Yeah, it is pretty hard to understand for folks coming from a civilian transport category background. It’s basically a big Cessna with a HUD, compared to airline planes. We have a barometric altitude hold function, you can couple to an enroute sequence of waypoints (to include RNAV post 2017), and we have autothrottles. We also have an attitude hold function which is similar in operation to 737 CWS (but all axis if commanded). No FD’s. We do have carrier based ILS guidance which looks identical to civilian land based ILS, and we have the automatic carrier landing system (ACLS) which you can fully couple to for an autoland at the ship, provided the ship’s gear and yours is working. I’ve never flown a coupled CVN approach, but i have used the guidance provided while hand flying. It’s just a different mentality of flying, probably for good reason.
We have a 249 count waypoint database, and have the ability (now) to load RNAV approaches to hand fly (to MDA). No LNAV or VNAV whatsoever. You just guess and do that pilot • if given a crossing restriction, an arc is flown like you would on a 6 pack plane with an HSI, and you will never hear a single one of us accept a STAR because we don’t have it, and it would take 20 mins to hand jam and we would never be speed or altitude protected.