Finally correcting a big mistake

The Navy appears to finally have come to its senses and dropped the flying warrant officer program. Couldn't come a day too soon. The idea was a mistake from the start.

The Navy has permanently grounded its 6-year-old Flying Warrant Officer Program, saying that though successful at turning enlisted sailors into aviators, the needs of the service have changed. Moreover, the long-term impact of keeping it going would hurt both the people and the service The 49 fliers created by this enlisted-to-officer program — both pilots and naval flight officers — will continue to fly, most likely as commissioned officers, though the service is giving them options.

As I told several of my Sailors at the time the program was created, the flying warrant officer idea sounds good on paper-but in reality it was a pig in a poke. Because it was limited to only certain communities, and because it had no defined career path-something that was done on purpose to make the program seem cheaper than it really was-it was in a good position to put these warrant officers in the same position as the Aviation Duty Officers of the early 1990's,

Can I say I told you so now?

What the Navy should have done, if it was serious about giving rising young enlisted stars a chance at flying, was to revive the Flying LDO program. Access folks from the E-6 ranks as flying LDO's. Revive the old career path which would have had them commissioned, complete flight training over a couple of years, do a fleet flying tour followed by one in the training command-then get them on CVN's filling ship's company billets as payback. This in turn would have had the added affect of keeping URL aviators from having to be derailed into these non productive excursions in pain-and perhaps allowed them to get a better amount of operational flying experience by completing a CAT1A tour as a senior LT or LCDR wannabe. In subsequent tours the Flying LDO's could have gone back to training command and to air stations with the option of , when they made O-5, filling CVN Dept head jobs like Air Boss etc. That would be assuming there were any still around who had not retired at the 20 year point.

Which was kind of the point. It filled a need for the Navy -getting disassociated sea tours filled-and in trade given these guys a boatload of flying experience they could turn around and use in a "second" career if they chose to. And as I said it might have freed up URL's to fill other important Navy needs instead of exiling the folks who lost in the FITREP 500 during their command tours.

What was really bad about the flying CWO program was that it created a class of "second class citizens" in aviation wardrooms. Since the Hornet community could not trouble itself to take any, only P-3's and Helo's, it further segregated the folks from the whole of Naval Aviation. I find it especially ironic since Hornet guys are always the biggest whiners about having to have a ground job on top of their flying. I said then and I will say it now. If all you want to do is fly then fine-you don't have to be commissioned officer. But don't kid your self-your primary duty is to be an officer. Flying is just an important collateral duty. But the reason you are a commissioned officer is to the "ground job"-and take care of your Sailors.

It would have been better for the Navy to have stayed the course-accessing more commissioned officers than to have gone down this rathole.

What happened, however, is after 2002, the unrestricted line aviation accessions dropped as the Navy embarked on a drawdown that continued to last year. By the time the flying warrant pilot program kicked off in 2006, accessions had dropped by 300. “We’re bringing in 300 less officers and when you projected that inventory out 10 years, it’s the exact opposite,” Whitehead said. “Now we’re looking at hopefully even making enough O-4’s to even fill out department head billets. The problem has effectively reversed.”

And the Navy knew this at the time it started the program.

Hopefully the Navy will realize it has a better solution on its plate-and when and if it does return to an enlisted flying accession, it will bring back the Flying LDO  program. Fill those ship's company billets!