A friend of mine, who is a licensed helicopter pilot with both his instrument rating and commercial license, has been trying to enter the Army's warrant officer program for several months now (he obviously wanted to fly for the military). For those of you who don't know, warrant officers fall between enlisted and officers (they're treated as officers by enlisted folk) and are reserved for specialists.
He needed 3 letters of recommendation, and after passing the board, he would go to enlisted boot camp then straight to warrant officer school. Assuming he passed both, he would then go to flight school.
Last week, I was surprised to hear from him that despite all his qualifications, he was disqualified because he admitted to smoking marijuana once after turning 18 (he's 23 now), and that it was over 3 years ago when he smoked. Not only can he not be a pilot, he couldn't work in any field in aviation, which includes ground crew or mechanical. He tried to get a waiver, but no luck there.
I was surprised because I figured since the military has been lowering their standards so much over the past few years that they'd waive him. When I was in the Navy, I worked with a guy who was convicted of grand theft auto twice in Baltimore before the judge finally said "Go in the military or go to jail". But again, that was ten years ago when that kind of thing was more common.
I think in his case the Army's decision to automatically reject him is a bit extreme. At the same time, it looks like the military is raising the standards. I don't know what the recruiting numbers are, but if they won't waive something as trivial as smoking pot once years ago, then they must be filling their quotas.
He's enlisting, anyway, and hopes that he can work his way into the aviation community down the road, though there are no guarantees. He'll be working on Bradley Fighting Vehicles, instead.
