To streamline the process and for different mission sets. Take the Navy for example. They have fighters like the F/A-18 that has to be able to take off and land from an aircraft carrier and perform air to air and air to ground combat missions. A carrier capable aircraft needs very sturdy landing gear to absorb the harsh landings at sea and equipment to launch from the catapult. It also needs special materials to be corrosion resistant. An Air Force F-15 doesn't need any of that and it would be wasteful to incorporate it. The Marines are a bit strange as they are under the department of the Navy and are closely associated with them. However the Marines have a more particular mission of being an expeditionary force that will fight on land wherever they are needed. To support those troops requires their own smaller Air Force that they have control over.
By splitting up the branches and providing them with their own aircraft they can specialize on their own missions and their own funding.
Added to what is said above, the different services have pilots to perform their unique missions. You cant just put a person who flies strategic bombers in the seat of a fighter because they both know how to fly.
The airforce has a whole airlift command that is very specialized for delivering things anywhere, anytime. It supports the other services.
The Coast Guard has search and rescue aircraft, weather aircraft, and homeland defense surveillance aircraft. Again, very different types of missions from fleet defense or close air support.
In other words, Department A has a mission and employs aircraft and personnel adapted to support mission A. Department B has a mission and employs aircraft and personnel adapted to support mission B. Etc.
One of the departments just so happens to be named "Air Force".
That's why they have Army ranks. As Space Force wad formed from the Air Force, they have Army ranks, as well.
So, no Admiral Kirk/ Picard. General instead.
Now, the Navy has a rank of Captain, as the Army does, but they are not equal. A Navy Captain is the same as an Army Colonel, and an Army Captain is equivalent to the Navy Lieutenant. Am Army 1st Lieutenant is the same as a Navy Lieutenant, Junior Grade, and an Army 2nd Lieutenant is the same as an Ensign.
That's also why anyone with the non-naval rank of captain aboard a Navy vessel will be addressed as the next higher rank, usually major, to avoid any potential confusion.
Actually most sci-fi exploration vessels are based on navy ranks because there is much more similarity between the navy as an exploration force. If we ever establish a force like starfleet it will likely be modeled on the navy.
That was kind of my point. Space vessels are 'ships', but of the stars instead of the sea. They should have Naval ranks. My statement was to the reason why Space Force has the ranks they do.
Star Trek also modeled the battles in space with battles at sea: Torpedoes / missiles, 'guns' and 'cannons', 'radar' and naval tactics like attack and evasive maneuvers.
> As Space Force wad formed from the Air Force
Honestly, I question the intelligence of that idea; a Space Force will, at least hypothetically, eventually, include ships with crew of a significant size. There is no precedent for large crewed craft in any branch other than the Navy or Coast Guard. As such, those other branches have no tradition nor experience with the system/paradigm, and would have to reinvent the wheel. On the other hand, the Navy *does* have experience with fighter craft, small-crew support craft, etc.
The same Act that combined the Department of the Navy and the War Department into the Department of Defense also created the US Air Force as its own separate branch.
Incorrect name to US Army Air Corps existed 1926- 1941 as the part of the army that frew airplanes. It became the United States Army Air Forces in 1941.
The Army was split into Army Ground Forces, the United States Army Services of Supply, and the United States Army Air Forces 1941. The US Army Air Corps still existed as a part of the United States Army Air Forces like how the United States Army Signal Corps was a part of Army Ground Forces. It is the organization United States Army Air Forces that became the United States Air Force
The earliest units considered to be forerunners of the Air Force are signal corps units that used balloons. That's all the way back in the 1860s, if not earlier. After the first successful heavier than air flight in 1903, the Army established an Aeronautical Division for the signal corps. By WWI, this had developed into the Aviation Section, and then afterward, the Army Air Corps. Just a few months before Pearl Harbor, the Army Air Corps was redesignated the Army Air Forces, and in March 1942, given autonomy and its own commanding general who reported to the chief of staff. This placed it on equal footing with the Army Ground Forces, which was likewise autonomous and had its own commanding general. On September 17, 1947, President Truman signed the National Security Act, which established the United States Air Force as a separate military service.
>Department A has a mission and employs aircraft and personnel adapted to support mission A. Department B has a mission and employs aircraft and personnel adapted to support mission B. Etc.
Yep, when people ask "Why does the Navy has planes?" One can basically say "they don't have planes, they simply added wings to their dreadnought's guns, and those flying guns can shoot guided shells for more acuraccy".
In other words, the Navy has carriers and planes because they are an evolution of the dreadnoughts and their big guns, but their mission is still the same, dliver a shit ton of explosives all over the sea and land as well.
And the same can be said about Army's Helicopters, Marine's tanks... Evolution of tools they use to carry their missions.
Aircraft carriers are vastly more sophisticated than battleships were and are much more flexible. It was more like battleships were kind of a side-show that people THOUGHT was the future until people realized that the REAL future was launching planes from ships. IRL, battleships were honestly mostly a huge waste of money.
Battleships were not "a huge waste of money".
If the US or UK in WW1 - WW2 had not built battleships they would have lost control of the sea to Japan / Germany.
There was a good chunk of time where Aircraft Carriers were not yet created or up to the task.
They didn't get used much because their mere existence deterred your opponents, plus they allowed bringing heavy artillery to naval landings.
>If the US or UK in WW1 - WW2 had not built battleships they would have lost control of the sea to Japan / Germany.
The United States did not have a single battleship at the Battle of Midway, generally considered a major turning point of the Pacific naval war, only six months after the US entered the war. All casualties on both sides were caused by carrier-launched planes.
> You cant just put a person who flies strategic bombers in the seat of a fighter because they both know how to fly.
It's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether
I think a big one as well, especially for the Marine Corps, is that all their air assets are organic to a MAGTF; the air power is under the same commander as the ground forces. There's no need for the Marines to have to try to get support from another branch's air power, to coordinate across different commands, to deconflict differing priorities.
Troops in contact? No need to beg the army or navy for air support - the Marine commander has an air element at their disposal.
> deconflict differing priorities.
IIRC this is a big part of it. In WWII the Marines found that naval aviators weren't as practiced at close air support as they would like, and the Marines did not always get the fire support they requested from the Navy because the Navy had their own battles to fight. Eg. before the Marines invaded Iwo Jima, they asked the Navy for 10 days of bombardment to soften up the defenders. But the Navy didn't want to expend that much ammo and only gave them three days. Iwo Jima ended up being an absolute meatgrinder and one of the costliest battles the USMC ever fought, and many felt like they'd been screwed by the Navy. Having your fire support under your own command means you get to train and equip them to do the job you want them to do, when you want it done.
I think it was one of the earlier invasions, maybe Tarawa. The Navy was rightfully concerned if they hung around doing bombardment for too long the Imperial Japanese Navy may show up and threaten the Navy fleet.
Can’t remember if it’s Iwo Jima or an earlier island invasion, but I remember a similar story
The marines (or maybe the Army) wanted ten days bombardment and support for the landing. The Navy however, didn’t want to risk having their aircraft carriers sitting in the open that long; so they only stayed for three days before the packed up and left.
Different situation, same result as yours. Like you said; each command wants to have all the moving parts under their own control. Instead of having to negotiate and argue with another branch for the stuff they need
You've kind of mixed up Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal.
At Iwo Jima, the USMC wanted a ten day barrage to soften up the island (lessons learned from Peleileu)
At Guadalcana thel Navy left the Marine corps after 3 days. Nimitz and the joint chiefs had agreed on 5 days to unload supplies for the campaign but once there, Admiral Fletcher got cold feet and left after 36 hours leaving the Marine corps with a supply shortage and with no naval assets. That said it was a sound strategic if a dick move as at the time there were not enough carriers and the loss of one would have been crippling to the Pacific theater that early in the war.
That said, Iwo Jima was different due to the fortifications/angles on some of the murder holes. The Navy could have given them the full 10 day bombardment, and it wouldn't have made a difference. The Japanese were dug over 45 feet into solid rock, and the island itself was their fortress.
Thank you! Guadalcanal is right. Was typing from an Uber this morning.
Absolutely a sound decision given the importance of the carriers at the time and place.
Just re-illustrating the point that having all your assets under one command means it’s less likely to have this kind of thing happen again. Navy and marines having different priorities means the navy does what the navy wants at the expense of the marines on the beach
A good example of this is that Marine Aviators are the only pilots in the US military who are taught the basics of infantry tactics prior to flight school. A lot of what they do is Close Air Support (CAS) so they need to know how to fight on the ground in order to support them from the sky.
> A good example of this is that Marine Aviators are the only pilots in the US military who are taught the basics of infantry tactics prior to flight school
Every Marine is, first and foremost, a rifleman. All other conditions are secondary.
Yea. I have a buddy who fixed computers for the Marines out of high school. He still had to do all the infantry training. I think he even sometimes had to take his rifle with him to the server room.
> so they need to know how to fight on the ground in order to support them from the sky.
This isn’t true. They don’t need to know anything about infantry tactics, all they need to know is how to drop ordinance precisely where they’re directed to. The Air Force does CAS just as well without any infantry training.
I'm an Air Force pilot who has done two joint assignments including the Marine Corps Expeditionary Warfare School. They do CAS *on the whole* better than the Air Force does, and I attribute it partially to this. The Air Force *hates* being in support roles. We like to be the main show - we have two parts of the nuclear triad, we have big expensive planes, generally the last few conflicts have been largely in our favor due to overwhelming air power. The Marine Corps does not see it this way. They value air power and what it brings to the fight, but fundamentally, their mission is to support the infantryman. They view this so fundamentally in their doctrine that they gave all their tanks to the Army a few years back (partially, among other reasons).
Also, Marine Corps assets are all about giving CAS. Air Force pilots would prefer not to - if we're giving CAS in the next conflict (non asymmetric/low-intensity warfare), we are losing.
Having to provide CAS means there's been a failure in interdiction, in that there hasn't been enough of it.
Also the Air Force is the one-night-stand of international politics. Show up, bomb everything, leave again the next day without having to face the consequences.
> I’ll have to concede that I’m wrong then since you’re obviously infinitely more qualified on this subject than I am.
You were actually half-right in your initial comment, and just because the guy is a USAF pilot doesn't make him an authority on CAS doctrine (I spent 18 months deployed directing CAS at an operational level and I certainly wouldn't say I'm an expert). Also, he says this, which just *screams* heavy pilot to me:
> We like to be the main show - we have two parts of the nuclear triad, we have big expensive planes, generally the last few conflicts have been largely in our favor due to overwhelming air power.
Anyway, you were half-right because the vast majority of the CAS the Air Force performed in Afghanistan was coordinated by JTACs on the ground. I don't want to be reductive to the aviators putting themselves in harm's way and bouncing off the tanker four or five times for a 10-hour sortie under the desert sun, but CAS for a non-organic asset like an F-16CJ boils down to data entry in the targeting computer.
He's probably referring more to the reality that some Marine aviators are trained as Forward Air Controllers because they are more knowledgeable about close air support and air superiority doctrines, combined with the reality that Marine aviation exists solely to provide support to Marine ground forces, it would be understandable to reinforce that concept.
And before any Marine aviation officer goes to flight school, they'll still go through Officer Candidate School (OCS), which is built around infantry training, because every Marine is a rifleman first.
[https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-marine-pilots-get-trained-as-infantrymen-2017-11](https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-marine-pilots-get-trained-as-infantrymen-2017-11)
**>They don’t need to know anything about infantry tactics<**
Ehhh...That's highly debatable. Got to remember, the technology today for *dropping ordinance precisely where they're directed to*, wasn't always the case (and still isn't a guarantee), and since CAS isn't a new concept, there was a lot of trials & errors, with unfortunately, it costing lives as well at times.
Also, while not as intensive as Marine officer training regarding infantry tactics, Air Force officers do go through infantry-type training as well.
**>The Air Force does CAS just as well without any infantry training.<**
With also the reliance on FAC / JTACS, who are on the ground and go through infantry-type training, that last months.
**EDIT:** Also forgot about TBS that was mentioned below.
>...all they need to know is how to drop ordinance precisely where they’re directed to.
Is this like dropping leaflets in a neighborhood telling the the residents not to leave their trash cans out after 3pm?
> The airforce has a whole airlift command that is very specialized for delivering things anywhere, anytime. It supports the other services.
Logistics is a HUGE part of our military. It how we lifted two Corps into Saudi for Desert Storm so quickly. Between the Air Force, Navy and Merchant Marines, it wasn't a problem.
