Lt Cdr Ash Loftus
“Sir, for the last time, it’s called a visual pattern, not a visual circuit.”
I curse under my breath, standing behind the lectern at the front of the briefing room. I thought I had managed to stamp out all of my British-isms. Clearly, one had slipped through.
My instructor, a seasoned USMC MQ-9 Captain, explains: “Sir, it may seem minor, but when you’re teaching students, they’ll be confused when you use different terms for things.”
He’s right, of course. This is aviation. Words mean things, and different words can have huge implications. “Height” versus “altitude”; “take-off” versus “departure”; “circuit” versus “pattern”. To someone outside aviation, these might sound like pedantic distinctions. In aviation, they are anything but. We build a shared language because, when things get busy, there isn’t always time to explain what we mean. Precision in language is part of precision in aviation.
It is also one of the first things you notice when you move between aviation cultures.
One of the perks of an international exchange is that the vast majority of people you meet, particularly in the military, have an innate curiosity about where you have come from. They want to know what you do, how you do it, and why you do it that way. Often, they want to talk about things that, to you, seem completely ordinary.
The downside is that you get asked the same questions over and over again.
The most common, of course, is some variation of: “What’s better about the UK? What’s better about the US?”
Normally, at this point, I dissolve into a ramble about how it isn’t really about who is better or worse, but rather how we are simply different. Partly because I don’t want to inadvertently offend my hosts, and partly because self-deprecation is probably one of the more deeply ingrained British traits I brought with me.
But there is something useful in being asked the question.
I came to the United States expecting to learn more about the US, the US Marine Corps and the way American aircrew operate. I certainly have. What I didn’t expect was for the change in geography, surroundings and people to alter my perspective on the Royal Navy and the Fleet Air Arm.
Distance has a funny way of doing that.
When you are immersed in your own organisation, it is easy to take certain things for granted. The way you brief. The way you work. The way you instruct. Even the terminology you use. The assumptions you make about what constitutes good airmanship. Even the culture of the crew room itself (ready room, for you Americans).
It is only when you step into somebody else’s world that you begin to notice your own.
One of the most obvious differences is scale. I can sit at my desk, with its ‘airfield-view’ window, and watch a steady stream of F-35s, C-130s, F-18s, Hueys, Cobras, V-22s, E-2Cs, and even aircraft that I, an aviation nerd, don’t recognise. USMC aviation is enormous, and the sheer size of it takes some getting used to.
It is difficult not to be impressed by it. From a Fleet Air Arm perspective, where seeing several different types of aircraft in the same place can feel like a busy day, the variety is striking. More than that, there is a depth behind the aircraft: squadrons, crews, instructors, maintainers and specialists whose entire professional lives may be concentrated on a particular type or role. It is a very different way of generating aviation capability from the one I have known for most of my career.
The comparison has made me think rather more carefully about the Fleet Air Arm.
We are small, particularly when compared with the aviation organisations of our closest allies. We cannot replicate their scale, and nor should we necessarily try to. The circumstances in which each has developed are different, as are the demands placed upon them.
Yet there remains a reason for people from the Fleet Air Arm to be here. There is a reason that an organisation as large as the US Marine Corps can see value in exchanging aircrew with one as comparatively small as ours.
I have found myself wondering about that during my time here. Why does the US Marine Corps want people from an aviation community as small as ours? What is it that we bring to the party?
I don’t think the answer is that the Fleet Air Arm has somehow discovered a superior way of doing aviation. That would be a rather bold conclusion to draw from an exchange, and there is much that a smaller organisation can learn from the advantages that come with scale. Rather, I suspect that some of what is useful about the Fleet Air Arm is easy to overlook if its contribution is judged simply by numbers of airframes and people.
