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?