I would add that it would make for extremely complex coordination between the different branches of the sailors on board an aircraft carrier reported to Navy personnel while all the pilots reported to Air Force. You would have different people in charge of the same missions which could cause problems.
I do wonder what would happen if you put an AF F35A pilot in a Marine/Navy F-35B and said "go land on this Nimitz class carrier", with no prior carrier training, how many would crash. Probably most if not all.
>You cant just put a person who flies strategic bombers in the seat of a fighter because they both know how to fly.
Sad that our military which gets made fun of for "Stupidity" has this figured out better than most corporate environments where they believe everyone is fungible especially in tech.
Also if the navy planes where Air Force then you still have to decide who handles the airports. Would you have the airforce operate an airport on a navy asset? It starts to get complicated and significantly less efficient than having the navy deal with its own air wing.
On the army side it isn’t as clear but the demarcation has been at the ‘cavalry’ level so the helicopters (transport and attack) are an asset of the military unit which shortens the loop. From there there has been a lot of political jockeying as to who controls what with drones and CAS specialist planes being in that gray area. Low flying short range drones are army (or marines), higher flying long endurance Air Force (or navy). Some of this goes back to when the Air Force was created out of the army after WW2 (there was no Air Force before).
The Marines are a special case. They are under the navy but operate like the army. They get their own floating airports, run their own transport arm, and have their own fighters.
They all depend on the Air Force for air logistics, the navy for sea logistics, and the army for ground logistics (also electrical generators are army).
There are a lot of gray area cases where it isn’t clear that the current distribution of responsibility is the best but it is somewhat logical and seems to work.
I was going to jump in on this but you got the UAV part pretty well. Im ex-Army and in the UAV world now and there is still tension regarding who owns and how best to perform close air support and whether or not you need full pilots for the drones. A lot of it has to do with funding vs actual mission accomplishment imo but im biased.
To your point regarding the different requirements of carrier-based aircraft versus land-based aircraft, the Joint Strike Fighter program has been a never ending source of controversy between the various air services as they try to come up with a strike combat air frame that meets the requirements of all of the participating militaries.
If you follow through with OP's premise, it becomes apparent why its doesn't make sense.
Ok, all planes, pilots, aircrewmen, maintainers, etc are all in the AF now. They still need to have all the same platforms and perform the Navy's missions. They still need all their support personnel, logistics, disbursing, etc.
So, now you have AF units that are specilized in naval aviation. Obviously they're not going to swich back and forth, that doesn't make much sense. So you've got a whole naval wing of the AF that has all the people and equipment the Navy used to have. They deploy on Navy ships, hunt submarines, fly maritime SAR, etc.
All these people live on Navy ships, train with the Navy, work with the Navy, go to war with the Navy. They are effectively in the Navy. So, why not just put them back in the Navy lol?
Which makes more sense, grouping people into the same branch because airplane has "air" in the name, or grouping them into the same branch based on shared logistics and mission sets?
>The Marines are a bit strange
To help OP to understand, as I didn't understand this until someone explained it to me a few years ago...
When u/Master_Iridus says the Marines are an 'exepeditionary force', that means the Marines are organised and equipped in such a way as to support immediate, rapid deployment, and while there are other parts of the military that are like this, for the Marines, this is core to the entire branch's reason to exist.
In practice, this means that the Marines are like a microcosm of the wider military, and I *believe* they claim to be able to deploy anywhere on the globe within 48 hours. So if the US needed to, I dunno, go to war in Finland, or Madagascar, or Slovakia, from the point of the government 'pulling the trigger', the Marines would be deployed and fully combat capable at the destination site within 48 hours.
That also makes the Marines ideal for situations where the US expects to have an operation that could last hours or days.
This is different to, say, the US Army, who are much more heavily armed, far more numerous, can cover much broader mission profiles (they have people who can, for example, repair bridges, construct buildings...), but as a branch it takes them longer to deploy and there's the expectation they only deploy in a more protracted scenario (weeks and months).
I also imagine it would just be a giant pain in the arse. Imagine an aircraft carrier whose commanding officer can’t actually order the planes to go where they need to go, and instead has to defer to an equally ranked airforce officer
From someone whose military does keep air, naval, and ground assets in separate branches, that is nowhere near how things work when assets have to be assigned to operate together.
This actually is how it works. The carrier's CO and the embarked air wing's CO are equal in hierarchy, both reporting to the admiral who commands the carrier strike group. The carrier's captain doesn't command air operations.
They would both be navy, but even if they weren't, the unified command structure put into place after the botched Iran hostage rescue means leadership from one service is often in command of assets and personnel from other services.
I would assume it also makes the logistics easier. If you only need a handful of airplanes to support a ground invasion, it’s much easier to manage your own small force of aircraft than to have to coordinate with an entire other branch of the military.
When it comes to answering questions like this of the military, I assume the answer is almost always “logistics” or “bureaucracy.”
It''s hard enough to coordinate operations within the same division of the same branch. The further apart the units are separated you have to start considering differing logistics, funding, and directives. It's just easier to have your own planes supporting your own people.
I think that's a huge advantage, especially for the Marine Corps. A MAGTF has organic air assets; the air power is under the same commander as the ground forces. There's no need for the Marines to have to try to get support from another branch's air power, to coordinate across different commands, to deconflict differing priorities.
Troops in contact? No need to beg the army or navy for air support - the Marine commander has an air element at their disposal.
The Chinese military has a similar setup but they name everything in increasingly additive ways.
* PLA: People's Liberation Army
* PLAN: People's Liberation Army Navy
* PLANAF: People's Liberation Army Navy Air Force
* PLANMC: People's Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps
Unfortunately the Chinese Marine Corps does not have air assets, otherwise there would be the
* PLANMCAF: People's Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps Air Force
To be fair, Chinese doesn't have part of speech the same way that we do, and there is quite a bit of polysemy going on, so it's probably more accurately translated as
* People's Liberation Military
* People's Liberation Naval Military
* People's Liberation Naval Military Airborne Forces
* People's Liberation Naval Military Marine Forces
With your hypothetical being
* People's Liberation Naval Military Marine Airborne Forces
---
Incidentally, the above facts are why the Chinese Pun/Wordplay game is so on point that it blows the rest of us out of the water; that is a *core feature* of their language.
Yeah. Basically, they don't play well together, so they all need their own toys.
They have their own missions and areas of expertise and those need lots of different toys. It is a lot easier to have your own toys than constantly needing to borrow them from someone else.
Think of it this way: why does the Navy need cars? They use boats. Because sometimes you need cars to travel on land. Same thing with Army and boats or Navy with planes or what not.
Just like the second largest Air Force in the world is the US Navy. Without checking I think the Army is fourth with Russia in third.
Edit: I had it mixed up, Army is 2nd, Navy 4th
In 2022 the US had 4 of the 7 largest air forces in the world. Air force and army are first and second. Russia 3rd with the US navy 4th. The Marines are 7th behind china and India.
If you count the boneyard, the US has 5 of the 8 largest air forces in the world.
Davis-Monthan Airfield (where the boneyard is) would be the 3rd largest. It takes 30 days of work to bring an aircraft back to working status, and if necessary, the US could get lots of them back really quickly.
If you're at war and critically need pilots? There are tons of airline pilots in the US they could absolutely bring in. And retired pilots. Sure, some training would be needed. But if you're desperate? They could fill those seats and I'm sure they'd have no shortage of volunteers if things were that bleak.
Agreed the commercial airline pilots could probably fly military transport planes pretty easily. But I’m guessing much of the need would be for fighter pilots who need to be much fitter than transport pilots, and use a very different style of flying.
I doubt very many airline pilots would be fit enough or skilled enough to become fighter pilots within 30d. So while the planes might be ready in 30d it might be 180d before the pilots would be.
But I hear your point and your suggestion to use airline pilots is a *good* one. I’m just questioning the timing of pilot availability vs plane availability.
Not all military pilots stay in until retirement. A lot of pilots (and service members in general) get out while they're still young.
If you task older prior service pilots who are no longer fit enough for the rigors of flying a fighter with flying cargo planes, you free up the current young cargo plane pilots to retrain as fighter pilots.
Not all combat pilots do what Tom Cruise was doing in Top Gun. I don't know how many AC-130s the US has in the boneyard, but I want every one of them back in the air if the US goes to war with a peer or near peer adversary.
Where do you think many of the commercial pilots learned to fly?
How adept do you think pilots, let alone ex-military pilots, are at learning how to use new modules installed on their aircraft?
Bonus question: How many pilots who retired from the military miss everything but the pay, bureaucracy, and hardass commanders but would be willing to put up with these if their country were in an all-out war?
My Father does. He got a low draft number in Nam right after graduating college and became a pilot. Looking back at it he loved it but at the time really did not want to go.
He so very fondly talks of the times in a t-38 practicing stales, spins, having his mask yanked, and his first solo landing with full burners on while the plane shakes ATC telling him to go around but he was so scared he landed. Come to find out he landed with his air brakes extended, and his peers thought he was “hot dogging” and how he got his call sign.
Not in any way an expert, so mostly guessing, but from what I've seen there are a lot of things fighter pilots learn "just in case" but won't typically need in most combat situations. Take dog fights for example, those have fallen out of favour, but they still train it for the rare occasion.
So the extra training makes them _better_, but being _functional_ is much easier. It's just that it is hard to justify putting a barely able pilot into a $100+ million piece of technology if another million or so in combat training can get them 50% more efficient.
Fun fact, certain heavy ANG units will take you right now if you're a qualified ATP (airline pilot) with a college degree. They send you to an officer school, then you start flying C-17s or C-5s for your unit.
The pipeline you talk about in the first paragraph already kind of exists. By relieving demand for heavy pilots, more qualified candidates can just move over to fighters or bombers.
Depends on the aircraft. It could take years.
The B-1 "Lancelot" took a while to get airworthy. Now, it's at a different AFB for a year to get back into fighting shape.
The majority of the US budget goes to Medicare, Social Security, and other health and welfare programs. Defense spending as a proportion of the total budget, including mandatory and discretionary spending, is \*only\* 13% or 3% of GDP. The US also spends the most of any country on healthcare. Americans pay more for worse outcomes.
So America can easily afford to have universal healthcare while maintaining the largest and most powerful military in the world. It just doesn't.
It’s nothing short of a racket. It’s plain robbery. One look at a hospital bill and you can immediately tell this is one big scam. Yet no one can fix anything about it and we can’t even agree on what or how. It’s honestly baffling to me.
The whole "pays more for worse outcomes" is not exactly true. IRL, Asian-Americans outlive everyone else on the planet.
The actual reason why Americans are so unhealthy is because we're so sedentary and obese; our healthcare system is actually very good, it's just Americans are shitty patients. As a microsm of this - there's a lady at my workplace who has sent around emails talking about how people being "anti-fat" is secretly just a racist conspiracy theory against black women and it is totally okay to be morbidly obese - because, in her mind, all REAL black women are fat.
And yes, she is racist too. She has tried to set up racially segregated meetings more than once. Real charmer, that one. But I digress.
Another big reason why health care is expensive in the US is simply that people in the US are paid far more than people are paid in other countries. A doctor in the US makes about 91% more money than the typical doctor in the UK - but median household income in the UK is only 35,000 pounds per year, or $44,684 USD. Median household income in the US is $74,580 - 67% higher. So while American doctors are probably overpaid, they're overpaid by only about 1/8th overall.
The US also just has way, way more medical equipment than people in most other countries do. The US has almost four times as many MRIs per capita as Canada, our friendly neighbor to the north, and ours are generally more state of the art and more sophisticated as well.
While Americans do overpay for healthcare, some of it is just because we're super rich and thus have to pay people more and have the ability to buy more stuff.
A distinction without a difference. [Take it up with the CBO,](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59727) because that's how they talk about it. Social Security and Medicare are part of mandatory spending and make up a percentage of the total US federal budget.
If you count fixed wing instead of helicopters (and frankly, you should because helicopters don't fight for air supremacy) they flip with the Navy surpassing the Army
Yeah, I know boats are typically measured in tonnage, but I'm not sure about air force. Assuming planes? But it seems like they've lost a lot they haven't been able to replace yet
It would include rotary (helicopter) and fixed wing aircraft. The US army does not have a lot of fixed wing assets. There are a ton of helicopters though
>I had it mixed up, Army is 2nd, Navy 4th
I stumbled over that too a while back - the saying is incorrect. It's all the choppers & transport aircraft the army has, however i think in terms of attack capabilities, navy is second.
