What is the Role of a Warrant Officer in the Modern Military?

Factual Questions
1

In this thread on Officer Candidate School, several folks headed off onto a tangent on Warrant Officers.

In that thread, it was pointed out that in the U.S. Navy, they now don’t have basic level Warrant Officers (WO-1), but just promote people to Chief Warrant Officer (CWO-2) and above. It was also pointed out that now Chief Warrant Officers actually have commissions, which confused the heck out of me because I thought Warrant Officers were such because they had warrants, not commissions. Further, I recall from somewhere that the Air Force doesn’t have Warrant Officers at all.

My main understanding of Warrant Officers comes from my reading of historical novels of the sailing navies, where the Warrant Officers were the sailors that were the heads of the technical specialties on the ship, the Gunner, the Sailmaker, the Bosun, the Carpenter, etc. They had a warrant from the navy board to be such on the ship (hence, warrant officers), and their assistants were petty officer enlisted men, the Gunner’s Mates, Sailmaker’s Mates, etc. (There was also a Sailing Master and his mates, which is a bit of a side issue.)

Anyway, what is the role of the Warrant Officer in the military services today? Why do the different services (U.S. or foriegn) use them differently?

2

My understanding was that the Warrent Officers did serve specialized functions such as the Military Police. But I’m sure someone will chime in and elaborate.

3

The last USAF Warrant Officer retired in the mid-1980s - he joined during WWII. The rank no longer exists in that branch of the service. Most of the warrant officers I hear about now are Army and Marine Corps helicopter pilots.

4

Note that it’s just the Navy’s Warrant Officers who are commissioned.

Warrant Officers are technical specialists in their field. They are more “hands-on,” so to speak, than their Commissioned Officer counterparts, who are more managerial.

There are still Warrant Officers serving as Ship’s Clerk, Gunner, Bo’sun, Photographer, etc. Their Enlisted counterparts are (in order): Yeoman & Personnelman, Bo’sun’s Mate, Photographer’s Mate, etc. Some of the fields have “Mate” after the name of the field and some don’t.

I posted a link in the referenced thread where one can glean some more information on the Navy’s Warrant and LDO (Limited Duty Officer) programs, along with other commissioning programs.

5

Here’s a nifty link to an official Navy site.
Not only does this site give good graphics to show the specialty insignia of the CWO, it also has this to say:

This site gives more information on what’s meant by wearing the specialty insignia. You will also notice that it also shows that the Navy commenced using W5 just last year. If you’re a hardy soul, you can click on the messages tab at www.bupers.navy.mil and then comb through all the ALNAV and NAVADMIN messages for 2003 & 2002 to get the names of those so selected.

6

Army Warrant program information is here.

7

The Air Force eliminated Warrant Officers in 1958, when they approved the “supergrades”, Senior and Chief Master Sergeants. Until then, E-7, Master Sergeant, was as high as you could go in the Air Force.

There’s been a pretty serious movement afoot to restore Warrant Officers, although exactly what they would do that isn’t already being done by either Officers or Senior NCOs is beyond me.

8

Actually, Monty, since the '90s the Army Chief Warrants do get commissions, upon making CW2 and completing some requirements. The Navy commissions every one of theirs right off the bat, right? (And as it says in your linked site: nowadays only Army aviation W1s may enter as WOCs right off the street.)

One reason the CWs got commissions, IIRC, is that UCMJ and other regs reserve some authorities and powers to officers holding commissions – and in some of these postings it would be administratively and militarily inefficient to have a wardroomful of CWOs, knowing what must be done, sit around waiting for a commissioned officer to show up.

As for the Air Force, if I understand correctly they inherited most of their WOs from their prior existence as the Army Air Corps/Forces, but as USAF had a different mission philosophy the career outlook was very limited. In the 50s they tended to use the grades to address an enlisted-rank-inflation problem also left over from WW2, and as Doors said, when the Enlisted grades were revised, the Air Force split the difference – very expert EMs to E8 and E9, new techies who needed the status of an officer to be commissioned.

To add to the excitement and confusion, in the British-Commonwealth armies and navies, “Warrant Officer” is used to refer to a high-ranking enlisted person – an E8 or E9 in the US system. You’ll hear British Army WOs often addressed as “Sergeant Major” or whatever their appointment is, rather than as WO.

