A Navy of seaplanes for a world of drones and hypersonic missiles

One of the many interesting talks at EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) 2026 was by James Schreiber, a U.S. Navy veteran-turned-IBM-patent-lawyer with a passion for seaplanes.

First, there is no reason that seaplanes can’t be part of a modern navy. The ShinMaywa US-2 is a four-engine monster with tremendous range in service with Japan (source):

Here’s the radius of search and rescue action:

Contrary to what we tell MIT students, a seaplane actually can land in real waves (up to about 10′ in this case):

(If the Canadians weren’t sending so many of their tax dollars to Hamas, they could have purchased water bombing versions of this magnificent 120,000+ lb. beast and preserved U.S. air quality.)

We learned that one of the most interesting periods of our U.S. Navy was the 1950s. The USAF had gained ascendancy in government and the doctrine was to destroy our enemies via strategic bombing from land-based airplanes, such as the then-new B-52 (considered a short-term solution at the time, a stopgap until the glorious age of supersonic bombers), and ballistic missiles. The Navy’s funding requests for new aircraft carriers were denied and, thus, the Navy tacked (so to speak) toward submarines and sea-based airplanes. The Navy had designs for jet-powered fighters, bombers, and transport seaplanes. The Convair F2Y Sea Dart is the most famous example, a supersonic fighter that first flew in 1953. For raining down destruction on our enemies (back when we actually wanted to win wars!), the Martin P6M SeaMaster first flew in 1955. For moving troops and vehicles from harbor to harbor, the Convair R3Y Tradewind, which first flew in 1954 (a little heavier than the above-mentioned Japanese seaplane and, therefore, potentially even better for our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters trying to fight fires in Canada with whatever funding scraps they have left over from serving as the Palestinians’ logistics arm).

Part of the 1950s rationale for a fleet of sea-based aircraft was that they’d be more challenging for the enemy to find and target than runways and monster-sized aircraft carriers. Perhaps that rationale is even more, uh, rational today? Let’s consider our gradual surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran (can’t be called a “war” because we apparently don’t have any ambition of winning, in which winning would be defined as destroying the Islamic Republic’s oil and electricity industries so that they wouldn’t be able to rebuild and run weapons factories). The ships of the Iranian Navy that were larger than an aircraft were quickly destroyed by the U.S. On our side, our fixed bases, such as Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, have proved vulnerable to Iranian missiles.

Readers: What do you think about resurrecting the 1950s idea?

An awesome T-shirt from the Seaplane Pilots Association (not in their online shop yet):