Flying Warrant: A success or failure?

To go even further, maybe the program should take brand new enlistees and allow them to go through flight school and beyond as CWOs.

You mean like OCS but for CWO's?
You can do that in the Army, it an interesting idea, but if the Navy (IMO) were to do this, then it would need to be a much bigger program than it currently is; I'm thinking they'll need hundreds of folks going through CWOCS to make it worth the cost of the program.
An intriguing idea, but I doubt the Navy will head that direction.

As that is an unnatural way to fly -- the answer would, of course be a considered & decided NO ...

WO1s and 2LTs come out of Army flight school (including AQC, which is the Army's FRS) pretty much identical. Afterwards, both get assigned ground jobs. The simple difference is that the warrants get programs to manage and the commissioned officers get people to manage/lead.

If the Navy isn't makng the WO pilot program work, either the candidates going in are less qualified or their training is substandard and diffferent from their officer counterparts. Are WO SNAs treated differently than commissioned SNAs?

I think you should onsidert the possibility that the small number of WOs in the Navy system are statistically too small to draw accurate conclusions from.

I left the Navy before flying warrants, so I have no first hand knowledge of the Nay WO pilot program. I do know the Army WO program well and the Navy commissioned side well. IMO, there is no reason the Navy can't make it work. It appears to me that those in charge of the Navy program either don't want it to work or don't know how to make it work (and are unwilling to learn).

This appears to me to be a test with insufficient data to be conclusive but then it could be a random sampling. The intent of this test is probably the first thing that should be clarified.

Could it be that the WO's felt out of place with a bunch of 2ndLt and Ensigns? Something else I thought about was this. Most people that have gone through college have developed okay studying habits through their time in college. These WO's are most likely coming from the fleet or some night school program that is not nearly as rigorous as flight school. This coupled with learning new material(flying) as whole could be a factor.

The lack of academic experience makes sense, except that it does work in the Army. College grads go through flight school right next to guys right out of the "fleet", er..desert. The feeling out of place might be something. In the Army, the WO is the norm in flight school. Commissioned officers are not as plentiful. There is a professional network to rely upon in Army flight courses and warrants look out for each other more so than the commissioned guys do in Navy flight school. This WO "mentoring" continues out of flight school and is one of the reasons WOs have fewer personality problems than commisioned guys in the Army.

I could list reasons all day why the flying warrant program works well in the Army post-flight school, but I am still a bit unsure why warrants in the Navy are not succeeding at least up to their first fleet tour.

Yeah, stick to making kicka$$ web forums!

From the what we know about the JSUPT, we know that the Airforce and Navy trains pilot's differently. It is probably safe to say this is the same across all services.Are the academic rigors of flight school similar across all branches? I have never been to any military flights school but in order to even suggest an apples an apples situation this is something to consider. Also, are the washout rates comparable? I have heard in time past that Army washout rates are generally lower compared to the other services. What is the Army doing differently ?

I agree that it's difficult to statistically draw conclusions from such a small data set. Also, here's another thing--with the flying WOs doing a 36/33 sea/shore rotation, it seems that the Navy wouldn't really begin to see the benefits it's hoping for until these guys start cycling back through for their second sea tours. And then they could draw even more possibly erroneous conclusions from the limited data set.

Umm, birds don't need runways - they do no-hover landings to a spot all the time. I think our way is more natural - needing a runway is what's unnatural.

Probably not, but you word in the community is you make a great staff weenie...

Au contraire, mon frère

Midway, gooney birds need runways to take off and to land, albiet most time unimproved runways. Sparrows and other little squirt birds can hover, yes.

If hovering is out then there is probably no point asking about sideways and backward flight...

Happy New Year!

If this argument can be made about natural flight, then one could say a C-172 with a 65KT headwind is a helicopter.

What's that I hear ???

Is it Orville & Wilbur weeping for the future of manned flight ... ???

Or are they just rollin' in their graves ... ???

At least jet-jocks wear U-trow when they ... FLY. That torso harness can smart when it creeps up ...

*sigh* ....

Chunks - the question shouldn't be "Can you hover?", the question should be "Do you want to hover?". But in either case, A4's answer is still appropriate. :icon_zbee

My understanding was that HSC-84 and 85 were using FTS folks to make that happen. An instructor here got picked up for it.

HSC-84 has had some AC folks assigned there due to numbers and quals. They were filling the holes that were being created by the SELRES hitting the I-Tempo walls. Rather than making a whole bunch of FTS to fill the gap, Big Navy decided to roll in some AC folks (in lieu of disassociated or OP-T DH) to make up the shortfall.

HSC-85 is dropping the San Clemente/Bambi Bucket mission and going to the same ROC/POE as 84.

Having a squadron on each coast dedicated towards the NSW support mission.... why didn't the Navy think of that before????
Oh wait they did and they decomm'd one of those squadrons!!

You can't directly compare 84/85 and TF 160. The funding/manning/commitment of senior leadership is different by orders of magnitude.

The Navy's WO program might have been able to achieve it's goals if Big Navy had made a large enough commitment to it, but the force shaping picture has already change so the somewhat half-assed effort underway isn't going to affect anything.

If the Navy is serious about providing NSW dedicated aviation capability then they will need pilots with lots of hours doing that mission. The CWO program offers the ability to have pilots attain those hours. That was my point.

Why not have all HSC (or what ever is HS now) squadrons train to that mission? And not depend on two reserve squadrons? Seemed to be going that way when I left the community.

The Navy's never been big on the FWO program, that much was obvious. I'm not exactly sure why that's so, but it's easy to know the difference in smell and plumage between a program that has money and patronage and one that doesn't. FWO does not.

My theory is it's lingering bad memories of the Flying LDO program. Admiral Starling sold the FWO program on the screening argument - that it would reduce competition for DH-XO-CO in helo VP, VQ - which is why the Warrants can only go there. But Big Navy is obviously not sold on the idea, which is why it's still a 'test' program...easier to shut it down, should they so decide.

I was at NASC when the first ones came rolling through, and our collective judgment was that they performed about on par with any of the O-1E's with the same amount of prior time. Which is to say, generally not so good. When you've been in the Fleet for 8-10 years, you're used to little academic work, more exercising leadership and less 'shut up and color', you've got family responsibilities, etc etc. They tended to treat the Program as just another Navy school, not the 'balls-deep in the books, study/fly/eat/sleep/repeat and you'll see the family in two years' attitude you need.

This is not universal; there were quite a few FWO's who diligently worked their assess off and I'm sure are doing great out in gray airplanes now. And I agree that they're taking so few FWO's in that it's impossible to get a scientific sampling. But my own thought is that they need to shift their aim and take in younger petty officers, not the first classes they're going for now. If the Army can do this with 18-year-olds straight out of Boot, then I don't see why you can't take a kid with a crow, warfare pin, kickass evals and ASTB scores, and make a pilot of him. I'd much rather try and work with a 20-year-old with no family baggage and who isn't used to running a shop.

Incidentally, the Associate's requirement is silly, and it's putting off a lot of otherwise good candidates. Unless we want to pretend that getting an AA ten years ago somehow academically prepares you for the rigors of the Program.