# Not including astronauts who are the most expensive military personnel to train & produce? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 24, 2014, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-including-astronauts-who-are-the-most-expensive-military-personnel-to-train-produce/696342 "2014-08-24T02:15:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-including-astronauts-who-are-the-most-expensive-military-personnel-to-train-produce/696342/21 "2014-08-24T13:55:00Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > What differentiates an enlisted (warrant officer?) pilot from an officer pilot? That is, why is officership required in some cases but not others? Jet jockeys are officers, as are support aircraft pilots. Warrants fly helos. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-including-astronauts-who-are-the-most-expensive-military-personnel-to-train-produce/696342/22 "2014-08-24T14:06:25Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Jet jockeys are officers, as are support aircraft pilots. Warrants fly helos. Does this fixed-wing=officer, rotary=warrant rule hold pretty strict? Googling tells me that even helos as important and expensive as Apaches are piloted by WOs, which surprises me. Ospreys seem to be piloted by officers, though. Is there are reason for this division? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-including-astronauts-who-are-the-most-expensive-military-personnel-to-train-produce/696342/23 "2014-08-24T14:10:53Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > Does this fixed-wing=officer, rotary=warrant rule hold pretty strict? > Googling tells me that even helos as important and expensive as Apaches are piloted by WOs, which surprises me. Ospreys seem to be piloted by officers, though. > > Is there are reason for this division? I suspect it’s the difference between the Air Force and Army. Airplane pilots are the heart and soul of the Air Force, and therefore must be officers; whereas to the Army, helicopter pilots are just another bunch of drivers. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-including-astronauts-who-are-the-most-expensive-military-personnel-to-train-produce/696342/24 "2014-08-24T14:20:23Z")
If you are a doctor who went to med school on the military’s dime, that’s expensive; you end up owing your branch of service a lot of time, and you have to put in time first. This is why the military likes to recruit doctors who are already doctors. They offer benefits like student loan repayment. It ends up costing them almost as much, but not quite, because they pay for the tuition (the loan), but they didn’t pay the person a salary while they were in school, because they weren’t enlisted then, and they don’t take the chance that you wash out, because they recruit people who have already passed their boards. I don’t know that it compares to pilots, though, because planes crash during training sometimes, and you have to count that kind of damage as part of the total bill. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-including-astronauts-who-are-the-most-expensive-military-personnel-to-train-produce/696342/25 "2014-08-24T15:55:16Z")
There ARE commissioned officer helo aviators in the US Army. Just that the main source of Army pilots\* both FW and RW\* come trough the WOC program. The commissioned aviators are often on a track for higher Armywide command staff positions. > [@Alessan](#): > > I suspect it’s the difference between the Air Force and Army. Airplane pilots are the heart and soul of the Air Force, and therefore must be officers; whereas to the Army, helicopter pilots are just another bunch of drivers. In the US, USAF was originally a corps within the US Army and much like other air branches in the early stages of its evolution had at different times enlisted, warrant officer and commissioned officer flyers. Post-WW2 enlisted pilots were phased out virtually everywhere. Former enlisted pilots of the Army were given the opportunity to become WO pilots. In 1948 the USAF was spun off and took with it all the “frontline” units (bombers, fighters, large transports) and the officer corps that went with them; later in the 50s they phased out any new-entry WOCs, splitting their former functions between E8 and E9 NCOs and junior commissioned officers. They and the Navy adopted a policy of all new pilots being commissioned officers. In the design of the then-new DoD with an independent Air Force, the Army was left at the time with only minimal auxiliary aviation resources – artillery spotters, light utility aircraft, then-primitive medevac helicopters. There was not even a branch corps for “aviation”, you were part of an artillery or logistics or signals or ambulance unit. _At the time_ the Flight WO (which in the US unlike most other anglophone militaries is a distinct level separate from either the enlisted or commissioned classes) _was_ a good fit for the Army’s necessity for “just drivers” of auxiliary