I bought that book in anticipation of Janes F-15, many years ago… 
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Second Jet at least…needed someone else to designate them…all the AAQ-14 TGPs were given to the F-15E sqns and F-111s had the Pave Tack.
Not aware F-16 sqns used any LGBs even in that manner in DS or even trained to it. Was all unguided except some Block 30s had HARM and teamed with F-4Gs. Later in DS some were using AGM-65Ds ( All Mavs were given to the A-10s sqns at the start of the war apparently).
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That jives with Vipers in the Storm. Initially trained to pops with dumb bombs, then transitioned to high altitude dive bombing with Mk84s. Interdiction with lead carrying Mavs and -2 carrying CBUs of some flavor.
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I’m secretly hoping they redo the Iran campaign from that one, would be too cool.
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Talk about teaser…
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That puts it on a different timeline to the next open beta patch… this week Vs about two weeks.
I can’t remember if all module releases have coincided with an open beta patch, recently they have but does it have to be that way?
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Always an update.
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They could also very well be kidding. Two more weeks is a meme. Be sure.
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Completely forgot about that… Thanks
Wonder how Oleg is doing?
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lol ‘be sure’ made me think of Oleg as well
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Wheels
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As I remember, the SE was originally intended as a next gen FB-111, designed to strike deeper than the Viper, carrying more, faster, and with a healthy ability to defend itself from air threats to boot.
The 15E was still a Cold Warrior; the last maybe. So it was very much designed equally to drop many conventional bombs on most targets and (relatively rare at the time) PGMs on targets that were either: hard to kill (requiring a direct hit), hard to get to (so you didn’t want to attack it twice), or hard for the enemy to lose (“when it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight” to quote the old saying).
As to the second crewman, he was not only there for the LGB mission.
It probably goes without saying that the Cold War gone hot was going to be a high threat, low altitude war, with low acquisition angles (even in a ramp up or pop) and short engagement times.
The SE, like it’s siblings the Harrier and the Hornet, had the capability to drop good old fashioned dumb bombs with near precision accuracy. But they had to find and designate the target to do it.
Which brings us to the other part that’s easy to forget; this was all pre-GPS. Pre-ring laser gyro in fact. Even a tightly coupled INS back then was capable of drifting several tenths of a mile per hour of flight time.
That’s easily enough to set you popping at the wrong time. Or rolling in on…nothing.
Period CAS could offset this shortfall in the traditional way, by marking the target with arty, or better still, with laser. But, unless SF was out snoopin’ and poopin’ in the toolies, that wasn’t going to help you in the DBA.
So a lot (a lot) of bombing in that period between the, “Clock to chart to ground, TLAR” days and the “There it is, right under the GPS designation diamond” days was about keeping your INS tight and trying to get your sensors (from TGP to just HUD designation) pointed at the target. This way you could use all that cool SciFi stuff built into the jet.
And, despite many jokes about having a Navbag, erm, I mean a GIB, back there, it really reduces the workload having someone else worrying about all the gnatsassery while you were up front concentrating on the avoidgroundery! 
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Unlike the F-16 and Hornet, the F-15E was to use twin pods all the time. One for targeting and one for navigation.
The idea of one pilot being able to do all that in the early 80s was not exactly a given. All the other dedicated interdiction bombers of the day, F-111, A-6, etc, had a 2nd for offensive ops.
Interestingly, the other contestant for the slot was the F-16XL and they made both single and twin seat prototypes for it. So while they never considered an EX-style single seater for the 15 in this slot, they did for the Viper just as the Super Hornet later proliferated in both variants. Not that I’m aware if any single seaters would have entered production, it could have been merely for proof-of-concept as well as mooting it for a possible interceptor version with better range than standard Vipers.
And of course the Israeli 2-seat F-16I is used very much in that same interdiction mission, it just has a shorter range and smaller payload which didn’t bother them as much. I still wish the delta-winged variant had entered production, though.
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I was surprised to see this is cheaper than the Mirage F1 - though I suppose you get several variants in the Mirage module, from the review I read.
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Its also 30% off at pre-order.
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The intent was for a two seat F-16E but seems they evaluated both single and twin seat for the DRF according to NASAs history. After the F-15E was chosen over the F-16E, the USAF were only putting the single seater into production as the F-16F with IOC around 1989.
That would have been used in the same way as the F-16s - and after all the point of the XL was to replace the baseline F-16.
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