dependency on WSO

[twistking]

The F-14 and F-4 rank quite high in my favorite planes list, however i did not pull the trigger on the tomcat, because i did not enjoy the dependency on the RIO, or AI RIO (Jester) to be precise. I think HB did a good job with Jester, in the end i just found the singleseaters more immersive for me, despite them being significantly less cool.
I now wonder how WSO dependency will be in the Phantom. I understand that the Airforce has a bit of a different concept concerning twinseaters.
Do you think that in the phantom there will be less AI interaction required, or more compared to the tomcat?

Thanks

Edited January 5, 2023 by twistking

[Czechnology]

1 hour ago, twistking said:

The F-14 and F-4 rank quite high in my favorite planes list, however i did not pull the trigger on the tomcat, because i did not enjoy the dependency on the RIO, or AI RIO (Jester) to be precise. I think HB did a good job with Jester, in the end i just found the singleseaters more immersive for me, despite them being significantly less cool.
I now wonder how WSO dependency will be in the Phantom. I understand that the Airforce has a bit of a different concept concerning twinseaters.
Do you think that in the phantom there will be less AI interaction required, or more compared to the tomcat?

Thanks

 

Targeting pods will almost definitely be rear seater territory. I don't know if they full on lack the controls or screens for it, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn just that.

[Stackup]

1 hour ago, twistking said:

Do you think that in the phantom there will be less AI interaction required, or more compared to the tomcat?

From what I've heard and read on this forum, the pilot should have basically all the weapon controls up front but only controls the radar in a borescope mode.  Most of the navigation systems seem to be controlled from the backseat as well as primary control of the radar.  The main difference between the USAF and the USN back-seaters is that the USAF back seats have full flight controls while the USN do not.  Otherwise, they do pretty much the same thing. 

I'm sure the experts here will be able to correct or explain it better than me, but I can't think of a single two-seat fighter from this era where the back-seater served no purpose.  So like it or not, planes like this will require you to talk to the WSO or RIO, that's why they are there.  They do things the pilot can't because of systems limitations.  I would imagine that the F-4E will require more interaction because the aircraft is older than the F-14 with older analog systems and some early digital systems.  Jester isn't that hard to use though and they said that the Phantom will launch Jester 2.0 I believe it was, so it should be even better than what's currently in the Tomcat.

[Kalasnkova74]

Interesting. I always thought having two trained heads is better than one, especially when it comes to overall SA. In modern air combat systems management is as important as flying the jet, and having Jester to do that for the F-4 frees me up to actually focus on the flying bit. 

[SgtPappy]

2 hours ago, Kalasnkova74 said:

Interesting. I always thought having two trained heads is better than one, especially when it comes to overall SA. In modern air combat systems management is as important as flying the jet, and having Jester to do that for the F-4 frees me up to actually focus on the flying bit. 

Two heads is better than one if they work together well.

One of the biggest shortcomings of USAF doctrine in Vietnam was that they used to put different pairs in the cockpit between missions and often the two didn't know how to communicate well. To make matters worse, the guy in back (GIB) was often a pilot waiting to be promoted to the front seat so was unhappy and would often back seat fly.

The USN on the other hand, caught this early and at least by the time of Top Gun, if not earlier, paired one guy with another for most if not all missions so they would work together. The RIO was also a dedicated NFO, not a pilot.

Edited January 5, 2023 by SgtPappy

[Bremspropeller]

9 hours ago, SgtPappy said:

To make matters worse, the guy in back (GIB) was often a pilot waiting to be promoted to the front seat so was unhappy and would often back seat fly.

Didn't that practise die some time during the F-4D, which was more tailored towards having a crew with clear-cut tasks?

9 hours ago, SgtPappy said:

The USN on the other hand, caught this early and at least by the time of Top Gun, if not earlier, paired one guy with another for most if not all missions so they would work together. The RIO was also a dedicated NFO, not a pilot.

RIOs were NFOs from the start, yeah. Some NFOs also became pilots later, though. One example being "Hawk" Smith.

There seem to have been different approaches concerning experience levels and crewing, tbh. Some squadrons did it better than others. On many prior F-8 squadrons (or with lots of F-8 folks), pairing experienced and unexperienced crews across one aircraft wasn't unheard of:

Nugget pilot paired up with an experienced RIO.

Experienced pilot paired with nugget RIO.

At some time, with their teeth cut, the nuggets then would start flying together.

I believe VF-143 even had an all-nugget crew bag a MiG once. The Dogs weren't prior F-8 users, though.

Edited January 6, 2023 by Bremspropeller

[SgtPappy]

2 hours ago, Bremspropeller said:

Didn't that practise die some time during the F-4D, which was more tailored towards having a crew with clear-cut tasks?

 

Yes, I believe the USAF got the idea and started doing this. The Rivet Haste crews were also all "fixed crews".