The Air Force starts at Lt. but the USAF do not pilot carrier-based craft. Navy pilots handle those craft. I just finished my fighter structure, and set it up with 2-craft elements as the base and working up from there:

2 fighter Elements
2 elements -> Flight
3 flights -> Squadron
4 squadrons -> Group
2 groups -> Wing

A wing has 96 aircraft total. Sine there is no space to manage the command structure to this detail (fighter wings are effectively Task Groups in my hierarchy), the 'leader' will be a Lt. Commander and an element cannot have more than one Lt. (maybe I'll just make sure my fighter wings never have more than 50% Lt. ranks)

Just to add to this, I like to format my navy into a realistic structure. I use American ranks and a mix of Starfleet (Star Trek) and real-world fleet structure, like so (from highest to lowest):

Admiralty - Fleet Admiral -- this is the entire navy, which isn't really depicted in game. The Fleet Admiral rank is also not present, the highest rank I use is the 3-star Admiral. If you want, consider yourself the fleet admiral (although in reality, you would be commander-in-chief and fleet admiral is two ranks below you.)

Named Fleet - Admiral -- this is a regional fleet (in US Navy that would be Pacific Command, Central Command, etc.) which doesn't have any ships on its own. In the game, this would be the Task Force screen, and I would designate them by Sectors (each sector has its own named fleet)

Numbered Fleet - Vice Admiral -- the first structure to have its own ships, but only flagships. each numbered fleet would have one flagship and associated vessels. In my game, the flagship would either be a carrier for deep-space fleets or designated flagships for assault or landing fleets (since carriers would be too big for near-planet missions)

Task Force - Rear Admiral -- an individual group for specific missions. I usually designate each ship type in its own task force (freighters in one, survey ships, landing / assault, carriers, auxiliary cargo, fighters, etc.) The Rear Admiral would be designated for the first ship in the TF. On the Organization screen, a TF would be where most ships end up

Task Group - no rank -- Task Groups are for individual missions. For fighters, these would be 'wings' but for survey ships, this would be skipped. It really depends on whether the mission requires one ship or several.

Unit - lower officers -- Individual ships. Not much explanation here.

The remaining officer ranks are:

Captain -- large vessels. Carriers, Battleships, some types of auxiliaries or command ships. Pretty much anything that is designed to be self-sustaining.

Commander -- small vessels. Cruisers and below (including frigates, escorts, patrol craft, etc.) which generally require tenders or support craft.

Lieutenant Commander / Lieutenant / Ensign -- In the US Navy, these ranks do not get their own commands. In Aurora, I use them to command fighters, commercial craft, or pretty much any non-combat related vessels.

You're more than welcome to add it to the Wiki. I don't have an account there.

That title should have gotten your attention!

We all know and love the Naval Organization Tab in the Task Groups window. Using the tree menu Steve provides is of tremendous help in sorting out your ships - once you have more than a handful - and reduces the amount of time you have to fiddle with TG's by hand. So I figured that in this thread we could share hints&tips when it comes to Naval Organization. I'll start.

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First, it's important to realize that a ship cannot be in two places at the same time. This reduces our options slightly but not to worry because it IS possible to create TGs not just from the last (or right-most) branch but from any point in the tree. Which is why we have several different buttons:


1 is to create a new branch under your currently selected Task Force. Note that you cannot create new TF's from this window, use the TF window for that. You can basically create an unlimited number of branches both horizontally and vertically.
2 is to rename the currently selected branch.
3 is to remove the currently selected branch.
4 and 5 will help you immensely when you need to make big changes to your organization.
6 adds the currently selected ship from the list above to the currently selected branch. Note that the ship choice does not remain highlighted after you click on the correct branch.
7 adds the current task group to the currently selected branch.
8 adds the parasites of the currently selected ship to the currently selected branch. Remember this when designing different Strike Groups for carriers.
9 adds the parasites of all ships in the current task group to the currently selected branch.
10 assigns stored parasites to the currently selected branch. This helps you shift fighter wings quickly from one Strike Group to another.
11 creates a task group that has only the currently selected ship from the organization branch.
12 creates a task group that has all the ships from the currently selected branch, that are present in the currently selected location. The location depends on which task group you have active in the top-left menu. It does not include sub-branches of the currently selected branch.
13 same as 12 except it does include sub-branches.
14 lands the currently selected ship to its assigned mothership.
15 lands all ships in the currently selected branch to their assigned motherships.

16-19 should be plainly obvious and not necessary right now.

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So how does this actually help us? Well, the most basic organization is to just make a simple branch and call it day. Like this:


But such an organization is lazy and only helps me to form the whole shebang. I'll probably use it once - to move ships from Shipyard TG and that's it. What if I need to send beam armed warships ahead while my missile combatants hang back? What if one ship class will be refitted? Manual handling, that's what. So here's a somewhat improved version:



Now we're getting somewhere - though don't worry about the names/titles, this is just an example. Depending on which branch you select, it is possible to create a TG that has all the ships, just ships of certain mission or ships of certain class. For example, selecting Beam Force and clicking button #13 would create a TG that has all the heavy-hitting beam warships. Selecting BB division and hitting button #12 would create a TG with just the battleships in it.

Oh yeah and remember naming! You can use . (dot) or just an empty space in the front of a name to ensure that it comes first in the drop-down menu or you can use x/z to ensure that it comes last. There is not limit there either - you can use two, three or even four spaces in front of names to ensure that critical TG is always first, during combat for example, so you don't need to scroll back and forth looking for it.

So that's one way to organize your fleet(s).

For carriers, you can combine this with the Fighter Squadrons window, so that you don't need to issue orders for each squadron - or that you could only have a single squadron on a carrier.

While I didn't have any in the examples, you should assign sensor platforms, jump ships and command ships in the earlier branches instead of being in their own, so that.

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I'm sure there are more experienced players out there, so please share your trade secrets!