Military
Air Force OPB/EPB examples
The Officer Performance Brief (OPB) and Enlisted Performance Brief (EPB) are the narrative statements that anchor an Airman or Guardian's official performance record.
What it is
The Officer Performance Brief (OPB) and Enlisted Performance Brief (EPB) are the narrative statements that anchor an Airman or Guardian's official performance record. They replaced the legacy EPR/OPR, which for decades leaned on terse, clipped bullet fragments — the newer OPB/EPB format moved the other direction, favoring fuller, complete-sentence narrative writing over those old fragments. They still carry real weight — promotion boards and senior raters read a lot of them fast, so every line has to earn its place. A vague sentence reads like every other vague sentence; a specific one is what gets remembered.
Who writes it
Your rater (usually your direct supervisor) drafts it, and it typically moves through one or more additional raters before it is finalized — most units work this on an annual cycle or at a change of rater.
How to write it
A repeatable structure.
- 1
Action — lead with the verb for what you personally did. Not the section, not the flight: you.
- 2
Impact/metrics — attach a number wherever the work produced one: a percentage, a count, a time saved.
- 3
Scope — say how big the effort was: how many people, systems, or units it touched.
- 4
Outcome — close with what changed because of the work, in terms a board or rater cares about.
Tips
- Start with the action you owned.
- Use real scope and results from your work.
- Keep it to one or two dense sentences — OPB/EPB narratives reward density, not length.
Illustrative sample
See it graded, honestly.
Every score below comes straight from the real 0–10 rubric — not a mockup, not a made-up number.
Was responsible for helping with various squadron tasks and participated in several exercises that were pretty successful.
Illustrative sample
No action verb, no numbers, no scope — a rater reading this cannot tell what actually happened or how big it was.
- Specificity 0/2
- Quantification 0/2
- Impact scope 1/2
- Structure 0/2
- Language 1/2
Led a nine-member maintenance crew through Exercise Cobra Shield. Restructured the F-16 phase-inspection schedule in a cross-functional push with the supply and munitions flights and cut turnaround time 22% in 30 days. Delivered 14 mission-ready aircraft ahead of the wing's Operational Readiness Inspection and left a repeatable checklist the squadron still uses.
Illustrative sample
Names the exercise, the aircraft, the cross-flight effort, and two hard numbers — a board can picture exactly what happened and why it mattered.
- Specificity 2/2
- Quantification 2/2
- Impact scope 2/2
- Structure 2/2
- Language 2/2
Try it now
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FAQ
Common questions
What's the difference between an OPB/EPB and the old EPR/OPR?
Same purpose — a periodic performance narrative supporting promotion and assignment decisions — but the styles actually moved opposite to what people often assume: the legacy EPR/OPR relied on clipped, bullet-fragment phrasing, while the OPB/EPB favors fuller, complete-sentence narrative writing. The underlying writing principles (action, metric, scope, outcome) carry over either way.
Do I need real numbers, or can I estimate?
Use real numbers you can back up. A rough-but-honest estimate ('roughly 30 sorties') beats a made-up precise one, and it beats no number at all — quantification is one of the fastest ways a bullet loses credibility.
How long should a bullet be?
Most OPB/EPB narratives are tight — one to two sentences per bullet, not a paragraph. If you can't say it in two sentences, you probably have two bullets.
Will Narrative Pro submit this to my rater or the personnel system?
No. It helps you draft and grade the language; you still hand it to your rater (or use it as your own input) through your unit's normal process.
Related
Explore related narrative types.
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