A Carrier Air Wing (abbreviated CVW) is an operational naval aviation organization composed of several aircraft squadrons and detachments of various types of fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft. Organized, equipped and trained to conduct modern US Navy carrier air operations while embarked aboard aircraft carriers, the various squadrons in an air wing have different, complementary (and sometimes overlapping) missions, and provide most of the striking power and electronic warfare capabilities of a carrier battle group (CVBG). While the CVBG term is still used by other nations, the CVBG in US parlance in now known as a carrier strike group (CSG).
Until 1963, Carrier air wings were known as Carrier Air Groups (CAGs). Carrier air wings are what the United States Air Force would call “composite” wings, and should not be confused with Navy Type Wings (such as Strike Fighter Wing Atlantic), which are primarily administrative commands composed of squadrons of the same type of carrier-based aircraft. Carrier air wings integrate closely with their assigned aircraft carriers, forming a "carrier/air wing team" that trains and deploys together. There are currently ten U.S. Navy air wings, five based at NAS Oceana, Virginia, four based at NAS Lemoore, California, and one forward deployed to NAF Atsugi, Japan. These air wings are occasionally reassigned to different aircraft carriers based on carrier maintenance schedules. A modern air wing consists of roughly 2,500 personnel and 60–65 aircraft.
Read more about Carrier Air Wing: Origins, World War II, Korea and Cold War, Vietnam, 1983 Invasion of Grenada, 1991 Gulf War, 2003 Iraq War, Organization, Active Carrier Air Wings / Identification, Anticipated Air Wing in 2020
Famous quotes containing the words carrier, air and/or wing:
“The problems of society will also be the problems of the predominant language of that society. It is the carrier of its perceptions, its attitudes, and its goals, for through it, the speakers absorb entrenched attitudes. The guilt of English then must be recognized and appreciated before its continued use can be advocated.”
—Njabulo Ndebele (b. 1948)
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.”
—Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
“Sure smokers have made personal choices. And they pay for those choices every day, whether sitting through an airline flight dying for a smoke, or dying for a smoke in the oncology wing of a hospital. The tobacco companies have not paid nearly enough for the killing.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)