Title: aircraft design - Why do some fighter jets have two pilots while others have only one? - Aviation Stack Exchange
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Why do some fighter jets have two pilots while others have only one?
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Content: Thanks to Jan, Habu, and Joel for comments and clarifications! Share
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edited Jul 13 '15 at 19:06
answered Jun 1 '15 at 12:06
dotancohen
dotancohen
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It's primarily a question of pilot workload and military policy at design time. You'll notice that the primary two-seat fighters and attack planes in the U.S. armed forces (designation F or A) were designed in the late Korean through Vietnam eras, representing the third and early fourth generation of fighter design. This was a critical period of transition from the fighter philosophy of the World Wars and Korea, primarily day fighters engaging in visual-range combat with guns, to modern air combat involving all-weather precision engagements beginning BVR through use of radar, missiles and targeting computers. As these systems were added to fighter cockpits in the early "century series", developing what would eventually be known as the "multirole fighter", pilot workload grew dramatically compared to the relatively simple layouts and weapons systems of propeller and early jet dogfighters. As a result, these systems, intended to increase pilot situational awareness, ended up doing the exact opposite, forcing the pilot to keep his head "in the cockpit" reading gauges and displays, with his situational awareness of what was going on outside the plane somewhere around his ankles. With the problem identified but insufficient technology to take critical "heads-down" tasks like navigation away from the pilot, designers initially addressed it by adding a second crewman, whose job it would be to handle tasks not directly associated with the primary operation of the plane, such as navigation, managing the radar, keeping an extra pair of eyes on the sky around them, handling radio communications, etc. This guy is officially known in most situations as the Radar Intercept Officer or RIO, or informally as the GIB (Guy In Back). It would take a few more technological developments, like the inertial navigation system, heads-up display, HOTAS control layouts, the integrated fire control computer, and advanced C4I capability like AWACS/JSTARS, before the workload inherent in the average fighter sortie could reasonably be handled by one crewman. AWACS can guide and advise pilots much like civilian ATC, the inertial navigation system allows pilots to simply point their plane in the indicated direction as opposed to monitoring nav beacons to figure out exactly where they were, and the HUD and HOTAS got the pilot's head out of the cockpit by placing the information and controls he needs to fly the jet effectively in combat where they're supposed to be;