Here Are the Air Force’s Toughest Jobs That Earn a Bonus, But the Service Won’t Explain Planned Cuts

The Air Force has approved 78 jobs to receive special duty assignment pay for 2025, an increase from the 70 for 2024, but also coming in a year when the service is planning to cut funding to the program.

While the service announced the 78 jobs figure, Air Force officials have refused to disclose details of its bonus program, including declining to share the eligible jobs and outline how the cuts to funding would affect the bonuses, claiming it’s a security risk to disclose how it uses those taxpayer funds.

Air Force budget documents show that the service requested $4.1 million less for the program next year, down from the estimated $95.2 million allocation for the program in fiscal 2024.

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The bonuses, ranging from $75 to $450 a month, are designed “to compensate enlisted service members who serve in duties which are extremely difficult” or “involve an unusual degree of responsibility in a military skill,” according to the service’s budget documents. Historically, they have been given to service members who take on assignments from pararescueman to nuclear missile worker.

When Military.com obtained the list of career fields eligible for the bonus through a source, an Air Force official confirmed it was authentic and accurate. But the service declined to provide any details on which jobs lost money, gained money or were cut, citing “security concerns.”

The total number of eligible jobs has bounced up and down in recent years, from 103 in 2023, to 70 specialties this year, and now 78 for 2025. Air Force officials did not explain how they plan to expand the bonus to more jobs in October, when the new fiscal year starts, while also planning on cutting the program by millions of dollars.

Ciara Travis, an Air Force spokesperson, told Military.com the figures in the budget documents were just estimates and that the “actual numbers of eligibles in each career field will fluctuate during the year of execution.”

Air Force officials in a June press release, without naming the 78 approved specialties, wrote that “10 were initial requests that were certified for the first time, 61 were recertified at their current rate, four increased rate and three decreased rate,” adding that one career field was eliminated from the list of jobs that qualified.

That lack of transparency, and citing “security concerns” for something such as how taxpayer funds are being utilized to pay service members, is alarming to government watchdogs.

“You’re paying American citizens with American taxpayer dollars,” said Dan Grazier, a senior fellow for the National Security Reform Program at the nonprofit Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. “So, the American people have a right to know how that money is being spent.”

He said denying that simple information to the public raises red flags.

“This just sounds like basic information,” Grazier said. “That just fits within a larger pattern that we’ve seen over the last four or five, six years, of the Pentagon trying to hide as much information from the public as they possibly can.”

A document obtained by Military.com, and confirmed as authentic and accurate by an Air Force official, lists the following jobs as being eligible for the bonus starting this October:

Air Force Careers Eligible for Special Duty Assignment Pay in FY25

1. MTI

2. Human Intelligence

3. Combat Controller

4. 724th Special Tactics Group Ops

5. Project 05

6.150th Special Ops Squadron

7. Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) Specialists

8. Academy Military Training NCO

9. Military Training Leader

10. Air Force Special Operations Command Air Ops Flight

11. Pararescue

12. Enlisted Professional Military Education Instructor

13. Joint Special Ops Command

14. Tactical Air Control Party

15. Aircraft Battle Damage Repair Expeditionary Depot

16. Project 02

17. Project 01

18. Subsurface Analyst

19. Defense Theater Reduction Agency

20. White House Communications Agency

21. Parachuting Instructor

22. ROTC Instructor

23. Cyber Warfare

24. Recruiter

25. Mission Generation Vehicular Equipment Maintenance

26. Special Warfare Battlefield Airmen Units

27. Flying Crew Chiefs

28. Battle Management Operations

29. USAFE NC3 Cyber Defense Operations

30. Guardian Angel Operational Test

31. Fuels Specialist

32. Test Parachute Program

33. Phoenix Raven Program

34. Defense Attache

35. Special Reconnaissance

36. Air Force Office of Special Investigations

37. AFSOC Deployed Aircraft Ground Response Element

38. Air Traffic Controller

39. Project 03

40. First Sergeant

41. SEAC/CMSAF/CCM

42. 33rd Cyberspace Operations Squadron, Operating Location Alpha

43. National Airborne Ops Support

44. White House Shelter Complex

45. Cyber Intelligence Analysis

46. Presidential Logistics Squadron

47. Explosive Ordnance Disposal

48. ISR Instructor

49. 844th Communications Squadron-Executive Communications Flight

50. Command and Control Operations

51. Nuclear Aircraft Maintenance

52. Security Forces Nuclear Support

53. Missile Maintenance for ICBM/ALC Ops

54. Missile Facility Manager

55. Aircraft Armament System

56. Nuclear Weapons

57. Missile Field Chief

58. Munition Systems

59. Project 04

60. Independent Duty Technician

61. Cyberspace Mission Forces

62. RPA Cyber

63. Special Ops Surgical Team

64. International Enlisted Engagements Manager

65. 33rd Network Warfare Cyber Security Squadron

66. Air Advisers

67. Common Mission Control Center

68. Agile Software Development Designer, Product Manager, Developer

69. Enlisted Pilots

70. Rescue Guardian Angel, Special Tactic, Special Warfare Training or TACP

71. Joint Communications Support Element

72. 437th Operations Squadron, Special Operations, Low Level

73. Respiratory Care Practitioner

74. USAF Honor Guard

75. Fire Protection

76. Academic Faculty Instructor — Air Force Academy

77. Special Mission Unit

78. 388th Operations Support Squadron

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