# Why are military pilots only officers? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 11, 2008, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148 "2008-11-11T02:35:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GreedySmurf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a698b9/32.png) [@GreedySmurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreedySmurf)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/21 "2008-11-11T06:07:10Z")
More an FYI, but I know of at least on other country that currently has non-officers flying military aircraft. That is the UK. The Apache squadrons, which are part of the Army Air Corp rather than the RAF, regularly have NCO’s piloting the Apache’s. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/22 "2008-11-11T11:25:30Z")
The British Army wiki Arssspedia approves of this arrangement, where by the officers fight and the lower ranks sit back in bunkers well behind the front lines and wait for them to return. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/23 "2008-11-11T12:45:37Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > 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. Ground control (if not civilians) _is_ enlisted personnel. And they _do_ have power over the officers/warrants. If ground control tells the pilot to zig but he zags, then the pilot is subject to some type of disciplinary action. Most aircraft accidents occur within the domain of ground control, so you can believe that it’s serious business. On edit: Well, emergencies being emergencies, the pilot probably won’t be reprimanded for having zagged. ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/24 "2008-11-11T13:02:05Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > 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. I haven’t dug out the references but my memory is that the Luftwaffe in WW2 used NCO pilots with an officer in another crew position as captain - not sure how well this worked. On the other hand, the RAF, in Bomber Command, where a crew had an NCO pilot and an Officer navigator (say) there was no doubt that the pilot was the captain of the aircraft and in charge during flight - even if the pilot had to salute the navigator on the ground. I suspect the general move to all officer pilots - the exception of helicopter pilots in various services noted - is more related to the move from conscription to all volunteer service than the increase in “intelligence” needed to fly military aircraft. Even in WW2 pilot training was not that simple but people of all inteligence levels got called up and not all of the bright ones were immediately made officers. ---
**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:** [November 11, 2008, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/25 "2008-11-11T13:42:53Z")
Another reason is this: morale. If you spend $1 million and two years of training on a man, and then give him absolute responsibility for a $50 million vehicle, you might as well make him an officer. He’ll be happier that way, and considering the investment you made in him and the risk he represents, you \*want \*him as happy as possible. ---
**Author:** ![yoyodyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a9a28c/32.png) [@yoyodyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yoyodyne)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/26 "2008-11-11T13:46:18Z")
> [@CutterJohn](#): > > Keep this up, order after order, procedure after procedure(which filled gigantic volumes and represented 40 years of bloat), and they would relent. That bloat represented 40 years of experience in what could go wrong. Sometimes it’s written in blood. ---
**Author:** ![LiveOnAPlane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@LiveOnAPlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LiveOnAPlane)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/27 "2008-11-11T13:46:59Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > …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. I’ve never worn the uniform either, but I’ve spent the greater portion of my career working with the military. I’ve got one for you that is funny to me to this day. I was uprange in Tonopah, Nevada in 1992 providing computer support for some wargaming by a joint services force (JADO/JEZ if anyone really cares). The guy in charge of the Patriot SAMs was a Chief WO4. We had 4 missions per day and it got very busy at the beginning and end, but in between we didn’t have much to do. One of the things the Patriot can do is generate a printout of stuff (sorry, all I feel safe to say about that). One day, he happened to be in the command center with me instead of at a Patriot site, and we were sitting on the steps outside picking gravel out of the treads of our boots. He started chuckling and I asked him what the joke was. Seemed that the day before, he was in a Patriot van and at the lunch break (2 pushes down, 2 to go) he explained to this lady who was a butter bar (Second lieutenant), “Now lieutenant, it may look like the paper in this printer will last through the last 2 pushes, but believe me, most of the time it won’t. So always change it out for a full stack after the second push, OK” She goes, “OK, Chief.” They’re in the middle of the last push, tracking our incoming F-111s and F-16s and F-14s and all that, busy as can be, when the printer goes silent. Everyone in the van looks over at it in time to see the last sheet of the fanfold paper exit the printer and fold itself neatly on the top of the pile. Somebody forgot to change the paper. He tells me, “I looked over at the lieutenant. She had this blush starting from her neck and going up to her cheeks.” "I said, ’ Lieutenant?’ " She goes, ‘Yes, Chief?’ " “Lieutenant, did your daddy pay for you to go to college?” “Yes he did, Chief” “Lieutenant?” “Yes, Chief?” “Your daddy wasted his money, didn’t he?” ---
**Author:** ![Jurph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/50afbb/32.png) [@Jurph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jurph)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/28 "2008-11-11T14:04:02Z")
As a former Air Force officer, I’m surprised that I haven’t heard the reason that I was always given for all-officer flight billets: treatment of prisoners. In WWII, when air power was used to go deep into enemy territory for the first time, pilots were regularly risking capture. I had heard – but have no cite – that because of the way the (1929) Geneva Convention treated officers and enlisted, the officers were more likely to survive capture. When this occurred to high command, they just decided that _pow_ anyone who was flying a plane should be billeted as an officer… and that morphed into “only those billeted as officers may apply to fly planes.” Note that this is based on word of mouth officer folklore, just like the (completely bogus) stories about why we don’t salute indoors, what “HUA” means, and so on. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/29 "2008-11-11T14:24:36Z")
I might get flamed for this but IMO another reason is raw intelligence/ability/work ethic. I served as an enlistee in the Army for 5 years, my Dad and both my uncles were all West Point grads and career Army officers. Some of my fellow enlistees were, ah, pretty challenged in the mental capacity department. I can only imagine the sheer volume of classroom instruction that goes along with being a fighter pilot, my uncles were Cobra and Apache pilots and they have told me that the ongoing training process for them is pretty exhaustive. That, along with simluated flights, actual training flights, and any other measure of training and testing that goes along with flying the most advanced warplanes in the world has got to be really demanding, and therefore, only the best minds and bodies can handle it. ---
