JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, S.C. –
Have you heard of or been part of the Noncommissioned Officer Retraining Program? The Air Force is going to run this program again this year. For those who have not heard about NCORP, the following is a quick explanation on how the program works and what you or your Airmen can expect if they are selected.
The NCORP is a program that retrains second term and career Airmen from overage Air Force Specialties into shortage specialties to optimize the enlisted force to best meet current and future mission needs. The Air Force Personnel Center determines which career fields are over-manned and selects a certain amount of those people, in selected ranks, to retrain into other Air Force Specialty Codes. AFPC will send emails to the top 10 percent of those members in the affected career fields and inform them they need to look into retraining. The program is divided into two phases; phase one is when the member selects a job, and phase two is when AFPC selects a job for the member.
If the member is selected for this program, they have a couple of options. First, they can apply to retrain into any open jobs on the retraining advisory they qualify for. If they don't want to retrain, they can wait and see if they don't get picked up. As an example, if the Air Force is looking to move 20 staff sergeants from a certain AFSC and the member is number 60 on the list, they have a good chance of not getting selected, however history does show that no one is completely safe. If the program gets to phase two and AFPC has not filled all their required slots, then they will select the first members in line to move out of the overage AFSC into another AFSC. The member will get seven days to either select the retraining or they could be separated. If you have been part of this program before and been selected, you are exempt for three years from being selected again.
This is a very important program that helps keep the force balance but can be a scary time for members who do not want to retrain. If you are selected for this program and you have questions, contact your Career Assistance Advisor at 963-2768.