In May 2025, the U.S. Department of War tasked the military services with implementing targeted reductions to permanent change of station moves and modifying career development pathways in line with these reductions. For this report, the authors evaluated the relationship between U.S. Air Force assignments and career development, assessing the role of culture in these processes.

Considering U.S. Air Force Culture When Modifying Career Development Pathways for Longer Assignments

Kelly Atkinson, Lisa M. Harrington, Kelly Piazza, R. Gordon Rinderknecht, Elizabeth M. Goldsmith

ResearchPublished Mar 31, 2026

Cover: Considering U.S. Air Force Culture When Modifying Career Development Pathways for Longer Assignments
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In May 2025, the U.S. Department of War tasked the military services with implementing targeted reductions to permanent change of station (PCS) moves and modifying career development pathways in line with these reductions. For this report, the authors considered the relationship between U.S. Air Force (USAF) assignments and career development.

The authors analyzed insights from subject-matter experts representing perspectives of USAF offices involved in assignment processes and career development management. The team also conducted a decomposition analysis of Department of the Air Force Instruction 36-2110, Total Force Assignments, to map the policy elements shaping assignment and career development culture.

Informed by these analyses, the authors suggest that USAF culture incorporates policy, process, and norms and that changes to assignment policy and career development processes consider strategies for changing expectations associated with these aspects. The report offers several recommendations for how the USAF can respond to this challenge.

Key Findings

  • Historical assignment patterns have fostered institutional and workforce expectations that frequent moves are necessary for career development and promotion.
  • Modifying career development pathways to reflect extended assignment durations would disrupt established practices and personnel expectations for career advancement.
  • USAF assignment policy includes four categories of assignment action: directing a PCS move, directing a member to stay in place, offering consideration factors for assignment calculations, or any combination of these actions.
  • USAF assignment policy produces four categories of outcomes: mission fulfillment, career development, member consideration, and cost savings.
  • Existing variation across personnel interpretation and application of USAF assignment policy introduces challenges to implementing policy changes.
  • Culture — including unwritten norms and values — plays a critical role in shaping both the implementation of assignment policy and the viability of modifying career development pathways.
  • Successfully modifying USAF assignment and career pathways would require integrating formal policy, local practices, and cultural expectations into a coherent, updated system responsive to emerging demands and long-term career development objectives.

Recommendations

  • Balance clarity and flexibility in policy revisions. Keep assignment and career development policies clear yet adaptable.
  • Account for variation in implementation. Ensure that strategies for implementing policy changes acknowledge the variation in interpretation and application across career fields, organizations, and individuals.
  • Deliberately address cultural context. Successful reform will require deliberate consideration of the broader cultural environment, including how airmen and their leaders perceive career progression, assignment equity, and work–life balance.
  • Take immediate actions to revise specific sections of Department of the Air Force Instruction 36-2110 to explicitly prioritize longer assignments as a career development tool, provide new guidance to promotion boards to reflect expectations for longer assignments, and develop senior leader communication templates that reframe extended assignments as strategic investments.
  • Leverage change management tools to identify champions of the new approach and areas of resistance among stakeholders and in the workforce. To demonstrate success stories under new assignment processes, publish case studies of personnel who achieved career advancement through extended assignments, and establish formal feedback mechanisms to monitor implementation challenges and adjust strategies in real time.
  • Establish baseline cultural metrics and conduct longitudinal analysis comparing career outcomes between traditional rotation-heavy careers and extended assignment pathways, providing empirical evidence to support or refine the cultural change initiative.

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Atkinson, Kelly, Lisa M. Harrington, Kelly Piazza, R. Gordon Rinderknecht, and Elizabeth M. Goldsmith, Considering U.S. Air Force Culture When Modifying Career Development Pathways for Longer Assignments. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2026. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3735-2.html.
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This research was sponsored by the Air Force Personnel Center and conducted by the Workforce, Development, and Health Program within RAND Project AIR FORCE.

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