Any Army fixed wing aviators out there?

[Pale Rider]

Hello Ladies and Gents,

I am a retiring Marine (spring 2026) - non aviation type. I am fairly well familiar with Marine and Navy Air programs / pipelines but not much with Army aviation.

One of my sons (18 y/o) starts civilian flight school this fall, but he is also keenly interested in the Army aviation programs specifically for fixed wing. On the Army website it lists a fixed wing MOS (155A) and I'm aware that there are indeed some fixed wing aviators in the Army, but the recruiter we spoke to knew next to nothing about aviation. In fact, he told us that there were no fixed wing aviators at all in the Army...

So, we are on our own research mission -- any helpful information is greatly appreciated!

Semper Fi

 

[sickboy]

Guy I share a cubicle with is an Army fixed wing guy (Active NG type). Started life as an Apache Pilot though.

I’d have to ask him, but I may be able to put you in contact

 

[Pale Rider]

Guy I share a cubicle with is an Army fixed wing guy (Active NG type). Started life as an Apache Pilot though.

I’d have to ask him, but I may be able to put you in contact

@sickboy that would be much appreciated. LMK what you find out.

 

[wink]

Think you will find all army aviators.Go through Rucker and wing as helo pilots first and then branch off to fixed wing, if that's in the cards. Beware of army recruiters.They hate working with Warrant officer candidates for aviation and will do anything to push them another direction.

 

[Lawman]

It is a very small and increasingly smaller subsection of aviation.

With the shutdown of the reserve compo aviation, the majority of it is either in the SOCOM world in the Regular Army side or the National Guard for specific units with missions like VIP, inter theatre trans, etc.

While they changed the pipeline back in 2012 to stop having fixed wing be this later in career reward and opened it to straight flight school assessment, there are hardly enough of those people in Army Aviation for anybody to consider that a normal pipeline.

Anecdotal we just got a WO1 assigned to us that has to now go find a rotary wing assignment because they don’t need the bodies they have. I wouldn’t say the recruiter is wrong, I’d say at the rate we’re going he’s shaping up to being right in the future. Artemis and some VIP aircraft is about all the manned aviation the Army has committed to at this point, and Artemis gets more questionable by the day.