Helicopters are terrible in many ways. They're noisy, they're slow, and they're expensive to operate. But they do have one major virtue. They don't have to be moving forward to fly, because they are so ugly that they repel the ground, which means they can take off and land vertically or hover over an area you want to keep an eye on. This is extremely useful if you need to operate somewhere that doesn't have a runway, either because there isn't space to build one or because you haven't had time to do so. This is a common problem that the US military faces, which means that they have a lot of helicopters.

General Transport/Utility

The most basic role of a helicopter is simply to pick people or stuff up and fly it somewhere else, and the majority of the military's helicopters do this. Occasionally, the place is just "over there, where there's a better view", although this role has largely been taken over by drones. For carrying stuff, it's often easier to use a sling load dangling underneath the helicopter, which saves you the trouble of having to land. This is generally not recommended if you're carrying people, although it is done in certain cases. Read more...

This time around, we turn our attention from combat aircraft and transports to the weird and wonderful world of support aircraft. The common thread here is information, either gathering it, moving it around, or denying it to the enemy.

AWACS

The US military has a lot of airplanes, and that in turn means it's generally a good idea to have someone coordinating all of them. It would be really helpful if that someone was mobile and had a really nice radar, and shortly after WWII, people realized that they could bundle the whole thing into an airplane, and thus was born Airborne Warning And Control Systems, or AWACS.¹ It's an extremely useful concept, and they form a critical component of any serious Air Force. Read more...

I've previously given a brief overview of the US military's fighters and bombers, and it is now time to follow that up with an examination of the large and unglamorous fleet of support aircraft.

Transports

Airplanes are generally the fastest way to move things around, and the military needs a lot of things moved quite fast. Sometimes these things are bombs, and we use the planes we talked about last time to deliver them to unwilling recipients. But sometimes, the thing is people or trucks or other equipment, and bombers are not well suited to carry these. So instead, the military turns to transports of various kinds. Some of these are basically civilian airplanes with a new paint scheme and some military radios, while others are bespoke airlifters, intended to deliver big cargoes that normal airliners can't handle, such as tanks or paratroopers, to places normal airliners can't go. Read more...

I am going to attempt a very brief and somewhat opinionated guide to the aircraft of the US military, for those who don't marinate in military aviation. Obviously, there will be many simplifications for those who do, but they already know this stuff, so I will simply ignore them.

Before I go further, I should say a word on designations. The US military has a (reasonably) consistent way it designates airplanes. There's a letter or set of letters that tell the mission, a dash, then a sequence number for the specific type of plane, then a submodel letter for variants of that type. The mission letter(s) are things like F for fighter, B for bomber, C for cargo, H for hovering and so on. They can be combined, so you might use CH for a cargo helicopter and RB for a bomber converted to do reconnaissance. If a plane is given with two variant letter designations below, the first one is the standard single-seat version and the second one has two seats. For more details on the system, see here. Read more...

It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Apologies for getting this up late.

Overhauls are Iowa Part 6, The Navy and the Space Program, and for 2023, my review of the old Midway movie and the 2023 USNI sale, which should serve as a reminder to everyone to go and check out this year's sale.

Books from the Naval Institute Press are the backbone of Naval Gazing, and every year they run a major sale in November and December, the best time of the year to build out a naval library. Unfortunately, this year's sale is significantly worse than previous years, with no free shipping and the half-off only applying to a selected set of books, which you will need to use the code HOLIDAY at checkout to get. But that's still a lot of the stuff you would want, and it's as good a time as any to take a look at their catalog and see what they have available. Note that if you decide to venture off the Holiday and Clearance lists, there's a substantial discount for being a USNI member, and the $42/year web membership can pay for itself pretty quickly.

First, there are new releases in the past year, all of which I think should be in the holiday sale. Highlights are the 2025 Seaforth World Naval Review, by far the best publication if you want an up-to-date state of the world's navy, Aircraft of the Royal Navy since 1908, by David Hobbs, the leading expert on RN aviation, Jellicoe's War by Nicholas Jellicoe (grandson of the Admiral and a nice guy) about John Jellicoe's time as First Sea Lord, a new book on the RN in the Cold War, The Origins of Aegis, about the weapons system that has proved itself in the last year and a new technical book on the British Fiji class. Also worth noting is a reissue of D.K. Brown's classic Rebuilding the Royal Navy. Read more...

Reader Quanticle has reviewed a recent report, Party on the Bridge, about Chinese naval command, and I asked him if I could repost his writeup here, as I thought it would be of significant interest.

American naval captains, like their British forebears, command a great deal of authority. In the US Navy, a captain is wholly and entirely responsible for maintaining the safety of their vessel, its crew, and accomplishing the missions that they are assigned. They have sole command of all aspects of their ship's operation, from watch rotations to weapons employment. This tradition of sole command is so inculcated into Anglo-American naval traditions that it is difficult for us to imagine any other way of running a navy ship. The Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), however, offers an alternative system. Instead of being commanded by individuals, as US and UK naval vessels are, PLAN vessels have a dual command system, where a captain and a political officer assume joint responsibility for major decisions. In their report, Party on the Bridge: Political Commissars in the Chinese Navy, Jeff Benson and Zi Yang look at this very different system of commanding a naval vessel, examine its strengths and weaknesses and highlight how it may lead to misunderstandings when US and Chinese naval units encounter each other at sea. Read more...

It is time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.

Also, the USNI sale has begun, although with some different details from last year. Post coming next week.

Overhauls are Iowa part 1, The Space Force and the FAA, my review of the 45th Infantry Division Museum, Early Guided Weapons Parts one and two, Taranto and for 2023, Is This a Battleship? - A Guide for Journalists.

Over the last few years, I've been involved with a series of meetups with people from the internet, first through the Data Secrets Lox forum and then for Naval Gazing itself. And those have been a lot of fun, so I thought I'd share the lessons I and some of the other key players have learned for doing large-group (10+ person) meetups with friends from the internet.

1. Have a Base

If you like these people enough to travel long distances to meet them, then you probably are going to want to talk to them, and you need a place to do that. Having a central location where everyone goes when not doing something else encourages hanging out and makes it a lot more fun. And having everyone gathered in one place when they aren’t doing something else makes a lot of your logistics easier. Read more...

It has been seven years since Naval Gazing started up, and it is once again time to celebrate both the US Navy and the fact that I keep finding things to write about.

The big event this year was our second meetup in New England, which was amazing. Thanks to everyone who came. I'm currently planning to do next year's back at Iowa. Check back here around the start of 2025 for more details. We should have the same catering crew, and an in-depth look at the greatest ship ever built. Read more...