Airbus FCAS has 2 seats and is as ‘next generation’ as Tempest? 6th Gen or 5th Gen, I know that Airbus call it 6th Gen.
Then there is USN’s F/A-XX, which appears to be 2 seat:
Or the 2-seat Su 57 variant for deep penetration and swarming Okhotnic drone missions:
https://www.shunlongwei.com/two-seat...hotnik-drones/
WSO training is cheaper than Pilot and the way that autonomy is going, the Pilot as we know it is looking more and more like a WSO every day. We have auto air-air refuelling, AI programs that can beat F16 Fighter Weapons Jockeys ‘3 sore bottoms to 0’ and auto-land has been around for ages. Sadly, the notion of Biggles as a stick waggling and nose gunning hero is on borrowed time. When you watch Star Wars, they got it wrong, R2D2 should have been in the front seat and Luke Skywalker in the boot - that way R2 would have smashed the exhaust port first time and Luke could have told Wedge not to go into the trench as Darth Vader was going to smash him.
However, it does make huge sense to have someone with more Pilot-type skills and someone with more WSO-type skills in a 2 seat aircraft - it also makes huge sense to have 2 Aircrew in all of our Combat Air types. The F35B couldn’t fit a second cockpit, it’s a compromise for that stupid lift fan and too little fuel anyway.
But Tempest, if it doesn’t want to be severely limited, needs to be a 2-seater. Otherwise, we are buying a pup, a bit like buying a 16Gb iPhone because that is all you can afford when the entry standard these days is 64Gb.