Navy Creates New Warrant Officer Role To Operate Its Carrier-Based Tanker Drones

The U.S. Navy has announced that its Boeing MQ-25 Stingray unmanned aerial vehicles, which will provide aerial refueling from its aircraft carriers, will be operated by warrant officer with a new specialty designation — the Aerial Vehicle Operator. This comes as the flight-test program for the drone continues to make progress, with a first sortie recently flown with the refueling pod attached.

The establishment of the new Air Vehicle Operator designator for Navy warrant officers was approved by Secretary of the Navy Kenneth J. Braithwaite on Dec. 9, 2020. The service says it plans to train around 450 warrants officers in the new AVO role over the next six to 10 years, across the W-1 through W-5 grades, and send them to the fleet. In the Navy, W-1 is the base Warrant Officer (WO) rank, while W-2 through W-5 are Chief Warrant Officer (CWO) ranks.