I am from Europe. Can someone explain why the US Navy has so much presence in the air, why isn't that the purview of the US Air Force?
> The main differences are Navy pilots focus on maritime strike missions and anti submarine warfare. Strike missions involve the carrier air wing which is embarked. All of the squadrons in the air wing are responsible for supporting the fighter aircraft in their strikes off of the carrier. It is essentially a forward deployed force.
> As for ASW we have P-8s which do strategic anti sub warfare. These focus on strategic issues and tracking subs.
> Air force isn't a maritime strike operation like the navy is. They can focus more on single operations such as bombing, air to air, etc. The navy uses on strike aircraft for a multitude of missions while the Air Force uses multiple aircraft for different missions.
> Air Force is also responsible for something called Internal Air Defense (IADS). This is basically intercepting aircraft that try and attack the United States. If anyone tried to bomb us and crossed into our air space the Air Force would be ready to scramble and send fighters up to stop them.
And because ships are owned by the Navy, and the planes flying off those ships are killing the Navy's direct opponents, and the actual aircraft in question are specific to the Navy... It makes sense for the people flying the planes to be Navy too.
Exactly the same in European countries with carriers - naval aviators usually come from the navy. (The UK now also hosts Royal Air Force and Army Air Corps on carriers.)
In WW II, the separation paid off. The British Fleet Air Arm flew lightly modified RAF aircraft, which were great for many things, but not for carrier operations. The US Navy would not pay for aircraft that could not take off from and land on carriers very well.
In the 1960s, the Pentagon imagined the F-111 as an all-purpose, all-service plane. Some USN captain told a congressional committee that it would not work, so becoming a hero to his peers and losing an prospect of promotion to flag rank.
It's politically complicated to just 'put an airbase somewhere'.
This is going to change as Carriers become more difficult to defend.
But then so is everything.
If a serious opponent starts sinking US aircraft carriers, then the war is already escalating far beyond that level.
Carriers are also very difficult to sink. And that's if you even manage to get past their countermeasures and actually manage to land clean hits. You need to be really lucky or the fleet command needs to be really incompetent.
The US Airforce needs a land base and small aircraft that has to travel longer distances. It's not tactically advantageous.
That's not true - naval ships are also used to launch missiles, to land marines, to sweep for mines, to fight other ships trying to do these things, etc.
It's not even true that carriers only do attack. They also do fighter roles, anti-submarine, helicopter platforms, air defence platforms, etc.
FTY
He told me that unlike the Navy sailors he had his gear bag with him and was ready to be dropped ashore to engage in hostilities at a moments notice.
Also, the marines have fighters, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_United_States_m...
This isn't true - defence is like 16% of Federal spending, and not even all of that is the military.
> The military can’t even say no, we’ve got everything we need to Congress, so sure why not.
And this isn't relevant either for this context. It's argued for some specific issues, such as production of main battle tanks, but the explanation for that is to maintain manufacturing capability.
Naval aviation is pretty clear capability requirement in the modern operating environment - it's how we'd defend for example Taiwan - and isn't due to the reasons you're saying.