Foghorn Leghorn and
Bob Viking - I agree in part with you both. I also agree that single seat Typhoon and F35 mates
eventually develop some of the skills of an ISTAR WSO or WSOp. But I guess my articulation is poor here, what I am trying to say (obviously clumsily) is that pretty soon (10-15 years) much of what many traditional Pilots learned during their Phase 2 Flying Training will no longer be needed. What they will need is more akin to a blend of Pilot, WSO and WSOp training, rather than what we currently have.
Easy Street seems to have nailed it better than I.
Now we’re talking about Aeralis here, so my main point is that this aircraft to me seems to be aimed more at what will be our legacy Flying Training System (which may have to change as quickly as 5 years away) and realistically we will need to train an “Operator” rather than what we traditionally know as a “Pilot”. Your ability to keep the needle straight up and the ball in the middle becomes less relevant as every day goes by. So, should these future “Operators” be called Pilots, WSOs or WSOps or something entirely different? I’m also not thinking purely Combat Air here either, the same question aims off at Air Mobility, ISTAR and Rotary Wing - all of which could very soon (within 5-10 years) see more ‘machine flying’ by a computer rather than a human. As I clumsily explained before, that human will not need the skills that we have traditionally inculcated in our Pilots prior to OCU or even AJT (which still major on Piloting skill and kit manipulation is a secondary activity as far as I can see).