Introduction:
The US Navy often relies upon its naval air arm to accomplish its missions and to provide maritime security and deterrence for the purpose of furthering America’s foreign policy goals. To this end, it is entirely necessary for the US Naval Aviation Community to adopt a certain lexis which is composed of concise and easy to understand terminology which will completely organize and discipline all members of that community so that they may function cohesively together and as a part of the broader US Military machine. The Naval Aviation Community’s use of language is a key component of its ability to dominate militarily.
Purpose:
This essay explores the discourse community of US Naval Aviation and the ways in which it utilizes language to excel in its primary task of warfighting.
Methodology:
Over the course of many years I have read various government papers on Navy Operational Concepts and Aircraft Program overviews. I have also read several accounts of Naval Aviators who often use some pieces of naval aviation language in everyday conversation. With these readings I have been able to compile this essay and represent the lingual characteristics of some of these readings.
Results:
Background Information:
The Naval Aviation Community of the US Navy was first born in the early 20th century when in 1911, the world’s first shipboard takeoff and landing of an aircraft was conducted by Eugene Burton Ely. Towards the 1920s, work began to develop the world’s first true Aircraft Carrier, the USS Langley, which would lead to the birth of modern naval aviation with naval fighter squadrons on board ships. Going into World War II, naval aviation would play a dominant role in the Pacific Campaign as a primary means of providing air power to combat the Japanese fleets with. World War II would see the end of Battleship dominated surface warfare and would lead to the US Navy’s current emphasis on having a large, powerful, and well trained naval air arm. As naval aviation evolved, the US Navy began to apply its lexis to the air arm as was necessary and, in time, the Naval Aviation Community itself created and standardized its lexis so that all of its members could effectively fight as part of the Navy. Creating this lexis involved designating many things in some way that could be easily spoken about or referenced by pilots and deck crews. To this end, terms such as “the meatball” (the glide slope indicator) and “Mud-Mover”(Tailhook Association) (Attack Aircraft, ex: A-6 Intruder) were developed to create a set of common terms that would vastly improve the functionality of the naval air arm.
Experts and Novices:
Within the US Naval Aviation Community, there are Experts and Novices at various ranks in the chain of command. The Novices will be personnel with the rank of Seaman Apprentice or Ensign while the experts will have ranks such as Captain, Master Chief Petty Officer, etc. It is the job of the higher ranked personnel to teach lower ranked personnel how to do their jobs and how to function as part of a cohesive warfighting unit which must be able to prosecute its duties as the naval air arm of the US Military. Experts within the chain of command will hold increasingly larger and more complicated responsibilities (such as managing a carrier air wing or Squadron of Fighters while the Novices (Enlisted and Junior Officers) will be given lesser duties such as flying an individual aircraft in a flight of jets or working to replace parts on an aircraft. Senior Officers may know such things as the intricacies of planning the missions that pilots will follow to go and strike targets, while Senior enlisted men may know the aircraft they maintain inside and out to the point that they can teach their lessons to the junior maintainer. The Novices will take orders from the Experts to accomplish the Naval Aviation Community’s mission. Everyone in this system knows precisely who they are because of the patches that they wear and the rank that they hold As a result they are able to know exactly what their duties are so that they may carry them out without delaying for questions.
Genres:
The US Naval Aviation Community makes heavy use of the genre of military orders, which will consist of a basic text which will set the Rules of Engagement, the level of clearance required to see such orders, and the general nature of all that would be occurring in any given mission. Friendlies and Hostiles will be noted along with assets available to that commander and other friendly assets that will be assisting in the operation. The ranking Commanding Officer will then give his orders to his subordinates which will call for them to draw up their plans for how the mission in question is to be executed. Subordinate commanders will then pass that information down the chain in the form of briefings which will inform all direct combat personnel of their duties in the battlespace. This genre is particularly useful for cutting down on the general pleasantries of normal conversational and literary communication which would at best would slow down the pace at which combat personnel receive the information that they need to know to perform their duties and which at worst would confuse combat personnel and leave them with an inadequate understanding of what it is that they will be doing (which in a shooting war would be disastrous, both for the combat personnel and for the commanders who ultimately rely upon them). The implications of this are that lengthy conversational orders or self expressive orders would severely interfere with the Naval Aviation Community’s ability to perform its primary functions. In order for Naval Aviation to perform, cohesiveness and discipline must be maintained so that all orders may be executed in both timely and correct manners. For these reasons, all US Navy language will be very concise and blunt, with neither subtlety nor wordiness. Such phrases as “MIGCAP” or “Fox 3” illustrate good examples of this lingual briefness. The Phrase “MiGCAP” is short for “Combat Air Patrol over ground-attack aircraft to protect against an air-to-air threat.”(Tailhook Association), while “Fox 3”(Tailhook Association) is short for “Radio calls indicating the firing of a Phoenix air-to-air missile.” (back in the day, this would only be the AIM-54 Phoenix, the primary missile on the F-14 Tomcat, but has since come to include the AIM-120 AMRAAM which is the Navy’s principal air to air radar guided missile).
