Individuals training to become U.S. Navy tactical jet pilots are no longer required to take off and land from aircraft carriers before being winged as Naval Aviators. This is a huge change in training requirements and has important ramifications for the service’s plans to replace its current carrier-capable T-45 Goshawk jet trainers.

Our colleagues at Task & Purpose first reported the elimination of carrier landing qualifications from the graduation requirements for the Tactical Air (Strike) aviator training pipeline earlier today. This pipeline currently produces new pilots to fly the Navy’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and F-35C fighters, as well as EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft.

“The final strike carrier landing qualification occurred in March of 2025,” a Navy official told Task & Purpose. “Students in the strike pipeline, those training to fly F/A-18s, F-35s, and EA-18Gs, are no longer required to qualify by landing on a carrier prior to graduation.”

Naval aviators who come out of the Tactical Air pipeline will now conduct their first carrier qualifications when they reach a Fleet Replacement Squadron (FRS). These units provide initial training on the specific type of tactical jet that those individuals have been assigned to fly.

TWZ has reached out to the Navy to find to what degree Field Carrier Landing Practice (FCLP) landings and touch-and-goes on aircraft carriers are still part of the undergraduate Tactical Air training syllabus. FCLPs are conducted at bases on land, but are structured in a way that “simulates, as near as practicable, the conditions encountered during carrier landing operations,” according to the service.

As noted, just eliminating carrier qualifications from the undergraduate training requirements is a fundamental change in how the Navy produces new Naval Aviators to fly tactical jets. The procedures for taking off from and landing on an aircraft carrier bobbing up and down at sea are significantly different from those when operating from an airfield ashore.

“It’s what makes naval aviation unique,” Sterling Gilliam, a retired Navy captain who is now the director of the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida, told Task & Purpose when asked about the change. “Audacity has kind of defined Naval Aviation, and the uniqueness of carrier operations, specifically fixed wing launches and recoveries, requires a fair amount of skill and practice and professionalism.”

At the same time, the change does not come as a complete surprise. In 2020, the Navy announced that the requirements for a future Undergraduate Jet Training System (UJTS) jet trainer to replace the T-45 would no longer include the need to be able to land on or take off from an aircraft carrier. In the past year or so, service has also moved to cut demands for the forthcoming UJTS aircraft to have features needed to conduct FCLP landings.

All of this has come on the back of Navy investments in virtualized training and automated carrier landing capabilities, such as Magic Carpet, in recent years. Those developments have already proven to be controversial, prompting concerns and criticism about potential impacts down the line from cutting what have long been considered essential naval aviation training requirements.

“Carrier qualification is more than catching the wire. It is the exposure to the carrier environment and how an individual deals with it,” an experienced U.S. Navy strike fighter pilot told TWZ back in 2020. “The pattern, the communications, the nuance, the stress. The ability to master this is one of our competitive advantages.”

The UJTS requirements still have yet to be firmed up, at least publicly, ahead of the start of a formal competition, which is expected to kick off next year. The Navy has said in the past that the goal is for the first UJTS aircraft to enter service by 2035 and for the T-45 to be completely phased out by 2040.

The removal of carrier qualifications from the Tactical Air pipeline already shows the Navy is not waiting for the arrival of UJTS to make major changes to its naval aviation training requirements. This would seem to make it increasingly less likely that the service will reverse course on the related changes to the UJTS requirements, at least when it comes to what is needed from the aircraft landing-wise, which will have significant ramifications for the upcoming competition.

Just last week, the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) announced its intention to compete for UJTS with a proposal that puts heavy emphasis on still being able to perform FCLP landings and touch-and-goes, as you can read more about in detail here.

“You want … your – I call it your lizard brain – to be trained to do the things you are going to do when things go south on you, because the way a [former Air Force pilot] like me lands an airplane is 180 degrees different than a carrier guy,” Derek Hess, Vice President of Strategy at SNC, told TWZ‘s Jamie Hunter on the sidelines of the Tailhook Association’s main annual symposium last week. “I touch down, go to idle. He touches down, slams down, goes to MIL [maximum non-afterburner thrust], and is ready to take off again.”

“This is why FCLPs are so important,” Ray “Fitz” Fitzgerald, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Technology at SNC, also said while speaking alongside Hess. “On that dark, stormy night, and everything’s just going bad, you rely on muscle memory, right? So when you think about muscle memory, as a carrier aviator, you’re on speed, so you’re on the right AOA, so the hook and the gear are the right AOA to trap, and everything hits at the same time. If I’m at a slow AOA, it means my nose is up, which means the hook grabs first and slams you down. You can break a jet like that. If I’m at a fast AOA, the nose is lower, hook is up, you skip across, and you go flying again, which is not good either.”

“So that muscle memory, I mean, it’s what will save lives,” He added.

Boeing, Lockheed Martin (in partnership with Korea Aerospace Industries), and Textron (together with Italy’s Leonardo) are also set to join the competition, but with aircraft based on existing land-based jet trainer designs that were not built for carrier operations, real or simulated.

More clarity on the Navy’s future vision for training future naval aviators will come when the final UJTS requirements are released. In the meantime, a major watershed moment has already occurred with the end of carrier qualifications as a graduation requirement for future tactical jet pilots.

Update, 3:30 PM Eastern:

A U.S. Navy official has now provided TWZ with the following additional statement:

“Students in the strike pipeline, those training to fly F/A-18s, F-35s, and EA-18Gs, are no longer required to qualify by landing on a carrier prior to graduation. However, future E-2 [Hawkeye airborne early warning and control aircraft] pilots and international military students will complete carrier landing qualifications on a ship in the T-45 while in student training. Field Carrier Landing Practice (FCLP) landings ashore are still required for graduation. The strategic decision of moving carrier qualifications from the training syllabus to their fleet replacement squadrons was driven by increased technological capabilities in the fleet, as well as the need to reduce training pipeline times, enabling the fleet to receive qualified pilots faster. After earning their initial qualifications after graduation, naval aviators in the strike pipeline are required to complete touch-and-goes and carrier landings at sea during their assignment at the Fleet Replacement Squadrons (FRS).”

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