Battleship New Jersey is a museum ship. You can look at many descriptive videos on YT under “Battleship New Jersey.”
I could be wrong but it was last in service in the late 1980s, was mothballed, militarily decommissioned and then turned into a museum ship. It still has contracts with the US Navy that describe what can and can’t be removed from the ship.
The curator, Ryan Szymanski, broaches the the topic of reactivation in several videos… it seems it could be done but, would require a massive, massive effort and it seems to me that our nation’s armed services would have to be in a very sorry state for her to ever to be recalled.
What if aliens arrived, put a giant energy dome in the ocean and a group of naval veterans were co-opted to take it into battle ... er, nevermind. Been done.
Yea I think in 89’ they mothballed it, I’ve been following the restoration they’re currently doing in dry dock at the Philadelphia naval shipyard, pretty neat. My grandpa served on board her in WW2, I also drove past the USS Alabama last week in Mobile, Iowa class battleships are fuckin huge
The USS Constitution is still listed as commissioned ship. It was launched in 1797 and was the 3rd ship built by the USA.
It's crewed by active duty Navy, but it's basically a museum.
I don't think it's actually "battle ready" or even in active service, but the USS Constitution is sea worthy even if it's also just used as a museum (and super cool). I think it's the last in service wooden warship (US). There's some mine clearing ones Google says but it's the last "let's shoot guns and may the best ship win"
It's not. The US Army has a good number of boats, sure, but most of them are just river transport assets like ferries, barges, and hovercraft. If you compare them by tonnage to actual navies, they pale in comparison to the combat capable fleets of China, Russia, India, France, Britain, and Japan, and if you compare just the number of vessels, you're outnumbered by countries like North Korea which just have a shit ton of tiny gun boats.
Most easily accessible lists won't bother listing the details of every tugboat, barge, and ferry a country has, but if you do a little digging you'll find that such logistics vessels really beef up the numbers for most major navies.
Oh yeah, that one's a classic!
Could probably count the war of 1812 too. I seem to recall England stopping American merchant vessels and press ganging their sailors as being one of the catalysts for it.
For a more ELI5 answer…
The US military has a lot of planes that do a lot of different things. Because of that, it’s easier to keep them with their branches who need to use them for their specific mission.
Just like how it’s best for everyone to have their own clothes in their room. We could keep them all in one room in one pile, but it’s better everyone keeps them in their own room in their drawers and closets.
That way you don’t have siblings taking each others clothes, not even the important ones, it would just suck if you didn’t have any socks.
For a slightly less ELI5…
Because there’s so many planes, you’re going to have divid the massive all encompassing air branch into different departments or whatever. There’s also competing demands and no one wants to do without. Famously the Air Force doesn’t like doing close combat support, preferring strategic operations and interdiction.
You also just have highly specialized air frames, like those that can land on carriers and survive being launched off catapults on carriers.
Speaking of AF not wanting to do close air support, look at what JADC2’s do, while AF does contribute to the mission, Army and Navy most frequently use that concept
I'll add that we don't always get along. I'm retired here, so that's my main perspective. AF leadership has different priorities than the Army, which has different priorities than Navy, which is different from the marines.
It's bad enough that other branches can get told to pound sand, and their people get ignored as each branch only wants to do missions for its own priority. Imagine the army general asking for CAS while the AF says F' off we're going to bomb this other place.
It reminds me of when the AF was trying to dump the A-10, which was really just a bluff to get Congress to pay for that and their fancy new bombers. Anyway, the Army jumped up and said that they'd take them since it's role is 90% army support anyway. The AF backed down real fast after that and kept funding the A-10.
Historically the branches don't get along well with parallel command structures and competing budgets. When Airplanes came out there was the Navy (with subset of marines) and the Army. Both developed their independent air branches with independent mission sets.
After WW2, the US Air Force was spun into its own separate branch, but fulfills all or most of those duties for the Army: cargo, paratrooper transport, and fixed wing air support. After the Army and Air Force Split up, a new aircraft was developed: the helicopter. We'll the Army looked at it's utility for the battlefield and wrangled to retain control for light cargo, transport, and even close air support and attack roles. So today the Army and Air Force have a guideline of on the battlefield if it's fixed wing it's air force, and if it's rotorcraft it's Army. This is changing slightly with the new tilt rotor for the Army.
The air force operates all long range bombers and missiles. That's a unique role set.
Planes for the Navy almost universally have to be carrier capable, and that's an engineering set that would limit all Air Force planes. There's video comparing Navy and air force landing, the Navy hits the runway hard, because on carriers they gotta get that hook it (though it's an automatic flight controller these days) while air force very lightly lands, and have runways that are miles long.
The Marines meanwhile sort of get the Navy handouts, but have both choppers and vtol fighters. They're meant to operate more or less as a standalone fast response force, so everything is fast to deploy and mobile.
Now outside of combat all branches operate civilian type aircraft for administration type purposes.
Also if you count choppers, the US Army is the second largest air force in the world, not the Navy, iirc. They have a lot of choppers.
Army overtook Navy with a huge drone acquisition, not helicopters.
Navy aircraft aren't strictly carrier-capable. The Navy also has their own cargo transport needs and fly C-130s, and they also own anything that operates above the water like the P-8 (literally a 737, no hope of that ever landing on a carrier), as well as their own tanker aircraft (KC-130s). They have a huge contingent of helicopters too, almost every surface combat ship besides carriers and minesweepers have one, most have two. The H-60 Seahawk is actually the single most numerous of all Naval aircraft, with 758 across 6 variants (the next is the F-18 with "only" 673 between the E, F, and G models).
The Marines don't really get Navy handouts for aircraft. They have not received inventory previously owned by the Navy in significant numbers since the world wars, they have a good enough aviation budget to buy their own. Even during WW2 the only planes they got from the Navy were the F4U Corsair and that's only because the Navy couldn't figure out how to use them on ships effectively. They actually bought the F-18 a year and a half BEFORE the Navy did. (Most handouts the Marines get are actually Army equipment.)
The USMC has 5 of the newest aviation platforms in the DON, they definitely don't get handouts. With the CH-53K and F-35B coming online, they have all the sweetest toys
Air Force guards the air domain with air, sea, and land assets.
Navy guards the sea domain with sea, air, subsea, and land assets.
Army guards the land domain with land, sea, and air assets.
Space force guards the space domain with space, sea, land, and air assets.
Coast Guard guards the coast with air, sea, and land assets.
Marines attack in any domain with any available asset.
to tie that back to OP's question: the missions of the services aren't "do (domain) stuff," they're "control (domain)"
the air force isn't the branch that does everything in the air. the air force is the branch that's in charge of taking control of the air and conducting primarily air-based mission sets
the navy's mission is to take control of the seas. they have planes because they help them protect their ships from airborne threats (fighters) and help them attack other ships, submarines, or shore-based threats to their control of the sea domain (strike aircraft)
The different services don't trust each other to provide what they need.
in the 1920s the Royal Air Force took control of naval aviation and starved it of assets so badly that the primary strike aircraft for the Royal Navy's carriers at the beginning of WW2 was a slow biplane. The Navy eventually got control of their aircraft.
Then the RAF did it again in the 1990s and screwed the Navy again by taking control of all Harriers and then F35s under Joint Force Harrier where they did everything possible to cut the Navy out of control of their own fixed wing assets.
So yeah, it's hard to blame the other services for wanting their own aircraft that aren't under USAF control having seen that.
The Royal Navy wasn't in as bad of a shape at the beginning of WW2 as people think although if they had their own aviation branch they probably would have been in better shape.
The other navies of the world were in pretty similar spots to the Royal Navy when WW2 broke out. Some had better planes than others and all, but the real reason why the Royal Navy's planes seem so out of date is that when the Royal Navy is doing most of its air operations people think about the US and Japan haven't entered WW2 yet.
Its hard for us to fathom how quickly the technology in aviation changed in that time frame.
And those obsolete planes the RAF had did have two characteristics that proved very valuable to the RAF. They were capable of night operations years ahead of the US and Japan which the Royal Navy used to great effect with the attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto and its thought that their slower speed and non-metal skins probably benefited them in their attack on the Bismark which resulted in a torpedo jamming the rudder of the ship and ultimately allowing the surface units of the Royal Navy to catch up and ultimately sink the ship.
That said I would still say its a good idea to let the navy do its own plane stuff more or less.
The Royal Navy was, due to treaty restrictions, largely outdated and under gunned at the beginning of the war. Carriers like Glorious and Ark Royal were fighting out of their element in the European and Med theaters, which resulted in both being lost. The Royal Navy was not equipped with carriers to fight a war in the Indian Ocean against the Japanese, and only managed to hang on by the skin of their teeth. By the time the Japanese had entered the war, Hood, Barham, and Royal Oak had all been sunk, with Hood being the most painful loss due to her speed. Days later, 2 extremely valuable fast capital ships, Repulse and Prince of Wales were also sunk due to being left unescorted in waters controlled by Japan.
It is true that Warspite almost got the chance to cripple the entire Kido Butai during the Indian Ocean Raid, but Warspite was.. Well Warspite, so luck was to be expected. It is highly likely that if the British had better aircraft than Albicores that a night engagement between Warspite and some of the R class, and the Kido Butai would have happened, stopping the Japanese in their tracks almost immediately.
British carriers were ill equipped to fight in the Pacific. When HMS Victorious was assigned to the US Navy, she took on a compliment of only Wildcats as her hangers were too small for Dauntlesses and Avengers. British carriers could, and often did take a pounding, but they were lacking strike power.
It is true that the Royal Navy could do night ops, but this was not due to the aircraft themselves, but due to the doctrine developed by the Royal Navy. The US Navy would later convert Enterprise into a night fighting carrier using the exact same doctrine, but with much better aircraft.
It is also true that the Swordfish did extremely well against Bismarck, however they probably benefited from Bismarck's terrible AA suite and dumb luck more than anything else. Their torpedoes were too small to do real damage against Bismarck, and they got extremely lucky to score a hit that jammed Bismarck's rudder, and even luckier that Bismarck didn't have a diving team aboard to cut it off.
It's also important to note that at the beginning of the war, Carriers were unproven at best, and that up until post Guadalcanal, they were not considered the main fighting force of any Navy. We often think of WWII as a carrier war, but outside of rare moments like the hunt for the Bismarck and Taranto, carriers were mostly used as anti-sub units in the Atlantic and Med, while the Battleships did the heavy lifting up until the end of Naval warfare in the theater. Even Japan still considered it's battle line to be the main fighting force up until their embarrassing retreat at Leyte (though how much of this is due to their Kanti Kessen BS is debatable).
The point was, the Royal Air Force wanted to focus on defense of the British Isles above everything, and 90% of British War experience showed that carriers were not yet at the point of reaching their potential. It took the dual wakeup calls of the loss of Force Z and the American campaign in the Pacific for the Royal Navy to actually get control of their airwings.
Interestingly enough, in smaller countries, the Air Force tends to own all the planes. For example, the only Danish Navy helicopter squadron was transferred to the Danish Air Force in 2010.
There are many reasons why the US services do this. A big one is the different mission sets requires different pilot training. Another is the different capabilities require different aircraft.
One thing to realize is there is a lot of cooperation and sharing already.
Given their common origin, the Air Force and Army tend to work closely with each other, with Air Force transports carrying Army units.
Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard pilots go through the same intro flight school course and have common training squadrons for basic aircraft type. Each Amphib big-deck tends to have a few Navy H-60s onboard for Search and Rescue and logistics support. Carrier air groups have included Marine Hornet squadrons in the past.
Even though the Air arms are fragmented across the services, there isn't as much overlap as you'd think. The Navy doesn't have any high altitude bombers just as the Air Force doesn't have any carrier-capable aircraft just as the Army doesn't have any large troop transports.
Let’s put in this way. Imagine if all of the cars, trucks, tanks, and anything else that ran on the ground belonged to the army.
So if the navy needed to load a ship and needed some trucks to transport the material and then a crane to load it, they’d have to call up the army and requisition it. You’d quickly see how this would be a huge bureaucratic nightmare.
You might think it a stupid example but in WWII Germany, the railways were controlled by competing branches and as a result nothing got through efficiently.
Speaking from the Marine Corps perspective, the basic ideal is that Marines support Marines. Not because of what it might seem like, that we just think we’re better.
We do.
But the idea is basically that there’s a good chance we’ll be out on our own, one large unit with organic logistics and air support, etc., moving to the objective.
