F-14 on the History Channel's "Modern Marvels"

On 11/4/03 12:37 PM, in article
, "James Woody"
wrote:

Yep - RIO (running into obsolesce). 2 pair of eyes was always better
than one.

Woody


Woody,

In the air-to-air arena, I've never found the two sets of eyes in the Tomcat
(or the Strike Eagle for that matter) to be an advantage against single-seat
fighters at the merge. Been there many times against Tomcats when the Toms
are tally 0 (red or blue) and the Hornets are tally all (blue or red). In
fact, I see "no joy's" out of Tomcats way more than out of Hornets.

Don't take that as NFO bashing. I've got a lot of respect for B/N's, WSO's,
and RIO's in the systems weapons and sensor supported weapons roles. It's
great to have one guy totally focused on target acq and weapons support
leaving the pilot to flying form and avoiding the threat.

I just think that their additional utility (given current technology) in the
air-to-air arena is limited.

I'm sure I'm going to get many responses from this one. Seriously, folks,
not a troll.

--Woody