Naval aviation history and operations

Future of Naval Aviation

In barely a century, military aviation technology developed tremendously. In its infancy, World War I reconnaissance pilots gradually became fighter pilots by taking pistols into the air to shoot at enemy reconnaissance pilots. By the end of the war, fighter aircraft were capable of speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour and boasted rapid fire machine guns firing through the propeller blades, and the world's first bombers demonstrated the tremendous military potential of strategic bombing. At the outbreak of World War II, modern navies projected their power across vast oceanic distances, during the battle between Japan and the United States for the Pacific was decided by naval airpower rather than battle ships.

Twenty-five years later, jet-powered aircraft exceeded twice the speed of sound, tracked multiple targets automatically, and enabled pilots to fire rockets at one another from distances far beyond visual recognition. Ironically, by the turn of the 21st century, the tremendous advances in military aviation has reached almost full circle, again changing its fundamental nature so much that most analysts predict that major naval battles will not emphasize manned aircraft very much longer.

Discussion

By the end of World War I, both the United States Navy and Britain's Royal Navy had commissioned their first dedicated aircraft carriers after having experimented during the final years of the war with various methods of launching and recapturing aircraft directly from ships at sea (Jackson, 2003; Crosby, 2007). During World War II, the war in the Pacific signalled the end of the reign of the battleship that had been the principal manifestation and symbol of national military strength since the age of nation states, capital ships, and the introduction of the Dreadnoughts by Britain shortly after the turn of the 20th century. Since then, the aircraft carrier has remained the primary means of projecting military power beyond American shores, serving admirably in every war (both "hot" and "cold"), and continuing today (Jackson, 2002; Jackson, 2003).

However, already the extensive deployment of U.S. military aircraft drones with deadly accurate offensive capabilities such as those currently involved in major operations in the Middle East strongly suggest that the next generation of military aircraft will no longer be piloted by humans on board (Crosby, 2007; Elgin, 2009). That is mainly because aircraft are much more expendable than pilots and combat operations can now be flown remotely by pilots stationed thousands of miles away from hostile fronts. Analysts predict that within the next decade or two, nations without the resources to compete with the U.S. In the development of sophisticated piloted naval aircraft will be able to launch hundreds of inexpensive drones without regard for how many are lost in combat (Crosby, 2007; Elgin, 2009). Large numbers of unmanned drones with offensive and "suicidal" capabilities could easily overwhelm even the most sophisticated multiple hostile aircraft tracking abilities of the U.S. Navy's manned air superiority aircraft (Crosby, 2007).