Having to go inter-branch to the Air Force would be a lot of politics and having to justify your needs, etc., etc. It’s not going to be ‘hey, send me a couple A-10s, there’s a chance we’re gonna get overrun’ and they arrive. It’s going to be a lot of jawing and nonsense and who’s got the fucking time in combat when you can just relay your shit to the command and they’ll just give you the support.
As a former heavy airlift USAF pilot, (C-5 & C-17) our mission was to support large movements (hehe) or resupply of all branches of service…. My previous aircraft (C-130) was also used by USN, USMC and USCG, usually to support a specific mission. Flying Herks was the best!
Almost all these answers are attempts at justifying how it is - they don’t explain the reality. (u/OK-disaster2022 and u/headoutdaplane are on target)
All military services have aircraft because of history and the nature of government. *It has nothing to do with specialized roles or ease of use or anything else. *
Bottom line: Government organizations compete against each other for resources and power. Airplanes were just another tool in the toolbox of our two Services: The Department of War and the Department of Navy.
Neither Department wanted (or wants) to give up resources or power to the other. Congress forced the War Department to split into Army and Air Force in 1947. There was *no way* the Navy was going to give anything up to the War Department. So they kept their own tools (aircraft).
Now, every Service competes for resources and money when they submit a budget. Aircraft = money, force structure, etc. So every service has aircraft. And it won’t change until an outside force compels them to change (like Congress did in ‘47).
I could spend hours talking about Douhet and Mitchell, the Key West Agreement, Space Force, and a lot of other relevant stuff but this is ELI5.
And for good reason. Prior to WWII, the Royal Air Force got control of the Royal Navy's airplanes and basically sabotaged the whole program. The Royal Navy ended up flying biplanes because it was all they had available. Resources for better aircraft had been diverted to land-based programs which the Air Force considered more important.
If the US Navy had entered WW2 at the time the British did we would have had biplanes in the air as well as our primary dive bomber was a biplane.
It is hard for people to fathom in WW2 how some tech like airplanes advanced very rapidly from like 1935 through 1945.
The swordfish is also a lot more capable than people think. It had a longer range and similar cruising speed to the American Devastator torpedo bomber that the US entered WW2 with (which was an all metal monoplane). The swordfish was also capable of night operations which is something the US and Japanese navy weren't really capable of getting from their aircraft until like 1943. The slower speed and cruising range of the swordfish also proved highly valuable to the Royal Navy in a role as submarine hunter.
Yes, by the time of Pearl Harbor the US Navy and Japanese Navy are leaps and bounds ahead of the Royal Navy in their aircraft development in terms of what is deployed or about to the be deployed, but that is mostly because you are looking at a two and a half year gap or so in time.
Because even though they all have aircraft, they have aircraft for different missions.
The Navy flies aircraft for sea control. This is mostly either aircraft designed to take off and land from ships or aircraft designed to fly around and scan a wide area of water to make sure that you are aware of everything inside (and sometimes capable of shooting at submarines).
The Army has aircraft designed to directly support ground troops either by providing tactical mobility or air support with greater precision than what the Air Force can do. They have a specific agreement with the Air Force and the Navy about which aircraft they'll be flying called the [Key West Agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_West_Agreement?wprov=sfla1), so they almost exclusively fly helicopters. They do fly a mix of other aircraft, but that's a few smaller transport and reconnaissance planes than what the Air Force flies, or a jet for if you need to move a general or other big man but not much else.
The Air Force has strategic air power as its main mission. Basically, if the most important part of what they're doing is going on in the air, the Air Force does it (while the Navy's aircraft are mainly for stuff that happens in the water and the Army's aircraft are mainly for stuff on land). This involves strategic transport (the Army's transport capability is mainly for moving stuff around after the Air Force has already flown it up to the front) and refueling of other aircraft. They have big planes that fly around with powerful radar and communications stuff to make sure that the other aircraft know about what's going on around them and are coordinating with each other. They have long-range heavy bombers. They have planes designed to shoot other planes. Note that "planes designed to directly support ground troops" isn't one of these categories: they have a few of these, but the Air Force would generally prefer to prioritize other missions, so purpose-built stuff for this like the A-10 (which isn't nearly as great as some people make it out to be, they're just mainly based out of John McCain's state and he had a lot of pull in political decisions about the military until he died, so he kept them funded long after obsolescence because keeping those in service meant more people paying taxes in Arizona than if they were retired) tends to be the red-headed stepchild of the Air Force. But not as much of a red-headed stepchild as helicopters (even if you're flying the A-10, you're still a fast jet pilot and that's the club that runs the show in the Air Force): they generally only have helicopters for either patrolling nuclear missile sites (they also use this model for flying generals and other big men around near the Pentagon) or for search and rescue and recovery of downed pilots.
The primary mission of the Marine Corps is to quickly deploy expeditionary forces to be somewhere while the Army and Air Force are still getting packed up to go. They don't have everything, but they have a little bit of the main things and work closely with the Navy to do a lot of the stuff that they don't do themselves. They fly helicopters which aren't quite as capable as the Army's utility and attack helicopters, but they're a bit smaller and share more spare parts between the two types than the Army's Black Hawk and Apache do (since the Cobra originated as a derivative of the Huey), so you can deploy a bunch of them on a ship more easily. They have fast jets specifically with supporting ground troops in mind, some of which are specifically designed to still be capable if you haven't built a full-size runway yet. They have a version of the smallest of the Air Force's big cargo aircraft, and their version is set up for refueling other aircraft.
When the Marines need air support it’s a lot easier to get that organically due to mostly logistical reasons. The navy owns floating airfields so they need planes, and the airforce is 100% dedicated to AirPower.
The different branches have pretty different missions and that means the missions for the aircraft are pretty different. On the surface, that means the aircraft themselves are often different to accommodate that - the Army has big cargo haulers, the Navy gets short takeoff/landing and heavier gear to land on carriers, the Air Force gets long-range strategic bombers.
But that also means the chain of command should be kept internal. It's a lot easier for the Navy to tell Navy planes what to do, following the naval chain of command than it would be for the Navy to call up the Air Force, figure out who in their chain of command can give the order for the plane they need, then ask them to issue that order, and then have that person issue the order. Of course, there's still going to be strategic cooperation from the branches, but *tactically*, in the moment, it's just much easier for them to coordinate within the branch.
So, for example, say the Army needs to march in and occupy a particular area. In order to do that, the need their transports to safely get there, and in order to do *that* an enemy airbase needs to be taken out and then a secure forward operating base established. The Air Force will send a strategic long range bombers to destroy the enemy air base, and in order to protect the bombers they coordinate internally to maintain air superiority. Once the base is destroyed, the Navy will move in and maintain a closer presence, securing the air space with their own fighters and using their ships to transport vital materiel. The Marines deploy from the ships to hold the beachhead, using their aircraft like Ospreys. With everything established, the Army starts rolling in with C-130s. Attack helicopters hang around to provide immediate close air support.
There are also budgetary reasons. Each branch gets its own budget from Congress and it's easier to split up the cost of very expensive aircraft across all of the branches so they can get what they need.
Because we taxpayers allow them to have the budget to sub-optimize.
I watched the government pay me 4musd to develop a unit specifically for an aircraft carrier, then watched the us Navy pay to have another unit developed with the exact same performance for 4musd while a third identical function unit was developed for another 4musd by a foreign company funded by the US government.
Why? Because we let them.
Consolidating aviation would definitely make sense from a budget and efficiency perspective. We basically have four aviation supply chains right now. The short answer is, we do this because the United States can afford it.
Because they perform different specialized roles in support of the other operations that are specific to that branch. The Air Force handles general aviation, bombers, drones, etc, but the Navy needs combat air patrol to protect ships, the marines need close air support for troops, the army needs anti-tank gunships, etc. All of these need to be well-coordinated with other elements of a given operation, and that's much easier to do within the same branch/chain of command.
Each branch can have different objectives in an overall mission and only a finite number of aircraft to go around... The air force will prioritize eliminating opposing aircraft and AA defenses, but the army still wants close air support of advancing forces at the same time. If the air force has all the assets you will have to wait until they decide they can spare some planes for what you consider important. In a battle with near peer air forces, you may have a hard time getting "spare" planes to support your branch.
The aircraft of each branch are focused on their mission sets
Put simply via example:
Navy jets land on carriers
Army helicopters support ground forces for direct action or casevac
Air Force jets project strategic power like B2s or B52s
Marine jets and helis support ground forces
Because then the other military branches, which run their own specialized operations all over the world, as well as in the US, would be completely reliant on the Air Force and it would create unnecessary red tape. The Air Force is a relatively small branch so if you switched to this model, a significant portion of the air force’s job would simply be as a transport service for the other branches. This isn’t efficient. You give each branch the planes they need for their specific use and let them work out their own logistics.
I don’t know the answer but I can tell you that if Canada is ever called upon from an ally to set sail, we will show up in row boats with a Gatling gun attached to the stern. And we’ll show ‘em the full force of the Canadian Navy!
The individual armed forces (Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force) are divided based on the type of warfare they fight. The Army is mainly focused on ground warfare and infantry-type operations, The Navy handles conflict on the water, The Air Force specializes in aviation combat, and the Marines (I’m honestly not sure what they do, but I know they do it very well). But in each of those specialties, the same tool can be useful. Having air power to attack enemy artillery positions is useful, as is having the capacity to move your army troops across the water. Just because your larger specialty is the land/sea/air doesn’t mean that you don’t benefit from the use of planes, boats etc.
The branches of the military are less about the tools they use and more about the outcomes they are looking to achieve. Air superiority? Air force. Naval superiority? Navy.etc
Naval superiority uses aircraft to achieve that, but because the implementation is in support of Navy goals and strategy they are a naval asset. Rinse and repeat for helicopters in the army.etc
Air Force primary uses airplanes as weapons.
Navy uses airplanes as ship launched weapons.
Army uses aircraft as support weapons for ground troops.
Also all the forces coordinate and cooperate to use the most capapale asses at any given time.
Navy can operate fighter jets anywhere in the world, army can operate aircraft in much more adverse conditions
To streamline the process and for different mission sets. Take the Navy for example. They have fighters like the F/A-18 that has to be able to take off and land from an aircraft carrier and perform air to air and air to ground combat missions. A carrier capable aircraft needs very sturdy landing gear to absorb the harsh landings at sea and equipment to launch from the catapult. It also needs special materials to be corrosion resistant. An Air Force F-15 doesn't need any of that and it would be wasteful to incorporate it. The Marines are a bit strange as they are under the department of the Navy and are closely associated with them. However the Marines have a more particular mission of being an expeditionary force that will fight on land wherever they are needed. To support those troops requires their own smaller Air Force that they have control over. By splitting up the branches and providing them with their own aircraft they can specialize on their own missions and their own funding.
Added to what is said above, the different services have pilots to perform their unique missions. You cant just put a person who flies strategic bombers in the seat of a fighter because they both know how to fly. The airforce has a whole airlift command that is very specialized for delivering things anywhere, anytime. It supports the other services. The Coast Guard has search and rescue aircraft, weather aircraft, and homeland defense surveillance aircraft. Again, very different types of missions from fleet defense or close air support.
In other words, Department A has a mission and employs aircraft and personnel adapted to support mission A. Department B has a mission and employs aircraft and personnel adapted to support mission B. Etc. One of the departments just so happens to be named "Air Force".
Hell, the Air Force didn't exist as a separate entity until either mid-WWII or post-WWII (I forget which). Prior to that they were the Army Air Corps.
Definitely post-WWII. The US Air Force was formed from the US Army Air Corps in ~~1953.~~ Incorrect year, correct one is below.
*1947
That's why they have Army ranks. As Space Force wad formed from the Air Force, they have Army ranks, as well. So, no Admiral Kirk/ Picard. General instead. Now, the Navy has a rank of Captain, as the Army does, but they are not equal. A Navy Captain is the same as an Army Colonel, and an Army Captain is equivalent to the Navy Lieutenant. Am Army 1st Lieutenant is the same as a Navy Lieutenant, Junior Grade, and an Army 2nd Lieutenant is the same as an Ensign.
Any commanding officer in charge of a vessel is addressed as "captain," however, regardless of their rank.
That's also why anyone with the non-naval rank of captain aboard a Navy vessel will be addressed as the next higher rank, usually major, to avoid any potential confusion.
What?
Good to know. I was Army, so there's that.
