The US Navy recently announced that its Surface Warfare Officers (SWOs) — those Sailors who operate and maintain the surface fleet of ships — will be allowed to wear a black leather jacket for “esprit de corps” and to identify with a “long lineage of professional ship drivers.”

Yet even the Navy’s official release noted the jacket’s aviator connotation:

The institution of the SWO leather jacket—similar to the aviation bomber jacket—is meant to build esprit de corps and reflect a symbol of the tactical warfighter expertise that come with earning a SWO pin.

Everybody wants to look like a pilot.