Aircraft Carrier Not Required
T-45 Goshawk
Carrier Qualifications Axed From Graduation Requirements For New Navy Fighter Pilots
The change in carrier qualification requirements is a huge watershed moment that has ramifications for the Navy’s future jet trainer plans.
Joseph Trevithick
Individuals training to become U.S. Navy tactical jet pilots are no longer required to take off and land from aircraft carriers before being winged as Naval Aviators. This is a huge change in training requirements and has important ramifications for the service’s plans to replace its current carrier-capable T-45 Goshawk jet trainers.
Our colleagues at Task & Purpose first reported the elimination of carrier landing qualifications from the graduation requirements for the Tactical Air (Strike) aviator training pipeline earlier today. This pipeline currently produces new pilots to fly the Navy’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and F-35C
fighters, as well as EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft.“The final strike carrier landing qualification occurred in March of 2025,” a Navy official told Task & Purpose. “Students in the strike pipeline, those training to fly F/A-18s, F-35s, and EA-18Gs, are no longer required to qualify by landing on a carrier prior to graduation.”
Naval aviators who come out of the Tactical Air pipeline will now conduct their first carrier qualifications when they reach a Fleet Replacement Squadron (FRS). These units provide initial training on the specific type of tactical jet that those individuals have been assigned to fly.
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“Carrier qualification is more than catching the wire. It is the exposure to the carrier environment and how an individual deals with it,” an experienced U.S. Navy strike fighter pilot told TWZ back in 2020. “The pattern, the communications, the nuance, the stress. The ability to master this is one of our competitive advantages.”
The next jet trainer the Navy has in mind isn’t even capable of practice carrier operations on land-based airfields. Big Navy is hanging its hat on virtual and simulation for initial training, then relying on the FRS to pick up the slack on actual carrier ops. Standing by for Mick’s opinion, but I have a pretty good idea what it’ll be.
Category: Big Navy, Good Idea Fairy
1) Learn just as well in a simulator
2) No boots on the ground needed, air power will kill all the defenders
3) Humint is unneeded if our SIGINT is good
etc. etc.
1) The check’s in the mail
2) It’s only a cold sore
“I’ll pull out.”
Just the head.
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Naval aviator. Having said that, this seems like an incredibly bad idea. Learning after you reach the fleet seems way too late. Kinda like using the Daytona 500 for driver’s ed.
Yeah, the good idea fairy didn’t help the Navy on this one.
*did
Task & Purpose hasn’t been the best source for military news/analysis. It sounds like a bad idea, but (having never been a Naval aviator, myself not having any insight into the more fabulous service) I imagine there is a good deal more to the story.
I could very likely be wrong in that assumption.
USAF isn’t teaching the newbies how to do aerial refueling until they get to their first duty station. Killed one kid already, and if the unit has to deploy before everybody’s trained, well that’s just a pity, innit?
US Army today debuted their new machine gun trainer.
Dubbed by troops “the two by four”, training commences this weekend…
Where’s that giant fly swatter? I see a large Good Idea Fairy that needs to be squashed.
There will be deaths, loss of expensive equipment, and recriminations (oops!) over this. Unfortunately, the ones Large, in Charge, and Responsible for this will NOT be held responsible after the fact.
Where’s that giant fly swatter? I see a large Good Idea Fairy that needs to be squashed.
There will be deaths, loss of expensive equipment, and recriminations (oops! my bad. heehee) over this. Unfortunately, the ones Large, in Charge, and Responsible for this will NOT be held responsible after the fact.
Simulation Training was good enough for Iron Eagles I-IV no reason to think it wouldn’t work in real life.
Sweet Jebus what a horrible idea!! Part of doing it before you get to your type model series aircraft is to see if you can hack it. If not, off to a P-8 or Helicopters.
We had a kid in the RAG who was great catching wires during the day. At night he became the Boltergeist. We could pick him out in the stack at night because he was not steady. When he did land he landed hard! He got a second chance because daddy was a bigwig. Didn’t help and he washed out to Helos.
Blaming the good idea fairy is just a columniation. Not even the GIF is that stupid.
Hahaha! What idiots. If I ever saw a decision that made a service less combat capable, this is it. Might as well strike “Naval Aviator ” from the vocabulary and replace it with “pilot.”
And take away their mirrored aviator glasses. They won’t be needing them any longer.
And that 12 pound watch…
I’m gonna just drop this here even though we’re a few days late and a dollar short
So do Naval Aviators (or, as the late great Lex would say, “Nasal Radiators) learn to draw sky penises (penii?) before or after they hit the fleet?