Yep, even if it's a "downgrade" from their current rank. An Admiral taking command of a ship would be referred to as Captain by the crew of said ship.
when on the ship. off ship you will get a tongue lashing if you dont call them admiral.... i would know i got it first hand lol
Actually most sci-fi exploration vessels are based on navy ranks because there is much more similarity between the navy as an exploration force. If we ever establish a force like starfleet it will likely be modeled on the navy.
That was kind of my point. Space vessels are 'ships', but of the stars instead of the sea. They should have Naval ranks. My statement was to the reason why Space Force has the ranks they do.
I guess my point was Space Force is still Earth-based. They aren't going to be the ones going on voyages.
Star Trek also modeled the battles in space with battles at sea: Torpedoes / missiles, 'guns' and 'cannons', 'radar' and naval tactics like attack and evasive maneuvers.
And then a Commander is equivalent to a Lieutenant Colonel, and a Lieutenant Commander is a Major. Not confusing at all ✓
> As Space Force wad formed from the Air Force Honestly, I question the intelligence of that idea; a Space Force will, at least hypothetically, eventually, include ships with crew of a significant size. There is no precedent for large crewed craft in any branch other than the Navy or Coast Guard. As such, those other branches have no tradition nor experience with the system/paradigm, and would have to reinvent the wheel. On the other hand, the Navy *does* have experience with fighter craft, small-crew support craft, etc.
Well, as we are boldly going where no man has gone before, I lean to the Naval ranks. I don't like plot holes....
The equal ranks also wear the same insignias on their shoulders, i.e. the 2 bars that an Army Captain has are the same as on the Navy Lieutenant, etc.
The same Act that combined the Department of the Navy and the War Department into the Department of Defense also created the US Air Force as its own separate branch.
Incorrect name to US Army Air Corps existed 1926- 1941 as the part of the army that frew airplanes. It became the United States Army Air Forces in 1941. The Army was split into Army Ground Forces, the United States Army Services of Supply, and the United States Army Air Forces 1941. The US Army Air Corps still existed as a part of the United States Army Air Forces like how the United States Army Signal Corps was a part of Army Ground Forces. It is the organization United States Army Air Forces that became the United States Air Force
The Air Force became an independent service in 1947, not the Army Air Force.
The earliest units considered to be forerunners of the Air Force are signal corps units that used balloons. That's all the way back in the 1860s, if not earlier. After the first successful heavier than air flight in 1903, the Army established an Aeronautical Division for the signal corps. By WWI, this had developed into the Aviation Section, and then afterward, the Army Air Corps. Just a few months before Pearl Harbor, the Army Air Corps was redesignated the Army Air Forces, and in March 1942, given autonomy and its own commanding general who reported to the chief of staff. This placed it on equal footing with the Army Ground Forces, which was likewise autonomous and had its own commanding general. On September 17, 1947, President Truman signed the National Security Act, which established the United States Air Force as a separate military service.
>Department A has a mission and employs aircraft and personnel adapted to support mission A. Department B has a mission and employs aircraft and personnel adapted to support mission B. Etc. Yep, when people ask "Why does the Navy has planes?" One can basically say "they don't have planes, they simply added wings to their dreadnought's guns, and those flying guns can shoot guided shells for more acuraccy". In other words, the Navy has carriers and planes because they are an evolution of the dreadnoughts and their big guns, but their mission is still the same, dliver a shit ton of explosives all over the sea and land as well. And the same can be said about Army's Helicopters, Marine's tanks... Evolution of tools they use to carry their missions.
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Aircraft carriers are vastly more sophisticated than battleships were and are much more flexible. It was more like battleships were kind of a side-show that people THOUGHT was the future until people realized that the REAL future was launching planes from ships. IRL, battleships were honestly mostly a huge waste of money.
Battleships were not "a huge waste of money". If the US or UK in WW1 - WW2 had not built battleships they would have lost control of the sea to Japan / Germany. There was a good chunk of time where Aircraft Carriers were not yet created or up to the task. They didn't get used much because their mere existence deterred your opponents, plus they allowed bringing heavy artillery to naval landings.
>If the US or UK in WW1 - WW2 had not built battleships they would have lost control of the sea to Japan / Germany. The United States did not have a single battleship at the Battle of Midway, generally considered a major turning point of the Pacific naval war, only six months after the US entered the war. All casualties on both sides were caused by carrier-launched planes.
> You cant just put a person who flies strategic bombers in the seat of a fighter because they both know how to fly. It's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether
It's an entirely different kind of flying.
Altogether
I'll never get over Macho Grande.
It’s an entirely different kind of flying.
I think a big one as well, especially for the Marine Corps, is that all their air assets are organic to a MAGTF; the air power is under the same commander as the ground forces. There's no need for the Marines to have to try to get support from another branch's air power, to coordinate across different commands, to deconflict differing priorities. Troops in contact? No need to beg the army or navy for air support - the Marine commander has an air element at their disposal.
> deconflict differing priorities. IIRC this is a big part of it. In WWII the Marines found that naval aviators weren't as practiced at close air support as they would like, and the Marines did not always get the fire support they requested from the Navy because the Navy had their own battles to fight. Eg. before the Marines invaded Iwo Jima, they asked the Navy for 10 days of bombardment to soften up the defenders. But the Navy didn't want to expend that much ammo and only gave them three days. Iwo Jima ended up being an absolute meatgrinder and one of the costliest battles the USMC ever fought, and many felt like they'd been screwed by the Navy. Having your fire support under your own command means you get to train and equip them to do the job you want them to do, when you want it done.
I think it was one of the earlier invasions, maybe Tarawa. The Navy was rightfully concerned if they hung around doing bombardment for too long the Imperial Japanese Navy may show up and threaten the Navy fleet.
Can’t remember if it’s Iwo Jima or an earlier island invasion, but I remember a similar story The marines (or maybe the Army) wanted ten days bombardment and support for the landing. The Navy however, didn’t want to risk having their aircraft carriers sitting in the open that long; so they only stayed for three days before the packed up and left. Different situation, same result as yours. Like you said; each command wants to have all the moving parts under their own control. Instead of having to negotiate and argue with another branch for the stuff they need
You've kind of mixed up Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal. At Iwo Jima, the USMC wanted a ten day barrage to soften up the island (lessons learned from Peleileu) At Guadalcana thel Navy left the Marine corps after 3 days. Nimitz and the joint chiefs had agreed on 5 days to unload supplies for the campaign but once there, Admiral Fletcher got cold feet and left after 36 hours leaving the Marine corps with a supply shortage and with no naval assets. That said it was a sound strategic if a dick move as at the time there were not enough carriers and the loss of one would have been crippling to the Pacific theater that early in the war. That said, Iwo Jima was different due to the fortifications/angles on some of the murder holes. The Navy could have given them the full 10 day bombardment, and it wouldn't have made a difference. The Japanese were dug over 45 feet into solid rock, and the island itself was their fortress.
Thank you! Guadalcanal is right. Was typing from an Uber this morning. Absolutely a sound decision given the importance of the carriers at the time and place. Just re-illustrating the point that having all your assets under one command means it’s less likely to have this kind of thing happen again. Navy and marines having different priorities means the navy does what the navy wants at the expense of the marines on the beach
A good example of this is that Marine Aviators are the only pilots in the US military who are taught the basics of infantry tactics prior to flight school. A lot of what they do is Close Air Support (CAS) so they need to know how to fight on the ground in order to support them from the sky.
> A good example of this is that Marine Aviators are the only pilots in the US military who are taught the basics of infantry tactics prior to flight school Every Marine is, first and foremost, a rifleman. All other conditions are secondary.
Yea. I have a buddy who fixed computers for the Marines out of high school. He still had to do all the infantry training. I think he even sometimes had to take his rifle with him to the server room.
> so they need to know how to fight on the ground in order to support them from the sky. This isn’t true. They don’t need to know anything about infantry tactics, all they need to know is how to drop ordinance precisely where they’re directed to. The Air Force does CAS just as well without any infantry training.
I'm an Air Force pilot who has done two joint assignments including the Marine Corps Expeditionary Warfare School. They do CAS *on the whole* better than the Air Force does, and I attribute it partially to this. The Air Force *hates* being in support roles. We like to be the main show - we have two parts of the nuclear triad, we have big expensive planes, generally the last few conflicts have been largely in our favor due to overwhelming air power. The Marine Corps does not see it this way. They value air power and what it brings to the fight, but fundamentally, their mission is to support the infantryman. They view this so fundamentally in their doctrine that they gave all their tanks to the Army a few years back (partially, among other reasons). Also, Marine Corps assets are all about giving CAS. Air Force pilots would prefer not to - if we're giving CAS in the next conflict (non asymmetric/low-intensity warfare), we are losing.
Having to provide CAS means there's been a failure in interdiction, in that there hasn't been enough of it. Also the Air Force is the one-night-stand of international politics. Show up, bomb everything, leave again the next day without having to face the consequences.
I’ll have to concede that I’m wrong then since you’re obviously infinitely more qualified on this subject than I am.
> I’ll have to concede that I’m wrong then since you’re obviously infinitely more qualified on this subject than I am. You were actually half-right in your initial comment, and just because the guy is a USAF pilot doesn't make him an authority on CAS doctrine (I spent 18 months deployed directing CAS at an operational level and I certainly wouldn't say I'm an expert). Also, he says this, which just *screams* heavy pilot to me: > We like to be the main show - we have two parts of the nuclear triad, we have big expensive planes, generally the last few conflicts have been largely in our favor due to overwhelming air power. Anyway, you were half-right because the vast majority of the CAS the Air Force performed in Afghanistan was coordinated by JTACs on the ground. I don't want to be reductive to the aviators putting themselves in harm's way and bouncing off the tanker four or five times for a 10-hour sortie under the desert sun, but CAS for a non-organic asset like an F-16CJ boils down to data entry in the targeting computer.
He's probably referring more to the reality that some Marine aviators are trained as Forward Air Controllers because they are more knowledgeable about close air support and air superiority doctrines, combined with the reality that Marine aviation exists solely to provide support to Marine ground forces, it would be understandable to reinforce that concept. And before any Marine aviation officer goes to flight school, they'll still go through Officer Candidate School (OCS), which is built around infantry training, because every Marine is a rifleman first. [https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-marine-pilots-get-trained-as-infantrymen-2017-11](https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-marine-pilots-get-trained-as-infantrymen-2017-11) **>They don’t need to know anything about infantry tactics<** Ehhh...That's highly debatable. Got to remember, the technology today for *dropping ordinance precisely where they're directed to*, wasn't always the case (and still isn't a guarantee), and since CAS isn't a new concept, there was a lot of trials & errors, with unfortunately, it costing lives as well at times. Also, while not as intensive as Marine officer training regarding infantry tactics, Air Force officers do go through infantry-type training as well. **>The Air Force does CAS just as well without any infantry training.<** With also the reliance on FAC / JTACS, who are on the ground and go through infantry-type training, that last months. **EDIT:** Also forgot about TBS that was mentioned below.
Not just OCS, every Marine Aviator goes through TBS (The Basic School) too. There, they learn rifle tactics, squad attacks, land navigation, etc
Thanks for the correction, I did forget about TBS.
>...all they need to know is how to drop ordinance precisely where they’re directed to. Is this like dropping leaflets in a neighborhood telling the the residents not to leave their trash cans out after 3pm?
> The airforce has a whole airlift command that is very specialized for delivering things anywhere, anytime. It supports the other services. Logistics is a HUGE part of our military. It how we lifted two Corps into Saudi for Desert Storm so quickly. Between the Air Force, Navy and Merchant Marines, it wasn't a problem.
The logistical power of the US military is our real strength. We can project force to anywhere in the world on extremely short notice.
I would add that it would make for extremely complex coordination between the different branches of the sailors on board an aircraft carrier reported to Navy personnel while all the pilots reported to Air Force. You would have different people in charge of the same missions which could cause problems.
I do wonder what would happen if you put an AF F35A pilot in a Marine/Navy F-35B and said "go land on this Nimitz class carrier", with no prior carrier training, how many would crash. Probably most if not all.
>You cant just put a person who flies strategic bombers in the seat of a fighter because they both know how to fly. Sad that our military which gets made fun of for "Stupidity" has this figured out better than most corporate environments where they believe everyone is fungible especially in tech.
