2. Both the AUSM and the NUSM (pronounced "new-some") tend to be over-officered. The reason is that nobody really put two-and-two together when universal military service was combined with near-universal higher education in the 1950s. The result has been a proliferation of regular officers, and a massive proliferation of warrant officers. Warrant officers, for example, are only 3% of the IOW U.S. Army -- but around 12% of the AUSM.
The resulting rank structure (thanks again to Henrik) is downright byzantine, with privates third, second and first class, corporals technical and command, sergeants in huge variety, and a wide range of commissioned and non-commissioned warrant officers. (If a "commissioned warrant officer" sounds like an oxymoron, it is, but such an animal exists in the current U.S. Army.) In addition, there are "second-class" college-graduate draftee officers, like Quezadas, clearly distinguished from professional and extended active service reservists. I'm not sure, but I suspect that Carmen Valenzuela was a non-commissioned warrant officer back in the day.
In some ways, then, the AUSM the opposite of the FANG: where FANG enlisted men often have responsibilities associated with officers, AUSM officers often do tasks normally associated with NCOs, especially in Group Two and Three units. See footnote 4 for more explanation.
(Return to Black September.)