What about the changes to the EPR system? I read the entire document and it wasn't clear exactly what the changes are.

I have Rally Point in my Facebook feed and I read it there. I got out of the air force in 1985 when the scale was 9. Now I hear it's 5. My take was they are reducing the epr' to the last 3 and reducing the time in grade and service and basing promotions more on WAPS testing. Am I close?

Sgt Sherry Taylor-Bruce - More or less what you have said. The scale is still 1-5 with 5 being the best however whereas in the past supervisors could write every troop a 5 EPR (Firewall Five) now they are restricted to giving 5s to the very best and 4s to the next best. The grand majority of personnel will now likely be receiving 3s on their EPRs. Those who are ineligible to promote, I.E. just promoted recently, will also be getting 3s to give those who are eligible a chance to make the higher level EPRs.

And as for TIG and TIS, they are to my understanding making those two factors worth far less points.

The intention of the new EPR is to basically make it so that it is the true high performers that are getting promoted. Not necessarily high performers volunteer wise as that was a problem with the old one (you could easily volunteer your way to a 5) but rather they are looking at more work based performance now. Or at least are supposed to be.

Sgt Sherry Taylor-Bruce - EPR system is basically - and I'm not saying Airman Knight is wrong by any means, just expanding on part of his comment: A small percentage of Airmen get a "Promote Now" type rating (5), a "Must Promote" (4) and a "Promote" (3). Think of it like this: 10% get 5's, 15% get 4's, 25% get 3's and the rest get 1's and 2's. Not the actual percentages, only our commander knows what those are and gives the ratings for promotions. It is less frowned upon to get 4's and 3's now, however the qualm with the new EPR system is if there's 15 out of 100 troops that work hard and exceed mission requirements and do more than what people ask them to do, and only 10 can get 5's, those other 5 will be left in the dust when it comes to promotions. You can't necessarily say "Well my old supervisor told me I would have gotten a five but only 10% can get 5's, and they just gave me a 4 instead.

All of the Airmen (E-2/E-3s) are getting three's this cycle... Just because there are people who have been able to show their worth to the Air Force more and because nobody really knows how the forced distribution will work... Squadron wide? Base wide? Wing? NAF? My Squadron is a DRU to 25AF...