WASHINGTON— Air Force officials released details on the fiscal year 2017 Selective Re-enlistment Bonus program Feb. 23, 2017. This year’s program consists of 80 Air Force specialties and continues the practice of offering larger sums of money initially up front.

The program is designed to improve readiness and capacity by targeting retention of experienced Airmen, especially those in in operations, nuclear, maintenance, cyber, space, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and support career fields.

The 13 new Air Force specialty codes included in the fiscal 2017 SRB list represent critical and emerging career fields with high operations demands and low manning or retention, such as maintenance and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The AFSCs removed from this year’s SRB list were no longer among those AFSCs with the highest needs based on analysis of manning, retention, and/or training costs. 

According to Col. Robert Romer, the chief of military force policy for the Air Force, the criteria used to determine career fields eligible for re-enlistment bonuses includes current and projected manning levels, retention levels and trends, and the cost levels associated with training new Airmen. 

“This year’s SRB list continues the Air Force’s focus on retaining key experience while we deliberately grow our force,” Romer said. “We are increasing our accessions and training pipeline to support the increased growth, but these new enlistees won’t be seasoned for some time. Retaining the experience we have is critical to maintaining readiness and training those new Airmen.”

All AFSC bonus changes are effective Feb. 23.

The fiscal 2017 bonus list will be available on myPers on the “re-enlistment” page.