The Warrants have arrived

[RobLyman]

Army WOCS has a way of removing that chip. If you try to carry that chip through Army WOCS, you will NOT make it, period. It is probably the most difficult thing for candidates to get over...being treated like you are a boot recruit. The Army has a way of doing that to its soldiers at inapproriate times too, but it seems well placed and warranted in WOCS. Maybe the Navy could learn something from the Army? If their warrant candidates were reminded in a non-subtle way how lucky they were to be in the program, they might lose that chip off their soldier too.

 

[squorch2]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but flying CWOs just go to knife and fork school, right?

 

[wlawr005]

Yes. The LDO/CWO course in Rhode Island.

 

[bobbybrock]

The WOCS program has chaange considerably since I went through in the early ninties, but they stil try and weed out those whom have trouble conforming.
My class had a very small amount of aviators. Most of us had no prior service or very little prior time. The majority of the class was Intel types with lots of rank (a few E-7's and three E-8's. They didn't last long. After 15-20 years of not being screwed with to being screwed with daily was to much. Roll backs were common and DOR's even more. When the numbers started to get pretty thin, we where trying to figure out the common denominator of those getting canned. After all was said and done our clas of 64 was down to 23. Only 12 09W( WOFT) started and 6 finished. When we finished age seemed to be the common denomanator between us. Age being youth.
Interestingly enough, I ended up flying with one of our TAC officer close to 15 years later in the guard. He pretty much validated what we thought.

 

[Lawman]

Army WOCS has a way of removing that chip. If you try to carry that chip through Army WOCS, you will NOT make it, period. It is probably the most difficult thing for candidates to get over...being treated like you are a boot recruit. The Army has a way of doing that to its soldiers at inapproriate times too, but it seems well placed and warranted in WOCS. Maybe the Navy could learn something from the Army? If their warrant candidates were reminded in a non-subtle way how lucky they were to be in the program, they might lose that chip off their soldier too.

Bullshit!

You cant tell me there isnt a "Right Shoulder Patch Mafia" amongst Warrants. Everything in our community is based around some college fraternity style right of passage bullshit. Amongst WOJG's if your not prior service, your a Beta till proven otherwise, the priors get a bit of a pass especially if they were combat arms.

Come into the military as a Warrant direct, and all you deal with the first two years is having anything you say treated as suspect. How could you know anything about ____ you didnt do a job you hated for 4-9 years before becoming a Warrant.

 

[Brett327]

the first two years is having anything you say treated as suspect.

FWIW, no different than in any Navy squadron.

 

[Lawman]

FWIW, no different than in any Navy squadron.

Im not so much basing that on stuff like actual operational knowledge, Its more there is a catch up to be made before two Warrants (One prior E, and one off the street) that has to be made up over a period of a few years before they would come into a unit as equals from day one. You see it any time we find our we're getting a new guy out of flight school. Sponsor emails the guy, hey what did you do before Rucker, and the rest of the Company looks at the response. There is more a readiness to accept a new guy if he was a prior E. Put a couple deployments underneath a guy and nobody cares what you did before, but even coming from Korea if you were street to seat you can expect to be a step behind the guy that isnt till you prove that you should be equals.

Its funny too because as I pointed out in another thread, during Flight School it always seemed like the prior E's that kept getting into the shit not the new guys who were too scared to think they were smarter than the system.

 

[Brett327]

Not exactly the same, but corporate experience does count. I wouldn't expect a prior's tactical knowledges to be any better than a non-prior, but I would certainly expect them to know how the Navy/squadron/etc works. Another comparison would be an LDO who had been a maintenance chief previously vs a 1520 flavored LDO right off the street. One I would be comfortable with being AMO or MMCO, the other, not so much.

 

[Lawman]

Not exactly the same, but corporate experience does count. I wouldn't expect a prior's tactical knowledges to be any better than a non-prior, but I would certainly expect them to know how the Navy/squadron/etc works. Another comparison would be an LDO who had been a maintenance chief previously vs a 1520 flavored LDO right off the street. One I would be comfortable with being AMO or MMCO, the other, not so much.

Right and there are certainly things the straight new guys need to come up to speed with. But the on fortunate byproduct of the system is a lot of the prior e's getting an over inflated sense of status. A kind of "king of the dipshits" thing that should if seen by the senior guys be crushed on the spot but often isn't.

 

[squorch2]

Not exactly the same, but corporate experience does count. I wouldn't expect a prior's tactical knowledges to be any better than a non-prior, but I would certainly expect them to know how the Navy/squadron/etc works.

