The US Air Force (USAF) is to bring back the rank of warrant officer within the cyber and information technology (IT) professions to bolster career prospects in those areas.
The move was announced by Air Force Chief of Staff General David W Allvin during a 12 February 2024 presentation at the Air Force Association’s 2024 Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado.
It is one of a number of initiatives announced by the USAF leadership to help prepare the service for strategic power challenges from competitors like China and Russia.
Within the Air Force, Allvin explained, the service is looking to better attract and develop cutting-edge talent, specifically within information technology and cyber fields. The service plans to expand technical tracks for officers and create technical tracks for enlisted, and to also reintroduce the rank of warrant officer within the information technology and cyber fields as a way to maintain technical leadership with those skills.
Gen Allvin explained that the air force is looking to better attract and develop cutting-edge talent, specifically within the information technology and cyber fields. The service plans to expand technical tracks for officers, create technical tracks for enlisted personnel and also reintroduce the rank of warrant officer within the information technology and cyber fields as a way to maintain technical leadership with those skills.
“We know there are people who want to serve. They just want to code for their country. They would like to be network attack people and do that business,” Gen Allvin said. “But everybody needs to see themselves into the future beyond just this assignment or the next. So, developing that warrant officer track for this narrow career field, we anticipate will drive that talent in and help us to keep that talent. There’s something specific about this career field, why it’s attractive and it’s a nice match for a warrant officer programme. The pace of change of the cyber world, the coding world, the software world — it is so rapidly advancing, we need those airmen to be on the cutting edge and stay on the cutting edge.”
The USAF had warrant officers when it was created in 1947 after being split off from the US Army, but it stopped appointing warrant officers in the late 1950s.
