Can the rear seat crewmember of a fighter jet fly the plane?

Factual Questions
1

That’s pretty much the question. If the pilot of a modern fighter jet (say, something the US uses) became unavailable during a flight, could the rear seat crewmember successfully operate the aircraft? Could he/she continue to be effective in fighting the plane, or is it best to retreat ASAP? Similarly, if the RIO becomes unavailable, could the pilot launch any of the weapons before departing the area?

Finally, how much combat damage can a modern aircraft take? We’ve all seen images of WWII aircraft coming back from missions beat to hell, yet still mostly capable of flight. But those planes weren’t using computers to keep the aircraft operational. Are the absolutely critical computers on a military aircraft armored enough to take serious punishment before no longer being able to support flight?

2

There are very few, if any, non-trainer modern two-seat jets so it’s kind of moot.

3

USAF two-seat Fighter/Bombers such as the F-15E have full controls for both the pilot and the weapons officer.

4

ETA: beaten by two good ninja’s.

As to the US:

USAF practice is the back seat has a full set of flight controls. So the back seater can control the airplane. They receive enough training to be able to probably land successfully in benign enough conditions. There are various controls available only in the front cockpit which would make start-up or shutdown or handling malfunctions impossible from the back seat.

The ability to deploy weapons without the back seater varies a lot by aircraft.

In Ye Olden Dayes of the F-4 the pilot could fire the gun (if equipped) or launch an IR missile without help provided the back seater had already configured whichever of those weapons before he dropped dead. If stuff wasn’t set up, the pilot had no ability to shoot. The pilot’s ability to operate the radar was nil, so launching radar-guided missiles was not doable.

Nowadays the F-15E is the only 2-seat USAF tactical jet; everything else is single seat. There’s not much public info on the details of F-15E weapons systems. I’d bet the frontseater could perform air to air combat and fire air to air weapons without backseat help. The backseater could fly (limited by their skill, not by aircraft equippage) without the frontseater. Any of the fancy guided air to ground munitions would need backseater operation to use effectively.

Conversely, USN/USMC practice has always been to not provide flight controls for the backseater. Whether in the now-obsolete F-4 or F-14 days or the current F/A-18 models that use a backseater. If the pilot is incapacitated, the backseater’s response is to promptly eject both of them.

I expect the 2-seat variant of the F/A-18, the -G, is akin to the F-15 in weapons system. IOW, the frontseater can perform air to air combat and defend themselves basically unassisted, but the backseater is essential to do any of their real air to ground or EW mission.

For both F-15E & F/A-18G I’d expect the backseater is a large asset in an air-to-air battle, but is not 100% essential to the basics of shooting.

As to survivability …
Modern fighters are pretty fragile really. The power of modern missiles or cannon fire is such that armoring doesn’t really work. You can’t carry enough to matter.

Back in the day of the F-16, there was one single 4-plex computer that was absolutely essential to keeping it airborne. It wasn’t armored, but they installed it directly under the pilot’s butt. The logic being that any battle damage that got either would get both. By concentrating the most critical components in the smallest possible volume they minimized the aircraft volume that was subject to 1-hit is a kill.

5

Possibly representing service differences, the pilot of the F-14 definitely could select the weapon while the RIO could not. Remember that thread a while back where I linked a short YouTube documentary on the 1989 Gulf of Sidra incident with the actual cockpit radio recordings where the RIO fired an AIM-7 Sparrow much to the pilot’s surprise - on hearing his RIO call Fox-1, the pilot said, “Ah Jesus.” I was under the impression that the RIO was being a bit panicky in later telling the pilot repeatedly to take a Fox-2 shot to which the pilot was replying “I can’t, I don’t got a fucking tone.” It turns out that in the stress of the engagement the pilot only thought he had selected Fox-2, actually he hadn’t, and the RIO was trying to communicate to him he hadn’t actually selected Fox-2.

The creator of that short documentary put up a new version of it on his main channel just last week recreating the visuals in the video game DCS (Digital Combat Simulator) World. The relevant part of the exchange between the pilot and the RIO and the immediate Sidewinder tone and sound of the missile launch when the pilot realizes his mistake start at ~11:50.

6

Doesn’t the rear seat face backwards in some jets? That’d probably make flying more difficult.

