The Influence of History

All non-US carriers operating fixed-wing aircraft (click to enlarge) The aircraft carrier has been the ultimate expression of naval power since World War II. Able to engage air, surface, and subsurface targets from hundreds of miles away, the carrier is a highly versatile class of warship and even a small number of carriers can turn the tide of an entire war. However, these ships (and the aircraft that they carry) are extremely expensive and only a handful of navies have ever operated them. Since the end of World War II, only 14 nations have operated a carrier with fixed-wing aircraft and no more than 9 nations have done so simultaneously. The above chart covers all non-US aircraft carriers operating fixed-wing aircraft from 1951-2020. I have not only excluded helicopter carriers, but also attempted to avoid counting commissioned ships that did not have available aircraft (for instance, I did not count the Soviet Kiev-class ships after 1991, when their Yak-38 fighters were phased out)...

This post will cover the composition of the air wings of the world's current major aircraft carriers. This includes the American Nimitz -class, the French Charles de Gaulle , the Chinese Liaoning , the Indian Vikramaditya , and the Russian Kuznetsov . The air wings of the smaller VSTOL are covered in Part 2 . Nimitz-class The uncontested apex of carrier air wings is found aboard the United State’s 10 Nimitz -class carriers (the Gerald Ford -class will carry the same air wing, although the lead ship is not yet operational). These ships generally operate 64 aircraft, twice as many as their competitors. Further, unlike almost all non-American carriers, the Nimitz-class is equipped for catapult takeoff and arrested recovery (CATOBAR), permitting the operation of heavy aircraft with full loads of weapons and fuel. 2019 Nimitz-class air wing: 4x E-2D, 5x EA-18G, 44x F/A-18E/F, 11x MH-60R/S Arguably the most important aircraft in this air wing are its 4 the E-2 Hawkeye 29-ton fi...