My WAG: It was thought (during WWII or so) the college education prepares them for the intricacies of flying?
In other countries during WWII, non-coms could fly as well, such as in the RAF.
Because ultimately, a pilot must have authority over his vehicle. If ground control thinks it’s better for the plane to zig and the pilot thinks it’s better to zag, the pilot zags. Enlisted personnel aren’t allowed that degree of discretion.
You don’t have time to think up there. If you think, you’re dead.
It’s not true that all pilots are officers, though.
The USAF does indeed have an all officer pilot corps. But the Army doesn’t, Army pilots are Warrant Officers. This is an oddball rank that sandwiches above enlisted but below O-1 on the table of organization.
What puzzles me about this, though, is that senior NCOs often seem to have just as much responsibility. This seems to be particularly true in the Navy, where CPOs may have charge of numerous sailors, and be responsible for the safe operation of expensive systems. At least as portrayed in fiction, e.g. the TV show J.A.G., chiefs often seem to have a level of responsibility about the same as non-executive senior managers in a large civilian company.
I was in Air Force ROTC for a year. The simple reason is that there are plenty of people that want to become pilots and there are not near enough slots for the officers let alone allowing NCO to fly a plane that costs tens of millions of dollars. There is no reason to let anyone that isn’t in officer ranks to let someone fly an airplane that is so complex yet can be horribly destructive. The chain of command doesn’t work that way.
Not to snark, but that sounds needlessly elitist vis-a-vis officers. Wouldn’t a very senior non-commissioned officer be more seasoned and responsible choice than a young 2nd lieutenant? And what’s inherent in the chain of command that says a given service member can operate this piece of equipment but not that one?
Maybe a fresh-faced 2nd lieutenant wouldn’t have the chance to fly a plane and it’s really confined to (WAG) captain and above, at a level of experience that stands above 2nd louie and master sergeant alike. But to me that sounds like a bit of a different rationale than identifying any given non-com as too irresponsible to be allowed to fly.
Which illustrates nicely why it’s considered necessary for pilots to have that degree of authority over their vehicles.
The last time I checked, it cost well over $1 million dollars to train a new fighter pilot. It is elitist in that is the entire way the Air Force and Navy (any all of the military for that matter) are built. They are not equal opportunity employees and the chain of command means everything. There is no reason to allow NCO’s to fly aircraft in the Air Force or Navy. If someone wanted to do that, they should have gone through ROTC, a military academy, or Officer Training School once they were in. I think you underestimate how procedural the military is. The chain of command doesn’t work if you allow random people to fly fighter planes or bombers.
22 year old 2nd Lieutenants have to be saluted by 40 year old NCO’s when they pass or walk into a room. That is the way things work.
It worked in World War II. There are many references to NCO pilots on all sides.
That was because they were desperate for people then. It doesn’t work that way anymore. I read Chuck Yeager’s biography all the time. He retired as a General even though everyone agrees he was about as smart as a bag of rocks but he was outstanding as a stick and rudder guy. That isn’t the case today.
Today’s fighter planes are so advanced that they require someone how took the initiative to get a college degree and, better yet, a masters degree. I know someone that was an Apache helicopter pilot in Iraq and is now an instructor. He busted his ass and went through the abuse of the Citadel to get there. That is all he ever wanted to do. There are lots of people that did the same and didn’t make the cut. Like many things, if you don’t have a college degree and the proper training, there is no reason why you would ever get to fly something like that especially when there are plenty of more qualified people waiting in the wings. I know that many NCO’s could fly fighter planes and attack helicopter quite well but they are under a different chain of command and there is no reason to complicate the matter.
