The Marine Corps, like the Navy and Air Force, is facing a massive shortage of pilots. The service is short a full quarter of its required aviators. The Corps now offers pilots bonuses of up to $210,000 to stay on active duty for another six years. More troubling, in 2017 the Marines announced that aviator captains passed over twice for promotion to major would be retained on active duty an additional 36 months unless they opted out. Yet the Marine Corps has thus far refused to pursue one remedy with a chance of success: creating warrant officer pilots.
Only one U.S. military service isn’t having pilot retention problems: the Army. As of late 2017, the Army was at 110 percent for pilot manning, though with some shortages at certain ranks. This despite flying nearly as many aircraft as the Air Force and over 1,000 more than the Navy and Marine Corps combined.
An Army pilot is different in one key way from his peers in the other services: he or she is likely to be a warrant officer. Whether transferring to the aviation field after enlisted service or becoming a warrant officer straight “from street to seat,” warrant officers account for more than 60 percent of Army aviators.
Warrant officer aviators provide the Army two critical advantages over its sister services. The first is proficiency. In an after-action review partially posted online, one of the Marine Corps’ most respected and highly decorated warrant officers, Gunner Keith Marine, conceded that “our pilots and aircraft [pale] in comparison to the Army.” Gunner Marine discussed several deficiencies, but one of his major conclusions was that “Their pilots are pilots, whereas our pilots fill a dozen different billets and get about a tenth of the actual stick time these guys do.”
Not only are Army pilots laser focused on technical and tactical proficiency, they also often have the benefit of enlisted combat arms experience. The Army’s Kiowa scout helicopter community, sadly now shelved, was notable for being populated with many former infantrymen who excelled at understanding and supporting soldiers on the ground.
The second advantage is recruiting and retention. The Marine Corps is failing to retain enough pilots, and it loses tens of thousands of exceptional young noncommissioned officers every year. The Corps’ manpower system builds attrition into its models and doesn’t necessarily account for the quality of those leaving or their specific reasons for leaving. We strongly suspect that many exceptional young Marines would jump at the chance to continue their service in a cockpit. As Army Brigadier General Frank Tate, director of aviation in G 3/5/7 said in 2017: “Everybody wants to be an aviator.”
Opening aviation to Marine warrant officer pilots is not an original idea. Colonel Gary Anderson, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired), advocated for warrant officer pilots in the Marine Corps Gazette in November 2015. The last remaining Marine warrant officer pilot, Vietnam veteran Jack Lee Grinstead, retired in 1992. Even the Air Force, the most officer-heavy U.S. military service, is giving the idea of warrant officer pilots a serious look. The Corps prides itself on its mustangs and on the responsibility it gives junior Marines. It should not be protecting a caste of commissioned officer pilots, especially in the midst of a legitimate personnel retention crisis.
The case for Marine warrant officer pilots is clear. It will require a cultural shift, to an ethos where Marines must sometimes prioritize the narrow specialties of the warfighter over the broader ethos of the service. This is a price worth paying. The Marine Corps is long overdue for putting warrant officers back in the cockpit.