Except systems doesn’t change the reality of task saturation. The systems can assist in operating the aircraft, but they still rely upon the pilot to take action in situations, ie a threat warning while operating the weapons. The pilot still has to shift his actions around and prioritize the most critical, taking away from whatever previous task he was focused on.
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This.
But from the other side.
Meaning… I think a plane mostly dedicated to air2air is harder to multi crew online as certain nuances that works great in person are lost in a desktop environment.
The A6 and other ground pounder will be perfect for multi crew.
As, I believe, helicopters.
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Sure, but think of them more like an autopilot: it can handle the basics, but the moment you need to do more complex tasks, they’re inadequate. For example, the CMWS equipping most US military helicopters can detect missile launches based upon UV signature pretty damn quick. It also detects just about anything else that kicks out UV light, so you get a lot of false positives with it. In addition, it doesn’t know what type of missile it might be – SAL? Radar? IR? You can potentially throw in an automation to kick out countermeasures, but that’s only part of the equation. Most of these systems still keep a man in the loop for obvious reasons, so a lot of things happening at once can still cause helmet fires in short order. The recent F-35 crash in Japan is quite indicative of this, I think.
Keep in mind that I’m not speaking of modern technologies which have gotten exponentially better in terms of automation in recent years, but more along the lines of what’s currently in use, tested, and available to the vast majority of people. The problem with these technologies has more to do with reliance on their infallibility, as the current 737-MAX situation sadly proves. In terms of DCS, think of how often the Bug’s IFF would indicate hostile when the target was in fact friendly.
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Having 400+ hours of Euro fighter cockpit I can agree a lot with this.
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Ah, got it - see what you mean now. I mean the trend is from 2 pilots, to 1 pilot (and can even extrapolate from there as well… 
)
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What? Dude, I’m right here!
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Well, the trend is more like from 2 pilots to no pilots. Two pilots offer a lot of checks and balances that a single one doesn’t. It’s like having someone else who can see things from your perspective, all your systems and information, but because they’re a different person they can come to a different conclusion or reaffirm your original one. They can potentially be just as wrong as you, of course, but having two well-trained people in that situation makes the chances of that much less likely.
Here’s a good article on the subject: https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/attention on-deck/
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Lots of F-35’s being built right now, although it seems like the Super Hornet will hold out forever, and there are a lot of 'F’s dual-seats in that group. I’m not really familiar with it all, but it seems like the F-35C is just going to be a strike aircraft and the Navy resisted?
I wonder if the step will be from 1 pilot to ‘1 pilot and drones’? Like some sort of automated and more local forward air controller?
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I wouldn’t know where to begin with their plans, but most everyone has their eye on UCAVs for the foreseeable future. The USN is just being a bit more cautious with the technology, but their recent X-47B and subsequent MQ-25 suggests that they’re well on their way to adopting autonomous systems, just on a more feasible time scale. There’s been a lot of hard lessons learned from the JSF program that has made a lot of folks in the US DOD be a bit more stringent with the contracts they tender to the defense industry. The USN hasn’t really resisted the F-35 as much as they’ve basically said “Sure, whenever it’s ready, til then we have F/A-18E/F.” Both the USAF and USMC have made some absolutely horrible decisions in their aircraft fleets due to a combination of factors that aren’t really pertinent to this discussion.
What the F-35 brings to the table isn’t so much in terms of raw combat power, but integration of new technologies and the fusion of them. That – when speaking of the US DOD and the US defense industry – isn’t an easy thing to do.
I honestly don’t see much advantage to a drone control aircraft versus drone control from a carrier, base or operating station. The way it’s been set up for a while now has been to allow a lot of existing manned aircraft to take control of drones (this was one of the big upgrades planned for the AH-64D Block III/E, going up from viewing drone information to controlling them), so if anything it’s become more like a handoff system. Given the endurance of a lot of unmanned systems, this probably offers the most flexibility anyways. It’s also one of those situations that makes having that second crewmember handy, since they get to operate on a different level than the pilot does without having the same concerns.
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Despite all the above ( conservative ideas ) writen down I will definitively go for Ka50s all the way, just sayin’
That means I am out of this MC thread with it so you can freely njoy the Mi28s … brrr 
I don’t think anyone is against the Ka-50, not even me (looking forward to the upgrade), just that the Ka-50 is from a different era with a different design philosophy that doesn’t really fit the changing nature of warfare nor human psychology. It’s very much a Russian machine, which doesn’t tend to translate very well to western thinking – especially in warfare. There’s a very real cultural as well as political difference that influences Russian hardware and western hardware design decisions.
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That’s a really interesting thought. What are those differences specifically?
Economics.
Vodka???
Yak141 vs F35
Keep in mind that I’m far from an expert, so much of what I’ve gathered has been from various books and talking to people who lived in the USSR from the 80s to 90s. None of the following is intended to attack anyone or find fault.