7

It’s not at all uncommon. In addition to the F-15E, already discussed, Israel uses a two-seat variant of the F-16 and the French Rafale B is also a two-seat aircraft. As mentioned, the F-16I and Rafale have largely identical front and rear cockpits. The Su-34’s side-seater does not have an identical cockpit but you can see in this video that they do still have flight controls.

But to make them indispensable in other ways for flying, apparently. On the F-14, for instance, only the RIO could operate the transponder :stuck_out_tongue:

8

My Buddy was one of 4 on a S3, carrier based anti-sub planes.

He had no idea at all how to fly the plane, nor did the other specialist crewman.

The pilot and “co pilot” only.

I realize this is a different sort of plane altogether, but planes often have a tech crewman and a pilot.

9

The Israelis experimented with this idea in jets. Even their best F-4 backseaters could not overcome motion sickness flying backwards in jet aerial combat. The idea was abandoned.

Back in WW-I & -II there were of course smaller tactical aircraft and bombers with aft-facing gunners who weren’t pilots. Here’s a couple of the smaller examples, although these weren’t exactly what we normally think of today as “fighters”. Bristol Beaufighter - Wikipedia,
Douglas SBD Dauntless - Wikipedia


Not so crazy.

I would expect the same was true on F-4, both USAF & USN. With 1960s tech there really is not a lot of room to cram all the necessary controls into just the front seat. Once you’ve admitted you’re needing a two-crewman design to do the mission, you have enough real estate to put lots of not-truly-essential crap in the back.

For the two-seat training variants of the F-15 & F-16 and A-4 and F/A-18 there is a lot of panel space in the back seat that is blank. Precisely because they crammed everything up front in what’s normally a single seat design.

Modern cars have touchscreens that we love to hate precisely so they can have 1000 controls in there without festooning the car with discrete buttons, knobs, and switches. As early computerized displays started happening in the F-15 & later, the same thing happened. Less panel space was needed for what had been discrete controls for the less-used functions. Like a transponder code that is set once before taxi and 99% not touched again.


The S-3, at least the early versions, carried one Naval Aviator as pilot, two Naval Flight Officers (AKA navigators, backseaters, etc.) and one enlisted Sensor Operator. The person sitting in the right front seat was an NFO, not a pilot. But, like USAF back seaters, doubtless he had the skill to fly the plane at least some. The two folks in the back had no flight controls at all. Nor probably the training to use them if they had them. Definitely not the Sensop.

Looking at photos of the cockpit it’s clear the right-seater did have a stick and throttles. Which was not true in the USN’s earlier A-6.

10

Brings to mind the bit from Airplane
Ted Striker: “This is a different kind of flying altogether.”
Everyone else (in unison): “This is a different kind of flying”.

I would imagine for a two-crew aircraft, it would be no fun to be sitting there and realize the pilot was incapacitated and you had no control over the aircraft.

Just watched this week’s episode of The Amazing Race where they are flying two-person gliders in Slovenia and the contestant strictly as passenger has a control stick too. (I assume the gliders are also used for teaching).

11

As mentioned above, in that case the 2nd crewmember has the sole option of ejecting them both.

In the early 1950s the USN came up with the

Which was simply ginormous for the carriers of the day. AFAIK it’s the largest & heaviest airplane ever routinely operated off USN carriers even to this day. It was intended as a long-ish ranged strategic bomber to give the Navy a piece of the nuclear attack / deterrence mission a decade before SLBMs were practical.

Relevant to this thread, the airplane had one pilot and one navigator sitting side by side, and one aft-facing navigator behind. Only the pilot station had flight controls. In that era a “bomber” didn’t have ejection seats. So if shit got bad, or the pilot was incapacitated …

The unofficial nickname of the A3D was “All three die”. Later variants removed the bomb bay and added a cramped space for 4 more EW operators. All without ejection seats.

One of my long-time airline pals who’s nearly a decade older than I had flown some then-ancient A3Ds in the Naval Reserves in the 1980s. Not a great experience in his telling.

12

This is generally true, but since we are mentioning the F-15, there is the rather famous story of an F-15 losing an entire wing during a training mishap and still landing safely. I’d call that rather survivable.