Why are Army Helo pilots Warrant Officers, rather than Commissioned?

In the Army, our enlisted are smart enough to not become officers and learn to fly! Haha!

No idea why pilots are always warrants . They aren’t the only position in the army that uses just warrants . Definitely the main job but not the only ones . I’ve seen warrants in the kitchen and other jobs . No idea why . Just know that the warrants I’ve met are smarter and more mature then the 2nd Lts I’ve met

Different branches had different needs for flight crews. The Air Force had the concept that you had to be commissioned to advance to other skills within the service as you gained rank. (this is now biting them in the butt).

The Navy need pilot so bad during WWII that they used enlisted pilots will up until the mid 1960's. (I think that is when the last Rated CPO retired) They also phased them out as they wanted all pilots to have a college education and therefor a commission. They also later learned that all pilot did not want to be an Admiral and command a battleship so they came up with the limited duty commissions.

The Army had a server need for flight crews during vietnam and expedited the young Warrant Officers through Flight School at an early age (some as young as 18) When you gain your WO1 rating at 18 and 10 years later your a CW4 you need some upward mobility. So the Army was them main reason the services were allowed to have the newly created CW5 grade. For some reason the Air Force fought them and they had no remaining Warrant Officers in the 1990's.???

Maybe that is true now but not always. The army has had warrant officers flying their OV1 Mohawks since the Vietnam war through the late 90's when I was in the service.

If they were commissioned, they would have to rotate through command positions, and that would take a significant bite out of their “crew rest”, newspaper reading and fly fishing time!

During the Viet Nam war, the Army was graduating 7,000 pilots a year, and there was no way to generate that many pilots using Branched commission officers. Until 1985 there was no commissioned Aviation Branch, so every commissioned officer had to go to school for a "Branch" to be commissioned (Infantry, QM, Transportation, MI, etc.), even if they were really smart cookies and could fly circles around the Red Baron. Usually in a career they would get no more than 50% aviation assignments, the rest of the time they were on a Branch assignment. That is the reason you could see a Captain (O-3) with only few hundred flying hours at best.

Using the highest quality high school graduates into the Warrant Officer Candidate (WOC), the Army was able to fill the pilot spots with folks that were going to be drafted in the military. Upon graduation from the WOC program, they were brand new pilots with little else to do by fly lots of hours.

The program has worked out so well you don't rock the boat. Commissioned officers in Aviation must still spend time doing staff and command duties, and once they make Captain, or beyond the flying days become even more limited.

A lot of great analogies of the Warrant officers and officer Pilots and Non Pilot duties.

Some are warrants. Warrants fly more.

The pilots are both commissioned and warrant officers.

I'm a Blackhawk pilot...