It is through phrases such as these that naval aviators are able to easily convey lots of information without cluttering radio traffic or taking too long to carry out their duties. In addition to critical phrases being very brief, they are also very specific and cannot be mistaken for anything else. Unlike in standard English lexis, “Fox 3” only has one meaning which leaves no room for misinterpretation. This guarantees that all pilots in the battlespace will understand what has just occurred at exactly that moment. It is because of this specific and easy to interpret language that the US Navy and its air arm are able to function cohesively and with the utmost discipline necessary to succeed in both peacetime and wartime environments.
Mechanisms of intercommunication:
Whenever interactions occur between enlisted and officers, the officers will hold rank over the enlisted and higher ranking officers will have ultimate authority over junior officers. This ensures that all interactions between pilots of junior rank, and air wing managers of senior rank will know who gets to say what and who gets to speak first and get their orders in. It is precisely through this chain of command that orders will always be heard and carried out accordingly with little to no confusion. What also occurs, however, is that pilots in the same squadron will be on less formal terms, which will allow them to socialize somewhat, which will build them up as a cohesive team ready to be ordered into action. If anyone of junior rank within Carrier Air Squadrons is insubordinate, however, senior pilots may pull rank on him and either bring him into line or cast him out of the squadron (and possibly the military itself).
Interactions between civilians and airmen of any branch particularly show the discipline that this strictly obeyed hierarchy instills in the lexis of all pilots (naval aviators being no exception). All discourse conducted with civilians will be dictated by the fact that naval pilots are required to give civilians common courtesy with no vulgarity (this, however, does not need to be reciprocated by the civilians). While Pilots may have their personal opinions of someone they may encounter, they must hold this in at all costs in order to preserve the image of the Navy in public. This guarantees that there will be little political action which would force unpleasant or unnecessary changes upon the navy or (in our case) the Naval Aviation Community. This interaction between civilians and Navy Aviators is largely the result of the highly disciplined discourse of naval personnel within the military which resultantly works towards being able to accomplish their aims, unimpeded by any obstacle, hostile, or political.
Conclusion:
From all of this information it is apparent that the US Naval Aviation Community uses its language very precisely and specifically in order to ensure that it can perform all tasks required of it. In all cases, the guidelines for discourse will be crystal clear and decluttered which will ensure that all language is both highly time sensitive and without any room for interpretation. It can also be decisively determined that it is this base level of disciplined and official speech that even makes the cohesion of naval aviation within the broader Navy possible. It is rather important that the Navy not only be able to seamlessly interact with its own components, but it is also imperative that the Navy (and in this case, naval aviation) be able to seamlessly integrate with units of the other branches in order to work towards a common goal of accomplishing whatever objectives have been set forth. Without the Naval Aviation Community’s adherence to these simple and absolutely necessary principles, naval aviation, despite all of its technological prowess, would be absolutely helpless against any enemy combatants which would easily chew through a divided and disorganized aviation element. As naval aviation continues to evolve, so too must the lexis used by aviators. Where “Fox 3” originally indicated a launch of an AIM-54 Phoenix, that call now indicates the general launch of any active radar guided missile. As other parts of naval aviation become obsolete, so too will the words that are associated with them. With the Naval Aviation Community’s inherent ability to develop its lexis for its planes, the USN air arm will continue to maintain its communicative prowess and will dominate the battlespace for decades to come.

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