How do warrant officers rank in the military services? Are they all below 2nd lieutenants? I heard of stories of Warrant Officers telling senior officers “to piss up a rope?” are these stories true?
In the same way that a Second Lt. can tell a Command Sargent Major of 30+ years of service to “Piss up a rope.”
Enlisted man - Warrant officer - Regular officer
Pay was more comparable as W-1 = same base as 2’nd Lt. and W-4 was same or near Major pay. + / -
Army , Coast Guard and Navy had Warrants and Marines had Gunners = same same more or less.
All warrants do indeed rank below a 2LT. The thing to remember is that most warrants were a NCO before going to school for warrant so a WO1 tends to have around 9-12 years of service. (They are specialists, think specialized technician) The exception to this is Aviation warrants (helicopter pilots), they tend to be younger as you can don’t have to be a soldier to apply. Join as a civ and be promoted to warrant after flight school.
Because of their unique position of not being in the chain of command, but being crusty old salts, stories abound about the CW5 telling a field grade or general officer to “to piss up a rope.” Usually in the stories I’ve heard, it is a copter pilot doing the telling and the general doing the listening. I really doubt it. Course, the only warrants I knew were counter-intellingence, CID, medical (PAs, but these guys are being commisioned these days), or a BMO (BN maint. officer). YMMV
BTW, this post only applies to the US Army. Warrants are different in the other services and, IIRC, don’t even exist in the Navy any more.
I served with a helicopter flying W-4 in Fort Bragg in 1964.
He had 30+ years in.
He could fly anything and well.
He broke regs all the time.
He never broke an plane.
He always got the job done.
They knew he was that good.
He was still doing it when I left there.
End result unknown.
Boy, could that man fly…
Officers from Second Lieutenants up through Generals all receive their ranks through commissions (from Congress?) and are called Commisioned Officers.
Corporals through Master Sergeants do not receive commissions and are called Non-commissioned officers.*
There exists a little patch of authority between these two worlds in which a person may receive a warrant to be an officer–and guess what they are called?
They do rank above all non-coms and below all commisioned officers in terms of military protocol.
(Actual authority wielded by them will depend on the particular function in which they are serving as was discussed in the recent thread Military question: a matter of rank.)
(Another recent thread, Sergeants in the US army, addressed the bewildering array of rank titles and their relationships).
The Warrant Officers have come and gone throughout much of the U.S. military history, but they have been more absent than present. However, as the Army began to invest heavily in an air corps of helicopter pilots, they ran into a problem. They wanted a lot of pilots, but they had already inherited the older tradition that only officers could be pilots. Not wanting to flood the ranks with thousands of lieutenants, they chose to resurrect the mostly dormant warrant positions. The other services may also use warrant officers, but the vast majority of Warrant Officers are Army (helicopter) pilots.
As for a Warrant Officer telling a Commissioned Officer (of any rank) to go “piss up a rope,” that smacks of UL, but there are certainly cases where a person with a lower rank can convey their intention to not obey an improper order from a person of higher rank if the two are not in direct line of authority, as noted in the “a matter of ranks” thread I linked, above.
- I never remember whether a Private First Class is considered a non-com.
Actually, Xgemina, they do have WOs in the Navy. It’s the Air Force that did away with WO’s, deciding to spread the duties between E-8/9 at the enlisted end, and staff-corps officers on the comnmissioned end.
What the Navy (and CG) don’t have is the WO1, the base grade of WO. In the Navy/CG it’s always up from the upper Petty Officer and Chiefs’ rates, with a decade in service. In the Army and Marines you can apply for WOCandidate School earlier in your career, plus you have people like helicopter pilots and Physician Assistants who enter the service right off civilian life as WO Candidates. Also, it’s only the Army and Marines who use the CW5 or Master Warrant rank, since it is in those services that you can have someone be a whole-career WO so you need more advancement billets.
Also, since not too long ago it’s only the WO1 that’s a true “warrant” appointment from the Service Secretary, while the CW2, 3, 4 and 5 grades get presidential commissions (the Navy/CG had it that way decades before the Army), so that they may perform some command duties among their own specialties.
tom~, a PFC (whether Army E3 or Marine E2) is not a NCO. Neither is an Army Specialist (E4) though an Army Corporal (E4, too) is a NCO. The Air Force used to have the mixed NCO/not NCO grade at E4 but ever since they got rid of their buck sergeants and left it at Senior Airman. It’s Marine Lance Corporals (E3) I’m not too sure about
Commissioned military officers are “officers of the United States” within the meaning of the Appointments Clause, and are appointed in the same manner as most commissioned officers throughout the executive branch: they are nominated by the President, and appointed by the President “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.” I believe that the actual commission, evidencing the appointment, comes from the President.
In the army, NCO’s are in charge of men. Specialists are in charge of equipment.
Marine LCpls (E-3) are not NCOs. That begins with Corporal (E-4). Warrant Officers I have known are much more casual with Commissioned Officers, and there is a general social equity between WO-1/CWO-2 and Lieutenants (O-1, O-2) and Captains. CWO3 and CWO-4 generally are seen as equals to Majors and LtCols. In my experience.
Just a point of information: Warrant Officers in the US Navy are commissioned as such.
JRDelirious
Urk, durr, thanks JRDelirious, I knew one service had gotten rid of warrant officers…don’t know why Navy stood out in my head.
These days only helicopter pilots can apply for warrant school at enlistment. In 1993 the Army began phasing out warrant rank for PAs and started commisioning them. I knew a WO3 PA who suddenly became a Captain (he was most happy about the pay raise…about a grand a month).
Otherwise you must be at least a SGT (E-5) and completed BNCOC before you can put in your warrant packet. A real high speed, low drag soldier (in a fast promoting MOS) could possibly do this in 5 years, but in reality the average warrant was a SSG (E-6) with about 8-10 years of service before putting in his packet.