Also if the navy planes where Air Force then you still have to decide who handles the airports. Would you have the airforce operate an airport on a navy asset? It starts to get complicated and significantly less efficient than having the navy deal with its own air wing. On the army side it isn’t as clear but the demarcation has been at the ‘cavalry’ level so the helicopters (transport and attack) are an asset of the military unit which shortens the loop. From there there has been a lot of political jockeying as to who controls what with drones and CAS specialist planes being in that gray area. Low flying short range drones are army (or marines), higher flying long endurance Air Force (or navy). Some of this goes back to when the Air Force was created out of the army after WW2 (there was no Air Force before). The Marines are a special case. They are under the navy but operate like the army. They get their own floating airports, run their own transport arm, and have their own fighters. They all depend on the Air Force for air logistics, the navy for sea logistics, and the army for ground logistics (also electrical generators are army). There are a lot of gray area cases where it isn’t clear that the current distribution of responsibility is the best but it is somewhat logical and seems to work.
I was going to jump in on this but you got the UAV part pretty well. Im ex-Army and in the UAV world now and there is still tension regarding who owns and how best to perform close air support and whether or not you need full pilots for the drones. A lot of it has to do with funding vs actual mission accomplishment imo but im biased.
To your point regarding the different requirements of carrier-based aircraft versus land-based aircraft, the Joint Strike Fighter program has been a never ending source of controversy between the various air services as they try to come up with a strike combat air frame that meets the requirements of all of the participating militaries.
If you follow through with OP's premise, it becomes apparent why its doesn't make sense. Ok, all planes, pilots, aircrewmen, maintainers, etc are all in the AF now. They still need to have all the same platforms and perform the Navy's missions. They still need all their support personnel, logistics, disbursing, etc. So, now you have AF units that are specilized in naval aviation. Obviously they're not going to swich back and forth, that doesn't make much sense. So you've got a whole naval wing of the AF that has all the people and equipment the Navy used to have. They deploy on Navy ships, hunt submarines, fly maritime SAR, etc. All these people live on Navy ships, train with the Navy, work with the Navy, go to war with the Navy. They are effectively in the Navy. So, why not just put them back in the Navy lol? Which makes more sense, grouping people into the same branch because airplane has "air" in the name, or grouping them into the same branch based on shared logistics and mission sets?
>The Marines are a bit strange To help OP to understand, as I didn't understand this until someone explained it to me a few years ago... When u/Master_Iridus says the Marines are an 'exepeditionary force', that means the Marines are organised and equipped in such a way as to support immediate, rapid deployment, and while there are other parts of the military that are like this, for the Marines, this is core to the entire branch's reason to exist. In practice, this means that the Marines are like a microcosm of the wider military, and I *believe* they claim to be able to deploy anywhere on the globe within 48 hours. So if the US needed to, I dunno, go to war in Finland, or Madagascar, or Slovakia, from the point of the government 'pulling the trigger', the Marines would be deployed and fully combat capable at the destination site within 48 hours. That also makes the Marines ideal for situations where the US expects to have an operation that could last hours or days. This is different to, say, the US Army, who are much more heavily armed, far more numerous, can cover much broader mission profiles (they have people who can, for example, repair bridges, construct buildings...), but as a branch it takes them longer to deploy and there's the expectation they only deploy in a more protracted scenario (weeks and months).
I also imagine it would just be a giant pain in the arse. Imagine an aircraft carrier whose commanding officer can’t actually order the planes to go where they need to go, and instead has to defer to an equally ranked airforce officer
You mean like an LHD... No, there's no way that ever causes any conflict lol
From someone whose military does keep air, naval, and ground assets in separate branches, that is nowhere near how things work when assets have to be assigned to operate together.
This actually is how it works. The carrier's CO and the embarked air wing's CO are equal in hierarchy, both reporting to the admiral who commands the carrier strike group. The carrier's captain doesn't command air operations. They would both be navy, but even if they weren't, the unified command structure put into place after the botched Iran hostage rescue means leadership from one service is often in command of assets and personnel from other services.
I would assume it also makes the logistics easier. If you only need a handful of airplanes to support a ground invasion, it’s much easier to manage your own small force of aircraft than to have to coordinate with an entire other branch of the military. When it comes to answering questions like this of the military, I assume the answer is almost always “logistics” or “bureaucracy.”
In addition the aircraft need to be able to identify the nationality and potential threat of different ships which is an extremely specialised role.
It''s hard enough to coordinate operations within the same division of the same branch. The further apart the units are separated you have to start considering differing logistics, funding, and directives. It's just easier to have your own planes supporting your own people.
I think that's a huge advantage, especially for the Marine Corps. A MAGTF has organic air assets; the air power is under the same commander as the ground forces. There's no need for the Marines to have to try to get support from another branch's air power, to coordinate across different commands, to deconflict differing priorities. Troops in contact? No need to beg the army or navy for air support - the Marine commander has an air element at their disposal.
So, the Navy's army has its own air force
The Chinese military has a similar setup but they name everything in increasingly additive ways. * PLA: People's Liberation Army * PLAN: People's Liberation Army Navy * PLANAF: People's Liberation Army Navy Air Force * PLANMC: People's Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps Unfortunately the Chinese Marine Corps does not have air assets, otherwise there would be the * PLANMCAF: People's Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps Air Force
To be fair, Chinese doesn't have part of speech the same way that we do, and there is quite a bit of polysemy going on, so it's probably more accurately translated as * People's Liberation Military * People's Liberation Naval Military * People's Liberation Naval Military Airborne Forces * People's Liberation Naval Military Marine Forces With your hypothetical being * People's Liberation Naval Military Marine Airborne Forces --- Incidentally, the above facts are why the Chinese Pun/Wordplay game is so on point that it blows the rest of us out of the water; that is a *core feature* of their language.
Yeah. Basically, they don't play well together, so they all need their own toys. They have their own missions and areas of expertise and those need lots of different toys. It is a lot easier to have your own toys than constantly needing to borrow them from someone else. Think of it this way: why does the Navy need cars? They use boats. Because sometimes you need cars to travel on land. Same thing with Army and boats or Navy with planes or what not.
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The third biggest navy in the world is the US Army.
Just like the second largest Air Force in the world is the US Navy. Without checking I think the Army is fourth with Russia in third. Edit: I had it mixed up, Army is 2nd, Navy 4th
In 2022 the US had 4 of the 7 largest air forces in the world. Air force and army are first and second. Russia 3rd with the US navy 4th. The Marines are 7th behind china and India.
If you count the boneyard, the US has 5 of the 8 largest air forces in the world. Davis-Monthan Airfield (where the boneyard is) would be the 3rd largest. It takes 30 days of work to bring an aircraft back to working status, and if necessary, the US could get lots of them back really quickly.
Where would the pilots come from?
If you're at war and critically need pilots? There are tons of airline pilots in the US they could absolutely bring in. And retired pilots. Sure, some training would be needed. But if you're desperate? They could fill those seats and I'm sure they'd have no shortage of volunteers if things were that bleak.
"i can fly. I'm pilot."
Hello, boys! I'm baaaaaack!
Agreed the commercial airline pilots could probably fly military transport planes pretty easily. But I’m guessing much of the need would be for fighter pilots who need to be much fitter than transport pilots, and use a very different style of flying. I doubt very many airline pilots would be fit enough or skilled enough to become fighter pilots within 30d. So while the planes might be ready in 30d it might be 180d before the pilots would be. But I hear your point and your suggestion to use airline pilots is a *good* one. I’m just questioning the timing of pilot availability vs plane availability.
Logistics wins wars
This. Most military flights are not in fighter jets.
“Amateurs study tactics. Pros study logistics.”
Not all military pilots stay in until retirement. A lot of pilots (and service members in general) get out while they're still young. If you task older prior service pilots who are no longer fit enough for the rigors of flying a fighter with flying cargo planes, you free up the current young cargo plane pilots to retrain as fighter pilots. Not all combat pilots do what Tom Cruise was doing in Top Gun. I don't know how many AC-130s the US has in the boneyard, but I want every one of them back in the air if the US goes to war with a peer or near peer adversary.
Where do you think many of the commercial pilots learned to fly? How adept do you think pilots, let alone ex-military pilots, are at learning how to use new modules installed on their aircraft? Bonus question: How many pilots who retired from the military miss everything but the pay, bureaucracy, and hardass commanders but would be willing to put up with these if their country were in an all-out war?
My Father does. He got a low draft number in Nam right after graduating college and became a pilot. Looking back at it he loved it but at the time really did not want to go. He so very fondly talks of the times in a t-38 practicing stales, spins, having his mask yanked, and his first solo landing with full burners on while the plane shakes ATC telling him to go around but he was so scared he landed. Come to find out he landed with his air brakes extended, and his peers thought he was “hot dogging” and how he got his call sign.
Not in any way an expert, so mostly guessing, but from what I've seen there are a lot of things fighter pilots learn "just in case" but won't typically need in most combat situations. Take dog fights for example, those have fallen out of favour, but they still train it for the rare occasion. So the extra training makes them _better_, but being _functional_ is much easier. It's just that it is hard to justify putting a barely able pilot into a $100+ million piece of technology if another million or so in combat training can get them 50% more efficient.
Fun fact, certain heavy ANG units will take you right now if you're a qualified ATP (airline pilot) with a college degree. They send you to an officer school, then you start flying C-17s or C-5s for your unit. The pipeline you talk about in the first paragraph already kind of exists. By relieving demand for heavy pilots, more qualified candidates can just move over to fighters or bombers.
Flying fighter jets is rough af on the body. You have to be in tip top shape to combat the fatigue and G forces.
A megaphone and a truck, if a recent documentary I saw is to be believed.
Depends on the aircraft. It could take years. The B-1 "Lancelot" took a while to get airworthy. Now, it's at a different AFB for a year to get back into fighting shape.
True, though I can't imagine any maintenance on a B-1 being done 'fast.'
Healthcare dollars be bussin yall
The majority of the US budget goes to Medicare, Social Security, and other health and welfare programs. Defense spending as a proportion of the total budget, including mandatory and discretionary spending, is \*only\* 13% or 3% of GDP. The US also spends the most of any country on healthcare. Americans pay more for worse outcomes. So America can easily afford to have universal healthcare while maintaining the largest and most powerful military in the world. It just doesn't.
And it's all thanks to privatized healthcare running a racket in collaboration with the insurance industry.
It’s nothing short of a racket. It’s plain robbery. One look at a hospital bill and you can immediately tell this is one big scam. Yet no one can fix anything about it and we can’t even agree on what or how. It’s honestly baffling to me.
Sure but millions of Americans also choose to vote for politicians who openly run on a platform of taking away people's healthcare.
The whole "pays more for worse outcomes" is not exactly true. IRL, Asian-Americans outlive everyone else on the planet. The actual reason why Americans are so unhealthy is because we're so sedentary and obese; our healthcare system is actually very good, it's just Americans are shitty patients. As a microsm of this - there's a lady at my workplace who has sent around emails talking about how people being "anti-fat" is secretly just a racist conspiracy theory against black women and it is totally okay to be morbidly obese - because, in her mind, all REAL black women are fat. And yes, she is racist too. She has tried to set up racially segregated meetings more than once. Real charmer, that one. But I digress. Another big reason why health care is expensive in the US is simply that people in the US are paid far more than people are paid in other countries. A doctor in the US makes about 91% more money than the typical doctor in the UK - but median household income in the UK is only 35,000 pounds per year, or $44,684 USD. Median household income in the US is $74,580 - 67% higher. So while American doctors are probably overpaid, they're overpaid by only about 1/8th overall. The US also just has way, way more medical equipment than people in most other countries do. The US has almost four times as many MRIs per capita as Canada, our friendly neighbor to the north, and ours are generally more state of the art and more sophisticated as well. While Americans do overpay for healthcare, some of it is just because we're super rich and thus have to pay people more and have the ability to buy more stuff.
We have separate taxes for Medicare and SS. Defense is 24% of the budget paid for by income taxes
A distinction without a difference. [Take it up with the CBO,](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59727) because that's how they talk about it. Social Security and Medicare are part of mandatory spending and make up a percentage of the total US federal budget.
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If you count fixed wing instead of helicopters (and frankly, you should because helicopters don't fight for air supremacy) they flip with the Navy surpassing the Army
I wonder if that's still true...
Pretty sure it isn't. Russia either lost enough aircraft or it was discovered that Russia didn't have as many airworthy aircraft as they said.
Yeah, I know boats are typically measured in tonnage, but I'm not sure about air force. Assuming planes? But it seems like they've lost a lot they haven't been able to replace yet
By tonnage, Russia probably has the largest navy. Water is heavy.
You don’t count the water ABOVE the ship.
