After a 10-month sprint to resurrect a program that ended more than half a century ago, the Air Force graduated its first class of 30 new warrant officers Dec. 6 in a ceremony attended by service Secretary Frank Kendall.
With a second class already filled and ready to begin in January, and hundreds of applicants having expressed interest, leaders are already talking about the possibility of expanding the course out to as much as double its current planned throughput in the future.
The Air Force’s race to bring warrant officers back to the force began with an announcement by Kendall in February as part of two dozen “key decisions” to optimize the service for great power competition.
While under the previous warrant officer program, which ended in 1959, Air Force warrant officers were able to serve as pilots and crew members, Kendall specified that the new program would be focused on information technology and cyber fields “to maintain technical leadership in these highly perishable skills.”
The relatively small number of warrant officers the Air Force plans to create will be expected to increase the total proficiency of the units they belong to.
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“This program was then to take their, I would call it, identified expertise, and hone that for future use, so they can be the most credible advisor, technical integrator, and be able to then provide those types of things to teams,” Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, commanding general of Air Force Recruiting Service, told Air Force Times in a Dec. 5 interview. “So, there is a critical leadership element that the program was really designed upon.”
To help guide instruction for the enlisted warrant officer “candidates,” as they were called, during the 40-day course at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, the service leaned on expertise from the Army and Marine Corps, which both have active warrant officer programs, said Maj. Nathaniel Roesler, commandant of the new Warrant Officer Training School, or WOTS.
All Air Force WOTS instructors attended the Army’s warrant officer training course at Fort Novosel, Alabama, Roesler said, and visited The Basic School at Quantico, Virginia, where Marine warrant officers are trained. In addition, a detachment of warrant officer advisers from the Army National Guard Bureau was dispatched to WOTS on a six-month temporary duty status to advise training, he said.
One key lesson Air Force WOTS staff captured from the other services was the emphasis on doctrine in training, Roesler said.
“When you show up to the Marine Corps’ The Basic School on Day One, they give you doctrine to read,” he said. “So, that’s one thing that we replicated here … those Air Force doctrine publications are things we’ve emphasized from the beginning. And that’s alignment, that’s stuff that you don’t often spend a lot of time reading when you’re out in the operational Air Force.”
Though certain aspects of the Army and Marine Corps’ warrant officer programs were absent or reduced in WOTS, such as land navigation and tactical combat casualty care, the physical training component of the course was robust: the graduates increased their performance on the Air Force PT test by an average of 5%, Roesler said.
The 450 applicants the Air Force saw for the first 78 slots reflected the immediate interest in the new program.
“One of our candidates … was a 19-year senior master sergeant,” Roesler said. “He knew he was signing up for more than his 20 years, and he went for this. But he felt like he’d seen warrant officers in other services working for [U.S. Cyber Command], and he felt like this is something that the Air Force really needed, and so he went ahead and signed on for more time, just so he could help this program stand up.”
Amrhein said his experience working for U.S. Transportation Command and supporting repositioning of forces in Afghanistan in 2013 gave him exposure to Army warrant officers and the cultural impact of their expertise.
“You can bring in that expert, and they can lead a team of how to present solutions and options for the leaders of the commanders of the organization to be able to make decisions and move out on them. And that’s where that trusted advisor comes in based on the level of expertise that they have,” he said. “I think what we’ll find out is that these warrant officers are going to do the very same thing for the United States Air Force in these specific roles.”
The initial planned throughput for the warrant officer training course is 150 candidates per year, Amrhein said, but added that officials had already mapped out a way to increase throughput to nearly 300 graduates per year if the service required.
As far as whether the warrant officer program could ever again include pilots — another skilled field in which service demand exceeds supply, Amrhein declined to speculate.
“The future really is getting these first graduates out and into the field, and then seeing that integration, not only at the Air Force level, but you know, how do they integrate within the joint force,” he said. “Seeing how that develops over time, as this pool grows and grows, is what’s really going to be exciting. And then getting that feedback into what adjustments need to be made to the program.”