9

Wow. Thanks for the links Monty.

I think I understand the Army Warrant Officer system. Essentially, an Army Warrant Officer will be doing something from this List. Each of the listed jobs are technicians of some sort or another, except for a Rotary Wing Aviator (helicopter pilot), Bandmaster (self-explanatory), Marine Deck/Engineering Officer (operate the Army’s lake/coastal boats), CID Special Agent (detective), Legal Administrator (paralegal/law office manager), Mobility Officer (organizes getting people/things places), and Special Forces Warrant Officer (does Special Forces things I’m not quite clear on). Each of these things seem to things that need to be done by a specialist/expert who isn’t necessarily responsible for generally commanding troops. That seems reasonably clear.

The Navy CWO/LDO system is still a bit hazy to me. As you suggested, I dug through http://www.bupers.navy.mil/ until I came to this page from the Manual of Officer Classification. In section 2, it appears to give the codes for the various classifications of Navy CWOs and LDOs (among the other officer billets). It also describes the categories of CWO and LDO as:

This leads me to quite a bit of confusion. I suppose I could sputter out some further questions, but I was wondering if there is any clearer explanation of what CWOs and LDOs are and do.

Thanks JR for the explanation of what it means to be a commissioned Warrant Officer (as self-contradictory as that may seem).

Thanks also JR and Doors for the history of USAF warrants. I suppose their current system of warrants (none) is pretty easy to figure out. I’ve heard that the USAF has the highest percentage of commissioned officers of the services. Is this because many jobs that would call for Warrant Officers in the other services are commissioned in the Air Force, or would the Air Force still have more officers if you count both commissioned and warrants?

And does anyone have any information on Warrant Officers in the Marine Corps? Thanks.

10

You’re welcome. :slight_smile:

Actually, the reason why the Air Force has the highest level of commissioned officers is because, frankly speaking, they do the vast majority of the fighting. That’s very different from the other services. To elaborate: every single pilot is an officer. Every single navigator is an officer. Enlisted are limited in flying duties to radar, comm (which I do, sort of), loadmaster, flight engineer, and loader on AC-130s, and maybe a few more that I forgot, but there are only a few positions that enlisted can fly in. They do outnumber the officers, yes, but not by as much as one would think. For instance: on a slick C-130H, you have three officers and two enlisted as a standard crew. OTOH, on an AWACS there are more enlisted (the aforementioned comm and radar guys) and they are supervised by a single Air Battle Manager, with the pilots up front. The imbalance is corrected by the support squadrons and groups, which are much more Army-like in their organization. One boss, lotsa grunts.

The Air Force could potentially save money by making Warrants for flying positions and the like, but the way things are now that would compromise the command structure considerably. In addition, Warrants would be very circumscribed in their duties, since those tend to be very techincal and specific in nature. It just wouldn’t translate well to what we have now. Other services have found them useful, we probably would not. It’s really not an experiment worth trying, IMO. Things are fine the way they are.

Hope that helps.

11

Billdo, here’s a site from the Army warrant Officer’s Association. It includes a complete history of the WO in the Army plus short blurbs about the WOs in other services:
http://www.penfed.org/usawoa/

This is the specific page in the site with a brief on the programs in other services, including the USMC and USCG, with links to pages from each service about their programs, and to government documents about the WO role:
http://www.penfed.org/usawoa/oth_svc.htm
As to the relative strengths of Commissioned/Warrant corps, here are numbers for 1999 found on the web:

Army: 396,155EM, 66,104CO, 11,491WO, no LDO
Navy: 314,286EM, 52,136CO, 1,757WO, 3,687LDO(count as CO)
Marine Corps: 154,830EM, 16,055CO, 1,839WO , 438LDO(count as CO)
Air Force: 286,170EM, 70,321CO, no WO, no LDO

The Air Force, proportionate to size, is about 20% officers; the Army, even counting its large WO corps, is a little over 16% officers.

12

Army, yes. Marine Corps, no. Marine Rotor Heads be Commissioned Officers.