units – get someone with a knowledge and experience in flying these things but who is not going to move on to brigade commander or Pentagon staff some day. FF to the 1960s and realize that you actually need a LOT of vertical movement of your troops so you need to buy a heap of Hueys. AND that it would really help if your ride into the battlefield had some guns and rockets of its own. So you create helicopter gunships and call it “Air Cavalry”, with the old cav’s varied mission as harassers, skirmishers, scouts and shock troops. Col. Kilgore, Wagner and Charlie don’t surf. Someone else says to himself, “Hmm… a chopper that did _not_ haul any grunts, but only a huge assload of rockets, missiles and cannon, could take out a whole buncha tanks” and you get the Cobras and Apaches. A lot of the things. Someone has to fly all these and hey, the Army happened to have the “High School to Flight School” program where you could enlist and go directly to Flight WOC status _without having to have been a NCO first_. Meanwhile “small auxiliary aircraft” do also tend, to, well, evolve. Cessna made the [O1 Bird Dog](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_O-1_Bird_Dog#mediaviewer/File:BirdDog.jpg) in the 60s but it also sold the [UC-35](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/images/uc-35a-army.jpg) in this century. By the mid/late-1980s, the WOs at or above W2 in the Army caught up with their Navy peers and got the legal authority status of commissioned officers; the Army dusted off the old Air Corps branch pins and reestablished Aviation as a branch corps in its own right so it has a proper career ladder. Meanwhile the Flight WO corps has become large, advancement involves getting degrees, traditions have grown and prestige accumulated over 50 years, so it stays that way. ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-including-astronauts-who-are-the-most-expensive-military-personnel-to-train-produce/696342/26 "2014-08-24T17:25:12Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Regarding the qualification to be an aircraft carrier, I don’t recall if the requirement is to be a pilot or to be either a pilot or a naval flight officer (sorry, I can’t remember the correct terminology right now). I thought the difference between a pilot and a naval aviator was a naval aviator is carrier qualified. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-including-astronauts-who-are-the-most-expensive-military-personnel-to-train-produce/696342/27 "2014-08-24T18:24:51Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > Does this fixed-wing=officer, rotary=warrant rule hold pretty strict? > Googling tells me that even helos as important and expensive as Apaches are piloted by WOs, which surprises me. Ospreys seem to be piloted by officers, though. > > Is there are reason for this division? Ospreys are VTOLs, but in flight are the same as fixed wing aircraft. Harriers also had hover capability, but were piloted by Marine officers. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-including-astronauts-who-are-the-most-expensive-military-personnel-to-train-produce/696342/28 "2014-08-24T18:28:20Z")
I’d think USMC pilots are up there; not only do they have to do the usual ROTC/Service academy stuff to get commissioned, they go to a year’s worth of Marine officer training (every Marine a rifleman, and all that) BEFORE they go to the same flight training that Navy pilots go to. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-including-astronauts-who-are-the-most-expensive-military-personnel-to-train-produce/696342/29 "2014-08-24T23:27:32Z")
As noted the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs doesn’t really qualify for the purpose of this question, but it’s maybe worth noting that he/she isn’t even necessarily the longest serving or most senior officer in his/her service. For example, Colin Powell was made Chairman over more senior officers. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-including-astronauts-who-are-the-most-expensive-military-personnel-to-train-produce/696342/30 "2014-08-25T01:11:31Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > As noted the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs doesn’t really qualify for the purpose of this question, but it’s maybe worth noting that he/she isn’t even necessarily the longest serving or most senior officer in his/her service. For example, Colin Powell was made Chairman over more senior officers. Personally, I’d be more concerned about the Unified Combatant Command generals; they’re the guys actually commanding the fighting troops, and the JCS aren’t in their chain of command. For combat troops, it’s the President, the Sec. of Defense, and then the Unified Combatant Command generals. The JCS are more administrative than anything else. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-including-astronauts-who-are-the-most-expensive-military-personnel-to-train-produce/696342.md?page=1)