Admiral Starling gave a brief at the NASO O'club about the Flying Warrant program, and it was kind of vague about where the Navy sees it going in the future.
"Blancing out" the Heavies/Helo communities is great and all, but I can think of a lot better reasons to have Flying Warrants. It's going to be years and years before there's enough of them around to really make a difference in the career prospects of URL aviators, and the Navy's not known for its patience with long-term-investment goals. I sorta got the impression that "better chance of making Skipper" was just how the program was sold.
Every community would benefit from having folks that are long-term, high-hour pilots and FOs, especially tailhookers. No time out of the cockpit at War College or Random Joint Staff, not worrying about punching of tickets or meeting of wickets, just fly your butt off and keep that expertise in the cockpit where it's needed.
I think the FWO program is a fantastic idea whose time is way overdue, but unless there's lots of high-level cheerleaders who keep an eye on it, I can see it getting half-assed and mismanaged to the point where all benefits are lost.
