Yeah, Huggy said person, which excludes the need for a WSO..

Mover and Gonky discussed this with the F-15EX

My druthers is to provide a place for them to land that seems more logical and to retrain some for the right seat with pilot wings.

F-7 & F-15EX with GIBs to control CCAs, B-21 with attached UPT program…

The only reason the EX has a backseat is due to the relative ease/cost of using the already existent tooling, etc. It’s not because any non-WSOs thought there was a WSO necessity. That said, writing on the wall says the AF may go the way of the Navy/USMC - “single seat” and “dual seat” squadrons with the same basic aircraft type. It’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out while enjoying my tray table.

Back on the B-21 topic I think we should all keep in mind that we’re probably only getting 50 of these things (if we’re lucky) so the question here is how comfortable are you trusting a very limited strategic asset to a single pilot? Bomber pilots will all tell you these long duration sorties really wear you down and little mistakes creep in as the fatigue gets worse. The airlines have figured this out too and they operate with a far higher degree of automation than most military jets.

I know our fighter brethren are all high SA giga-chad superheroes who can do everything themselves but with all due respect if you haven’t flown a sortie over 24 hours un-augmented, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You need two pilots on this plane unless you’re comfortable putting them into the ground on a semi regular basis.

9 hours ago, Pooter said:

Back on the B-21 topic I think we should all keep in mind that we’re probably only getting 50 of these things (if we’re lucky) so the question here is how comfortable are you trusting a very limited strategic asset to a single pilot? Bomber pilots will all tell you these long duration sorties really wear you down and little mistakes creep in as the fatigue gets worse. The airlines have figured this out too and they operate with a far higher degree of automation than most military jets.

I know our fighter brethren are all high SA giga-chad superheroes who can do everything themselves but with all due respect if you haven’t flown a sortie over 24 hours un-augmented, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You need two pilots on this plane unless you’re comfortable putting them into the ground on a semi regular basis.

50? Most of the chatter I’ve seen is for 200 or more

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/why-the-u-s-needs-200-b-21-raider-stealth-bombers-not-100/#:~:text=Mark%20Gunzinger%20and%20colleagues%20advocate%20for%20more,build%20a%20nearly%20400%2Dstrong%20strategic%20bomber%20force.

https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/why-the-u-s-air-force-needs-300-or-more-b-21-raider-stealth-bombers/

Granted if there is a way to f up an acquisition process going mostly smoothly, the AF is the GOAT but it seems we will get more not less.

Concur on your point on long duration sorties

12 hours ago, brabus said:

The only reason the EX has a backseat is due to the relative ease/cost of using the already existent tooling, etc. It’s not because any non-WSOs thought there was a WSO necessity. That said, writing on the wall says the AF may go the way of the Navy/USMC - “single seat” and “dual seat” squadrons with the same basic aircraft type. It’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out while enjoying my tray table.

Maybe but I’d like to try before we buy, fly off and testing the cognitive load and tasking in representative scenarios should be done if it is not already being done

@Pooter Nobody is arguing two pilots shouldn’t be there given the sortie duration (unless we want to take the AI route as replacement for the 2nd guy…definitely could be viable one day, not that I love the idea). Any argument I made is that two pilots aren’t needed IF we took sortie duration out of the mix.

1 hour ago, Clark Griswold said:

Maybe but I’d like to try before we buy, fly off and testing the cognitive load and tasking in representative scenarios should be done if it is not already being done

It’s been done multiple times given current day tech (fighter specific) - the continuous result is not in the WSO’s favor. Not speaking to large crew aircraft like B-1 or B-52. This whole thing comes down to emotion; they’re simply not needed on current and future tech. Just as airline pilots will not be needed at all some day (we just all hope it’s not in our careers, but it absolutely is coming).

Edited 14 hours ago14 hr by brabus

@Clark Griswold

I just say 50 by going off historical precedent. We were supposed to get 700+ raptors and 100 B-2s. There are already talks of cutting F-35 production in favor of NGAD paper promises. We’re dumping the wedge tail and can’t field a single engine jet trainer without a litany of issues. I’ve ranted about this in other threads before but I don’t think we have the attention span to stick with programs or build jets in numbers that are tactically relevant anymore.

I would bet on getting 25% of the airframes we originally planned for. 50 would be 50% of the original B-21 order number which given how f-ed our acquisitions are right now would literally be a moonshot best case scenario. Would love to be proven wrong