Warrant Officers in the USMC are the technical or expertise sort, generally. Admin, Aviation Maintenance, HAWK Missile Maintenance, Band Master are the ones I recall working with or around. Sounds very similar to the Army, sans the helo thing. They can serve as Platoon Commanders, but not Company/Battery Commanders, just as LDO (Limited Duty Officers) cannot hold command (Platoon Commander is not considered “Command”).

They are generally prior Staff NCO’s (Staff Sergeant, E-6, or above) before applying for the Warrant Officer Program, but I do not think that is a requirement.

13

For the sake of completeness, I’ll mention that in the Canadian Army and Air Force, “Warrant Officer” is just a rank above Sergeant, with no special modifiers. The ranking system is as follows:

Private
Corporal
Master Corporal
Sergeant
Warrant Officer
Master Warrant Officer
Chief Warrant Officer

Beyond this are “appointments”, or temporary job assignments.

Base Chief Warrant Officer (highest-ranked NCO on a base or other large facility containing several member units)
Command Chief Warrant Officer (of which there is one for each branch of the service)
Canadian forces Chief Warrant Officer (of which there is one in Canada)

14

JRD: Regardless of the terminology of commissioned or warranted, the UCMJ bases the scope of punishment that an officer may issue on that officer’s paygrade. In certain cases, that paygrade’s scope is limited based on the position (or lack, actually) that the person occupies.

15

Billdo: Perhaps you’d like an anecdote since we’re on the subject of officers. Years ago in Germany, I got to listen to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force give a speech to some group of Air Force personnel. I especially liked one phrase he used (actually, it’s the only thing I remember from that speech): “This is the responsibility of all of our officers: Commissioned, Warrant, and Non-Commissioned. All of these officers need to be concerned about this.”

The big difference in the Navy’s LDO and CWO communities (besides the obvious in rank & pay) is that the LDO has more managerial responsibility as he’s a Line Officer. Another thing that seemed counter-intuitive to me is that it’s pretty much PO1 (E6) going for LDO and CPO (E7) going for CWO. Of course, there are certain exceptions to that. The next thing is that the LDO is responsible for a wider range of things in the field than the CWO is. Another thing is that the LDO, unlike other Commissioned Officers, may only be promoted up to Captain. That’s actually a recent change; before that, the LDO could only make it to Commander.

It’s kind of interesting to compare the way the different Services treat the same rank, isn’t it?

16

Drat! I swear one missing word completely changes a post!

The LDO is a line commissioned officer.

17

OK, Monty, since you’ve been so darn helpful, perhaps I’ll torture some more. In looking up the Warrant Officer question, the list I quoted above had a few more distinctions that I’m confused by. Let me quote the rest of it in full:

Putting aside the CWOs and those transitioning, it seems that we have the following different types of commissioned officers: Unrestricted Line, Restricted Line, Staff. LDO - Line and LDO - Staff.

I think I understand what the staff corps are, the doctors, nurses, dentists, chaplains, lawyers and the like (though I’m not sure why supply and civil engineering are staff corps).

However, I still don’t get the difference between an unrestricted line officer, restricted line officer, and LDO - Line. (I guess that the LDO - Staff would be an LDO in a Staff Corps, but I’m not sure why one would be an LDO not simply a staff officer.)

Anyway, can you (or someone else) help me out with the differences between these. Thanks.

18

An Unrestricted Line Officer can command a unit regardless of his own specialty. A Restricted Line Officer is restricted to commanding units which are in his speciality; for example, a Supply Corps officer can’t command an aircraft carrier but will instead be able to command a supply unit. At least that’s the way I recall it.

You could go back to the BUPERS* (joke about that acronym below) link and click on instructions. Then you need to look for the following two regulations: SORN and Navy Regulations.

*Have you ever wondered why Bureau of Naval Personnel changed its acronym from NAVPERS to BUPERS? Consider which one rhymes with bloopers and you have your answer!

19

So would master chief be a warrant officer rank now?

Declan

20

No, Master Chief Petty Officer is the highest enlisted rate in the US Navy (E-9). The Air Force has Chief Master Sergeants and Command Chief Master Sergeants at E-9.

These both outrank non-commissioned zombies.