Good2Golf said:
Max, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You appear to give little credit to combat system simplification through leveraged automation and aggrandize the difficulty of fighting a system that has a second seat.
This is a broad generalization that is filled with assumptions. In order for the second seat to be useful and not detrimental, the person needs to be trained, experienced and competent. It takes 1.5 years of solid training to bring a winged pilot to the level where he can
learn to be an effective fighter pilot. It takes 1 year to make that fighter pilot a competent wingman. It takes another 1 year to make an effective 2-ship lead/junior 4-ship lead. It is a complicated business and before we can even start to think about putting a second body in our multi-role aircraft, there needs to be a solid training plan in place as well as a large preemptive exchange program to build the experience and competency in that specific role. Setting up the training is not the issue. Building the experience and competence
might would be.
If you don't have those 3 things, instead of increasing your capacity, you make it half: the pilot not only has to manage the flying and the tactics but also has to manage the backseater. I happen to work with F/A-18F pilots right now and all of them have flown operationally. While the second crewmember is sometimes a true enhancer, it is fairly often SA depleting. To the point that soon after takeoff on operational missions, the pilot knew they were not going to employ that day because of their backseater's lack of competence. This is an organization that has done this for decades and yet, the 2-crew is not always an enhancer. Having said that, with the right backseater (and frontseater), you can make you 2 crew the equivalent of 3.
I am not against the idea, just very skeptical, given our (the CAF in general) track record of doing things properly....
Good2Golf said:
So as a potential CF-35 pilot in the future, you're okay with sharing your cockpit only with your ego, trusting that the jet's combat system automation will keep you from becoming over-saturated and losing SA.
I an absolutely okay relying on automation: there is no second guessing, less likely to deplete my SA (although if not properly integrated, too much information laid out poorly will do that), and this is the way I have been trained, managed to do well by myself, therefore I absolutely have a bias for single-cockpit.
Good2Golf said:
...but, other aircraft can't provide that, and need a second body in the jet, and...well...it's pretty complicated stuff and ACSO's may not make the cut?
They may be able to make the cut, but it's far more complex than a type conversion simply because operating a single system in a training aid is not same as flying as operating (and CRMing) a true combat system.
Good2Golf said:
How do you survive when you fly a 900 tail? ???
We don't use the 2-seaters as a 2-crew aircraft per se. We use it like they use the second seat in the Harvard II: with an instructor or standards pilot in the back seat providing training or evaluating someone. The front seater does everything tactically.