Russians have a certain outlook on life in general that is, shall we say, callous in general regard of it. That isn’t to say that they hate it or are bloodthirsty or anything like that, but more of a “stuff happens” kind of outlook. If they attack a target with airpower and it happens to be near noncombatants, well it’s the noncombatants’ fault for being there. While the west tries its damndest to use technology to minimize such cases, Russian access to these technologies is limited as well as being expensive, and if they can achieve the same result with 192 S57 rockets versus one precision weapon, they’ll use the rockets. Another example would be Soviet doctrine to fire air-air missiles in pairs, in order to increase PK; not really damning against the technology, but instead indicative that if you’re in a good position to shoot, you make it count.
The Russian approach is basically so as long as it works, there’s no reason to change it. This makes them very practical in how they apply things, not to mention saving them a lot of money. The MiG-29, Su-27, Su-25, etc. work good enough, and incremental upgrades don’t cost that much, plus it gives opportunities to work out kinks in new hardware and get them mature before throwing them onto the latest and unproved airframe. They eventually get newer tech stuff into their militaries, but it’s an incremental approach mandated by their budget as well as their culture.
Basically, for the Russian government, there’s no real political fallout if a mistake is made and a news crew gets shot up or they blow up a hospital. The culture is “sucks to be them” and life goes on. In the west, such a thing typically (though not always) becomes a big deal and heads are likely to roll.
Russians also have a huge regard for the Great Patriotic War and much of their tactics (especially attack aircraft) still have footing from that conflict. For example, every aircraft in a flight will line up and in a single pass expend all their ordnance at once, with the idea being enough aircraft to make a constant barrage to soften a position for the duration of a friendly ground advance. This also influences aircraft design, because while the VVS and PVO (army air forces and air defense forces respectively) were separate in the Soviet era, much of the same delineation remains today. Thus you have the MiG-29: designed as a point defense fighter with secondary air-ground capabilities, intended to operate from rough forward strips to protect ground forces. By contrast, the Su-27 was designed to defend domestic airspace, so it has a radically different payload and design purpose. They both share some similarities for logistical reasons, but they were both designed for – essentially – different services.
At the end of the day, the west by and large has gone the direction of advanced technology in order to reduce the political fallout from cultural backlash to violent conflict, which they’ve learned can sink political goals in short order. Russia, due to having completely different political concerns as a result of their culture, pushes their military technology in a direction that best suits their history and future concerns.
LockMart sure made out like bandits on that deal…
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Also percussive maintenance.
I have been told there is a spot on the vipers’ belly where if you kick it, even lightly, you will bring a certain set of turbine blades out of whack and the thing is down for days or will catastrophically fail on flight. Might be apocryphal, just as the above gif is
Helmet fires is a perfect reason to bring a second crewmember along. Or perhaps have him sit in by datalink…
When I had to explain my boy why a tank has more than two crew, I only needed to show him how little one sees from within and how heavy tracks are. It was immediately clear to the little dude. Having a wizzo makes as much sense.
On the other hand, doing a prebriefed, preprogrammed run-in, drop, scoot where you drop all the eggs in one pass, then haul ass, one man could and should suffice with proper preparations and systems integration.
On the gripping hand, having a wizzo makes it easier to improvise if the gomers dared put a flak trap right in that valley you was going to be running in on, and you saw numbers one and two go up like firecrackers in it…
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That was a great answer Franze, thanks.
Being married to a former Soviet woman, I can definitely see a more “practical” approach towards life and death. ■■■■ happens and you just got to be strong seems prevalent throughout the culture. I suppose that does carry over to their planes. Cool.
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From my latest experience with Case III night landings in the Turkey, I can only say that I would have saved some airframes from a dip in the drink if I had a human RIO who might have recognized that I unintentionally stopped my instrument scan and lost track of my altitude…
This is a great discussion and it has got me thinking…
Both the A-10 and Su-25 were designed as tank killers. Both are single seat, fixed wing. Both are successful.
Both the AH-64 and Mi-28 are designed as tank killers. Both are two seat rotary wing. Both are successful.
From this thread I learned about the genesis of the Ka-52 from the Ka-50. Again a tank killer rotary wing but a 2 seater developed from a single seater that was not as successful?
So what is it about helicopter anti-tank/CAS vs fixed wing anti-tank/CAS missions that would lead making the helicopter a pilot/gunner machine but the fixed wing a single pilot machine?
Before answering that, I freely admit that there are plenty of two seat fixed wing ground attack/strike aircraft out there that ca be pressed into the anti-tank/CAS mission–F-15E, FA-18F, various Flanker versions, etc. But their overall mission is Strike–they are capable of anti-tank/CAS but not specifically designed to do so.
So back to the question - why does fixed wing anti-tank/CAS = 1 aircrew; rotary wing anti-tank/CAS = 2 aircrew?
More so (and getting back to the thread’s theme) - how does that play out in DCS? We have the A-10 and Su-25 variants. The Gazelle can do simple yeoman’s service as a tank killer. And we have the Ka-50. Perhaps a bit of experimentation is in order. See where the similarities are with fixed and rotary wing anti-tank/CAS. Then look at the differences. See what it adds up to. Then looking at what the Ka-50 can/cannot do (or does well) because it is single seat. Hmmmm…
My gut says that it will haver something to do with tactics and workload…something to do with the low / slow (hovering) attacks of a helicopter vs the low fast slashing attacks of a jet.
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