Carrier Aviation Enters a New Era as the Navy Prepares for Distributed Maritime Operations

The United States Navy is undertaking its most significant transformation of carrier aviation doctrine since the introduction of jet aircraft seven decades ago. Distributed Maritime Operations, the service’s emerging warfighting concept, fundamentally reimagines how aircraft carriers and their air wings will fight in an era of long-range precision weapons and contested electromagnetic environments.

For generations, the carrier strike group operated as a concentrated force, with escorts and aircraft providing layered defense while strike aircraft projected power ashore. This approach exploited American advantages in maritime domain awareness and precision strike while presenting adversaries with a daunting defensive challenge.

Today’s threat environment has changed the calculus. Peer adversaries have developed long-range anti-ship missiles, advanced submarines, and sophisticated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that can locate and target carrier formations at unprecedented ranges. The traditional carrier strike group operating concept must evolve or face growing risk in contested waters.

Distributed Maritime Operations Concept

DMO envisions a Navy that fights as a distributed force, with ships and aircraft spread across vast ocean areas while maintaining the networked connectivity to concentrate effects at decisive points. Rather than massing physical platforms, the Navy will mass weapons and information across extended battlespace.

For carrier aviation, this transformation has profound implications. Air wings must operate at greater ranges from their ships, striking targets while their carriers remain outside adversary weapons engagement zones. Aircraft must survive and operate in environments where communications may be degraded and support limited.

“The era of the carrier operating with impunity in any water on Earth is ending,” acknowledged Admiral Samuel Paparo, Commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet. “We are adapting our tactics, training, and force structure to maintain the decisive advantage carrier aviation provides.”

Extended Range Strike

The MQ-25 Stingray unmanned tanker addresses carrier aviation’s range challenge directly. By refueling strike aircraft in flight, the Stingray can extend the combat radius of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and F-35C Lightning II fighters by hundreds of miles, allowing carriers to project power while remaining farther from shore-based threats.

The Navy is also developing longer-range weapons that multiply aircraft effectiveness. The AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile and its successors will enable strikes against surface targets at distances that exceed current capabilities, while new variants of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile family provide similar reach against land targets.

These weapons require aircraft with sensors and data links capable of targeting at extended ranges. The F-35C’s sensor suite and networking capabilities make it the centerpiece of future air wing strike packages, able to find, fix, and engage targets that legacy aircraft could not independently acquire.

Air Wing Composition Changes

The carrier air wing is undergoing compositional changes that reflect DMO requirements. The addition of MQ-25 detachments is just the beginning. The Navy is studying unmanned strike and reconnaissance platforms that could augment manned aircraft, extending air wing reach while managing risk to pilots.

The Collaborative Combat Aircraft concepts being developed for the Air Force have direct naval applications. Ship-launched autonomous aircraft could precede manned strike packages, identifying threats and saturating defenses before pilots enter the battlespace. These platforms could also provide persistent surveillance that allows carriers to maintain awareness of adversary activities across extended areas.

Electronic warfare capabilities are receiving significant investment. The EA-18G Growler fleet is being upgraded with new jamming pods and techniques designed for peer adversary communications and radar systems. Future unmanned platforms may assume portions of the electronic warfare mission, freeing Growlers for other tasks.

Training and Tactics Evolution

Naval aviators are training for scenarios their predecessors never imagined. Exercises now emphasize operations with degraded communications, forcing pilots to execute pre-briefed missions when real-time coordination with carrier battle managers becomes impossible.

Night and adverse weather operations receive renewed emphasis, exploiting conditions that complicate adversary targeting while testing pilot skills in demanding environments. The days of fair-weather carrier operations are giving way to all-conditions proficiency requirements.

Joint integration has become critical. Navy and Air Force aircraft will fight together in any major conflict, requiring interoperability in communications, tactics, and procedures. The F-35’s common data link provides a foundation, but human and organizational integration requires constant exercise.

Challenges and Uncertainties

Transformation on this scale presents significant challenges. The fleet must maintain readiness for today’s missions while developing capabilities for future fights. Budgetary pressures force difficult tradeoffs between procurement of new platforms and sustainment of existing forces.

Personnel policies must evolve to recruit and retain the technically skilled sailors and aviators DMO demands. Operating sophisticated unmanned systems, maintaining complex weapons, and conducting distributed operations in contested environments require expertise that competes with civilian sector opportunities.

Despite challenges, the Navy is committed to evolving carrier aviation for the distributed maritime future. The aircraft carrier remains the most flexible and powerful military instrument available to national leadership. Ensuring that capability endures requires continuous adaptation to emerging threats and technologies.

The carrier air wing of 2030 will look different from today’s, and the one flying in 2040 different still. What will remain constant is the American commitment to projecting power from the sea, maintaining maritime superiority that underpins global security and commerce. Distributed Maritime Operations represents not an abandonment of carrier aviation but its evolution for a new era of competition.