Or maybe that’s a misconception on my part. But it seems that the fighter pilots you hear about are usually aircraft carrier based, and so they’re members of the U.S. Navy. If this country wants to position itself for attacks, say, in the Middle East, it sends an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Sea and they send out the airplanes. So, assuming that the above is not too far off the mark, when would the Air Force fight? Would that not happen until and unless we experienced a full-scale military invasion on American soil?
And, can Air Force fighter pilots be stationed on carriers, or be transfered over to the Navy if they’re needed there?
When I was in 20 years ago(!) the USAF fighter pilot headcount outnumbered the Navy + Marines about 4 to 1. The total USAF pilot headcount outnumbered the Navy + Marines about 8 to 1.
Solid numbers are getting harder to find due to the Pentagon clamping down on useful info during a war, but the USAF has about 6000 aircraft today, the Navy far less. There has not been a material change in the relative sizes of the two branches since I was in.
As others mentioned, there are some USAf pilots operating with the Navy off cariers, but the numbers are tiny, like a dozen total at any time. It’s a special program for special people to get cross-service experience early in their golden career; it isn’t some kind of force augmentation whose purpose is to contribute USAF manpower to an understaffed USN.
As to news, the reality is the USAF is delivering about 80% of the ordnance dropped in Iraq & Afghanistan. About 80% of the US pilots flying in any role over there are USAF. The Navy shows up with the news guys, grabs the spotlight, then leaves the real work to the USAF. It was ever thus.
LSLGuy covered it quite nicely (aside from the rhetoric… hehe).
Another factor to take into account is that a Carrier Group is designed, in part, to project power. In a place where we may not have an airbase handy, the odds are good we can get a carrier group in place to do sorties off of before we can secure an airbase. The Navy will often be the first hitters, while the USAF is getting their stuff together to take over the bulk of the airwar.
Also note that while the Navy/Marines have fighter craft, for heavy duty strikes, the USAF and their medium and heavy bombers are still the gold standard.
While the Navy can project power anywhere in the world, the Air Force is still doing the heavy lifting. The Air Force hosts the entire B-52 fleet which is the best strategic long-range bomber in the world as they are nuclear capable. The B-52 can fly from the U.S. mainland to somewhere like Irag, deliver a devastating blow and then return home without stopping. The Air Force also controls NORAD which monitors nuclear and other significant threats to the U.S. and Canada every single second of every day. NORAD is the organization that would launch ICBM’s in the event of a full-scale nuclear attack from another country.
The U.S. Airforce also operates Strategic Air Command which maintains nuclear readiness at all times.
I think the question is highly misguided as well. They say that the U.S. Navy is the second largest air force in the world but 1st place still goes to the U.S. Air Force. The Navy does some flashy stuff that you see on TV but the Air Force has bigger muscles. The Air Force also does much of the cutting edge research like stealth planes and drones with artificial intelligence.
My buddy, the [del]ex[/del]former Marine, would probably crack wise that the USAF is a taxi service for the real military. But they do a whole lot more- eg the Kosovo war, which was almost entirely waged by the AF.
Suppose we secure an airbase in a conflict on the other side of the world, such that the USAF can now use it in combat. Say, Afghanistan or Iraq. How does the USAF get its fighter planes to that base? Are they transported? Do they simply fly to the other side of the world, refueling on the way? What if there are issues about crossing someone’s airspace?
As the Wiki article notes, SAC was disbanded in 1992 and its assets reassigned to other components of the U.S. military, most notably U.S. Strategic Command.
They fly them and either use in-flight refueling or stop at U.S. bases along the way or allied bases owned by other countries. The U.S. has bases all over Europe and Japan and even Cuba with airspace rights already. There are strong allies in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as well. A popular window from Europe into the Middle East is Spain which usually grants airspace rights for U.S. flyovers.
Just some more info - a large portion of the airplanes/pilots/maintainers/etc that end up on the other side of the world are Air National Guard or Air Force Reserve. I think the guys and gals from Great Falls, MT are deployed over in the desert right now with a bunch of F-16s.
As to getting there - yes, they just fly them there. Sometimes diplomatic clearances cause problems, but for the most part repositioning flights are fairly straightforward. If you recall back in 1986 the USAF bombed Libya with some F-111s based in England. France did not give permission to overfly their airspace so they just went around - it added time to the mission but it still got done.
Helicopters and such are usually carried aboard cargo aircraft if they need to get somewhere very far away.
And to the OP - I know Air Force guys who’ve done an exchange tour with the Navy (very rare as LSLGuy said), but why on earth would he want to get transferred to the Navy? Unless he has some perverse attraction to “haze gray” and crappy BOQs…
This isn’t quite true- Wikipedia lists the B-52’s range as 11,000 miles, which is shy of halfway around the world. We could maybe fly a B-52 from the mainland US to Iraq without refueling. Now, of course we could do the mission you suggest with mid-air refueling, but that’s true of any bomber capable of mid-air refueling, and way more expense that just operating out of Saudi Arabia.
The thing is that it has been done routinely. It does require in-flight refueling but it isn’t a stunt. Many of the major bomber missions in Iraq were conducted by B-52 crews that lived in Louisiana and elsewhere in the U.S. They weren’t even officially deployed. The crew could fly to Iraq, deliver a devastating bomber blow, and return straight home without stopping. The crew would be back home about a day later. Many planes can be refueled in flight but the USAF seems to prefer keeping the B-52 fleet on the U.S. mainland as much as possible so they use endurance missions that you don’t see as often elsewhere.
Is the latter sentence meant to be the modern headcount ratio as opposed to 20 years ago?