The Air Force has started reminding tens of thousands of enlisted airmen that they need to enroll in their professional military education distance learning course.
Beginning in mid-June, the Air Force Personnel Center started notifying the roughly 83,000 airmen about their PME requirements. AFPC will notify about 20,000 airmen at the beginning of each month until everybody has been reminded.
The Air Force last year announced a new PME system that is a hybrid of online learning and in-residence training, so enlisted airmen can move through their noncommissioned officer and senior NCO PME requirements faster.
This new system sets specific milestones and windows of time during which airmen must complete online courses and attend in-residence NCO and SNCO academies. They also must complete distance learning courses – for NCOs, Course 15 and for SNCOs, Course 14 version 6 – before attending the academies.
Airmen should finish their distance learning course within 12 months of getting the notification message, AFPC said in a June 22 release. Those who are already enrolled and have a completion date agreement with Air University should finish their course by that date, AFPC said.
Receiving a notification does not extend the 12-month completion window for airmen already enrolled in those distance learning courses.
Some airmen may ask for an exception to the 12-month requirement under certain circumstances, such as deployment, that prevent them from finishing it in a year. Those requests must have the approval of an airman's wing commander or equivalent commander.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
