To be annoying, in the US military, enlisted have pay grade and officers have rank.
Ultimately, it is the structure of the Chain of Command that details who is in charge and who is above and below you. Regardless of grade or rank.
My experiences with Warrant Officers was in the Coast Guard and 30 some years ago.
First off, to be a candidate for WO, you had to be at least a 1st Class Petty Officer (PO1) on the Chief’s (CPO) promotion list. Base pay for a WO2 was the same as that of an LtJg, WO3 was the same as a Lt, and WO4 was the same as a LtCdr. There were no WO1s (Warrant Officer Junior Grade (WoJg)). That’s before the Time In Service pay entered in, so Warrants generally got paid more than the equivalent Commissioned ranks. And WO2s out ranked MCPOs.
We had Warrants as school chiefs when I was a student and instructor at the Electronics Schools. I did some temporary duty at the LORAN station on Nantucket Island, MA, and the XO was an electronics Warrant. That made sense as 85% of the crew was ETs, the entire purpose of the station was to feed the LORAN antennae, and the CO (an LT) had no particular electronics training.
Before WWII, the USN and USMC had flying chiefs and sergeants. After Pearl Harbor, since these flying enlisted men had a couple thousand hours of flight time in a variety of aircraft and the new commissioned pilots coming out of flight school had maybe 200-250 hours, the flying sergeants and chiefs were given direct commissions as LTs or Captains and made squadron commanders. After the war was over, they kept the promoted NCOs as officers flying and no enlisted men were piloting anymore.
After the USAF was separated from the Army, Army Aviation was liaison pilots and artillery spotters. By the time Vietnam rolled around, they needed a lot more bodies to fly all the newfangled helicopters and it was pointed out that 19 year olds had a lot better reflexes than some senior officers. So they started taking enlistees (NOT draftees) after boot camp and sending them to Rotary Wing Aviator school and making them WOJGs when they graduated. That way they weren’t enlisted pukes, they were Warrant Officers.
That is incorrect. Officers have pay grades: O-1, O-2, … etc. Enlisted have ranks: PVT, PFC, SPC, SGT, SSG… etc. Enlisted personnel, warrant officers, and commissioned officers all have ranks and pay grades.
Except for the USN and USCG. Their terminology for enlisted personnel is rate instead of rank. Of course, they still have paygrades.
My understanding is all military personnel in all branches have pay grades: E-1 through E-9* for enlisted, W-1 through W-4** for warrant, and O-1 through O-10 for officers. Officers have ranks, enlisted personnel have rates and ratings. My paygrade was E-5, my rating was PO2, and my rate was ET2.
- Actually, there is ONE E-10 in each branch who personally represents enlisted needs to the senior officer, i.e., the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard reports directly to the Commandant, the Sergeant Major of the Army reports directly to the Chief of Staff, etc…
** I’ve read the Army had W-5 aviators during Desert Storm. These were men who got their wings as WOJGs (W-1) during Vietnam.
In the Navy and Coast Guard the enlisted personnel have rates and ratings. In the land services everyone has ranks, and you can have more than one rank in the same grade. The Senior Enlisted Advisor for each service is nominally still an E-9 grade, of a rank higher than the others.
Under the law, the WO paygrades are authorized W1 through W5 across the board but each service decides what to do with them.
This is correct. To elaborate, the rating is the person’s specialty, i.e., Machinist’s Mate, Bosun’s Mate, etc. The rate is the pay grade. So an MM2 would be a Machinist’s Mate, second class, a YN3 would be a Yeoman, third class, etc. Rank (or grade) in the Navy refers to the ‘E’, ‘W’ or ‘O’ level (E-1 through E-9; O-1 through O-10, W1-W5) and seniority within each rank is determined by time in grade: an E-6 with ten years in grade is senior to an E-6 with 8 years in grade.
Why do you think it stops at W4? There are plenty of W5s in the Army. They are rare because each MOS might only have a handful of slots for them (I’d have to look up the exact figure). And it’s not just aviators… tech fields have W5s as well. The MI Corps has 1512 Warrants and 25 are CW5 rank.
When I was a new recruit in AIT, a W5 told me that the only way to get to W5 was to outlive all your competition.
I’m glad you brought up Mates. Isn’t it true that, theoretically at least, for each of the ratings you mentioned, the ____'s Mate would report directly to a _____, who would be a warrant officer? So for example the Machinist and Bosun would be WOs. However, in the case of smaller ships, there wouldn’t be a WO-level Machinist or Bosun, so the responsibility devolves to the respective Mates?
Am I making any sense here?
Is it a way to make your sergeant outrank other sergeants in an international force?
Make him the Command* Sergeant Major. The thing is, international forces are usually only “international” on a staff level. You’re probably not going to have a squad, platoon, or company made of up different national personnel. There might be a liaison assigned, but you’re probably not going to have privates from different nations sharing the same fighting hole.
*insert “Task Force”, “Division”, or whatever the international force is called.
There was this semi-fiction book “The Five Fingers.” It was a squad with 5 different nationalities. The author, a Kiwi, was made a warrant officer just before being deployed and he was made second-in-command. In the squad were a Korean 2nd Lt, a British Reg. Sgt. Major, and a US Green Beret Msgt.
A Warrant Officer in the US Army is NOT just a sergeant who outranks other sergeants. They are commissioned officers who are expected to have more training, experience, and expertise in their specialty than other NCO or Officers. NCOs get progressively less specialized and more managerial as they move up the chain. Army E8s and E9s are almost exclusively managerial.
It is worth pointing out, though, that many other countries do not follow this system. For example, in the Australian Army a Warrant Officer is the equivalent of the US Army’s Sergeant Major; it is the highest position in their Other Ranks (what they call the enlisted). I imagine the NZ system is rather similar.
Also, while I have never seen a squad with five different nationalities, I have seen bilateral (two nations) in mixed squads and fireteams.
Not to me, but then I wasn’t a boat sailor; I was a Seabee and never set foot on a ship in 23 years. 
Because in the Navy it does, and it’s possible that he made a mistake in thinking it’s so for the rest of the branches. Navy is W2 through 4 (they start at 2 because you have to be at least an E7 to apply for the Warrant program; all other services you can apply at E5 but you’ll come in as a W1), the others are W1-W5.
The boyfriend is a W4 in the Marine Corps; his CO and a number of his friends are 5s. He could be looked at for 5 in two years, but he doesn’t want to go past 20 years in. He is not, as far as I can tell, a zombie. 
Huh. I wonder how DoD has missed that little detail on our monthly reports for the last three years…
Are there Warrant Officer Clubs on bases, e.g. equivalent to NCO Clubs and [Commissioned] Officers’ Clubs?
It would be cool to be the bouncer at one of those clubs, because you could tell people,
Sorry, you can’t come in here without a Warrant.
That is odd. I suppose there’s a difference between having the rank established and actually implementing it… if there’s no need for a CW5 slot on the billets, they may not have them. But I’m not a sailor, so I don’t know.
LOL at Robert Columbia’s joke.