Originally Posted by Plastic Bonsai
Easy Street:..2-seat Super Hornet or Growler would be better from an EW / ISTAR / UAV control / etc point of view
For these roles a second seat makes sense surely?
Those that sought to characterise my post as a personal attack on Sharkey were wrong - I find myself in 100% agreement with his views on the 1 seat / 2 seat point! The thrust of my post was that I was surprised to hear this view expressed by a former Harrier pilot, when pretty much every other British single-seat pilot I've ever met has (publically, anyway) viewed 2-seat fast jets and their operators with derision! So, rather than being aimed directly at Sharkey, it was aimed at those who have consistently sought to denigrate those of us who share the task of flying a combat aircraft.
Over the past 30 years the "single-seat or die" community has convinced those with the purse strings that modern computing and data fusion renders the nav/WSO unecessary for future combat tasks - hence we end up with F-22, F-35, Typhoon, etc. It's one thing with air combat (where the reduction in aircraft mass and size of a single-seater has certain advantages) but for all the roles mentioned above, it's possible lunacy! When, at some point in the future, politicians decide that enough is enough and the damned aircraft has to come into service NOW, imperfections in mission software and data fusion are very, very easy to gloss over - "hey look everyone, we have some aircraft we can put on the carrier - job done". We then get saddled with working around various shortcomings in the mission kit until they get ironed out over the first decade in service. With a second body on board, 'data fusion' issues can be worked around in real time through the simple expedient of CRM.