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The Warrant Officer Ranks: Adding Flexibility to Military Personnel Management February 2002

Warrant officers are undoubtedly the least studied and least understood of the three main groups of military personnel. That status reflects their small numbers; at the end of 1999, only about 15,100 warrant officers were serving on active duty in the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps (none serve in the Air Force). In contrast, more than 1.1 million enlisted personnel--the group from which warrant officers are drawn--and 200,000 commissioned officers were serving.⁽¹⁾ Although probably best known for their role as helicopter pilots in the Army, warrant officers serve in virtually every military occupational area; most warrant officers, even in the Army, are not pilots.

Recently, some policymakers and analysts have suggested that the Department of Defense (DoD) might consider making greater use of the warrant officer ranks as a tool for attracting and retaining high-quality, skilled individuals, particularly in occupations with attractive civilian alternatives. Offering both higher pay and greater status than enlisted service, the warrant ranks might provide a more competitive career path for potential recruits who aspire to more than just a high school education, for experienced service members with skills that are valuable to the military, and for very capable people whose superior abilities may not be adequately recognized in the enlisted ranks. Like enlistment and reenlistment bonuses, expanded opportunities for warrant officers could be focused on specific occupational areas, an important advantage over a general pay raise whose effects, and costs, are across the board. Expanded use of warrant officers might also be considered as an alternative to raising the pay of midcareer and senior enlisted personnel, which some analysts argue is needed to bring the pay of those personnel into line with the pay of similarly educated workers in the private sector. For the cost of a 5 percent raise for personnel in the top four enlisted pay grades, roughly one in five of their positions could be converted into positions for warrant officers.⁽²⁾ On average, warrant officers (excluding the Army's aviators) receive 30 percent more in basic pay than personnel in the top four enlisted pay grades receive.⁽³⁾

This paper provides information that policymakers need in considering alternative personnel structures that would make greater use of the warrant officer ranks. It describes the current policies and procedures governing warrant officers--how they fit into the personnel structure, where they come from, how they are managed, and who becomes one--as well as management practices for a closely related group in the Navy and the Marine Corps called limited duty officers (LDOs). Although some of that information is available in various published sources, most of the data presented here derive from the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) analysis of the career paths of individual service members and are not readily available elsewhere.

The paper finds that current law permits considerable flexibility in the management of warrant officers, flexibility that has allowed the services to use the warrant officer system in markedly different ways. It concludes both that warrant officer programs designed to alleviate problems with personnel quality or experience in the enlisted ranks are feasible within current law and that those programs could be based on management practices already in use by one or more of the services.

Although the paper does not attempt to compare the costs and benefits of an expanded warrant officer system with those of alternative approaches to improving recruiting and retention, it does identify some of the questions that such an analysis would have to address. Among those questions are what value people place on current compensation in comparison with deferred compensation and what value potential warrant officers place on the status of warrant service in comparison with enlisted service. Because those questions are difficult to answer with existing data, the services might decide to test the concept of an expanded warrant officer system in some small occupational area.

The paper's discussion assumes the reader has a general understanding of management practices for enlisted personnel and commissioned officers. For readers with little knowledge of those management practices, Appendix A provides an overview.
 

WHY IS THERE INTEREST IN WARRANT OFFICERS?

Reports of problems in recruiting and retention during the late 1990s spurred a search for new approaches to meeting the services' personnel needs, but the specific idea of expanding opportunities for warrant officers can be traced more to concerns about the long-term needs of the military. (Indeed, in 2000, all of the services met their recruiting goals, and although both the Air Force and the Navy fell short of their goals for retention, the latter service reported sharp improvement.) For example, a 1999 study by RAND, a California-based think tank, documented the growing tendency for high school graduates to proceed directly to college and discussed a rising gap between the earnings of workers with only a high school education and those with some college training or a college degree.⁽⁴⁾ The study suggested the possibility of attracting graduates of two- or four-year college programs into the military but questioned whether enlisted rates of pay would be adequate inducement.

Among the more prominent advocates of an expanded role for warrant officers is Bernard Rostker, who served as Undersecretary of the Army and Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. In late 2000, for example, Rostker cited a growing need for computer-network administrators to support the "digitized" forces of the future in calling for opening the warrant ranks to more high-tech specialists. "Today, we train them and they leave us at $30,000 [a year in pay]," he said to reporters. "Then they show up the next day working for the contractor at $60,000."⁽⁵⁾

In addition to providing a possible solution to specific recruitment or retention problems, expanded use of the warrant ranks could simply be a better way to manage the personnel of a modern military. Under the enlisted personnel structure, the services have only limited flexibility to pay people according to their occupations and even less flexibility to manage careers in ways that are consistent with the training and experience requirements of different jobs. Many studies, including one completed as part of the review of DoD programs ordered by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have criticized that one-size-fits-all approach to military personnel management.⁽⁶⁾ Redefining the roles of warrant officers, and increasing their numbers, could be one of the less radical ways to introduce greater flexibility into the personnel management system.

Although this paper focuses on the relationship between the careers of enlisted personnel and warrant officers, DoD might also consider whether the warrant officer career path, and the closely related career path of limited duty officers, would be a cost-effective alternative for positions that are now being filled by conventional commissioned officers. Both warrant officers and LDOs tend to have long careers--in some cases exceeding 30 years of total service--in which they gain expertise in particular fields. In contrast, typical career paths for commissioned officers move them quickly through a variety of assignments to prepare some fraction of them for senior leadership positions.
 

