're saying:

"We owe it to those affected to address it immediately," Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force David R. Wolfe said in a news release. "This is going to be hard for everyone impacted."

Once the error was found, officials verified the correct answer key with Security Forces experts and rescored every eligible test.

In total, 2,285 Security Forces Airmen were rescored. The number of available promotions did not change, with 586 technical sergeant promotions still available.

After the rescoring, 451 Airmen kept their promotion status. However, 135 Airmen who were originally told they had been selected for promotion will now lose that selection because their corrected scores fell below the cutoff. At the same time, another 135 Airmen who were originally told they were not selected will now be promoted after their corrected scores placed them above the cutoff.

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What's next:

The newly selected Airmen will receive updated promotion line numbers, but officials said this will not delay when they are promoted.

"We promote Airmen based on merit, which is established in federal law and policy," said Lt. Gen. Jefferson O'Donnell, deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services. "Who we are as an Air Force, defined by our core values, demands integrity in the meritocratic promotion system; we have a core obligation to ensure the Airmen who earned it are selected."

The Air Force Personnel Center plans to announce the newly selected Airmen during a supplemental promotion release the week of July 13. Airmen do not need to take any action to be considered.

"We owe it to our Airmen to own the mistake and to take the necessary actions to not only make it right today, but to prevent future issues," Wolfe added.

Air Force leaders said they are reviewing their testing and scoring process and adding new quality checks to help prevent a similar mistake from happening again.

Officials also stressed that artificial intelligence was not involved in the error. They said the incorrect promotion results were caused by human error.