Posted on 07/19/2025 11:57:47 AM PDT by know.your.why
Key Points and Summary – The Trump administration has officially confirmed it is prioritizing the U.S. Air Force’s F-47 sixth-generation fighter over the Navy’s F/A-XX program, creating a major rift between the White House and naval leadership.
-In a formal statement, the Office of Management and Budget cited “industrial base concerns” about running two major stealth fighter programs at once and opposed a congressional effort to add nearly $1 billion in funding for the Navy’s jet.
-The decision effectively puts the F/A-XX on ice, jeopardizing the future of the carrier air wing and drawing protests from Navy officials.
As ex-Navy, I am curious what the role of carrier based aviation is in the defense of the Pacific Island chain where long range attack/bomber aircraft will be needed. I don’t know the answer. Carriers have always been vulnerable to peer adversaries. They sure were in WWII.
Last I knew the Navy’s primary air defense fighter was the F/A-18.
USAF has gone beyond that to the F-35 and both F-22 and F-35s are active in the ANG.
Why were the F-22 and/or the F-35 never configured for carrier duty?
Are the ‘stealth’ frames too light for carrier ops?
Carriers have always been vulnerable to peer adversaries
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The Japanese are not a threat any longer - the Chinese PLAN is not a peer. The Russians have only a few older ships in their Northern fleet - not a peer.
From what I've read, modern carriers are being updated with the latest tech/missiles for ground to air defense, and torpedo defense. I also read about the first ship based laser hitting its target. That and supersonic anti-missiles and Drone mass production will keep the oceans lanes free and our carriers safer. I'm curious what our new Space Force is working on.
Re: stealth planes and aircraft carriers. The F-35 can launch vertically.
I suspect that the F-47 doesn't have folding wings, which is needed on a carrier. That could be why the Navy has a problem with that generation fighter and their F/A-XX being defunded. Just my humble flight deck swabbie opinion.
The F35C is the carrier configuration. Additionally, The F35B (STOVL) is the USMC version which also operates aboard ships.
>Why were the F-22 and/or the F-35 never configured for carrier duty?
The Air Force operates the F-35A.
The Marines operate the STOL variant, the F-35B. A relative is a pilot for that.
The Navy operates the carrier variant, the F-35C.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II
Interesting. Thank you for that info.
I am left wondering WHY the Navy wants to pursue an entirely different fighter than the Air Force simultaneously.
👍
Thank you.
Because inter-service rivalry is a thing, and has been for a long, long time.
And truthfully, a carrier fighter probably wants to be a completely different aircraft from a land-based fighter. I am still amazed the Navy and the Air Force managed to coexist operating the F-4 so well.
With the drones, subsurface, surface, and aerial, becoming this generations aircraft carriers (versus WWI/WWII battleships), the answer is fairly obvious.
Subsurface UAV’s that can surface, launch 100, 250 drones or missiles, and then drop back down, go to a local base and reload/rearm.
Carriers, IMHO, will be goners within 30 minutes of a peer level global war. We have only used them to beast up second and third rate enemies.
The reason the F-47 was selected is because it is not vaporware. It exists already.
“fighters”, attack aircraft, multirole, wild weasles? I imagine naval air/Marines USAF have different needs and priorities. How did the “fa”-18 do in multirole? (I am a few decades from good info)
Perhaps for open ocean ops, but open ocean has now been pushed out to 100km to 1000mi from the Chinese Mainland and offshore bases in the South China Sea. That is beyond easy carrier based aircraft range. Chinese ISR and development of ground launched and air launched cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles as well as a range of very low yield nukes put our traditional conops at risk.
Thus the shift to land based long range attack for maritime ops.
The most important reason are practical ones and the need to effectively utilize increasingly scarce American assets.
The recent Middle East experience shows that the Navy has neglected the development of adequate force protection assets to allow an aircraft carrier task groups to operate effectively at close range to a peer enemy like China.
The stand off distances that carriers need to operate safely against the Chinese maritime strike capability are comparable to land based Air Force options and it's hard to fit the optimum mix of 6th Gen aircraft and weapons systems onto an aircraft carrier.
Plus sophisticated 6th Gen stealth fighters are really not that compatible with a ship board, aircraft carrier operating environment. Air Force stealth aircraft get treated like pampered pink poodles at a Best in Show competition while Navy carrier planes get treated like junk yard dogs.
There are enough challenges making 6th Gen stealth technology work as required in the pink poodle environment so a bit of breathing room to mature the technologies enough to harden them to operate in the Navy junk yard dog operating environment makes a lot of sense.
It's going to take a while for the Navy to design and build new ships to rebuild it's carrier protection capability and to develop 6th Gen stealth tech that is robust and environmentally hardened enough to survive the aircraft carrier marine environment.
As it is right now, the Navy is just getting up to speed operating 5th Gen F35s in the carrier environment. and F-35s are adequate for the Navy's current needs.
Aside from the practical issues of fielding a 6th Gen stealth fighter there is another important factor.
The Chinese have geared an extraordinary amount of their military weapons development to optimize it towards fighting the US Navy and it's aircraft carriers in the South China Sea. .
It's generally a bad idea to fight the battle that your enemy has prepared to fight and wants you to fight.
The strategy that the Trump Team seem to be gravitating towards is to develop our advanced weapons systems to fight the kind of war we want to fight and to fight it on on our terms in a way that the Chinese have not prepared themselves to fight.
US Carriers will certainly play a vital role in any near future conflict but they will do so in a way that optimizes the deterrence and leathality of the US military.
One of the more significant changes that may be coming on the horizon is the closer integration of the Naval Air capabilities with Air Force capabilities to leverage their respective strengths and work around each others limitations.
Great points. The other problem of course is that the countries we want to keep SLOCs open for are well inside the minimum carrier safe operating radius and so we need other options.
Another problem is that as near as I can tell Air Force, and Army are getting on board with rapid capability development and other things going on in defense acquisition reform, the Marines are headed that way, Space Force is young and have always been there [SPACEX is their preferred provider]. But my belove Navy is set in its ways. There are a lot of reasons why tradition matters. The sea is a hard taskmaster and fighting at sea is 10% of the battle the other 90% just being surviving and coping.
If you believe the Chinese multi-billion dollar propaganda machine designed to convince everyone that the Chinese military is good at something besides parades, while the rocket troops are busy draining rocket fuel to heat their tea.
China could not defeat a handful of Indian mountain troops, could not defeat the Vietnamese twice, and suddenly they are a military power to be feared by one and all?
OK.
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