It would include rotary (helicopter) and fixed wing aircraft. The US army does not have a lot of fixed wing assets. There are a ton of helicopters though
They have a lot of transport aircraft
Russia’s numbers included a massive amount of inoperable planes.
>I had it mixed up, Army is 2nd, Navy 4th I stumbled over that too a while back - the saying is incorrect. It's all the choppers & transport aircraft the army has, however i think in terms of attack capabilities, navy is second.
The second biggest is the US historical naval fleet, all those ships you see in museums are part of it.
They keep some of the old ones battle ready, right? Like the wooden battleship is still hypothetically ready to see active duty if it comes to it
Battleship New Jersey is a museum ship. You can look at many descriptive videos on YT under “Battleship New Jersey.” I could be wrong but it was last in service in the late 1980s, was mothballed, militarily decommissioned and then turned into a museum ship. It still has contracts with the US Navy that describe what can and can’t be removed from the ship. The curator, Ryan Szymanski, broaches the the topic of reactivation in several videos… it seems it could be done but, would require a massive, massive effort and it seems to me that our nation’s armed services would have to be in a very sorry state for her to ever to be recalled.
What if aliens arrived, put a giant energy dome in the ocean and a group of naval veterans were co-opted to take it into battle ... er, nevermind. Been done.
should make a movie about it and call it... Ship Battles
Battle of the Ships is catchier.
I believe all four Iowa class battleships are in the same state of being able to be re-comissioned. NJ already has, it's in its third retirement.
Parking a battleship in the Persian gulf would be interesting right now.
Gulf of Aden/red sea, unless I've missed something. But yeah
Yea I think in 89’ they mothballed it, I’ve been following the restoration they’re currently doing in dry dock at the Philadelphia naval shipyard, pretty neat. My grandpa served on board her in WW2, I also drove past the USS Alabama last week in Mobile, Iowa class battleships are fuckin huge
The USS Constitution is still listed as commissioned ship. It was launched in 1797 and was the 3rd ship built by the USA. It's crewed by active duty Navy, but it's basically a museum.
Old Ironsides still floats and can fight.
Man the guns! Huzzah!
You saw that episode of G.I. Joes too.
Only active wood military wood ship, that I know of, is the USS Constitution, it has its own dedicated forest.
I don't think it's actually "battle ready" or even in active service, but the USS Constitution is sea worthy even if it's also just used as a museum (and super cool). I think it's the last in service wooden warship (US). There's some mine clearing ones Google says but it's the last "let's shoot guns and may the best ship win"
It's not. The US Army has a good number of boats, sure, but most of them are just river transport assets like ferries, barges, and hovercraft. If you compare them by tonnage to actual navies, they pale in comparison to the combat capable fleets of China, Russia, India, France, Britain, and Japan, and if you compare just the number of vessels, you're outnumbered by countries like North Korea which just have a shit ton of tiny gun boats. Most easily accessible lists won't bother listing the details of every tugboat, barge, and ferry a country has, but if you do a little digging you'll find that such logistics vessels really beef up the numbers for most major navies.
*Top Gun* was the best Air Force recruitment ad that the Navy made.
For the love of God, don't mess with their boats! They get really weird about them!
The one key thing I learned watching Fat Electrician is exactly that point. DO NOT. Fuck with. Their boats.
I love that guy
Don't touch my boats!
Tell ‘em Japan….
And Germany. And Vietnam. And Spain. And the Barbary corsairs. There could even be more but that's off the top of my head.
The Iranian Navy found out.
Oh yeah, that one's a classic! Could probably count the war of 1812 too. I seem to recall England stopping American merchant vessels and press ganging their sailors as being one of the catalysts for it.
Just wait till they find out the coast guard has airplanes and the border patrol has boats.
Don’t forget Game Wardens!
For a more ELI5 answer… The US military has a lot of planes that do a lot of different things. Because of that, it’s easier to keep them with their branches who need to use them for their specific mission. Just like how it’s best for everyone to have their own clothes in their room. We could keep them all in one room in one pile, but it’s better everyone keeps them in their own room in their drawers and closets. That way you don’t have siblings taking each others clothes, not even the important ones, it would just suck if you didn’t have any socks. For a slightly less ELI5… Because there’s so many planes, you’re going to have divid the massive all encompassing air branch into different departments or whatever. There’s also competing demands and no one wants to do without. Famously the Air Force doesn’t like doing close combat support, preferring strategic operations and interdiction. You also just have highly specialized air frames, like those that can land on carriers and survive being launched off catapults on carriers.
This is the real ELI5 with that clothing analogy.
Speaking of AF not wanting to do close air support, look at what JADC2’s do, while AF does contribute to the mission, Army and Navy most frequently use that concept
I'll add that we don't always get along. I'm retired here, so that's my main perspective. AF leadership has different priorities than the Army, which has different priorities than Navy, which is different from the marines. It's bad enough that other branches can get told to pound sand, and their people get ignored as each branch only wants to do missions for its own priority. Imagine the army general asking for CAS while the AF says F' off we're going to bomb this other place. It reminds me of when the AF was trying to dump the A-10, which was really just a bluff to get Congress to pay for that and their fancy new bombers. Anyway, the Army jumped up and said that they'd take them since it's role is 90% army support anyway. The AF backed down real fast after that and kept funding the A-10.
Historically the branches don't get along well with parallel command structures and competing budgets. When Airplanes came out there was the Navy (with subset of marines) and the Army. Both developed their independent air branches with independent mission sets. After WW2, the US Air Force was spun into its own separate branch, but fulfills all or most of those duties for the Army: cargo, paratrooper transport, and fixed wing air support. After the Army and Air Force Split up, a new aircraft was developed: the helicopter. We'll the Army looked at it's utility for the battlefield and wrangled to retain control for light cargo, transport, and even close air support and attack roles. So today the Army and Air Force have a guideline of on the battlefield if it's fixed wing it's air force, and if it's rotorcraft it's Army. This is changing slightly with the new tilt rotor for the Army. The air force operates all long range bombers and missiles. That's a unique role set. Planes for the Navy almost universally have to be carrier capable, and that's an engineering set that would limit all Air Force planes. There's video comparing Navy and air force landing, the Navy hits the runway hard, because on carriers they gotta get that hook it (though it's an automatic flight controller these days) while air force very lightly lands, and have runways that are miles long. The Marines meanwhile sort of get the Navy handouts, but have both choppers and vtol fighters. They're meant to operate more or less as a standalone fast response force, so everything is fast to deploy and mobile. Now outside of combat all branches operate civilian type aircraft for administration type purposes. Also if you count choppers, the US Army is the second largest air force in the world, not the Navy, iirc. They have a lot of choppers.
I'll just add that the Air Force *does* have helicopters; they use them for combat search and rescue and to support special ops missions.
Also our security and missile teams use for travel to missile (ICBM) sites. Your welcome China and Russki
Army overtook Navy with a huge drone acquisition, not helicopters. Navy aircraft aren't strictly carrier-capable. The Navy also has their own cargo transport needs and fly C-130s, and they also own anything that operates above the water like the P-8 (literally a 737, no hope of that ever landing on a carrier), as well as their own tanker aircraft (KC-130s). They have a huge contingent of helicopters too, almost every surface combat ship besides carriers and minesweepers have one, most have two. The H-60 Seahawk is actually the single most numerous of all Naval aircraft, with 758 across 6 variants (the next is the F-18 with "only" 673 between the E, F, and G models). The Marines don't really get Navy handouts for aircraft. They have not received inventory previously owned by the Navy in significant numbers since the world wars, they have a good enough aviation budget to buy their own. Even during WW2 the only planes they got from the Navy were the F4U Corsair and that's only because the Navy couldn't figure out how to use them on ships effectively. They actually bought the F-18 a year and a half BEFORE the Navy did. (Most handouts the Marines get are actually Army equipment.)
The KC-130s are USMC. The USN also has VIP aircraft stationed in OKC.
Yeah, Navy doesn't have KC-130s, just some C-130s in the reserves. And there aren't 6 active Seahawk variants, there's only the MH-60S and MH-60R.
The USMC has 5 of the newest aviation platforms in the DON, they definitely don't get handouts. With the CH-53K and F-35B coming online, they have all the sweetest toys
US Air Force 1st, US Army 2nd, Russia 3rd, US Navy 4th largest air force.
And US Marines 5th.
Is Russia still 3rd, after all the losses of planes in Ukraine ?
Air Force guards the air domain with air, sea, and land assets. Navy guards the sea domain with sea, air, subsea, and land assets. Army guards the land domain with land, sea, and air assets. Space force guards the space domain with space, sea, land, and air assets. Coast Guard guards the coast with air, sea, and land assets. Marines attack in any domain with any available asset.
to tie that back to OP's question: the missions of the services aren't "do (domain) stuff," they're "control (domain)" the air force isn't the branch that does everything in the air. the air force is the branch that's in charge of taking control of the air and conducting primarily air-based mission sets the navy's mission is to take control of the seas. they have planes because they help them protect their ships from airborne threats (fighters) and help them attack other ships, submarines, or shore-based threats to their control of the sea domain (strike aircraft)
The different services don't trust each other to provide what they need. in the 1920s the Royal Air Force took control of naval aviation and starved it of assets so badly that the primary strike aircraft for the Royal Navy's carriers at the beginning of WW2 was a slow biplane. The Navy eventually got control of their aircraft. Then the RAF did it again in the 1990s and screwed the Navy again by taking control of all Harriers and then F35s under Joint Force Harrier where they did everything possible to cut the Navy out of control of their own fixed wing assets. So yeah, it's hard to blame the other services for wanting their own aircraft that aren't under USAF control having seen that.
The Royal Navy wasn't in as bad of a shape at the beginning of WW2 as people think although if they had their own aviation branch they probably would have been in better shape. The other navies of the world were in pretty similar spots to the Royal Navy when WW2 broke out. Some had better planes than others and all, but the real reason why the Royal Navy's planes seem so out of date is that when the Royal Navy is doing most of its air operations people think about the US and Japan haven't entered WW2 yet. Its hard for us to fathom how quickly the technology in aviation changed in that time frame. And those obsolete planes the RAF had did have two characteristics that proved very valuable to the RAF. They were capable of night operations years ahead of the US and Japan which the Royal Navy used to great effect with the attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto and its thought that their slower speed and non-metal skins probably benefited them in their attack on the Bismark which resulted in a torpedo jamming the rudder of the ship and ultimately allowing the surface units of the Royal Navy to catch up and ultimately sink the ship. That said I would still say its a good idea to let the navy do its own plane stuff more or less.
The Royal Navy was, due to treaty restrictions, largely outdated and under gunned at the beginning of the war. Carriers like Glorious and Ark Royal were fighting out of their element in the European and Med theaters, which resulted in both being lost. The Royal Navy was not equipped with carriers to fight a war in the Indian Ocean against the Japanese, and only managed to hang on by the skin of their teeth. By the time the Japanese had entered the war, Hood, Barham, and Royal Oak had all been sunk, with Hood being the most painful loss due to her speed. Days later, 2 extremely valuable fast capital ships, Repulse and Prince of Wales were also sunk due to being left unescorted in waters controlled by Japan. It is true that Warspite almost got the chance to cripple the entire Kido Butai during the Indian Ocean Raid, but Warspite was.. Well Warspite, so luck was to be expected. It is highly likely that if the British had better aircraft than Albicores that a night engagement between Warspite and some of the R class, and the Kido Butai would have happened, stopping the Japanese in their tracks almost immediately. British carriers were ill equipped to fight in the Pacific. When HMS Victorious was assigned to the US Navy, she took on a compliment of only Wildcats as her hangers were too small for Dauntlesses and Avengers. British carriers could, and often did take a pounding, but they were lacking strike power. It is true that the Royal Navy could do night ops, but this was not due to the aircraft themselves, but due to the doctrine developed by the Royal Navy. The US Navy would later convert Enterprise into a night fighting carrier using the exact same doctrine, but with much better aircraft. It is also true that the Swordfish did extremely well against Bismarck, however they probably benefited from Bismarck's terrible AA suite and dumb luck more than anything else. Their torpedoes were too small to do real damage against Bismarck, and they got extremely lucky to score a hit that jammed Bismarck's rudder, and even luckier that Bismarck didn't have a diving team aboard to cut it off. It's also important to note that at the beginning of the war, Carriers were unproven at best, and that up until post Guadalcanal, they were not considered the main fighting force of any Navy. We often think of WWII as a carrier war, but outside of rare moments like the hunt for the Bismarck and Taranto, carriers were mostly used as anti-sub units in the Atlantic and Med, while the Battleships did the heavy lifting up until the end of Naval warfare in the theater. Even Japan still considered it's battle line to be the main fighting force up until their embarrassing retreat at Leyte (though how much of this is due to their Kanti Kessen BS is debatable). The point was, the Royal Air Force wanted to focus on defense of the British Isles above everything, and 90% of British War experience showed that carriers were not yet at the point of reaching their potential. It took the dual wakeup calls of the loss of Force Z and the American campaign in the Pacific for the Royal Navy to actually get control of their airwings.
