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I'm just an old (not too old, 45), retired, enlisted dude so I may not have the first hand experience you are looking for but I've been around a little. Take the manned slot with the Reserves. Build some time, go to the airlines, stay in the Guard/Reserve, live the dream. If, down the road you want to go RPA, that door will be wide ass open. May not happen the other way. Just my two cents. Eng out.

Shack. The enlisted pilot concept is one of those dumb ideas that simply won't go away. Yes, we had enlisted pilots in the 20s and 30s, and also during WW II. The Army could get away with it, because (1) something called the Great Depression provided a powerful incentive for folks to stay on active duty, even if they were working for enlisted wages, and (2) those enlisted pilots were competing for active duty officer billets. Some of the best pilots during the interwar period were enlisted aviators. The other two primary members of Chennault's "Three Men on a Flying Trapeze" demo team were enlisted aviators . . . but guess what? They were reserve officers who, when their one or two-year active-duty stints were up, accepted the demotion to enlisted status to stay on active duty. On the days they flew in demo's, they wore their reserve officer rank. They got commissioned later on active duty, in conjunction with the wartime buildup. Don't forget that it was the Army Air Corps and Army Air Forces that had enlisted pilots. Of course the Army wanted its aviators to be enlisted, because if they became officers, they might end up running the Army. The Army couldn't wait for the Air Force to become an independent service after the war, lest airmen take over the whole organization. Imagine how much worse it would have been for the ground service, if all the enlisted pilots/navs/bombardiers were made officers. They might have more-senior and smarter (airmen typically scored 10 IQ points higher than their ground counterparts during the war) air officers commanding non flyers. Think of active duty enlisted pilots in the military as something akin to regional pilots in the commercial world. It's a neat idea, and it can work, so long as folks see it as a stepping stone to greater things. Folks have embraced the suck in the regional world, because they perceived a long-term future benefit (transition to major airlines). Short term pain, long-term gain. The problem for the Air Force is that the primary avenue for long-term gain for enlisted aviators would be the commercial RPA industry (or if we ever trained enlisted pilots of manned aircraft, the airline industry). At least if you train officers to fly RPAs, there's a more reasonable monetary incentive to stay in. Looking at ACP take rates, though, the monetary incentive is far from adequate. Creating enlisted pilots would strike me as ridiculously penny-wise and pound-foolish. We'd spend a whole bunch of time and money to train them, then they would simply get out at the end of their initial enlistments and take their skills to the commercial world. They'd be fools not to. Creating an Air Force warrant officer corps is equally problematic. The Army system works great, because that service primarily flies helos. Retaining helo pilots on active duty is much easier because, oddly enough, there are proportionally fewer lucrative opportunities in the civil sector. If there are any Army warrants who have gone directly into fixed wing, I'd love to hear what their retention stats are right now. They can stay in the Army, knowing that they'll run into a ceiling promotion-wise, or take their skills to the civil sector and makes way more cash than they ever could in the Army--while (even more importantly) not having to be in the Army. It would seem to be a helluva lot smarter to ramp up Air Force OTS production. Provide liberal bootstrap opportunities for medically-qualified enlisted folks and advertise extensively in colleges/universities for folks to earn their commissions and become RPA pilots. You avoid creating a whole warrant officer corps for a relatively niche career field, and you can get your officers relatively quickly and cheaply (especially since many quality enlisted folks already have their undergrad degrees, or at least are working on them). Of course, the Air Force doesn't like to read its own history. We'll probably try the enlisted pilot thing, realize it was a dumb idea from the outset and we should have known better . . . and scrap it, having further delayed getting the RPA pilot community healthy manning-wise. TT

that's a significant observation. We think somehow our modern era has intellectually matured beyond mankinds gory history. Not so, and our naïveté cannot be fixed unless first acknowledged.

This is why I sometimes write long posts . . . short ones fail to include vital information. - "Full capacity" in the Army is very different from full capacity in the Air Force. Given the comparatively puny number of orbits the Army provides to joint warfighters relative to the Air Force, and considering how the Army has way more people than the Air Force to start with, the Army's effort to grow and maintain its RPA operator force can hardly be described as a major muscle movement. It is unsurprising that the Army is able to successfully grow a small, niche career field within its massive overall organization. - The underlying premise of the enlisted vs. officer pilot argument is that enlisted pilots are cheaper than officer pilots. This idea needs to be examined. The Army RPA construct is (unsurprisingly, it's the Army we're talking about here) manpower-intensive. A relatively small fraction of the Army's enlisted RPA operators are actually providing direct support to warfighter on a given day, because only those who are forward-deployed actually support combat operations. Those back at home station, in keeping with the Army's organic support model, are doing exactly squat for the warfighter. Meanwhile, proportionally and numerically way more Air Force RPA operators are fully employed in support of warfighters, while home station. - Riddle me this: How many Army enlisted RPA pilots would be required to provide the same level (60 CAPs and growing) of warfighter support), and how many more other troops would be required to house, feed, protect them, etc., at their forward locations? Unless and until you can prove that the aggregate costs associated with the Army model, on a per CAP basis--what really matters to the warfighter, is cheaper than the Air Force model (good luck with that), you need to at least be honest about the flaws in your basic argument. - I don't get what you're saying with, "Meanwhile you can't force guys out of fixed wing because it's not the Army an there is literally no upper limit to promotion since the community flow is so well managed compared to helo's." I'm not a smart man, but this makes no sense to me. If you're telling me that the Army sends some number of its officers and warrants directly into fixed wing, and has no problem retaining those individuals past the end of their initial commitments in today's hiring environment, I'm sure all of us would love to hear what the Army's secret is. Again, I suspect you left out some key data point/idea. Also, there is an upper limit to promotion in the warrant officer ranks. It stops at W-5. Officers can press on to O-10. Seems pretty clear to me there's a significantly lower upper limit for warrants, vs. officers. In fairness, that might be a distinction without a difference, since many are happy not to have their lives run by the Colonel's group. Not trying to get in a pissing contest here, but as stated above, trying to provide value-added info for those on the forum who care. I really look forward to hearing what the Army's secret for retaining its fixed wing pilots is, and if the Army's policies could be effectively translated into the Air Force. I'm not holding my breath, however. Fly safe, TT

Perhaps there's a correlation with being continuously at war since 2003, and not being at war before that.

Duck... 1. You click submit. 2. It gets routed through your SQ/CC, GP/CC, WG/CC, and Functional... They all have an opportunity to "recommend approval/disapproval"... But no matter which they do, it'll keep going. 3. It goes to the SAFPC (SecAF Personnel Council)... They approve/disapprove it. Timetable may vary. My single data point: Approx 5 weeks from submit to approval... No clue if that's standard or not.

The real problem is retaining trained people, and this move wouldn't help that.

Rookie mistake. Everyone knows the chemtrail mixture is adjusted by the boom operator at the boom station in the -135....

Chiming back in after a couple years. I got selected at age 31. So if you are wondering, it is possible if you are determined to make it happen!

Same - left USAA when I got smart on fees.