When there are relatively few people available to perform a wide range of tasks, individuals tend to carry considerable responsibility. I have become conscious of this in my own career. It is not particularly unusual for a Fleet Air Arm officer to accumulate a rather eclectic collection of qualifications and responsibilities: operational flying alongside instruction, tactics, safety, trials or leadership. None of these things is especially unusual in isolation; taken together, however, they reflect what a relatively small aviation community asks of its people. The expectation is not simply that an individual will become highly competent at operating, maintaining or controlling an aircraft, but that they will develop the judgement to apply that competence in circumstances that may change considerably from one posting to the next. Working alongside a much larger aviation organisation has made me more conscious of this characteristic of Fleet Air Arm life. The depth of specialisation available to the USMC is extraordinary, and rightly so; at our scale, however, there is a greater need for people to develop across several areas of professional life and to take on responsibilities beyond their immediate specialism.
That is not necessarily better or worse. It is simply a different way of developing aircrew.
This also affects the character of the aviation community itself. In a small organisation, individual contributions are more visible. Knowledge is often passed directly between generations of aircrew, and professional reputations tend to travel. How many times do we see the ‘old and bold’ at training squadrons, only for the Fleet Air Arm to come forward with stories when they retire about how that person shaped their careers? There is less distance between the person learning a profession and those who have shaped it before them. The result is a strong sense of continuity, even as aircraft, tactics and technology change.
I think that has something to do with the reputation of the Fleet Air Arm.
When considered against its size, that reputation is rather remarkable. It has not been created by the organisation in the abstract, nor can it be attributed to any one generation. It has been built gradually by thousands of individuals who, in their own time, were simply doing their jobs: flying aircraft, maintaining and controlling them, instructing students, conducting trials, developing tactics, operating from ships and airfields, and solving the innumerable problems that accompany aviation.
Most of those individuals probably did not think they were building a reputation. They were doing their jobs to the standard expected of them. But taken together, across generations, those individual contributions have become something much larger than any one person.
When somebody in the United States asks about the Fleet Air Arm, I am occasionally conscious that I am explaining an organisation whose reputation I did not create. I inherited it. One of the odd things about an exchange is realising how much of your professional behaviour is inherited rather than consciously developed. You find yourself briefing in a particular way because an instructor once insisted on it, or approaching a problem according to a principle that someone passed to you years ago. Until somebody asks why you do it that way, you may never have considered where it came from.
It is a peculiar responsibility. You can neither take personal credit for what has been built before you nor completely separate yourself from it. When you represent the Fleet Air Arm, whether formally or simply by being the British naval aviator in the room, you inevitably carry some of that accumulated reputation with you.
That has made some of the apparently ordinary conversations I have had during this exchange more interesting than I expected. Being asked why we train in a particular way, why Fleet Air Arm aircrew tend to have experience across several different parts of naval aviation, or why we approach a problem in a particular manner forces you to examine assumptions that you have never previously needed to articulate. What seemed ordinary when viewed from inside the organisation becomes distinctive when described to somebody from outside it.
The process works in reverse, of course. I have learned a great deal from American aircrew precisely because I have been forced to look beyond my own assumptions. There are differences in terminology, procedures, training and culture which initially seem quite significant. Some turn out to be simply different ways of achieving the same outcome; others have made me reconsider practices that I had previously accepted without much thought.
The useful part is not necessarily deciding which system is better. It is understanding why each has developed as it has, and recognising what the other might have to teach you.
For aircrew, I think that is particularly valuable. Aviation is a profession in which experience is accumulated slowly and passed between generations. Much of what we understand as airmanship is difficult to capture completely in regulations or training. It is also learned through observation, conversation and experience: from instructors who explain not just what to do but why; from colleagues who have encountered a problem before; and from the accumulated professional judgement of people who have spent years operating in the same environment.
An exchange gives you the opportunity to see another aviation community doing things differently, but perhaps more importantly, to examine your own professional culture with a degree of detachment that is difficult to achieve when you are immersed in it. The US Marine Corps has shown me what can be achieved through aviation at enormous scale; being here has also made me appreciate what the Fleet Air Arm has achieved without it.
A change is as good as a break, apparently. I can’t necessarily attest to that, but a change in perspective is certainly a close second. There is value in stepping outside your own understanding, culture or professional circle. You may learn something new from the people on the other side. But even if you don’t, I would wager you’ll learn something about where you came from.
Sometimes you have to cross an ocean to get a better view of home.
