Role of the maintenance warrant officer

If you look at my transportation unit's MTOE (blueprint of assigned personnel and equipment), you'd see we have a lot of enlisted personnel and a handful of commissioned offiers, but only one warrant officer -- the maintenance chief.

It was the same in my previous unit, another similar-sized transportation company. I remember -- as a platoon leader -- wondering what the warrant officer did besides stand behind the maintenance platoon during formations. I've since learned a lot about that position.

A company's maintenance program is more than ordering parts and repairing trucks. It includes overseeing the maintenance of CBRNE equipment, the communications gear, and the arms room. There's also a lot of record keeping and coordination with the Supply section.

As a commander, it's important to give the right amount of authority and autonomy to the warrant officer. In my first unit, the first sergeant would pull people from maintenance for miscelleous taskings and even funeral detail teams. That may be fine if maintenance is ahead of their schedule (and overstrength), but that's hardly ever the case.

It's also important that the executive officer/operations officer know how to work with the maintenance warrant. The XO is in charge of the headquarters platoon, but the maintenance chief should be able to address issues in the HQ's constituent sections. For example, each weapon is supposed to get a documented, periodic inspection. If the armorer is behind on those, the chief needs to be able to frankly tell the XO about the problem.

Depending on the unit's mission, a commander might even consult as much with the maintnance chief as with the first sergeant (his "senior enlisted advisor"). This might be the case in "Third Shop" maintenance units whose primary mission is to provide field level maintenance support, but it doesn't have to be.

As the maintenance platoon's motto says, "No Maintenance, No Mission."