See subject.
I dunno. Does the jet in question have duplicate controls for the “other” person?
If so, I would say, “Yes.”
If not, then, “No.”
The jest pilot: he’s the one with red and green boots that curl up at the toe, and a hat with bells, right?
:smack::smack: “Jets”
I see the ninjas massing already.
I also don’t know how to talk to the mod via “report this post.” I’m sure the answer is in front of my face.
Too late by under 60 secs. ::sigh::
I expect it will depend on exactly what jet you’re talking about.
It will depend on (1) whether they can get at the controls, and (2) whether they know how to fly a plane.
(1) will presumably depend on the layout of the plane (whether the second person can get to the cockpit during flight), and whether the original pilot’s body can be got out of the way.
(2) is a maybe.
Are you asking if any military planes come with dual sets of controls? I don’t know, but it seems very unlikely. Extra weight, and dangerous, I should think.
Thread title fixed at OP’s request.
F 15, F 16, F 14, that type.
From what I understand, the Navy does not put flight controls in the back seat of most of its fighters. The Air Force does, and the backseater routinely gets some stick time during flight. I logged 400 hours in fighters as an aerial photographer, and I got my share of stick time. I even landed an F-15 from the back seat on my End of Tour flight. Granted, the pilot was absolutely not going to let me crash, and would have taken control if I was messing up, but I had the stick all the way to landing.
FB-111 too, I’m curious also.
The F-14 is a Navy bird. I flew in the F-15, F-16, F-4, and T-38 Air Force planes. Never flew in an F-111, but have chased them several times. Pretty sure the WSO has a set of flight controls in that bird, too.
The F-4 Phantom had dual controls because the pilot originally sat in the back, but I think most small fighter/bombers don’t unless they are a trainer variant. Larger planes that spend a long time in the air (long range bombers, etc) will usually have dual controls and copilots.
F-15 and F-16 are single pilot planes, except the trainer variants. The F-14 only had single controls.
Most F-15s and F-16s are single seat fighters. The two seat versions I flew in were trainers. The F-15E is a ground attack version of the F-15, and does have flight controls in the back seat. F-15s are nicknamed “Eagles”, but the E-model was somewhat derisively referred to as a “Mud Hen”.
There’s an article here from DefenseTech on the virtues of two-seat compared with one-seat in a future version of the F 22, and how perhaps two-seaters could be integrated in the ballsy single- seaters.
Comments?
Much of what I experienced is way out of date now. I got out in '92, and things have changed a lot in the last 20 years. One advantage of the two seat fighter is an extra level of protection in low altitude strike missions. Every time I flew one of those, we always covered a bird strike scenario. Two seat fighters have a handle that can set the ejection seats to both fire from the back seat. I was always instructed to set the handle for that, in case the pilot became incapacitated and there was no time to try anything else. If there was time, I was told to “zoom and boom”–ie, get the nose up and hit afterburner to get away from the ground and buy time to assess the situation, give my front seater every chance to recover.
For those planes that are double-seaters and don’t have flight controls in the back, what’s the purpose of having a guy in the back at all? In Top Gun all they seemed to do was look around for enemy planes. That’s it?
The job is pretty much the same whether he’s got a set of flight controls or not. They operate various things–radar, certain weapons systems, GPS, radio, etc. With some of the “smart bombs” used in Desert Storm, the backseater was actually flying the bomb after it was released, guiding it to the target with a joystick in the backseat. He’s got video screens back there so he can see what the bomb sees. In certain situations, he will run the checklist–ie calling out each step in various procedures from a list.
This is my job in the Navy as an NFO. In most aircraft, there is no second set of controls. As pointed out, there are trainer aircraft where there is a second set and is a good choice for taking people like Oakminster up.
In the Navy, NFO’s go through the first part of flight training with the other pilots. We learn the same things up until we actually climb into the first training aircraft (T-34). NFO’s then spend a few flights learning how to fly the aircraft, but then we split into learning how to navigate. Could I have landed the T-34 if the instructor was incapacitated? Yes. Could I land a 2-seat/dual control F-18 from the backseat? Not on the boat–not a chance in hell. Maybe I could land a nice long straight-in to a long airfield, but the landing would probably not be the greatest. If that was my platform, I’d know the various airspeeds, so that wouldn’t be a problem–but knowing the cockpit would be a problem.
The NFO is going to know the cockpit he uses, so as the WSO, you’d know all the systems/switchology in your cockpit. This would not be dual-control trainer cockpit, but an operational warbird. Stick that same NFO into a dual-control trainer, and he’s not going to know the cockpit very well. If the emergency is time-critical, that unfamiliarity is going to be a problem. If you can take your time, I’d say the NFO landing the plane can be done.
FTR, my aircraft was the EP-3, which is a multi-piloted aircraft. Not as much to worry about both pilots becoming incapacitated. Could I have landed it alone? It would have been very difficult. Getting the plane across the runway threshold in a landing configuration - yes. Flaring the plane to a landing at the right speed - probably not. A hard landing with a plane not built for carrier landings with a non-pilot at the controls probably won’t end well.