Originally posted by: GagHalfrunt
It was the F-4 in Vietnam, not the F-14. The Tomcat does have a 30mm cannon in addition to its missles. In different planes the rear seater is called different thing. It's WSO (Weapons System Operator) pronounced "Whizzo" in the F-111 and some other Air Force jets. In the F-14's used in Top Gun the guy in the back is technically called a RIO, short for Radar-Intercept Officer. He handles the planes electronics systems, radar, navigation and acts as a second set of eyes.
But in all cases he'll be an NFO - 'Non-flight officer'. They don't give that seat to qualified pilots (too rare, by design), nor do they give it to enlisted personnel. Still, you CAN occupy that seat with '20/20 corrected vision' (IE., contacts/laser surgery/etc), which you cannot as a pilot.
I wonder if they'll ever come out with a sim that will let people play together as pilot and navigator
In F-15 Strike Eagle III (Microprose, it's quite a bit older) you can fly an F-15E Strike Eagle as pilot/weapons officer.
In Jane's Longbow 2 (Jane's Combat Simulations, not THAT old, but it's got a few years on it) two players can play as a pilot and commander/gunner (the equiv. of that role in helicopters).
In Jane's F-15, you can play either seat - but not two player. You can just jump back and forth between them.
In Gunship! (Microprose again, newer) two players can fly the Apache Longbow, Russian Mil-28 Havok, or Eurocopter Tiger as a pilot or gunner. This game has the unique distinction of having an AI pilot take over when you play as the gunner/commander. You simply tell the pilot what you want to do ('find cover', 'hover', 'move left', etc) and he does it, leaving you free to work the weapons systems.
----
Helicopters handle the second role differently than aircraft do. Flying a helicopter is really, REALLY difficult. MUCH harder than flying an airplane, by an order of magnitude! So, the one person just flies the bird. The other handles the radar, target acquisition, and firing.
In aircraft, the 'environment' is MUCH more dynamic, while flying is much easier. Essentially, if you stop working the controls on a helicopter, you immediately crash. While, in an aircraft, you can take your hands completely away from the stick with no problem at all - it keeps on flying straight were you last pointed it. So, the pilot can do more than just fly, he controls the weapons firing, as well.
As to the environment - a helicopter only has air-to-ground radar. Some come equipped with Stingers (VERY basic air-to-air weapon) for self defense, but they are mostly only interested in ground targets. Which, of course, obligingly move along only 2 dimensions!
Aircraft (like the F-14 in 'Top Gun') are equipped with substantially more air-to-air weapons, since that is their primary role (for many, not all, of them). And the air environment is MUCH more interesting - targets above, below, around you....keeps a radar VERY busy tracking all that. So, many aircraft (particularly those tasked with standoff attacks or complicated air and ground delivery missions - the F-4 Phantom, F-14 Tomcat, F-15E Strike Eagle, F-111 Aardvark, etc) have a second seat for a person to sit and handle the rader. Finding targets, prioritizing them, planning the ingress/egress from the target, etc.
If YOU are interested in seeing a small glimpse of the workload involved, try picking up a copy of 'Lock On: Modern Air Combat'. It does a pretty good job of simply modelling the controls of several modern single-seater fighters. Saying that Top Gun 'oversimplified' a LOT of aspects of air combat is....an understatement! This is a new game, and should be pretty easy to find.
For more hardcore avionics (radar, flight controls, weapons deployment), try Jane's F-15, Jane's F/A-18, or Falcon 4.0
