TSA CBT Practice: the TSO Assessment Battery

Every Transportation Security Officer announcement open on USAJOBS on 8 October 2026, all 171 of them, says you “may be invited to take the TSO Assessment Battery (TAB) (i.e., a computer based test) to evaluate x-ray interpretation aptitude”. That sentence has been on every TSO announcement sampled since 7 January 2025. TSA’s own careers page words it differently: “a computer-based test to evaluate image interpretation aptitude”.

Despite the word x-ray, candidates who have sat the test since October 2022 describe no X-ray images at all. The sentence that described the old test, “to confirm English language proficiency and evaluate x-ray interpretation aptitude”, was on every announcement sampled from 2020 to March 2023 and on none after that. The change is easiest to see side by side:

A cut score nobody publishes. The announcement says that to be considered you must meet all qualifications, “including meeting or exceeding the cut score on the required assessments”. TSA publishes no cut score and no section detail. Candidates are told pass or fail by email, anywhere from minutes later to about a week, and none reports seeing a section score.

How the sections combine is unknown. No source says whether each section has its own cut or the three are added together. Candidates widely believe 2D to 3D decides the result, but one who “got all those wrong but still passed” shows it is not that simple.

Two years for a pass, six months for a fail. The announcement says: “Passing assessment results will be kept on record for two years and failed assessment results will be kept on record for six months. These results will be used toward future positions for which you might apply that require the same assessments during the specified timeframe.” So a fail counts against every TSO application you make, at any airport, for six months, and a pass carries to other TSO applications for two years.

Figures you may see elsewhere. Prep pages quote passing percentages, qualification categories and a rule that a second fail ends your eligibility for good. None of them cites a source, and none appears on any TSA page, so we repeat none of them.

You apply on USAJOBS, and the application questionnaire has a cut score of its own. If you pass it, an email from OPM’s staffing office (usastaffingoffice@opm.gov) explains how to use the USA Hire system, which sends you to Pearson VUE’s “TSA - USA Hire” page to book. You must schedule and complete the proctored test at a TSA Testing Center within 21 days, and missing that deadline closes your application. Bring a valid US-issued ID.

The confirmation email, as candidates quote it, says to expect 25 to 45 minutes at the test centre on average, and the appointment slot is longer than that. Each section is timed separately, and candidates say 2D to 3D gets its 15 minutes however fast the first two went, so there is nothing to gain by rushing the early sections. Accommodations are available under the Rehabilitation Act.

Sources: USAJOBS, Transportation Security Officer (Madison, WI); TSA, Transportation Security Officers; TSA application tip sheet; Pearson VUE, TSA - USA Hire.

Before late 2022 the TSA CBT had an X-ray section and an English section, and many prep sites still sell both. No firsthand report of either since early 2023 turned up among the several hundred candidate posts our research read, and the announcement wording that named the English test has gone. One applicant in August 2026 put it flatly: “No x-ray portion. It’s different now.”

Prep sites describe the old X-ray section as a run of bag images, each shown for a few seconds, asking whether a named item is inside, and the English section as reading and vocabulary questions. None of them cites a source, and no official page ever gave either section’s length or item count. Its academic relative is CASRA’s X-Ray Object Recognition Test, built in 2002 to measure how a screener copes with rotation, superposition of prohibited items and bag complexity, and used in pre-employment selection. Whether TSA’s old test was that one or its own is not stated anywhere.

Two more things muddy the search results. Some prep sites expand TAB as “Technical Aptitude Battery”, but TSA’s name for it is the TSO Assessment Battery. And in the early 2000s, CBT at TSA also meant computer-based training, with simulated X-ray machines, for screeners already in the job.

The TAB is for Transportation Security Officers. TSA’s office and support roles use OPM’s standard USA Hire assessments instead: a TSA Training Manager announcement, for example, states that its USA Hire Assessments carry a cut score you must meet or exceed. If that is your application, practise on our USA Hire hub.