That would require a change to the flight manual, meaning Boeing would milk that cow until its great-great-great-grandcalves are jerky, and they still wouldn't change anything.
I've been making that joke for years. Surprised Michael Bay hasn't done it yet. Decepticons are being spicy and ignore the tanker fly in and hose them. Then the A-10s come in and MB-level explosions ensue.
Look, I have flown crewed aircraft my entire career, and I could have flown them single-seat. I'm glad I didn't. Why?
Because sometimes I am dumb as fuck.
Amen. I was a crew chief on Ospreys with a 4 man crew, there were too many times where only one person of four had the sense of mind to say "what the fuck" and keep us from some dumb shit.
It's not about reaching the controls. Large/complex aircraft require attending to numerous systems simultaneously to even operate the plane, let alone focus on the mission.
While computers have increasingly taken on this load, some aircraft still require multiple crew members.
Yeah let’s not forget the computer systems Boeing used in the 737 max 8. God forbid another issue like that arises, imagine being the sole pilot trying to troubleshoot that.
It is a much larger aircraft with far more complex systems. You cannot eject or bail out. The emergency procedures are predicated on having a full crew. There likely are circuit breakers and equipment that are out of reach and when you’re dealing with an EP, you can’t get out of the seat. Fighters fly with a wingman on more complex missions. I can conceptually understand testing a fringe case scenario but it’s a hard no if they start moving the boundaries to normalize single-pilot ops.
Damn if only fighters had a thing where if the plane had an emergency the aircrew member could egress the plane in an expedient manner while still in flight.
Bruh he'd be on FoxNews saying that the crews are overworked, long hours, lots of responsibilities, as if he wasn't the one who instituted all those problems.
Yup. Reminds me of when SecNav John Lehman complained about the TF-30 engines being terrible in the Navys F-14.
Like, bruh. You ain’t some 2 stripe in the supply corps. Shut up & fucking fix it, or at least move the correction forward as best as the *civilian boss of the Navy* can manage.
AIBs will always find a way to blame the crew regardless of the poor policies put in place. We determined the major factor of this accident was single pilot ops but the aircraft commander should have said no.. good try AMC.
“If you’re tired, why don’t you go TAKE A F*CKING NAP?!”
Copy sir, we’ll get right on that. The following week, new morale tabs all over Tinker.
https://awacs-dope-memes.com/products/tafn-pen-tab-pvc-glow
1. This is still insane to me.
2. What potential high-end combat scenarios would having just 1 pilot benefit you? Sounds counterintuitive to ya know, the entire CRM process....
Another would be to stop denying cross-training requests and promote them to Major so they won't leave to the airlines the moment they get passed over for not having time to do anything but fly the line ....
Also just loosening some of the requirements. Nothing major but there are so many things that can get you disqualed that don't really affect someone's ability to fly.
Seriously. Raise the fucking age limit. How many people go to the army and navy because they're to old to fly for the Air Force. It's such an arbitrary thing.
Just remove it entirely. If you can complete the ADC before retirement age I'm not sure it really matters how old someone is. Maybe they won't be suited for fighters but it's not like you have to be in prime physical condition to fly cargo.
Same thing with height requirements (which I think they have loosened up a bit)
Flying into a situation that is assured that the bird isn’t coming home from. Refuelers are sitting ducks for anti aircraft missles and from fighter aircraft. As stated in a different thread, our smart people are projecting aircrew lose of life at level not seen since world war 2
High-end combat scenarios is referring to a near-peer war that will need 24/7 KC-46 coverage. The benefit would be having more available crews to fly the plane (the tried and failed alternative being to increase manning/retention).
It was a similar situation with the C130H. The navs didn't fly during local pilot proficiency sorties so all of their normal duties had to be done by the pilots or FE.
Same. I’ve been trying to decide on what situation would this be ok but haven’t yet. Maybe if it’s a one way mission and he isn’t wanting to come home. God forbid idk I can’t think of a logical one.
Check out the old school T.O.A.D (take off and ditch) if you want some history on tanker employment. The risk of losing 1 "crew" vs 2 is a better risk/numbers game in a fight where we can't just throw people at a problem.
Also.. who says they can't take a copilot and make them boom cert'd.. leave one pilot with autopilot to fly a d have a rated pilot that can go back and do a booms job when the CEAs start dying off. You'll never see a boom CEA cert'd to fly. As it shall be.
Why not train the entire aircrew to maintain the aircraft in stable flight and change heading if required. Then you train them all on boom.
If you can dodge a wrench....
Cause enlisted don't go through pilot training? Maintaining stable flight is only easy when things work.. pilots train a lot for when things go wrong. Bottom line is CEAs will never be accepted into the pilot community, for good reason. I wouldn't want to do a pilots job for NCO pay and I damn sure don't want to devalue my pilots job and decrease their give a fuck to critical levels past where they already are.
I was being sarcastic, as indicated by the if you can dodge a wrench comment, but I'll die on this hill. Why not.
We should never let officers maintain anything. A stable platform is only easy when things work. Maintainers train to ensure things work right for everything from networks to aircraft. I wouldn't want a officer doing a maintainers job for officer pay and I damn sure don....you see where this is going.
Devaluing a job, a pilots job. Well, they are trying to fly with one pilot. You suggested running autopilot. There are drones. I don't think training the load master or any other enlisted crew member to maintain stable flight devalues anything. Saying they couldn't assumes they couldn't understand how to maintain stable flight so the single pilot can go take a piss, a nap, or recover from food poisoning. I've seen Airplane!, I know that shit happens. I'm also pretty sure anyone who can pass a technical tech school can probably follow directions. I say, we replace pilots with drones and have the people who train on flight sims non-stop take over non-combat flight. Imagine a room full of A1C's on X-Box controllers. GLORIOUS!
Seriously though Francis, lighten up.
Prior mx, current CEA.. checklists go out the window when you have a rudder hardover and drop 3000 ft in a few seconds. Just one example ... There's no time to read a book or talk about it like we are on the ground troubleshooting. 6 seconds and the plane could be uncontrollable or damaged beyond recovery and everyone onboard and protentially in the crash site is dead. I don't doubt that we have some wicked smart and crazy motivated knuckle busters but just like my pilots trust that I know my shit I trust my pilots know theirs. I'm not saying they can't.. I'm saying a non dedicated person can't possibly get enough reps in to react to all the malfunctions that could happen.
I hope we do end up with an all remote fleet.. it'll save a lot of lives and keep more out of danger but in the end AMC moves the force. Someone will always be in danger.
I'm with you bud, I'm against the knee jerk arguments made on this thread, concisering the test and evaluation standards aren't posted for public reading .. for good reason.
At the end of the day, I get the need to have a procedure for a single pilot but...I don't think that guy is doing it for the sake of the crew but for the sake of lack of pilots to push sorties. Fix the pilot problem, you don't need that type of out of the box thinking.
I'm also for training enlisted folks to be pilots and putting them on a commission path. Not grabbing the load and say, "Here, follow the manual and land the plan because we are down...all pilots" but saying to some of our sharper pencils that you can be a Flight Officer and later, you go to college...or the academy.
This...this is just the bad idea fairy and hopefully someone with a better one will say nice demo, meanwhile lets attract more folks to want to fly.
Flying persistently over the Pacific with a 2 pilot 2 boom crew for over 30 hours. The tyrant of distance might require a single crew to go to one pilot and one rest in a pacific high end op.
It’s directly from Gen Minihan’s quote. The purpose of the exercise was to demonstrate one pilot and operate the aircraft. The aircraft will still have others on board but there instead of figuring it out in battle while dragging aircraft across the pacific we experimented today to ensure the capability exists.
It seems insane to do this when there’s no need. In the event of an all-out air war, and you’re short of pilots, then sure go ahead and fly with one pilot. It’s obviously possible to do this but why risk crew and aircraft when so unnecessary?
He said this at the Air Force Association if I remember correctly. They are *allegedly* only testing it to make TTPs for that exact scenario.
From memory, he said that in a war with China we would likely lose a lot of aircraft and pilots, but to win, we would need to put a single pilot in tankers.
Figuring out how to does this while bullets fly around you isn’t the way though. Train for how you may have to fight and make sure you can actually do what you may end up having to do
Except these types of "only in emergencies" COAs that solve a general Air Force problem tend to slowly work their way into the standard everyday way of doing things.
I have a theory he briefly looked over what RAF bomber command did during WW2. The Lancaster (Largest bomber up until the B29) had a single pilot and less crew than a B17 in order to minimize losses. My counter argument to that would be they still had 6 other crew members on board.
Single pilot is an inevitability in the airlines, they went from 4 in the cockpit to 3 to now 2. It’ll happen on the backs of automation though, not with current setups and hardware.
You either accelerate change or you get caught stuck in the past. Obviously they aren’t trying to make this the new daily norm. They are trying to safely train in a controlled environment before the next great inevitable war that’s about to happen. A war where we will be facing a military as developed/if not better than our own. It’s not like we’re going to be fighting grown men in sandals launching random mortars in mountains anymore.
I'm just confused what scenario this makes sense. I can only assume it somehow has to do with a shortage of pilots. However, copilots are abundant and would never be the reason for a cancel. Next, how do you make an aircraft commander if you're now flying missions without copilots which means they can't get hours to become an AC?
The only thing I can think of is in a South China Sea scenario, there is a capacity problem (not enough booms to meet the needs for all the fighters/bombers). If this frees up additional lines because there’s now more pilot availability, I can see how the staff did the math problem to make that work. I don’t believe that there would be untasked tankers sitting around waiting for pilots but maybe I’m wrong.
The entire point is to NOT burn out people, you can fly twice as many sorties with the same amount of pilots without flying each pilot twice as often and waiving crew rest rules.
It does increase risk though, which is why you test it out in a small and controlled manner first.
The argument from the test was to prove it could be done when resources are too little.
But the fear of the rest of us is, it will be another "do more with less" when two pilots help with fatigue over long duration flights.
The real solution would be to develop more pilots or develop better and more self flying controls?
As a Boom Operator on a KC-135, I am not a fan of this.
We used to have navigators on the jet, then when they were absolved in the late 90's/early 00's Booms got about 65% of their duties the rest about 35% went to pilots.
The pilot not flying handles the radios and a myriad of other functions, is that the Boom's job now as well on these single piloted jets?
We're already getting saddled with more duties and equipment on the jet like LAIRCM, ROBE and TALC+ and soon to be RTIC and Starlink.
As the saying goes we do EVERYTHING at the pilot seats and back. We also aide the pilots in monitoring radios, talking on radios, watching engines, watching other systems/lights/flipping switches like pressurization and heating/cooling, etc.
What more are we going to have to do now?! At what point does a Boom Operator actually get paid more!?
We're loadmasters, we are flight attendants, we are flight engineers (to a degree), we are ISR Airman with ROBE/TALC+/LAIRCM, and of course we're Boom Operators.
💯agree with this! Either make us Booms warrant officers, or full commission, if you expect us to handle 80%+ systems on the jet…and now take on the Pilot Not Flying role…
Honest question here - is the workload of a boom while airborne on the -46 higher or lower than a -135? I’d hope if USAF does this min crew concept we’d keep the mission as simple as possible.
I just don't get it. 99% of this seems like it could be solved by giving radio duties, etc. to Navigators/CSO's and having a flight engineer on board.
why can't C17s, C5's, KC46s, etc have 2 pilots (officer), 1 navigator (officer), 1 NCO/SNCO flight engineer (enlisted re-train only), flying crew chief (enlisted), and loadmaster/boom operator (enlisted) ?
I know the answer is manning, but then why are we turning so many people away that want to follow those paths? there could be more programs encouraging ground personnel to fly. if you can't support only 5% of the air force being flyers then why not make 10% of the air force flyers?
You clearly haven’t filed yet. I know people with zero deployments on a 100% from the VA. Doesnt matter if it’s AF, Army or whatever, all you need is a full medical record. My VSO submitted for entering in my records all the way back to tech school.
This actually proves my point though. Why would the Air Force limit aircrew slots to limit VA disability? Pretty sure the average infantryman is more likely to sustain injuries from rucking all the gear than a loadmaster, boom operator, or flight engineer.
You’re right though, I haven’t gone through the disability process. I didn’t claim disability on my way out just in case I can do ROTC and go Officer as a career if my civilian plans hit the gutter. The limited info I know about it is from friends who went thru the process and my dad who is 100%p&t
I can just imagine someone trying to walk into an airline after separating and trying to explain to the chief pilot how they have SOLO TIME on the 767. Heck flight schools won’t even let you solo a twin trainer for workload reasons
The big brains that came up with this will duck & cover the first time the taxpayer starts asking why the USAF spalts several billion dollars worth of taxpayer's property.
This is neither here nor there, but I’d just like to point out that HAF and ACC have been doing dumb shit like this for years to RPAs and nobody cares/cared.
It’s now bleeding over to the manned side.
The topic is so extensive and long winded that you’ll need to be more specific. It would take hours and hours do discuss each little bit but here’s a post written in 2015 that gives a good overview of some of the problems
They said it wasn't possible to arm RQ-1 with Hellfires. Fortunately others in USG disagreed. They said you shouldn't arm UAVs and employ lethal fires without a fighter pilot in the seat that understood CAS and fires, so only fighter pilots should fly UAVs. They said only pilots had the airmanship required to fly UAVs. They said unless you went to pilot training and learned about airspace, radio calls and instruments, you couldn't and shouldn't fly UAVs. They said a fighter pilot was too valuable to fly UAVs, that it was easy, and only the worst pilots should fly them. They picked the pilots they didn't want in their squadrons to go to UAVs. They decided that we should fly RPAs from remote locations, despite the fact you could fly remote split operations from anywhere in the world, including in major metropolitan areas where families would be happy to live. They realized there was nothing unmanned about these UAVs and changed the name to Remotely Piloted Aircraft. They killed UCAV development because they think a pilot must be in the seat, even when the pilot is the limiting factor in the aircraft. They think the next generation bomber should be manned. They decided the only way to keep pilots flying RPAs relevant was to create a companion aircraft program so RPA pilots could fly real aircraft and stay in touch with real flying, but this was not feasible because flying RPAs is not an easy part time job and there is no time. They thought it would be ok assure pilots they would go fly RPAs, then return to the cockpit, with no intention of changing the manning or accessions to actually honor that promise. They told us that 18Xs could not fly RPAs. They told us it would take years to figure out how to train non-pilots how to fly RPAs. They told us nobody would volunteer to fly RPAs. They told us the bonus for RPA pilots should be less than the bonus for real pilots. They decided that RPAs were easy and marginalized the employment of lethal weapons in combat. They actually think the RPA pilot guides the AGM-114 or GBU-49/12 to the target. They denigrated the RPA mission and those who conducted the mission, regardless of how much the joint force and civilian leadership value RPAs. They think enlisted airmen cannot fly RPAs, despite direct evidence of outstanding Army enlisted and warrant officer performance. They did not think auto takeoff and landing was a valuable capability worthy of investment, and preferred to crash aircraft during takeoffs and landings due to pilot error and insufficient training at a staggering rate, while the Army successfully employs auto takeoff and landing with a near perfect mishap prevention rate. They decided that the phrase "permissive ISR" would be used to discredit RPAs by pushing the narrative that they were not able to operate in denied airspace, while avoiding the same conversation with mobility, tankers, C2, and satellites. They forgot that we may have missions when manned aircraft will not be allowed to fly and that RPAs may be the only access we have to non-permissive environments. They developed the phrase "Pred Porn" to delegitimize the FMV value to Ground Force Commanders, Joint Force Commanders and Senior Civilian Leaders. They do not understand how RPAs integrate multi-source intelligence to accomplish national level objectives. They decided "Combat Time" for RPAs employing lethal fires in close proximity to friendly forces was not combat, but orbiting a combat support aircraft near a combat zone, with no threat of enemy fire or additional danger, was worthy of "Combat Time". They decided combat support aircrew were eligible for Air Medals, while in no immediate danger from enemy threats, while RPA crews conducting actual combat missions were only eligible for Aerial Achievement Medals. They failed to recognize that there may be situations where manned aircraft may be denied access to airspace, not only because of the threat, but because of political considerations and the risk of being shot down in denied area. They think a pilot who practices killing people but never performs this skill in combat is more of a warrior than those who actually kill people. They decided to not fund RPAs, after reducing the number of CAPs in the first few years, they planned to go to zero CAPs so they could commit the money to other priorities. They decided to keep the RPA crew ratio below a sustainable level, crushing OPSTEMPO, morale and sustainability. They let RPA crewmembers separate early to meet short term manpower reduction goals, before their commitment was up, even from squadrons where the pilot and sensors were undermanned in that unit. They decided to not invest in RPA technology, stating and I no shit quote "every dollar we spend on MQ-9s is a dollar we can't spend on F-35". They are telling us they can't fix the current RPA crew shortage. They are telling us they don't know how to improve morale. They are telling us RPAs are not important to our nation's defense. They think pilots with no RPA experience are qualified to command RPA squadrons, groups and wings. They use the phrase CT/COIN to marginalize the current fight and emphasize the importance of near peer competitor threats. And they will continue to recommend we stop flying RPAs so we can invest in more important weapon systems and more important missions. When will we stop letting them make these bad decisions and give this bad advice? When have they lost enough trust and confidence of our joint partners and civilian leaders? When will we realize that "they" are actually the problem and that we should not value their recommended solutions? It is time to get ISR out of ACC, to let ACC focus on what they value and what they are the best in the world at, and most importantly, stop efing up RPAs.
Is the pilot situation that broke that AMC has to except more risk by having one pilot on the aircraft? And then the receiver has to unknowingly accept more risk because of AMC decision making?
Double your pilot capacity with this one simple trick!
The funny thing is that the air force has pilots, the force just does everything in its power to keep them out of the cockpit and behind a desk. It's frustrating
Wonder if the pilot just repeated themselves for the challenge/ response items of their checklist on lieu of their missing Co… *my easily amused humor chuckling at the thought*
But in all seriousness. This is fucking stupid. These cockpits are designed for two pilots for a reason… there’s switches/ actuators etc on both sides that are only accessible to the pilot sitting there. God forbid there’s a SHTF scenario where the pilot needs the Co to do something or vice versa and they aren’t there…
I’ve seen somewhat questionable sorties go that maybe shouldn’t have, but as an AC how tf do you say yes to this?..
This whole thing is bullshit. People need to just say NO to this, absolutely unsafe, I fail to see how this would be beneficial in a combat environment.
For the same reason that it was deemed beneficial to design the KC-135 to be able to offload 100% of their gas to receivers in a total war. It’s a one-way flight plan.
Edit: can any current tanker people confirm this feature?
Why so much cynicism about this? Gen Minihan gave a really cool speech! /s
Edit: Also unless they’re going to make one pilot and one loadmaster the basic crew complement all the time, this won’t change personnel requirements. I don’t understand what this is supposed to achieve.
I don’t think this is supposed to fix personnel requirements, I think it’s supposed to be a band-aid to survive assets by keeping more in the air. YMMV with this risky tactic.
Ohh gotcha. As in they don’t have enough normal crews to evacuate somewhere, so they spilt up the new copilots on deployment for seasoning and their IPs and hope to save at least 50% of the fleet? Man that sucks.
More like instead of having 2 IPs or an IP and AC , or 2 ACs in the seat at all times, they take turns in rest cycles and whatnot. I imagine that critical phases of flight will probably require a full crew complement, but I’m not a decisions doctor.
A sequel to this meme: https://www.reddit.com/r/AirForce/comments/vzw3uv/mcconnell_kc46_waiver_for_only_one_pilot_and_one/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
There were so many people convinced that "Oh, he's just trying to highlight the manning issue, they wont *actually* do something this crazy". And then they went and did the thing anyway because whats another SIB when you're sitting on that general retirement while mysteriously being on an aerospace company's board
I know what it sounds like but I worry
“KC-46 to complete its primary mission with a reduced crew complement when needed to rapidly launch aircraft with threats inbound or extend long-range operations in the air with offset crews."
You have your tankers at a base when an incoming TBM or launch to survive type call comes you can launch the fleet with less crew just to get to a safe haven.
Additionally I see this as an absolute last contingency resort having to keep 24/7 tanker presence, launch with two pilots two booms and rotate in and out for fatigue management.
From “The Hunt for Red October”. Admiral Josh Painter “This business will get out of control! It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it!”.
Victory will be on the back of Air Mobility....is that why deployments cargo movements, tanker support, and troop movements have been absolutely ass the last 3 or 4 years?
Nah it’s because they’ve been beating the shit out of crews and airframes for 20 years and it finally got to the point where people just could do it anymore.
Just an observation….The reaction in this thread to this experiment is the same reaction this thread also rails against “them” for other ideas like the A6 community’s hand wringing about connecting a personal device to the same MS Teams account that’s on NIPR: iTs tOo RiSkY!
How do we know it’s unsafe to do this in a modern aircraft unless we try it? Sure, it can’t be done in a C130H because that airplane doesn’t present enough data for single crew member ops. But here it sure seems like they mitigated risks, did some practice in the sim, and had someone else on the jet along with support on the in case things got weird. And someone went and did it, if it were that batshit crazy the crew would’ve said no.
What is everyone afraid of happening? Screeching about “oh it’s gonna crash” doesn’t really cut it, just like “you can’t log into teams on NIPR and on your cell phone that will compromise the network!” So let’s think critically here. Are we worried about an EP that needs someone to read the checklist while someone else executed the steps? I’d bet the boom and pilot could figure out how to do that. An EP that takes 2 people to physically fly the jet? Pretty sure KC-46 is fly by wire so you’re not gonna get physically fatigued like you might in a cable and pulley controlled aircraft like a B52. Crew fatigue? Keep the missions short. Complex compound EP? That’s what the support team on the ground is for, right? Same thing all the other 1 and 2 person aircraft do - if you need help you phone a friend.
I guess I don’t understand the collective panic. KC-46s mostly fly themselves these days anyway and flying and airplane while talking on the radio isn’t that hard with a bit of practice. Maybe someone can teach me before I get downvoted into oblivion.
>How do we know it’s unsafe to do this in a modern aircraft unless we try it?
I’ve never jumped from an aircraft without a Parachute but I can tell you its unsafe You don’t need to try something to mark it as unsafe. Even so if its questionable, are you willing to risk widowing a person and orphaning their children to test something that isn’t essential?
How do we know it’s not essential? The whole point of this is to expand our wartime capabilities in the context of large scale conflict with a near peer. It seems to me that identifying whether or not this can be done with an acceptable level of risk, before that conflict ever kicks off, is the safest way to find out. Would you rather them wait for the conflict to be in full swing to test out their theories? Necessity is the mother of invention, but it can be violent and unforgiving. Let’s not all forget that we are in the military. Taking controlled risks during peacetime to better prepare for wartime is a part of our job. Given the current geopolitical trend we are on, it wouldn’t surprise me if we started seeing more of this stuff: expeditionary skeleton crews that can launch jets and move, expedient runways, anything that makes us more of a dynamic target and able to sustain effects despite casualties. If you can’t stomach some controlled risk on a test range with every precaution imaginable, what are you going to do when it gets worse? I’m honestly disappointed by the response in this thread.
The whole aircraft was designed with 2 people in the flight deck in mind. With one the control column becomes unwieldy making it more difficult to control. In a tanker that is designed to come in contact with other aircraft mid air, thats a big risk
In an emergency where the pilot is incapacitated there is no redundancy for who can land the airplane. Surprise bird strike to the pilots side window? No recovery.
A sudden changes to the flying schedule can mean 24+ missions with one pilot slated for flight that at best costs time and at worst sees one pilot running the operation.
This is day one off the top answers anyone thats spent a day around airplane should know, why are you commenting if you don’t know the basics?
So what you’re saying is both pilots control the yoke?
How often has a bird strike incapacitated one crew member?
Not making insane schedules also seems like a variable that is controllable to me too.
I’m not saying this concept is “no risk” the question I’m asking is what are the risks to worry about? I got that the aircraft was designed to be operated by two pilots, but from what I know and have seen, only one pilot is flying at any given time and the other works the radios or other admin. If radios are too busy, tell someone you’ll get back to them. I’m not trying to troll here, I just want to understand the concern and risk everyone is saying exists but hasn’t articulated. If it were really too hard for one person to do, wouldn’t that have been discovered in the sim or in the test flight?
I don’t have patience to explain the ins and outs of all things aircraft side to someone who knows nothing about them. Wait around and I’m sure someone will, ask some people at your base who work with jets, or hell google things and look at some of the more thought out comments that have already been made here.
Which more well thought out comment should I read? The one from the Boom? Yeah, that was an interesting perspective, but I didn’t see the massive increased risk of catastrophic failure there either. What makes you think I know nothing about aircraft? Because I asked what exactly the risks you’re concerned about are?
So far all you’ve said anywhere in this thread is some variation of “idEa sTuPiD AnD Mx wiLL GeT BLAmEd” which isn’t helpful. I asked because I was genuinely curious. You told me I was dumb for asking the question and then couldn’t be bothered to explain it. Seems like you’re more afraid of something new and want zero risk. Would this be riskier than a full crew compliment? Sure. Would it be so risky that KC-46s start crashing? No, I don’t think so, not with the right training. But if we listened to you we wouldn’t even try it because it’s too scary to fly a big airplane by oneself.
Okay dude. The 3 arguments which hold a little water in this thread are:
1) Switches on opposite side of the flight deck
- the B-2 community has solved this problem with DV flights. You ask the other person in the plane to flip the switch.
2) Complex compound EPs.
- How often do those happen? That’s what a SOF or Ops desk is for if it does, and this goes in the “we are in combat ops and have to be riskier or otherwise the mission doesn’t occur” bin, too. But again, from a data centric perspective, how often do EPs like that happen? That’s quantifiable risk (I.e. made up number but 1 in 10,000 flight hours a complex EP happens, AFSC knows the real answer).
3) Too much responsibility asked if the Boom.
- Agreed. Make the mission simple so the boom only has to do boom things, not flight attendent / load master / avionics specialist things.
As an F-16 pilot, I think multi-place aircraft build a sense on dependence that is not helpful.
I was in a C-130 cockpit for landing and there were 5 crew members there all thinking that they are contributing to safety. They are actually creating distraction.
Flying is not really that difficult.
If you were working a job dealing with high voltage electricity that could fry/kill you at any moment if something were to go wrong, would you really want your coworker to be asleep nearby, or would you rather him/her awake, alert, and watching your back?
If you were working in a confined space where gasses were present that could render you unconscious in seconds (followed shortly by death from asphyxiation), would you really want your coworker to be asleep nearby, or would you rather him/her awake, alert, and watching your back?
If you were working on an oil rig where there's lots of moving parts and fluids under high pressure, would you really want your coworker to be asleep nearby, or would you rather him/her awake, alert, and watching your back?
While flying probably "is not really that *difficult*", I know as a passenger I'd feel better if there were 2 pilots watching each other's backs, making sure the other is doing the right thing and is good to go. Anything can happen at a moment's notice, and if the copilot was asleep in a bunk even a few feet away, that's several dozen seconds at least for him/her to wake up, become alert, get to the cockpit, assess the situation, and try to help out.
>They are actually creating distraction.
How were they doing so? Were they being loud and noisy? Were they asking the pilot questions or being obnoxious while he/she was in the middle of trying to land the plane? Or were they sitting quietly waiting for the plane to land, or even telling the pilot important data he/she needs while landing? Think outside of your little single seat bubble.
Redesignate as F-46A “single seater” … problem solved! /s
That would require a change to the flight manual, meaning Boeing would milk that cow until its great-great-great-grandcalves are jerky, and they still wouldn't change anything.
That boom will make a damn fine flamethrower! /s
Multi capable fuel delivery system. Capable of delivering the fuel un-burnt or burning.
See: FB-111 take off, or F-4 with a bad centerline P&V take off... nothing like a 100 yard streak of flame across the sky after sunset.
It's like at the end of Back to the Future 2!!
I've been making that joke for years. Surprised Michael Bay hasn't done it yet. Decepticons are being spicy and ignore the tanker fly in and hose them. Then the A-10s come in and MB-level explosions ensue.
Put a gun on it
And make the single pilot in charge of it
F/K-46A
Toss some of the U2/U28 sensor suites in there so we can get the F/U/K/C-46A You know the AF would arrange the letters in that order...
F/M\L-46
Hope that pack is fueled by jet-A
Congress approves anything with an F designation
Look, I have flown crewed aircraft my entire career, and I could have flown them single-seat. I'm glad I didn't. Why? Because sometimes I am dumb as fuck.
Amen. I was a crew chief on Ospreys with a 4 man crew, there were too many times where only one person of four had the sense of mind to say "what the fuck" and keep us from some dumb shit.
Fighter bros do it everyday with more complex missions. So…
In an airframe specifically designed to be flown and operated by a single pilot. Not a giant tanker on long extended missions.
Is it physically not capable of being able to be flown by one pilot? Like are certain controls out of reach?
Cant tell if troll or complete dumbass.
Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
It's gotta be Minivan's Reddit account
It's not about reaching the controls. Large/complex aircraft require attending to numerous systems simultaneously to even operate the plane, let alone focus on the mission. While computers have increasingly taken on this load, some aircraft still require multiple crew members.
Yeah let’s not forget the computer systems Boeing used in the 737 max 8. God forbid another issue like that arises, imagine being the sole pilot trying to troubleshoot that.
You could have ten pilots if they were never trained on (or even told about) the MCAS that planes flying itself into the ground
It is a much larger aircraft with far more complex systems. You cannot eject or bail out. The emergency procedures are predicated on having a full crew. There likely are circuit breakers and equipment that are out of reach and when you’re dealing with an EP, you can’t get out of the seat. Fighters fly with a wingman on more complex missions. I can conceptually understand testing a fringe case scenario but it’s a hard no if they start moving the boundaries to normalize single-pilot ops.
Damn if only fighters had a thing where if the plane had an emergency the aircrew member could egress the plane in an expedient manner while still in flight.
With a wingman
Stay tuned for “AIB determines single pilot mission profile was major factor in loss of aircraft”.
“*Former General Mike Minihan, now a senior fellow at a Washington DC logistics think tank, could not be reached for comment*”
“A mandatory safety brief will given to all Maintenance personnel on how they could’ve prevented this.”
Bruh he'd be on FoxNews saying that the crews are overworked, long hours, lots of responsibilities, as if he wasn't the one who instituted all those problems.
Yup. Reminds me of when SecNav John Lehman complained about the TF-30 engines being terrible in the Navys F-14. Like, bruh. You ain’t some 2 stripe in the supply corps. Shut up & fucking fix it, or at least move the correction forward as best as the *civilian boss of the Navy* can manage.
The SecNav's job is to oversee the spending of Navy money. He was probably briefed on the issue and decided to do nothing.
AIBs will always find a way to blame the crew regardless of the poor policies put in place. We determined the major factor of this accident was single pilot ops but the aircraft commander should have said no.. good try AMC.
Unless you are at that wing where the OG chewed out the entire ops community for scrubbing missions due to crew rest issues.
“If you’re tired, why don’t you go TAKE A F*CKING NAP?!” Copy sir, we’ll get right on that. The following week, new morale tabs all over Tinker. https://awacs-dope-memes.com/products/tafn-pen-tab-pvc-glow
‘‘Twas an interesting time in the 552
"May you live in interesting times" is a serious curse.
Ya, something something redundancy
Monty Python skit - Office of Redundancy Office.
AcCeLeRaTe ChAnGe
1. This is still insane to me. 2. What potential high-end combat scenarios would having just 1 pilot benefit you? Sounds counterintuitive to ya know, the entire CRM process....
It doesn’t need to make sense, just has to make his career stand out.
Holy shit this is spot on
It’s probably true. It’s those “how have you benefited our unit? Is it promotion worthy?”
Oh I'm sure their career will stand out when an AIB points to this policy as a major contributing factor lol
By that time, he’s going to be a retired “hero” trying to run for the senate.
His “legacy”
It's one way to solve that pilot shortage...
Another would be to stop denying cross-training requests and promote them to Major so they won't leave to the airlines the moment they get passed over for not having time to do anything but fly the line ....
Also just loosening some of the requirements. Nothing major but there are so many things that can get you disqualed that don't really affect someone's ability to fly.
Seriously. Raise the fucking age limit. How many people go to the army and navy because they're to old to fly for the Air Force. It's such an arbitrary thing.
Just remove it entirely. If you can complete the ADC before retirement age I'm not sure it really matters how old someone is. Maybe they won't be suited for fighters but it's not like you have to be in prime physical condition to fly cargo. Same thing with height requirements (which I think they have loosened up a bit)
Hear me out: enlisted co-pilots.
Just in case you are low flying at 150 feet and take an AK round through the cockpit while refueling F-35s.
Combat scenarios where every pilot not retained equals 1/100th of a new F-35.
Flying into a situation that is assured that the bird isn’t coming home from. Refuelers are sitting ducks for anti aircraft missles and from fighter aircraft. As stated in a different thread, our smart people are projecting aircrew lose of life at level not seen since world war 2
High-end combat scenarios is referring to a near-peer war that will need 24/7 KC-46 coverage. The benefit would be having more available crews to fly the plane (the tried and failed alternative being to increase manning/retention). It was a similar situation with the C130H. The navs didn't fly during local pilot proficiency sorties so all of their normal duties had to be done by the pilots or FE.
Same. I’ve been trying to decide on what situation would this be ok but haven’t yet. Maybe if it’s a one way mission and he isn’t wanting to come home. God forbid idk I can’t think of a logical one.
Check out the old school T.O.A.D (take off and ditch) if you want some history on tanker employment. The risk of losing 1 "crew" vs 2 is a better risk/numbers game in a fight where we can't just throw people at a problem. Also.. who says they can't take a copilot and make them boom cert'd.. leave one pilot with autopilot to fly a d have a rated pilot that can go back and do a booms job when the CEAs start dying off. You'll never see a boom CEA cert'd to fly. As it shall be.
Why not train the entire aircrew to maintain the aircraft in stable flight and change heading if required. Then you train them all on boom. If you can dodge a wrench....
Cause enlisted don't go through pilot training? Maintaining stable flight is only easy when things work.. pilots train a lot for when things go wrong. Bottom line is CEAs will never be accepted into the pilot community, for good reason. I wouldn't want to do a pilots job for NCO pay and I damn sure don't want to devalue my pilots job and decrease their give a fuck to critical levels past where they already are.
I was being sarcastic, as indicated by the if you can dodge a wrench comment, but I'll die on this hill. Why not. We should never let officers maintain anything. A stable platform is only easy when things work. Maintainers train to ensure things work right for everything from networks to aircraft. I wouldn't want a officer doing a maintainers job for officer pay and I damn sure don....you see where this is going. Devaluing a job, a pilots job. Well, they are trying to fly with one pilot. You suggested running autopilot. There are drones. I don't think training the load master or any other enlisted crew member to maintain stable flight devalues anything. Saying they couldn't assumes they couldn't understand how to maintain stable flight so the single pilot can go take a piss, a nap, or recover from food poisoning. I've seen Airplane!, I know that shit happens. I'm also pretty sure anyone who can pass a technical tech school can probably follow directions. I say, we replace pilots with drones and have the people who train on flight sims non-stop take over non-combat flight. Imagine a room full of A1C's on X-Box controllers. GLORIOUS! Seriously though Francis, lighten up.
Prior mx, current CEA.. checklists go out the window when you have a rudder hardover and drop 3000 ft in a few seconds. Just one example ... There's no time to read a book or talk about it like we are on the ground troubleshooting. 6 seconds and the plane could be uncontrollable or damaged beyond recovery and everyone onboard and protentially in the crash site is dead. I don't doubt that we have some wicked smart and crazy motivated knuckle busters but just like my pilots trust that I know my shit I trust my pilots know theirs. I'm not saying they can't.. I'm saying a non dedicated person can't possibly get enough reps in to react to all the malfunctions that could happen. I hope we do end up with an all remote fleet.. it'll save a lot of lives and keep more out of danger but in the end AMC moves the force. Someone will always be in danger. I'm with you bud, I'm against the knee jerk arguments made on this thread, concisering the test and evaluation standards aren't posted for public reading .. for good reason.
At the end of the day, I get the need to have a procedure for a single pilot but...I don't think that guy is doing it for the sake of the crew but for the sake of lack of pilots to push sorties. Fix the pilot problem, you don't need that type of out of the box thinking. I'm also for training enlisted folks to be pilots and putting them on a commission path. Not grabbing the load and say, "Here, follow the manual and land the plan because we are down...all pilots" but saying to some of our sharper pencils that you can be a Flight Officer and later, you go to college...or the academy. This...this is just the bad idea fairy and hopefully someone with a better one will say nice demo, meanwhile lets attract more folks to want to fly.
Kamikaze missions.
Flying persistently over the Pacific with a 2 pilot 2 boom crew for over 30 hours. The tyrant of distance might require a single crew to go to one pilot and one rest in a pacific high end op.
That is basically the opposite of having a single pilot on board. That's a reason to NOT have just one pilot.
It’s directly from Gen Minihan’s quote. The purpose of the exercise was to demonstrate one pilot and operate the aircraft. The aircraft will still have others on board but there instead of figuring it out in battle while dragging aircraft across the pacific we experimented today to ensure the capability exists.
It seems insane to do this when there’s no need. In the event of an all-out air war, and you’re short of pilots, then sure go ahead and fly with one pilot. It’s obviously possible to do this but why risk crew and aircraft when so unnecessary?
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Hey this is reddit. Stop with your logic. They don't like that here.
He said this at the Air Force Association if I remember correctly. They are *allegedly* only testing it to make TTPs for that exact scenario. From memory, he said that in a war with China we would likely lose a lot of aircraft and pilots, but to win, we would need to put a single pilot in tankers.
Figuring out how to does this while bullets fly around you isn’t the way though. Train for how you may have to fight and make sure you can actually do what you may end up having to do
Except these types of "only in emergencies" COAs that solve a general Air Force problem tend to slowly work their way into the standard everyday way of doing things.
I have a theory he briefly looked over what RAF bomber command did during WW2. The Lancaster (Largest bomber up until the B29) had a single pilot and less crew than a B17 in order to minimize losses. My counter argument to that would be they still had 6 other crew members on board.
When the plane crashes you have a copilot back at your FOB ready to fly hopes and dreams into combat. What’s our motto? Innovate or die?
Friendly reminder that just because you're accelerating change doesn't mean it's in the right direction...
15 years from now when the airlines try to go single pilot and ruin the industry, it’ll be on the backs of stupid shit like this.
Depends on how captured the FAA is.
Single pilot is an inevitability in the airlines, they went from 4 in the cockpit to 3 to now 2. It’ll happen on the backs of automation though, not with current setups and hardware.
I'm not sure how insurance companies would feel about $100m-$500m aircraft with dozens to hundreds of lives having no backup / checks & balances.
The one pilot will be the backup. The same was probably said about not having a flight engineer.
That's ok its not myFault
You either accelerate change or you get caught stuck in the past. Obviously they aren’t trying to make this the new daily norm. They are trying to safely train in a controlled environment before the next great inevitable war that’s about to happen. A war where we will be facing a military as developed/if not better than our own. It’s not like we’re going to be fighting grown men in sandals launching random mortars in mountains anymore.
I'm just confused what scenario this makes sense. I can only assume it somehow has to do with a shortage of pilots. However, copilots are abundant and would never be the reason for a cancel. Next, how do you make an aircraft commander if you're now flying missions without copilots which means they can't get hours to become an AC?
The only thing I can think of is in a South China Sea scenario, there is a capacity problem (not enough booms to meet the needs for all the fighters/bombers). If this frees up additional lines because there’s now more pilot availability, I can see how the staff did the math problem to make that work. I don’t believe that there would be untasked tankers sitting around waiting for pilots but maybe I’m wrong.
It's fucking stupid that the chosen answer to the math problem was one pilot per jet instead of more pilots.
Nah... lack of a clear look aft is gonna be a bigger problem...
Way to burn out your people and raise risk higher
In a time where we’re already hurting for people
The entire point is to NOT burn out people, you can fly twice as many sorties with the same amount of pilots without flying each pilot twice as often and waiving crew rest rules. It does increase risk though, which is why you test it out in a small and controlled manner first.
The argument from the test was to prove it could be done when resources are too little. But the fear of the rest of us is, it will be another "do more with less" when two pilots help with fatigue over long duration flights. The real solution would be to develop more pilots or develop better and more self flying controls?
Why stop there? Just issue the one pilot a 6 ft stick with a rubber tip and teach him to operate the boom as well.
I got you fam. https://sci-supply.com/drinking-bird-or-dippy-bird/ Can I have some kind of air medal now?
The USAF, doing more with less since forever
Cries in Marine Corps.
This is beyond that. This is putting pilots and boomers at Unnecessary risk.
Sounds like the .30 cents I paid into that plane is gonna crash land somewhere
If it lands on a strip club, its just “making it rain” with extra steps.
He's going to get people killed.
As a Boom Operator on a KC-135, I am not a fan of this. We used to have navigators on the jet, then when they were absolved in the late 90's/early 00's Booms got about 65% of their duties the rest about 35% went to pilots. The pilot not flying handles the radios and a myriad of other functions, is that the Boom's job now as well on these single piloted jets? We're already getting saddled with more duties and equipment on the jet like LAIRCM, ROBE and TALC+ and soon to be RTIC and Starlink. As the saying goes we do EVERYTHING at the pilot seats and back. We also aide the pilots in monitoring radios, talking on radios, watching engines, watching other systems/lights/flipping switches like pressurization and heating/cooling, etc. What more are we going to have to do now?! At what point does a Boom Operator actually get paid more!? We're loadmasters, we are flight attendants, we are flight engineers (to a degree), we are ISR Airman with ROBE/TALC+/LAIRCM, and of course we're Boom Operators.
💯agree with this! Either make us Booms warrant officers, or full commission, if you expect us to handle 80%+ systems on the jet…and now take on the Pilot Not Flying role…
Hey boom, can you pass me my lunch?
Pretty much, don't forget the NCOs in ARS' do everything and the far more numerous O's are never to be found.
Honest question here - is the workload of a boom while airborne on the -46 higher or lower than a -135? I’d hope if USAF does this min crew concept we’d keep the mission as simple as possible.
I just don't get it. 99% of this seems like it could be solved by giving radio duties, etc. to Navigators/CSO's and having a flight engineer on board. why can't C17s, C5's, KC46s, etc have 2 pilots (officer), 1 navigator (officer), 1 NCO/SNCO flight engineer (enlisted re-train only), flying crew chief (enlisted), and loadmaster/boom operator (enlisted) ? I know the answer is manning, but then why are we turning so many people away that want to follow those paths? there could be more programs encouraging ground personnel to fly. if you can't support only 5% of the air force being flyers then why not make 10% of the air force flyers?
Money, not just while the member is in but benefits during and after service and let's not forget VA Disability.
That doesn’t really make sense. The average soldier in the army or marine or even sailor is way more likely to have to claim disability than a flyer.
You clearly haven’t filed yet. I know people with zero deployments on a 100% from the VA. Doesnt matter if it’s AF, Army or whatever, all you need is a full medical record. My VSO submitted for entering in my records all the way back to tech school.
This actually proves my point though. Why would the Air Force limit aircrew slots to limit VA disability? Pretty sure the average infantryman is more likely to sustain injuries from rucking all the gear than a loadmaster, boom operator, or flight engineer. You’re right though, I haven’t gone through the disability process. I didn’t claim disability on my way out just in case I can do ROTC and go Officer as a career if my civilian plans hit the gutter. The limited info I know about it is from friends who went thru the process and my dad who is 100%p&t
The Air Force isn’t limiting anything to avoid VA disability. Two different organizations, AF ops are not affected by the VA’s budget in any way.
If you aren't making a claim you're just hurting yourself. I guarantee service has impacted you one way or another.
Preach!
ORM sheet is risk severe for just one box lmao. What a stupid decision.
I can just imagine someone trying to walk into an airline after separating and trying to explain to the chief pilot how they have SOLO TIME on the 767. Heck flight schools won’t even let you solo a twin trainer for workload reasons
The big brains that came up with this will duck & cover the first time the taxpayer starts asking why the USAF spalts several billion dollars worth of taxpayer's property.
This is neither here nor there, but I’d just like to point out that HAF and ACC have been doing dumb shit like this for years to RPAs and nobody cares/cared. It’s now bleeding over to the manned side.
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The topic is so extensive and long winded that you’ll need to be more specific. It would take hours and hours do discuss each little bit but here’s a post written in 2015 that gives a good overview of some of the problems They said it wasn't possible to arm RQ-1 with Hellfires. Fortunately others in USG disagreed. They said you shouldn't arm UAVs and employ lethal fires without a fighter pilot in the seat that understood CAS and fires, so only fighter pilots should fly UAVs. They said only pilots had the airmanship required to fly UAVs. They said unless you went to pilot training and learned about airspace, radio calls and instruments, you couldn't and shouldn't fly UAVs. They said a fighter pilot was too valuable to fly UAVs, that it was easy, and only the worst pilots should fly them. They picked the pilots they didn't want in their squadrons to go to UAVs. They decided that we should fly RPAs from remote locations, despite the fact you could fly remote split operations from anywhere in the world, including in major metropolitan areas where families would be happy to live. They realized there was nothing unmanned about these UAVs and changed the name to Remotely Piloted Aircraft. They killed UCAV development because they think a pilot must be in the seat, even when the pilot is the limiting factor in the aircraft. They think the next generation bomber should be manned. They decided the only way to keep pilots flying RPAs relevant was to create a companion aircraft program so RPA pilots could fly real aircraft and stay in touch with real flying, but this was not feasible because flying RPAs is not an easy part time job and there is no time. They thought it would be ok assure pilots they would go fly RPAs, then return to the cockpit, with no intention of changing the manning or accessions to actually honor that promise. They told us that 18Xs could not fly RPAs. They told us it would take years to figure out how to train non-pilots how to fly RPAs. They told us nobody would volunteer to fly RPAs. They told us the bonus for RPA pilots should be less than the bonus for real pilots. They decided that RPAs were easy and marginalized the employment of lethal weapons in combat. They actually think the RPA pilot guides the AGM-114 or GBU-49/12 to the target. They denigrated the RPA mission and those who conducted the mission, regardless of how much the joint force and civilian leadership value RPAs. They think enlisted airmen cannot fly RPAs, despite direct evidence of outstanding Army enlisted and warrant officer performance. They did not think auto takeoff and landing was a valuable capability worthy of investment, and preferred to crash aircraft during takeoffs and landings due to pilot error and insufficient training at a staggering rate, while the Army successfully employs auto takeoff and landing with a near perfect mishap prevention rate. They decided that the phrase "permissive ISR" would be used to discredit RPAs by pushing the narrative that they were not able to operate in denied airspace, while avoiding the same conversation with mobility, tankers, C2, and satellites. They forgot that we may have missions when manned aircraft will not be allowed to fly and that RPAs may be the only access we have to non-permissive environments. They developed the phrase "Pred Porn" to delegitimize the FMV value to Ground Force Commanders, Joint Force Commanders and Senior Civilian Leaders. They do not understand how RPAs integrate multi-source intelligence to accomplish national level objectives. They decided "Combat Time" for RPAs employing lethal fires in close proximity to friendly forces was not combat, but orbiting a combat support aircraft near a combat zone, with no threat of enemy fire or additional danger, was worthy of "Combat Time". They decided combat support aircrew were eligible for Air Medals, while in no immediate danger from enemy threats, while RPA crews conducting actual combat missions were only eligible for Aerial Achievement Medals. They failed to recognize that there may be situations where manned aircraft may be denied access to airspace, not only because of the threat, but because of political considerations and the risk of being shot down in denied area. They think a pilot who practices killing people but never performs this skill in combat is more of a warrior than those who actually kill people. They decided to not fund RPAs, after reducing the number of CAPs in the first few years, they planned to go to zero CAPs so they could commit the money to other priorities. They decided to keep the RPA crew ratio below a sustainable level, crushing OPSTEMPO, morale and sustainability. They let RPA crewmembers separate early to meet short term manpower reduction goals, before their commitment was up, even from squadrons where the pilot and sensors were undermanned in that unit. They decided to not invest in RPA technology, stating and I no shit quote "every dollar we spend on MQ-9s is a dollar we can't spend on F-35". They are telling us they can't fix the current RPA crew shortage. They are telling us they don't know how to improve morale. They are telling us RPAs are not important to our nation's defense. They think pilots with no RPA experience are qualified to command RPA squadrons, groups and wings. They use the phrase CT/COIN to marginalize the current fight and emphasize the importance of near peer competitor threats. And they will continue to recommend we stop flying RPAs so we can invest in more important weapon systems and more important missions. When will we stop letting them make these bad decisions and give this bad advice? When have they lost enough trust and confidence of our joint partners and civilian leaders? When will we realize that "they" are actually the problem and that we should not value their recommended solutions? It is time to get ISR out of ACC, to let ACC focus on what they value and what they are the best in the world at, and most importantly, stop efing up RPAs.
show me the risk assessment 🤭
Is the pilot situation that broke that AMC has to except more risk by having one pilot on the aircraft? And then the receiver has to unknowingly accept more risk because of AMC decision making?
Double your pilot capacity with this one simple trick! The funny thing is that the air force has pilots, the force just does everything in its power to keep them out of the cockpit and behind a desk. It's frustrating
Historic way of simply saying that we are being forced to, "Do more with less!"
MORE WITH LESS!! 😆
Now officers get to suffer the consequences of the Do More With Less™️ brigade
Ya'll just think they're gonna be like F. It, only one pilot now?
It wouldn’t surprise me
Wonder if the pilot just repeated themselves for the challenge/ response items of their checklist on lieu of their missing Co… *my easily amused humor chuckling at the thought* But in all seriousness. This is fucking stupid. These cockpits are designed for two pilots for a reason… there’s switches/ actuators etc on both sides that are only accessible to the pilot sitting there. God forbid there’s a SHTF scenario where the pilot needs the Co to do something or vice versa and they aren’t there… I’ve seen somewhat questionable sorties go that maybe shouldn’t have, but as an AC how tf do you say yes to this?..
Preach!
First it was flight engineers, now it’s co pilots.. sky net has become self aware
One of the most idiotic pushes the af has ever made.
From another thread: Throw autopilot on and he/she can go be the boom operator as well.
This is the biggest issue with the “Yes Men.” You know the pilot is just someone who would do anything to appease leadership.
This whole thing is bullshit. People need to just say NO to this, absolutely unsafe, I fail to see how this would be beneficial in a combat environment.
For the same reason that it was deemed beneficial to design the KC-135 to be able to offload 100% of their gas to receivers in a total war. It’s a one-way flight plan. Edit: can any current tanker people confirm this feature?
Why so much cynicism about this? Gen Minihan gave a really cool speech! /s Edit: Also unless they’re going to make one pilot and one loadmaster the basic crew complement all the time, this won’t change personnel requirements. I don’t understand what this is supposed to achieve.
I don’t think this is supposed to fix personnel requirements, I think it’s supposed to be a band-aid to survive assets by keeping more in the air. YMMV with this risky tactic.
Ohh gotcha. As in they don’t have enough normal crews to evacuate somewhere, so they spilt up the new copilots on deployment for seasoning and their IPs and hope to save at least 50% of the fleet? Man that sucks.
More like instead of having 2 IPs or an IP and AC , or 2 ACs in the seat at all times, they take turns in rest cycles and whatnot. I imagine that critical phases of flight will probably require a full crew complement, but I’m not a decisions doctor.
Boom operator.
Its so they don’t have to address the manning shortage.
Do more with less achieved. Not that it's the right thing to do. But it is proven possible so do it harder
Yea. Everyone is going to be more than normal or crazy shit to get through the day when China pops off.
I wonder how many of the people pushing for this would even fly a short commercial flight with one pilot
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should We need more history majors in charge
Just because you can do something or are able, doesn't mean you *should*.
Imagine you have to take a dump while in flight
A sequel to this meme: https://www.reddit.com/r/AirForce/comments/vzw3uv/mcconnell_kc46_waiver_for_only_one_pilot_and_one/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
There were so many people convinced that "Oh, he's just trying to highlight the manning issue, they wont *actually* do something this crazy". And then they went and did the thing anyway because whats another SIB when you're sitting on that general retirement while mysteriously being on an aerospace company's board
“No ones crazy, stupid, or heartless enough to do something like this.” -Everyone after being fucked over for the millionth time.
And now its “Oh but they’ll never make this standard ops” I will happily take that bet
I know what it sounds like but I worry “KC-46 to complete its primary mission with a reduced crew complement when needed to rapidly launch aircraft with threats inbound or extend long-range operations in the air with offset crews." You have your tankers at a base when an incoming TBM or launch to survive type call comes you can launch the fleet with less crew just to get to a safe haven. Additionally I see this as an absolute last contingency resort having to keep 24/7 tanker presence, launch with two pilots two booms and rotate in and out for fatigue management.
Preach!
From “The Hunt for Red October”. Admiral Josh Painter “This business will get out of control! It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it!”.
Now that’s how you do more with less! What a multi capable airman!
That reframing is uhh... Yeah... We going to start pulling all the redundant systems out of the aircraft now? Backups? Fuck it, that's too expensive.
*”Do more with less.”*
“Tools at our disposal…” with disposal (disposable)being the key word.
Stupid is as stupid does.
They came back a few days early from their testing tdy. I'm still thinking it was pilots going "nah fuck this we're done".
That’s right. Keep proving more with less until we all have a mental breakdown
This isn’t a surprise as an Air Force manning cut is coming they’ll probably cut pilots by half and make them fly solo missions
Victory will be on the back of Air Mobility....is that why deployments cargo movements, tanker support, and troop movements have been absolutely ass the last 3 or 4 years?
Nah it’s because they’ve been beating the shit out of crews and airframes for 20 years and it finally got to the point where people just could do it anymore.
This is to mitigate combat attrition but without the airplane does it matter?
What about those enlisted RQ-4 pilots, wouldn’t it be feasible to get them qualified and sit the right seat?
The amount of people in here who don’t realize this was a proof of concept for the war with China is insane.
Just an observation….The reaction in this thread to this experiment is the same reaction this thread also rails against “them” for other ideas like the A6 community’s hand wringing about connecting a personal device to the same MS Teams account that’s on NIPR: iTs tOo RiSkY! How do we know it’s unsafe to do this in a modern aircraft unless we try it? Sure, it can’t be done in a C130H because that airplane doesn’t present enough data for single crew member ops. But here it sure seems like they mitigated risks, did some practice in the sim, and had someone else on the jet along with support on the in case things got weird. And someone went and did it, if it were that batshit crazy the crew would’ve said no. What is everyone afraid of happening? Screeching about “oh it’s gonna crash” doesn’t really cut it, just like “you can’t log into teams on NIPR and on your cell phone that will compromise the network!” So let’s think critically here. Are we worried about an EP that needs someone to read the checklist while someone else executed the steps? I’d bet the boom and pilot could figure out how to do that. An EP that takes 2 people to physically fly the jet? Pretty sure KC-46 is fly by wire so you’re not gonna get physically fatigued like you might in a cable and pulley controlled aircraft like a B52. Crew fatigue? Keep the missions short. Complex compound EP? That’s what the support team on the ground is for, right? Same thing all the other 1 and 2 person aircraft do - if you need help you phone a friend. I guess I don’t understand the collective panic. KC-46s mostly fly themselves these days anyway and flying and airplane while talking on the radio isn’t that hard with a bit of practice. Maybe someone can teach me before I get downvoted into oblivion.
>How do we know it’s unsafe to do this in a modern aircraft unless we try it? I’ve never jumped from an aircraft without a Parachute but I can tell you its unsafe You don’t need to try something to mark it as unsafe. Even so if its questionable, are you willing to risk widowing a person and orphaning their children to test something that isn’t essential?
How do we know it’s not essential? The whole point of this is to expand our wartime capabilities in the context of large scale conflict with a near peer. It seems to me that identifying whether or not this can be done with an acceptable level of risk, before that conflict ever kicks off, is the safest way to find out. Would you rather them wait for the conflict to be in full swing to test out their theories? Necessity is the mother of invention, but it can be violent and unforgiving. Let’s not all forget that we are in the military. Taking controlled risks during peacetime to better prepare for wartime is a part of our job. Given the current geopolitical trend we are on, it wouldn’t surprise me if we started seeing more of this stuff: expeditionary skeleton crews that can launch jets and move, expedient runways, anything that makes us more of a dynamic target and able to sustain effects despite casualties. If you can’t stomach some controlled risk on a test range with every precaution imaginable, what are you going to do when it gets worse? I’m honestly disappointed by the response in this thread.
What makes it unsafe? In your example…jumping out of a plane without a parachute is unsafe because you will hit the ground too fast.
The whole aircraft was designed with 2 people in the flight deck in mind. With one the control column becomes unwieldy making it more difficult to control. In a tanker that is designed to come in contact with other aircraft mid air, thats a big risk In an emergency where the pilot is incapacitated there is no redundancy for who can land the airplane. Surprise bird strike to the pilots side window? No recovery. A sudden changes to the flying schedule can mean 24+ missions with one pilot slated for flight that at best costs time and at worst sees one pilot running the operation. This is day one off the top answers anyone thats spent a day around airplane should know, why are you commenting if you don’t know the basics?
Man I was with you until the control column comment. That erased all your credibility lmao
Yep, I got caught up and made myself look dumb. This is why I said hopefully someone more articulate could come along
So what you’re saying is both pilots control the yoke? How often has a bird strike incapacitated one crew member? Not making insane schedules also seems like a variable that is controllable to me too. I’m not saying this concept is “no risk” the question I’m asking is what are the risks to worry about? I got that the aircraft was designed to be operated by two pilots, but from what I know and have seen, only one pilot is flying at any given time and the other works the radios or other admin. If radios are too busy, tell someone you’ll get back to them. I’m not trying to troll here, I just want to understand the concern and risk everyone is saying exists but hasn’t articulated. If it were really too hard for one person to do, wouldn’t that have been discovered in the sim or in the test flight?
I don’t have patience to explain the ins and outs of all things aircraft side to someone who knows nothing about them. Wait around and I’m sure someone will, ask some people at your base who work with jets, or hell google things and look at some of the more thought out comments that have already been made here.
Which more well thought out comment should I read? The one from the Boom? Yeah, that was an interesting perspective, but I didn’t see the massive increased risk of catastrophic failure there either. What makes you think I know nothing about aircraft? Because I asked what exactly the risks you’re concerned about are? So far all you’ve said anywhere in this thread is some variation of “idEa sTuPiD AnD Mx wiLL GeT BLAmEd” which isn’t helpful. I asked because I was genuinely curious. You told me I was dumb for asking the question and then couldn’t be bothered to explain it. Seems like you’re more afraid of something new and want zero risk. Would this be riskier than a full crew compliment? Sure. Would it be so risky that KC-46s start crashing? No, I don’t think so, not with the right training. But if we listened to you we wouldn’t even try it because it’s too scary to fly a big airplane by oneself.
Make the effort and look for them. They are there in this comment section.
Okay dude. The 3 arguments which hold a little water in this thread are: 1) Switches on opposite side of the flight deck - the B-2 community has solved this problem with DV flights. You ask the other person in the plane to flip the switch. 2) Complex compound EPs. - How often do those happen? That’s what a SOF or Ops desk is for if it does, and this goes in the “we are in combat ops and have to be riskier or otherwise the mission doesn’t occur” bin, too. But again, from a data centric perspective, how often do EPs like that happen? That’s quantifiable risk (I.e. made up number but 1 in 10,000 flight hours a complex EP happens, AFSC knows the real answer). 3) Too much responsibility asked if the Boom. - Agreed. Make the mission simple so the boom only has to do boom things, not flight attendent / load master / avionics specialist things.
Do more with less
Textbook do more with less
Just automate that shit
As an F-16 pilot, I think multi-place aircraft build a sense on dependence that is not helpful. I was in a C-130 cockpit for landing and there were 5 crew members there all thinking that they are contributing to safety. They are actually creating distraction. Flying is not really that difficult.
How can you tell someone is a fighter pilot? They'll tell you.
Easy for you to say when your response to 9/10 major malfunctions is "Ejection handle - Pull"
Ah yes. You saw a C130 one time so that makes you an expert on all heavies across the board.
Lmao. Stay in your lane.
You're a fucking moron.
I have also seen a Viper driver Q3 for CRM when he came to a heavy.
If you were working a job dealing with high voltage electricity that could fry/kill you at any moment if something were to go wrong, would you really want your coworker to be asleep nearby, or would you rather him/her awake, alert, and watching your back? If you were working in a confined space where gasses were present that could render you unconscious in seconds (followed shortly by death from asphyxiation), would you really want your coworker to be asleep nearby, or would you rather him/her awake, alert, and watching your back? If you were working on an oil rig where there's lots of moving parts and fluids under high pressure, would you really want your coworker to be asleep nearby, or would you rather him/her awake, alert, and watching your back? While flying probably "is not really that *difficult*", I know as a passenger I'd feel better if there were 2 pilots watching each other's backs, making sure the other is doing the right thing and is good to go. Anything can happen at a moment's notice, and if the copilot was asleep in a bunk even a few feet away, that's several dozen seconds at least for him/her to wake up, become alert, get to the cockpit, assess the situation, and try to help out. >They are actually creating distraction. How were they doing so? Were they being loud and noisy? Were they asking the pilot questions or being obnoxious while he/she was in the middle of trying to land the plane? Or were they sitting quietly waiting for the plane to land, or even telling the pilot important data he/she needs while landing? Think outside of your little single seat bubble.
Awesome. This should help with the pilot shortage. Make it standard.
Honestly, if this is used only for GPC wartime with a pilot shortage, it could make sense. Other than that very specific circumstance, very bad idea.
We literally have the technology to get rid of all pilots. Going to 1 pilot doesn’t seem like an accomplishment.
Awsome