Navalised aircraft

A navalised aircraft (or navalized aircraft) is an aircraft that is designed for naval usage. A navalised aircraft specifically designed to take off and land from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier is called a carrier-based aircraft.

Navalised aircraft include both fixed-wing (including seaplanes, biplanes, monoplanes and flying wings, both propeller- and jet-propelled) and rotary-wing aircraft (helicopters, tiltrotors and, in some cases, multicopters). In many cases, the aircraft is simply a modified variant of a land-based model. They are different to land-based aircraft in that they are designed to tolerate greater corrosion due to humidity and salt weathering around marine environments, handle increased mechanical stress due to harsher air conditions such as strong sea breezes and extreme weathers, and often need to operate on moving vessels at sea, which typically dictates more complex flight control to deal with unsteady sea state and also the ability to perform vertical/short takeoff and landing as there are very limited runway spaces available (or none at all) on deck.

A navalised aircraft typically differs from its land-based equivalent by:

For safety reasons, the aviation fuel provided by ships may be different (e.g. AVCAT) from that provided by airfields and tanker aircraft.

The T-45 Goshawk is a navalised version of the BAE Hawk jet trainer. Differences from the Hawk include changes to the undercarriage for aircraft carrier compatibility and a strengthened airframe. The engine design was also modified for the aircraft's role at sea. A proposed navalised version of the Alpha Jet would have had similar design modifications.

Other examples of navalised variants of land-based aircraft include: