Why I Finally Joined — A Warrant Officer's Case for NGAUT

By CW3 Matilde I. Ott, Warrant Officer Trustee, NGAUT

Let me be honest with you because I owe you that.

I have worn the Warrant Officer rank since 2015. For nearly a decade, I did not join NGAUT, not because of a poor experience, but because I never understood the value. I assumed it was for "the officer crowd" and had little bearing on my world as a warrant. I was wrong, and I want to spare you the years I lost.

Here is what I have learned as your Warrant Officer Trustee: NGAUT advocates for the very things we Warrant Officers rarely have the time or platform to advocate for ourselves. Their focus areas—healthcare, education, equipment and readiness, and career development—read like a checklist of everything that matters to our corps.

And these are not promises. They are the proven results of decades of NGAUT and NGAUS advocacy. The benefits we rely on today were secured by those who joined before us:

• Commissary and Base Exchange privileges

• TRICARE Reserve Select access

• GI Bill improvements and dependent transferability

• NGREA retirement funding

• Modern equipment on par with Active Duty

• Specialty pay equal to Active-Duty components

• Enhanced life and injury insurance coverage

• Reduced retirement age based on deployments

None of this happened automatically. Each gain came from members who refused to remain silent.

We are known as "The Silent Professionals." It is a title we have earned through technical mastery, quiet competence, and steady leadership. But on the matters of our pay, our benefits, our readiness, and our future, silence does not serve us. This is the moment to make our voices - and our numbers - count.

The principle is straightforward: advocacy is neither free nor automatic, and it is never advanced by silence. Every Warrant Officer who joins strengthens our collective voice and makes our priorities harder to overlook. We are a small but indispensable community, and the more of us at the table, the more of us represented in the conversation.

I joined NGAUT in March 2025. My only regret is that I did not do so in 2015.

Do not make my mistake. Join. Represent. Let us ensure the Warrant Officer perspective is never again an afterthought.

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Originally published in the NGAUT 2026 Summer Newsletter.