**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:** [November 11, 2008, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/30 "2008-11-11T16:33:51Z")
> [@LiveOnAPlane](#): > > Seemed that the day before, he was in a Patriot van and at the lunch break (2 pushes down, 2 to go) he explained to this lady who was a butter bar (Second lieutenant), “Now lieutenant, it may look like the paper in this printer will last through the last 2 pushes, but believe me, most of the time it won’t. So always change it out for a full stack after the second push, OK” > > She goes, “OK, Chief.” There’s her mistake right there. She should have immediately pointed at the nearest enlisted man and told him that he was personally responsible for refilling the tray. It’s a sad day when an officer doesn’t know to dump a mundane task on a grunt. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Slant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@Mr.Slant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Slant)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/31 "2008-11-11T17:05:49Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Another reason is this: morale. If you spend $1 million and two years of training on a man, and then give him absolute responsibility for a $50 million vehicle, you might as well make him an officer. He’ll be happier that way, and considering the investment you made in him and the risk he represents, you \*want \*him as happy as possible. and, he gets paid more… That was my initial reaction to the OP… On edit: And, perhaps the higher pay will help the service retain staff that they’ve just spent millions training on a skill that’s somewhat valuable on the open market. ---
**Author:** ![TJVM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b38774/32.png) [@TJVM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TJVM)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/32 "2008-11-11T20:27:02Z")
I believe the Air Force’s “pilots must be officers” policy has recently brought them into conflict with the DoD over the issue of unmanned aircraft. Apparently the AF required that UAV pilots be officers, like other pilots, which resulted in pilot shortages and delays in getting the highly-in-demand UAVs into service. From [this story](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/23/national/main4540269.shtml), it sounds like the Air Force has now changed its policy on that. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/33 "2008-11-11T20:29:44Z")
> [@FoieGrasIsEvil](#): > > I can only imagine the sheer volume of classroom instruction that goes along with being a fighter pilot, my uncles were Cobra and Apache pilots and they have told me that the ongoing training process for them is pretty exhaustive. That, along with simluated flights, actual training flights, and any other measure of training and testing that goes along with flying the most advanced warplanes in the world has got to be really demanding, and therefore, only the best minds and bodies can handle it. That doesn’t preclude all enlisted, though, and certainly doesn’t include all officers. You can’t get approved for flight school just because you’re an officer. In the Army during my time, most of the Apache and Cobra pilots were old Warrants. So, you can’t hold someone to necessarily needing a good college education, either (wasn’t always a requirement for Warrant positions). There are excellent enlisted people. They become air traffic controllers. There are pretty bad enlisted people. They wash out and become – if anything – infantry. The best of the best, of course, become air traffic controller systems technicians. ---
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/34 "2008-11-11T20:44:38Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > You don’t have time to think up there. If you think, you’re dead. Not only that, but if you screw up just this much, you’ll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/35 "2008-11-11T21:28:06Z")
Now, I may be totally insane here, but I recalled that there were more than a few ways to get that degree you needed to become an officer and fly, including getting one while serving in the military itself.v It seems like more of a pro-forma requirement, since anyone bright enough to fly ought to be able to graduate. ---
**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:** [November 11, 2008, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/36 "2008-11-11T21:32:04Z")
I’d also add that even in militaries where officers are not required to have college degrees, all pilots are still officers. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/37 "2008-11-11T21:54:23Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Now, I may be totally insane here, but I recalled that there were more than a few ways to get that degree you needed to become an officer and fly, including getting one while serving in the military itself.v It seems like more of a pro-forma requirement, since anyone bright enough to fly ought to be able to graduate. I think you are referring to subsidized college classes combined with Officer Training School. That could work for some people although it might take so long that you aren’t considered for flight training because you be competing with people who went straight through college or a military academy. There are only so many slots available in OTS as well. The easiest way to become an officer is to go through ROTC at a regular college. For the first couple of years, you just take it like any other class before you have to commit to it. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/38 "2008-11-11T22:11:17Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > That doesn’t preclude all enlisted, though, and certainly doesn’t include all officers. You can’t get approved for flight school just because you’re an officer. > > In the Army during my time, most of the Apache and Cobra pilots were old Warrants. So, you can’t hold someone to necessarily needing a good college education, either (wasn’t always a requirement for Warrant positions). > > There are excellent enlisted people. They become air traffic controllers. There are pretty bad enlisted people. They wash out and become – if anything – infantry. The best of the best, of course, become air traffic controller systems technicians. Oh, I don’t disagree that there were some very smart people that were eminently capable that were in the enlisted ranks…far from it. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/39 "2008-11-12T01:33:10Z")
W2 through W5, IIRC, are considered commissioned; however, the pay grades are, of course, W2 through W5. Antoher thing is that the US Navy, at least, has had an Enlisted pilot program at one time. ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148/40 "2008-11-12T02:15:14Z")
A Marine Corps pilot stationed aboard my ship during the Vietnam War told me that the Huey helicopter was actually harder to fly than his favorite jet (an A-4?). I’m pretty sure that some Huey pilots were enlisted. The memory fades, though. Peace, mangeorge [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-military-pilots-only-officers/472148.md?page=3)