kbay hombre

Agree with most of what you said, but in point of fact, it varies by service. I can definitely speak to the differences in the Army versus Navy. Most Navy warrant officers are extremely experienced ex-Chief Petty Officers (E7 and above) and yes, I'd speculate that more than half have at least an associates degree and as high as a PhD from what I've seen. It depends on the community (subs, aviation, etc) and the rate (nuke vs boatswain) too. The point is, in general, navy warrants are experienced technical experts. To say they have the same education level as the officer corps is a stretch given the simple fact that a bachelor's degree is a requirement for most of our commissioning sources and a master's is required above O-4.

I believe what earlier posters have alluded to with regards to young inexperienced relatively uneducated warrant aviators is the Army's high school to flight school program. Don't get me wrong, these guys are excellent pilots and they wouldn't get to WOFT if they weren't intelligent and capable. The program seems to work very well for the army, and a bachelor's degree has zero to do with how well you can fly a UH-60 in combat. With that said, they are the youngest officers in the military (many W1's are 19 years old and commissioned CW2's at 20 years old). Yes, they can become officers even faster than those 2-year junior college military academies that can pump out a 20 year old 2LT. Army warrant aviators can literally go boot camp -> WOFT (WOCS, flight school). While a lot of them do get associates or bachelors degrees after their first few tours, make no mistake, the army has operational 19-20 year old commissioned aviators with absolutely no leadership experience and no degree. Non-aviation army warrants are the same as the warrants in the rest of the military, i.e., highly experienced former NCO's who also have more education.