My thoughts on it are that you still only have the same amount of surface area for the air to come in contact with.
Exactly, fletching that way isn't going to create any more or less drag than fletching the regular way and it isn't going to steer any better or worse. It will lessen the FOC very slightly but it will be negligible.
Each vane is a specific size and each vane creates a specific amount of drag.
The only thing I can see that this
might be doing is causing the vanes to the rear of the lead vane to be in slightly more turbulent air than the leading vane which would be detrimental to accuracy.
It's just the latest "thing" that some "pro" can say "I thought of that". Whoopty doo. I've seen different "pro's" trying to pass this fletching style off as the next best thing for a number of years now and it still hasn't caught on.
the whole purpose for using short vanes is to eliminate as much drag as possible.
The purpose any vane is to create drag. The purpose of the short vane isn't to eliminate drag but rather to create as much drag as a standard 4" vane and to increase FOC slightly. Creating the drag is accomplished in two ways. #1 is that they are stiffer than a standard 4" vane so they are more resistant to deformation when traveling through the air at speed. #2 is that they are taller than a standard 4" vane so the tips of the vanes are in less turbulent air surrounding the shaft. The less turbulent the air the better fletching works. If it were beneficial to eliminate drag then we would all b shooting bare shafts.