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From: marks@math.mscs.mu.edu (Mark Storin)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Can the backseater in f-18's bring it home?
Message-ID: <1991Apr29.052842.6649@amd.com>
Date: 26 Apr 91 13:47:57 GMT
References: <1991Apr19.071041.14331@amd.com> <1991Apr23.054150.24804@amd.com>
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From: marks@math.mscs.mu.edu (Mark Storin)


In regards to the discussion on backseaters: in the navy it had been
the policy to use the backseater as a weapons officer.  Neither the F4 nor the
F14 backseat had controls for flying the aircraft.  When the Air Force became
interested in the F4 they had the backseat redesigned with flight controls.
With the advances in computerised avionics, the trend has been away from
weapons control officers as being unnecessary.  Hence the two seated versions
of aircraft (F15B/D, F16B/D, F18B, etc.) are generally training platforms,
though they lend themselves easily to other roles where a second person is
required (Wild Weasle). 

Much arqument has been made over the advantages/disadvantages of
a weapons officer in a backseat. Despite advances in avionics and computer
controlled radar and weapons systems, it is felt that pilots are still
overloaded with data.  I've read about F14's in dogfights against more
manuverable aircraft gaining the upper hand because the pilot of the F14 was
free to fly the aircraft without the distraction of all the data the other
pilot had to filter through.  In Vietnam Thud drivers routinely disabled
sensors and alarms as being too distracting during combat situations. Maybe
newer advances in technology will handle even more of the load for pilots.
Obviously the services feel this is so, the Navy's F18 is a single seater, and
there is no new trend towards two seaters in the Air Force (the YF-22 is a
single seater).

-Mark A. Storin