AN OVERVIEW OF WARRANT OFFICER AND LDO PROGRAMS

The services view warrant officers, apart from the Army's warrant officer aviators, as senior technical experts and managers. Warrant officers serve repeatedly in similar positions, without the succession of broadening assignments typical of the careers of commissioned officers. In comparison with commissioned officers, they are heavily concentrated in engineering and maintenance occupations and, in some of the services, in intelligence and administrative positions.

The system for managing warrant officers is so flexible that several different management models coexist within the services (see Table 1). The Army manages its warrant officer aviators under an early-select model, choosing most aviators from among enlisted personnel in their first or second enlistment terms and the rest directly from civilian life. Although promotions are slow for that group, their early selection places their pay squarely between that of enlisted personnel and commissioned officers of the same age, and the program attracts some of the best people in the junior enlisted ranks.
 

Both the Army and the Marine Corps manage their technician warrant officers under a midcareer model.⁽⁷⁾ They select enlisted personnel with moderate experience in an enlisted occupation that is relevant to their future duties as warrant officers, give them additional technical training, and then promote them more rapidly than under the early-select model. Midcareer selection offers more modest financial rewards than early selection does, however, particularly for people who would have advanced rapidly through the enlisted ranks.

The Navy selects its warrant officers from among enlisted personnel late in their careers and generally does not give them additional training before they assume their new duties. Most of those selected are in grade E-7 (chief petty officer); the rest have advanced even farther. Although the Navy bypasses the lowest warrant officer pay grade, appointing most selectees in grade W-2, a late-career transfer to the warrant ranks yields only a small initial pay advantage over enlisted service for someone with good prospects for promotion. The Navy's LDO program, which selects enlisted personnel somewhat earlier and places them in the ranks of commissioned officers--most begin as an ensign (O-1)--offers much faster pay growth and appears to attract more-capable people.

A person's chances of becoming a warrant officer or limited duty officer depend on his or her service and occupational specialty. Overall chances are greatest in the Marine Corps and smallest in the Army (excluding aviators). The Army also limits opportunities most severely by occupational specialty; nearly half of Army personnel in grade E-6 (the most common grade among people selected for warrant service) work in specialties that do not directly feed into any warrant officer specialty. By contrast, only about 7 percent of Navy personnel have no direct route to warrant officer or LDO service.

The legislation governing the warrant officer system gives the services considerable flexibility in how they manage personnel. That flexibility and the diversity of management models in use suggest that if the services chose to expand their warrant officer ranks to help meet goals in enlisted recruiting and retention, they would not have to explore uncharted territory. The early-select model that the Army uses in managing its aviators, for example, could be adapted to aid recruiting in highly technical occupations. A service could offer immediate warrant status to some recruits who had obtained valuable technical training in civilian institutions and select others after they had demonstrated their competence in service schooling and completed an initial enlisted apprenticeship. The midcareer model could be used in a program designed to improve retention, either in selected occupations requiring lengthy training and offering high pay in the private sector or among top performers in various occupations.

If the services were to expand their warrant officer systems to help meet recruiting and retention goals, they would probably find that some adjustments were desirable. Management adaptations would naturally depend on which goal was being addressed but might include allowing top performers to advance much more rapidly than people with average skills or providing for more rapid advancement in some occupations than in others. If a greater role for warrant officers was found to be cost-effective, legislative changes might be pursued to create a new warrant officer pay grade above the existing grades, ease the rules governing mandatory separation of warrant officers, and possibly increase pay for warrant officers generally.

1. Throughout this paper, the term "commissioned" is reserved for officers in the grade of O-1 (second lieutenant or Navy ensign) and above. In fact, however, all warrant officers except those in the lowest grade also receive commissions; only appointments in the grade of W-1 are made by "warrant" by the secretary of the service concerned. See section 571, title 10 of the U.S. Code.

2. Assuming the 5 percent pay raise for grades E-6 and above was effective on January 1, 2002, it would add about $590 million to defense costs in 2002 and $820 million in 2003, the first full fiscal year under the higher pay rates. Those figures reflect the personnel strength numbers reported in Department of Defense, Selected Military Compensation Tables, 1 January 2001.

The estimate for the number of enlisted positions that could be converted to positions for warrant officers was derived by comparing average rates of compensation for personnel in grades E-6 through E-9 with rates for personnel in grades W-1 through W-5, excluding Army aviators. Thus, the estimate reflects a steady state rather than the transition period in which the new warrant officers would be in the lower pay grades. The elements of compensation were basic pay, the allowances for food and housing, the employer's share of Social Security taxes, and the amount that the Department of Defense sets aside to fund the future retirement benefits of current military personnel. The pay rates were those in effect on July 1, 2001.

3. The actual raise in basic pay that enlisted personnel receive when they become warrant officers is less than 30 percent because that figure reflects an average for all enlisted personnel in grades E-6 and above, including many who do not advance beyond pay grade E-6 and so would be unlikely to qualify for warrant service under current policies.

4. Beth J. Asch, M. Rebecca Kilburn, and Jacob A. Klerman, Attracting College-Bound Youth into the Military: Toward the Development of New Recruiting Policy Options, MR-984-OSD (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1999).

5. Quoted in Vince Crawley, "Big Changes on the Way for Career Enlisted Pay?" Navy Times (January 8, 2001), p. 9.

6. Admiral David Jeremiah, U.S. Navy (Retired), "Special DoD News Briefing on Morale and Quality of Life" (Department of Defense, June 13, 2001). For an example of a study recommending different career lengths in different occupational areas, see Robert L. Goldich, Military Retirement and Personnel Management: Should Active Duty Military Careers Be Lengthened? CRS Report for Congress 95-1118 F (Congressional Research Service, November 14, 1995).

7. Following the services' practice, this paper uses the term "technician" to refer to all warrant officers other than aviators and a small group in the Marine Corps called infantry weapons officers.

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