Book Review

A review of The In-Betweeners, by Bruce D. Callander, published in Air Force Magazine, November 1991; Review by Dr. George Wade, Department of Military History, U.S. Army Warrant Officer Career College

By Dr. George Wade

Article published on: April 1, 2026 in the April-June 2024 Edition of the Warrant Officer Journal

Read Time: < 5 mins

A quick internet search on the topic of Air Force Warrant Officers will lead you to several sources announcing the return of the Warrant Officer to the U.S Air Force. One article is an April 2024 announcement on the af.mil news site. In addition to detailing the specialties for these new Warrant Officers (information technology and cyber career fields) is a statement by Air Force Chief of Staff General David Allen, who ties this reintroduction to the need for technological superiority in an age of great power competition.

The Air Force stopped appointing Warrant Officers in 1959. What gives? Why does the Warrant Officer suddenly need to be reintroduced? The answer to this question should be of interest to all Warrant Officers in all services—most particularly the U.S. Army, from which the Warrant Officer began in U.S. military service.

Bruce Callander wrote an article called The In-Betweeners for Air Force Magazine in 1991—a long time ago. In addition to giving a short and comprehensive history of both Army and Air Force Warrant Officers, Callander created a paradoxical picture of both the reasons for creating and the place of Warrant Officers within the enlisted to officer structure. The paradox lies within the rank itself, which has been subject to use by the services in ways that defy the reasons for having an officer corps at all yet is irresistible as it creates space for technical specialization as a career endeavor.

Consider, as Callander informs, that the same year Congress allowed the Army up to 1,120 warrant officers that it also allowed the Army to give warrants to enlisted soldiers of long-service and to some Army pilots who lost their commissions at the end of World War I. The unsurprising result of this was an inability of the Army to defend the need for the entire warrant officer grade structure as a requirement for any Army organization. Warrant Officers, it seems, did not fit.

But then another World War came. The idea of great power competition certainly got its trial during World War II. Not surprisingly, the Warrant Officer came along for the ride. Why? Because of the need to create an Army of initially over 2 million in an era of technological specialization. The Army also used technological specialties to create new categories of enlisted technical specialists who received noncommissioned officer pay without the rank—they had their own separate rank structure. Such are the exigencies of war with peer or near-peer foes in an era of technological sophistication.

And then came airplanes in numbers previously unimagined. John Keegan tells us in his history of World War II that the United States went from making 2141 aircraft in 1940 to making 96,318 in 1944. The United States truly was the arsenal of democracy. Who was going to fly all these aircraft? The Army’s answer was to make thousands of aviation cadets into flight officers, who were pilots, bombardiers, navigators, flight engineers, and fire control officers—in total, around 200,000 personnel. Importantly, the rank was equivalent to the then-existing rank of Warrant Officer Junior Grade for pay and some privileges of officer rank (salutes, titles, insignia), all the while ranking below all commissioned officers.

This rational answer to a technologically based requirement for specialist practitioners created problems within the Army rank structure with its attendant customs. The flight officers performing a highly technical skill did not fit within the social structure of the Army Officer Corps because they did not share common education or orientation toward the profession of arms. What do a pilot and an infantry officer have in common in terms of their actual duties and the use of authority?

Additionally, the Army gave its major commands the authority to appoint and assign traditional (non-aviation) Warrant Officers without a standardized process. Here again, the use of the rank as a reward rather than an organizational requirement is an indelible part of Warrant Officer history. The result was several Warrant Officers, many doing essential jobs, who had a lot of experience. This gave them clout, which NCOs of the time lacked.

Future wars in Korea, and especially Vietnam, would do much to solidify the Army Warrant Officers because of their use as helicopter pilots. The nexus between the Warrant Officer rank and technical specialization is also evident today in the many (and growing) number of career fields for Warrant Officer service. At least two conclusions suggest themselves.

First, the need for Warrant Officers is tied primarily to the need for technical specialists unencumbered by military authority in the conduct of their technical vocations. This is a bedrock issue for Warrant Officers. Technology drove the need, not the requirements, for military discipline. Putting these together in a rank structure both useful to the Army and driven primarily by nonmilitary factors (flight, for example) is, of necessity, an experimental, dynamic, and time-sensitive endeavor.

Second, it is normal to use the Warrant Officer rank as either a reward or as a default for skills that do not fall within either officer or enlisted scopes of authority or practice. This should not be a surprise given the World War II experience when the rank was used as a reward for long service among specialists not eligible for battlefield promotions to Lieutenant; these were available only to combat arms soldiers. Further, the Army’s use of Warrant Officers as pilots shows this strain as well.

The end of World War II saw the end of both flight officers and warrant officers—other wars would revive them. The problem of what to do with technical specialists for whom enlisted rank was not appropriate (scope of authority, command decision-making, and so forth) remained. The Warrant Officer rank for these technical specialists is the only default position available, assuming these positions must be filled by those subject to the UCMJ—in other words, soldiers.

These are all topics for considerable thought and discussion. Callander’s article provides a solid and mercifully brief summary of Warrant Officer usage through World War II. This history should help frame issues related to Warrant Officer policy. If nothing else, it provides food for thought for current Warrant Officers.

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