You expect it, but sometimes - for whatever reason - I feel like I'm dealing with someone who is operating under a different set of assumptions than everyone else when working with prior enlisted Os. (commissioned and warrant alike)

 

[Brett327]

You expect it, but sometimes - for whatever reason - I feel like I'm dealing with someone who is operating under a different set of assumptions than everyone else when working with prior enlisted Os. (commissioned and warrant alike)

Yeah, hence the aforementioned chip on the shoulder. My attitude was never that I was a prior and thus knew more than my contemporaries, but knowing the system sure did come in handy when it came time to get things done, particularly in a non-standard way. Better to surprise and impress people by working miracles than to tell everyone that you've been there, done that and have three in your pocket.

 

[RobLyman]

Bullshit!

You cant tell me there isnt a "Right Shoulder Patch Mafia" amongst Warrants. Everything in our community is based around some college fraternity style right of passage bullshit. Amongst WOJG's if your not prior service, your a Beta till proven otherwise, the priors get a bit of a pass especially if they were combat arms.

Come into the military as a Warrant direct, and all you deal with the first two years is having anything you say treated as suspect. How could you know anything about ____ you didnt do a job you hated for 4-9 years before becoming a Warrant.

You can call bullshit if you want, but that hasn't been my experience. Once you put on wings, what you did prior to WOCS doesn't mean shit! Everyone is treated equally like shit as a WOJG. If you manage to carry a big chip on your shoulder after WOCS (and I have seen only a few who tried), you can count on being a permanent RL3-tard. Your dreams of flying in the Army turn into a nightmare as every flight becomes a checkride. That is what I have seen.

The warrant officer mafia is a tight group. It is easy to see who is on the inside and who is on the outside. It took me several years to be accepted as an insider and I joined the Army with 1500 hrs in the 'hawk. I had made several Navy deployments; one even to Somalia. I had no patch and thanks to a stellar individual who came from the Navy before me, everything I did was scutinized. I didn't whine about it. I didn't expect to be treated special.

It may seem unfair that a deployment to Korea isn't treated like one that gets you a patch on your right arm, but in my unit a patch on your right arm only gets you treated differently if it was earned while wearing AVIATOR wings on your left chest. Even then, if it wasn't with the current unit, you are still suspect. Granted, I am talking about a guard unit without the constant turnover of active duty, but the same should apply. It's not what you did before that counts. It's what you are doing now. I never saw anyone get special treatment and if they thought they deserved it..well it didn't turn out well for them.

Perhaps what you saw as special treatment for having a right arm patch was really given because the WOJG had prior experience in the Army. A street to seat guy is going to have a much steeper learning curve dealing with all things Army/military. Someone familiar with the 'system' may have an easier transition, which could be mistaken for receiving special treatment.

 

[Pags]

Right arm patch? Is that a WTI thing or something else?

 

[RobLyman]

In the Army, if you deploy to a combat theater, you get to wear the unit patch for the *major command you are under on your right shoulder in addition to your current unit patch on the left shoulder. If you have never deployed to a combat theater, you wear nothing on your right shoulder other than the US flag. Someone with no patch on their right shoulder is usually considered to have never deployed, since we have been at war for 10 years or more. This isn't really true, which is one of Lawman's points. Deployment with another service or to a "non-combat" area like Korea doesn't warrant a combat patch, and can unfairly open you to noob treatment.

* Which unit patch you wear as a combat patch has it's on set of rules, involving the type of orders you are on, how you are attached, and other crap I admit I really don't understand. I wear the Florida Guard patch on my left sleeve and the 29th ID patch on my right sleeve, although I could wear 1st Cav or 3rd ACR patch on the right.

 

[Lawman]

Right arm patch? Is that a WTI thing or something else?

In the Army we wear a unit patch for the assigned unit on your left arm. On your right arm you can wear a "combat patch" from any unit you were assigned to in combat for a given amount of time. A lot of guys with multiple will wear the most "prestigious" of their collection like 101st or 82nd instead of their reserve unit or something less known/prestigious like 2nd ID. The unfortunate thing is you get judged on this right away kinda the way some people look at stacks of ribbons or skill badges as a discriminator. So you could be a guy with ten years of service in the Air Force as a combat controller in a no shit combatant role before coming over to the Army and you will encounter treatment whether in flight school or even initially in your unit of "oh he hasn't done anything yet."

It's a bullshit attitude because even amongst the Army a guy can do two years on certain assignments (Honduras, Korea, Sinai) and they get no patch. Where as some dude could have been a towel boy in the 82nd that never left the wire at Kandahar and on sight he will have more street cred.