[bbal44]

I've heard that both Warrant Officers and Commisioned Officers fly Apaches. I was wondering which one gets more fly time, and how do you go about becoming an Apache pilot for both routes.

[patrick w]

fly a real helo. go fly cobras. ive seen these guys flying at night in iraq and there was this anti aircraft gun shooting at them. we could see the tracers flying up in the air from where we were. any way one would fly over and cut his lights on his helo on to draw the fire from the aa gun while the second one would see the muzzel flashes and he would fly down and light the guy up. it was great.

[Teddyslayer86]

I'm doing exactly that. I'm signing up with a National Guard Unit that has an Apache Squadron as a 15 Romeo (15r MOS). Now that's a mechanic position but after you get back from AIT you can put in your Warrant Officer packet and your flight packet and if you're squadron doesn't think you're a total douchebag they'll sign off on it and send you out there. This is the best way to fly apaches, because if you go without being attached to an Apache squadron you have an extremely low chance of getting assigned an Apache because you'll be competing with everyone else in the class, because who really goes into the army wanting to fly cargo helicopters? I heard out of an entire class at Rucker only one guy got assigned Apaches. The rest got Kiowas, Black Hawks, and Chinooks. Either way good luck, man.

[Larry R]

My brother in law just got out after 20 years of flyingh Apache's... he started out on the early models right after they were introduces and wound up with the AH-64D Apache Longbow before he retired.

He is brighter than all get out and works VERY hard...but when he graduated from High School in 84 he was able to go on a program called "High School to Flight School" where he literally went straight from High School to Basic to Rucker. I do not know if such a program still exists. It may not. Still you can ask.

I can tell you this for sure, as a W/O he had much more flight time than the Officers. The Comissioned Officers are not just pilots, but leaders and commanders, so they had a lot of additional duites. The comissioned officers got more pay and more rank but they were also doing duty as court martial officer, security officer, laundry and morale officer, etc. etc. etc. They had to write the evaluations on all their toops, handle the disciplne, make sure all the required training got done, answer the phone at 3AM when one of the guys got a DWI, counsel pilots who were getting divorced, make sure they got all the spare parts that were ordered, etc. etc. etc. all the different things that officers do. As a W/O, at least at the junior grades, my bro-in-law didn't have to do that. Later on as he got more rank those duites started to fall even on him... and he could handle it, he was "Staff Duty Officer" at Fort Hood (that's the guy who's job is to be by a phone in case something happens) on Holidays... and he would volunteer for it 'cuse he was single and the other guys had families they wanted to be with. Even then he still had a lot more flight time than the officers that had been in as long as him. After 10 or 12 years he was a W/O3 or a W/O 4 and still flying.. but an officer that has been in that long is a Captian or a Major, and once an officer hits Captian or Major he's hardly, if ever, flying...what with meetings, planning, etc. Also officers get rotated out into non-flying staff positions... (S-1, S-2, S-3, S-4 etc.) where they spend several years doing staff work. I don't think the W/O pilots EVER wound up in a non-flying job. Even when he was training other pilots, he was still flying.

Good luck!

One last note, he became a w/o because he was qualified to fly Apaches. In ROTC it is the other way around...you become an officer first, then select a branch, and if you qualify for that branch THEN you get to go to whatever school (Rucker, Knox, Huachuca, etc.) teaches the basic course you need for that branch.