Carrier Air Wing

CARRIER AIR WING

Stands up within RAFAIR UK with 3 primary Naval Air Squadrons and 1 secondary Expeditionary detachment. A carrier air wing (abbreviated CVN in the US but CAW within RAFAirUK) is an operational naval aviation wing composed of several aircraft squadrons and detachments of various types of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. Organised, equipped and trained to conduct modern Navy carrier air operations while embarked aboard aircraft carriers, the various squadrons in an air wing have different but complementary (and sometimes overlapping) missions, and provide most of the striking power and electronic warfare capabilities of a carrier strike group CSG.

CARRIER AIR WING ETHOS

New pilots of any experience are welcomed with the only requisites being enthusiasm, time, ability to cold start, take off and land safely (runway) within Openbeta build & the Super Carrier module. You will be expected to engage in a facilitative mentored training programme. It would be advantageous to have PG & Syria terrain maps.Our aim s to promote esprit de corps and assistance to one another in learning the roles and technical aspects of these exceptional aircraft.... all in an enjoyable and friendly hobby environment. In missions we fly formerly with NATOP procedures without the bull and in training there is plenty of craic!.

CAW SQUADRONS

- 809NAS is equipped with F14A/B

- 892NAS is equipped with F18C

- 727NAS is a training SQN with the very capable free T45C

- CAW Expeditionary unit with AV8BNA. UH1h, Mi-17 & UL60

Pilots are encouraged to qualify and remain current in 2 or more operational airframes but there is no compulsion. All Squadrons wherever possible train and fight from the same carrier and tactically support one another when possible or planned.… decks are busy!

TRAINING PROGRESSION

Competency based syllabuses for the F18 & F14 have self driven pathways with plenty of mentors. All pilots joining CAW spend some time in 727, even experienced pilots (albeit that time may well be very short and is mainly a clarification of carrier recovery skills) The T45, a dual seat carrier capable trainer is used for basic flying skills training and in the intro phases of low level tactical initial BFM.

CARRIERS & MAPS

USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) USS SAIPAN (LH2) and USS Forrester are used so the SC module is required. Syria and Persian Gulf and DCS default are used but not a requirement, if not held then some missions will simply not be available. All training is on default maps.

MISSIONS

Mission nights are normally Tuesday when we fly will all the other Squadrons of RAFAir and Thursday which is a mixture of training and CAW missions. Pilots are often active on most evenings, sometime, somewhere Timings are around 19:30(UK) to 21:30 RAFAir have 4 24/7 servers available to all.