The US, too, has had pilot NCOs (many of the pilot NCOs in the US Army were eventually repositioned as WOs), but WW2 is an anomalous example: we’re talking Global Total War and if the person knew how to fly and fight, they were flying and fighting, even if they did not otherwise have whatever tickets they needed punched to get a commission (which except for “battlefield commissions” was a quite elitist process). Pre-WW2 there were also many more openings where you could enlist in the military already having mastered a trade and be placed directly into that role
Johnathan, indeed the Army uses the WO ranks for most of their pilots, however in all the services today the Warrant ranks W2-through-5 DO have commissions, it’s only the initial appointment as W1 (Army or Marine) that’s via warrant any more, and even that is soon going to get an automatic commission upon completing training. This allowed the Army to recruit helo pilots “High School to Flight School” off the street or off the enlisted ranks w/o having to wait for them to complete college, thus getting a slight advantage over the other services who absolutely required that pilots have degrees and commissions. Also, the Navy has itself recently done a trial for using WO pilots in support-role aircraft (cite: http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=22072 ) in order to expand the pool of available pilots (and of career opportunities for interested enlisted ratings)
In any case, post WW2 it became a matter of that not only the degree of technical complexity required a higher level of training and education ***at entry ***, which during the initial years was still the time when it was expected that college degree = commission (mandatory ROTC at State colleges…) but also, as mentioned, that a pilot flying an aircraft is by definition in command and expected to make fast decisions and face the consequences. Since you generally want your pilots, specially those in combat roles, to be ready for that military, not technical, task the moment you put them on the stick, you might as well give them the training for it: officer training (Warrant or Commissioned, initial-entry or up-from-the-ranks). For what THAT’s worth, also, it was decided that if you had a Sergeant/Petty Officer who wanted to fly, and s/he makes the grade, you might as well give him/her a warrant/commission for their trouble and added service commitment (and your added training expense); at least by time-in-service they’d then be senior to other freshly-minted butterbars.
Spectre, that is pretty much true, senior NCOs have high responsibility but the officers have higher authority; but woe it be to the O1 who does not listen to the advice of his/her E7.
As opposed to the Army? And who confined the discussion to fighter pilots? I suspect the training bill for a cargo transport plane might be less.
I’m not military myself, but eagerly await any fellow Doper’s anecdotes on how a grizzled senior non-com may have introduced an attitudinous 2nd louie to the way things really work.
Oh boy, we are getting into some serious concepts here. A 40 year old NCO has to salute a 22 year old 2nd Lieutenant and respect his or her authority. To refuse to do otherwise is a very serious offense. OTOH, a 22 year old 2nd Lieutenant would be stupid not to listen to the NCO because no one knows everything about their job at 22 years of age. Still, the Lieutenant is in the officer ranks and in charge at all times. A deliberate breach of authority is not something you want to be involved with in the military. It could be career ending if a Court Martial is called. I don’t think that many people in this thread understand how procedural the military is and how harsh it can be for something that may be considered minor disconduct in the civilian world.
Missed Edit Window
To clarify: All the services require that if you intend to begin your career already as a commissioned officer, you must have a degree; since all the other services require pilots to be commissioned officers, if you want to begin your career already as a pilot you need a degree.
Nice platitude. Must be a hell of a thing to try and fly on instinct alone. “Check my instruments, calculate distance to… Oh fuck! I thought something -” DEAD.
One time Navy Petty Officer here, this is more eloquent than what I was gearing up to say.
I once went through a training course for testing toxic gas levels in confined spaces. There were officers and enlisted guys all taking the same training together. My Lt. and I tested dozens of spaces and certified them safe for entry. We would agree on the readings from the meters or sensors, the kicker was that it was his signature not mine that certified the room safe. That’s why they get the perqs and paid the big bucks, for the responsibility and accountability that comes with it.
Every so often, we would get a new watch officer who was all bright eyed and full of pep, and wanted everything done perfectly by procedure. We protested this in a remarkably simple, and incredibly effective way… By following those orders to the letter. When stuff takes 5x as long to do, and the officer is constantly being harassed for permission, orders, signatures, reviews, etc, it gets old quick, and within a short time they would relent and let us get back to doing our job.
As an example… There was a valve that I opened in order to fill a reserve water tank. Simple thing. Open the valve, then close it when they called down and report that it was closed. The procedure for this, however, involved calling 4 or 5 different stations and verifying valve lineups, plus a few checks of my own, and would take half an hour or more to do. Stupid, since we operated that valve ten times a day, and nobody had any reason to operate the rest of the valves(and even if they did, worst case, no water would flow, at which point I would of course investigate).
Keep this up, order after order, procedure after procedure(which filled gigantic volumes and represented 40 years of bloat), and they would relent.
Pilots are officers because, in the grand sceme of things, single planes are the equivalent of platoons, flights are the equivalent of companies, squadrons are the equivalent of battalions, and so on.