Whenever I see a Warrant Officer in the news, their rank is invariably given as Chief Warrant Officer. It’s almost correct, and it certainly sounds like a military rank. The only problem is that it is incomplete.
Unlike every other rank in the Army, which we imported wholesale from the British, the Warrant Officer corps was created from scratch 1918. There have been several amendments and revisions to the WO rank structure since then, but the current structure was instituted in 1991 and seems likely to remain essentially unchanged indefinitely.
Warrant Officer 1 (WO1): This rank, in aviation at least, is essentially a training rank. Promotion to CW2 is automatic after two years time in grade, barring some major failure on the part of an individual. Flight school lasts just under two years. WO1s are sometimes called WOJG (pronounced “woje”), for Warrant Officer Junior Grade, an obsolete term of rank.
Chief Warrant Officer 2 (CW2): Upon promotion to this rank, the legal basis for the Warrant of Commission comes from the President. For WO1s, it comes from the Secretary of the Army. This is also when the officer gains the title “Chief,” which many people use as an informal term of address for Warrant Officers of any rank.
Chief Warrant Officer 3, CW4, and CW5: Promotion to each of these ranks is competitive and generally requires six years of service in the previous rank (or 5 for non-aviation branches).
The key thing to note is that the number is not some superfluous army-ism which can be safely disregarded by a reporter. The difference between a CW2 and a CW5 could be more than 20 years of experience. A new CW2 generally works at about the same level of authority as a 1LT; a senior CW5 can count full Colonels as peers.
Nobody’s going to get seriously bent out of shape if a reporter, particularly a civilian one, fails to correctly name the rank of a warrant officer. Plenty of people in the Army never encounter a Warrant through their entire career. Our ranks are the only ones with numbers in them. We only make up 2% of the Army; about the same as the percentage of Generals among the officers.
On the other hand, nobody ever misreports the number of stars a General has.
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