More than 100 Air Force airmen have had their promotions withdrawn after officials found a scoring error in a required exam, disrupting this year’s advancement process and leaving leaders to acknowledge the difficult fallout for those involved.
The Air Force said Tuesday that an outdated answer key was mistakenly used to grade the Specialty Knowledge Test, a key exam considered in promotion decisions for security forces airmen.
As a result, the service had to rescind 135 promotions that would have moved airmen up to the rank of technical sergeant, then reassign those promotion slots to other eligible troops whose scores met the corrected standard.
“We owe it to those affected to address it immediately,” Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force David R. Wolfe said. “This is going to be hard for everyone impacted.”
According to the Air Force, the mistake was discovered only after the promotion list had already been released, when a member of the enlisted promotions team at the Air Force Personnel Center identified that the wrong scoring key had been applied.
Officials then rescored all 2,285 eligible exams and determined that 135 airmen who had been notified of their selection for promotion to technical sergeant no longer reached the required cutoff score.
At the same time, 135 airmen who were initially not selected will now receive the promotions under the corrected scoring process.
Technical sergeant is a mid-level enlisted rank in the Air Force, with promotions determined through a mix of criteria that includes job performance, time in service and Specialty Knowledge Test results.
After the exams were rescored, 451 of the original 586 selectees kept their promotions. The total number of promotions did not change.
The Air Force described the mix-up as an isolated and unprecedented case of human error that affected only the security forces career field.
Officials said they verified the correct answer key with subject matter experts before rescoring every eligible exam.
“We promote Airmen based on merit, which is established in federal law and policy,” Lt. Gen. Jefferson O’Donnell, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services, said.
“Who we are as an Air Force, defined by our core values, demands integrity in the meritocratic promotion system.”
The Air Force Personnel Center plans to announce the 135 newly selected technical sergeants in a supplemental promotion release during the week of July 13.
Officials said the new selectees will receive adjusted line numbers that will not delay their promotions.
The service said leaders are notifying affected airmen directly, have set up a hotline to answer questions and are tightening review procedures as they investigate how the mistake happened.
Officials also emphasized that the error was caused by human error — not AI.
The promotion blunder follows other high-profile testing problems in the Air Force.
Last year, the Air Force Academy investigated nearly 100 cadets accused of cheating on a weekly knowledge test.
In 2021, another cheating scandal involved nearly 250 cadets accused of honor code violations, prompting a broader review of the academy’s programs.