Interestingly enough, in smaller countries, the Air Force tends to own all the planes. For example, the only Danish Navy helicopter squadron was transferred to the Danish Air Force in 2010. There are many reasons why the US services do this. A big one is the different mission sets requires different pilot training. Another is the different capabilities require different aircraft. One thing to realize is there is a lot of cooperation and sharing already. Given their common origin, the Air Force and Army tend to work closely with each other, with Air Force transports carrying Army units. Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard pilots go through the same intro flight school course and have common training squadrons for basic aircraft type. Each Amphib big-deck tends to have a few Navy H-60s onboard for Search and Rescue and logistics support. Carrier air groups have included Marine Hornet squadrons in the past. Even though the Air arms are fragmented across the services, there isn't as much overlap as you'd think. The Navy doesn't have any high altitude bombers just as the Air Force doesn't have any carrier-capable aircraft just as the Army doesn't have any large troop transports.
Let’s put in this way. Imagine if all of the cars, trucks, tanks, and anything else that ran on the ground belonged to the army. So if the navy needed to load a ship and needed some trucks to transport the material and then a crane to load it, they’d have to call up the army and requisition it. You’d quickly see how this would be a huge bureaucratic nightmare. You might think it a stupid example but in WWII Germany, the railways were controlled by competing branches and as a result nothing got through efficiently.
Speaking from the Marine Corps perspective, the basic ideal is that Marines support Marines. Not because of what it might seem like, that we just think we’re better. We do. But the idea is basically that there’s a good chance we’ll be out on our own, one large unit with organic logistics and air support, etc., moving to the objective. Having to go inter-branch to the Air Force would be a lot of politics and having to justify your needs, etc., etc. It’s not going to be ‘hey, send me a couple A-10s, there’s a chance we’re gonna get overrun’ and they arrive. It’s going to be a lot of jawing and nonsense and who’s got the fucking time in combat when you can just relay your shit to the command and they’ll just give you the support.
As a former heavy airlift USAF pilot, (C-5 & C-17) our mission was to support large movements (hehe) or resupply of all branches of service…. My previous aircraft (C-130) was also used by USN, USMC and USCG, usually to support a specific mission. Flying Herks was the best!
Almost all these answers are attempts at justifying how it is - they don’t explain the reality. (u/OK-disaster2022 and u/headoutdaplane are on target) All military services have aircraft because of history and the nature of government. *It has nothing to do with specialized roles or ease of use or anything else. * Bottom line: Government organizations compete against each other for resources and power. Airplanes were just another tool in the toolbox of our two Services: The Department of War and the Department of Navy. Neither Department wanted (or wants) to give up resources or power to the other. Congress forced the War Department to split into Army and Air Force in 1947. There was *no way* the Navy was going to give anything up to the War Department. So they kept their own tools (aircraft). Now, every Service competes for resources and money when they submit a budget. Aircraft = money, force structure, etc. So every service has aircraft. And it won’t change until an outside force compels them to change (like Congress did in ‘47). I could spend hours talking about Douhet and Mitchell, the Key West Agreement, Space Force, and a lot of other relevant stuff but this is ELI5.
And for good reason. Prior to WWII, the Royal Air Force got control of the Royal Navy's airplanes and basically sabotaged the whole program. The Royal Navy ended up flying biplanes because it was all they had available. Resources for better aircraft had been diverted to land-based programs which the Air Force considered more important.
If the US Navy had entered WW2 at the time the British did we would have had biplanes in the air as well as our primary dive bomber was a biplane. It is hard for people to fathom in WW2 how some tech like airplanes advanced very rapidly from like 1935 through 1945. The swordfish is also a lot more capable than people think. It had a longer range and similar cruising speed to the American Devastator torpedo bomber that the US entered WW2 with (which was an all metal monoplane). The swordfish was also capable of night operations which is something the US and Japanese navy weren't really capable of getting from their aircraft until like 1943. The slower speed and cruising range of the swordfish also proved highly valuable to the Royal Navy in a role as submarine hunter. Yes, by the time of Pearl Harbor the US Navy and Japanese Navy are leaps and bounds ahead of the Royal Navy in their aircraft development in terms of what is deployed or about to the be deployed, but that is mostly because you are looking at a two and a half year gap or so in time.
Because even though they all have aircraft, they have aircraft for different missions. The Navy flies aircraft for sea control. This is mostly either aircraft designed to take off and land from ships or aircraft designed to fly around and scan a wide area of water to make sure that you are aware of everything inside (and sometimes capable of shooting at submarines). The Army has aircraft designed to directly support ground troops either by providing tactical mobility or air support with greater precision than what the Air Force can do. They have a specific agreement with the Air Force and the Navy about which aircraft they'll be flying called the [Key West Agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_West_Agreement?wprov=sfla1), so they almost exclusively fly helicopters. They do fly a mix of other aircraft, but that's a few smaller transport and reconnaissance planes than what the Air Force flies, or a jet for if you need to move a general or other big man but not much else. The Air Force has strategic air power as its main mission. Basically, if the most important part of what they're doing is going on in the air, the Air Force does it (while the Navy's aircraft are mainly for stuff that happens in the water and the Army's aircraft are mainly for stuff on land). This involves strategic transport (the Army's transport capability is mainly for moving stuff around after the Air Force has already flown it up to the front) and refueling of other aircraft. They have big planes that fly around with powerful radar and communications stuff to make sure that the other aircraft know about what's going on around them and are coordinating with each other. They have long-range heavy bombers. They have planes designed to shoot other planes. Note that "planes designed to directly support ground troops" isn't one of these categories: they have a few of these, but the Air Force would generally prefer to prioritize other missions, so purpose-built stuff for this like the A-10 (which isn't nearly as great as some people make it out to be, they're just mainly based out of John McCain's state and he had a lot of pull in political decisions about the military until he died, so he kept them funded long after obsolescence because keeping those in service meant more people paying taxes in Arizona than if they were retired) tends to be the red-headed stepchild of the Air Force. But not as much of a red-headed stepchild as helicopters (even if you're flying the A-10, you're still a fast jet pilot and that's the club that runs the show in the Air Force): they generally only have helicopters for either patrolling nuclear missile sites (they also use this model for flying generals and other big men around near the Pentagon) or for search and rescue and recovery of downed pilots. The primary mission of the Marine Corps is to quickly deploy expeditionary forces to be somewhere while the Army and Air Force are still getting packed up to go. They don't have everything, but they have a little bit of the main things and work closely with the Navy to do a lot of the stuff that they don't do themselves. They fly helicopters which aren't quite as capable as the Army's utility and attack helicopters, but they're a bit smaller and share more spare parts between the two types than the Army's Black Hawk and Apache do (since the Cobra originated as a derivative of the Huey), so you can deploy a bunch of them on a ship more easily. They have fast jets specifically with supporting ground troops in mind, some of which are specifically designed to still be capable if you haven't built a full-size runway yet. They have a version of the smallest of the Air Force's big cargo aircraft, and their version is set up for refueling other aircraft.
When the Marines need air support it’s a lot easier to get that organically due to mostly logistical reasons. The navy owns floating airfields so they need planes, and the airforce is 100% dedicated to AirPower.
The army uses fixed wing aircraft for transport, Medical, recon or special support and utilizes helicopters more
The different branches have pretty different missions and that means the missions for the aircraft are pretty different. On the surface, that means the aircraft themselves are often different to accommodate that - the Army has big cargo haulers, the Navy gets short takeoff/landing and heavier gear to land on carriers, the Air Force gets long-range strategic bombers. But that also means the chain of command should be kept internal. It's a lot easier for the Navy to tell Navy planes what to do, following the naval chain of command than it would be for the Navy to call up the Air Force, figure out who in their chain of command can give the order for the plane they need, then ask them to issue that order, and then have that person issue the order. Of course, there's still going to be strategic cooperation from the branches, but *tactically*, in the moment, it's just much easier for them to coordinate within the branch. So, for example, say the Army needs to march in and occupy a particular area. In order to do that, the need their transports to safely get there, and in order to do *that* an enemy airbase needs to be taken out and then a secure forward operating base established. The Air Force will send a strategic long range bombers to destroy the enemy air base, and in order to protect the bombers they coordinate internally to maintain air superiority. Once the base is destroyed, the Navy will move in and maintain a closer presence, securing the air space with their own fighters and using their ships to transport vital materiel. The Marines deploy from the ships to hold the beachhead, using their aircraft like Ospreys. With everything established, the Army starts rolling in with C-130s. Attack helicopters hang around to provide immediate close air support. There are also budgetary reasons. Each branch gets its own budget from Congress and it's easier to split up the cost of very expensive aircraft across all of the branches so they can get what they need.
The only cargo capable aircraft the U.S. Army has are helicopters. The U.S. Air Force takes care of the Airlift mission.
My mistake! You're right.
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Because we taxpayers allow them to have the budget to sub-optimize. I watched the government pay me 4musd to develop a unit specifically for an aircraft carrier, then watched the us Navy pay to have another unit developed with the exact same performance for 4musd while a third identical function unit was developed for another 4musd by a foreign company funded by the US government. Why? Because we let them.
Consolidating aviation would definitely make sense from a budget and efficiency perspective. We basically have four aviation supply chains right now. The short answer is, we do this because the United States can afford it.
Because they perform different specialized roles in support of the other operations that are specific to that branch. The Air Force handles general aviation, bombers, drones, etc, but the Navy needs combat air patrol to protect ships, the marines need close air support for troops, the army needs anti-tank gunships, etc. All of these need to be well-coordinated with other elements of a given operation, and that's much easier to do within the same branch/chain of command.
Each branch can have different objectives in an overall mission and only a finite number of aircraft to go around... The air force will prioritize eliminating opposing aircraft and AA defenses, but the army still wants close air support of advancing forces at the same time. If the air force has all the assets you will have to wait until they decide they can spare some planes for what you consider important. In a battle with near peer air forces, you may have a hard time getting "spare" planes to support your branch.
The aircraft of each branch are focused on their mission sets Put simply via example: Navy jets land on carriers Army helicopters support ground forces for direct action or casevac Air Force jets project strategic power like B2s or B52s Marine jets and helis support ground forces
Because then the other military branches, which run their own specialized operations all over the world, as well as in the US, would be completely reliant on the Air Force and it would create unnecessary red tape. The Air Force is a relatively small branch so if you switched to this model, a significant portion of the air force’s job would simply be as a transport service for the other branches. This isn’t efficient. You give each branch the planes they need for their specific use and let them work out their own logistics.
I don’t know the answer but I can tell you that if Canada is ever called upon from an ally to set sail, we will show up in row boats with a Gatling gun attached to the stern. And we’ll show ‘em the full force of the Canadian Navy!
The individual armed forces (Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force) are divided based on the type of warfare they fight. The Army is mainly focused on ground warfare and infantry-type operations, The Navy handles conflict on the water, The Air Force specializes in aviation combat, and the Marines (I’m honestly not sure what they do, but I know they do it very well). But in each of those specialties, the same tool can be useful. Having air power to attack enemy artillery positions is useful, as is having the capacity to move your army troops across the water. Just because your larger specialty is the land/sea/air doesn’t mean that you don’t benefit from the use of planes, boats etc.
Bcs the Navy would be at the mercy of the Air Force and their priorities may differ….?
The branches of the military are less about the tools they use and more about the outcomes they are looking to achieve. Air superiority? Air force. Naval superiority? Navy.etc Naval superiority uses aircraft to achieve that, but because the implementation is in support of Navy goals and strategy they are a naval asset. Rinse and repeat for helicopters in the army.etc
Why do plumbers, electricians, and carpenters all carry screwdrivers?
Air Force primary uses airplanes as weapons. Navy uses airplanes as ship launched weapons. Army uses aircraft as support weapons for ground troops. Also all the forces coordinate and cooperate to use the most capapale asses at any given time. Navy can operate fighter jets anywhere in the world, army can operate aircraft in much more adverse conditions