won't it be odd to see a fighter to be in service without an operational trainer?
With Pakistan it may be ok,but if you are considering it for export ,then it will a terrible downside.When can one expect a two seat trainer?
why it would be odd? remember F22 and F35 both don't have any twin seaters, and F35 is a export oriented jet but still no twin seaters. so it won't be odd in the case of JFT.
Pilots in -22s and -35s came from established fighters.
The decision to make no trainer versions of both were not that difficult. If you study the evolution of manned aircrafts, civilian and military but especially military, you will notice the progression of the transference of flying tasks from pilot to aircraft. In other words, we want to make the aircraft as autonomous as possible.
For example...In the old days, pilots must learn to make 'stick and rudder' coordinated turns in training and when they graduate and became 'real' pilots, they still have to use that skill. I went through it during my teenage years on the old Cessna 152 before I ran out of money, but that is another story. Anyway...Not so with today's modern avionics, especially with the fly-by-wire type. Pilot candidates went through training on the basics of flight and flight maneuvers but when they get to their assigned aircraft, it will be the computer itself that will make those 'stick and rudder' maneuvers for him. It has become so transparent that the technology has been taken for granted.
Same for other avionics systems like going from air to ground attack modes. In the old days, the pilot would have to 'monkey' around the cockpit with various switches and dials to get the radar and its companion display to work for the clutter filled ground returns. Today -- one flipped switch, may be two. In the old days, like the early Cold War, navigators provides guidance to Soviet targets, today as in the F-111 era of which I was on, the WSO (right seater) have a plug in cartridge and the INS extract the necessary information and off they go.
The-22 and -35 are advanced enough that all the pilot have to do is learn their unique
MISSION capabilities, not
FLIGHT capabilities, and that includes thrust vectoring for the -22, of which the aircraft makes just about all decisions on how much and how long to exercise which flight control surfaces in coordination with the engine exhaust redirection.
For example...
John Boyd - USAF, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of Air Warfare
As an instructor at the Fighter Weapons School (FWS) at Nellis AFB, he fought students, cadre pilots, Marine and Navy pilots, and pilots from a dozen countries, who were attending the FWS as part of the Mutual Defense Assistance Pact.
He never lost.
Boyd was famous for a maneuver he called "flat-plating the bird." He would be in the defensive position with a challenger tight on his tail, both pulling heavy Gs, when he would suddenly pull the stick full aft, brace his elbows on either side of the cockpit, so the stick would not move laterally, and stomp the rudder. It was as if a manhole cover were sailing through the air and then suddenly flipped 90 degrees. The underside of the fuselage, wings, and horizontal stabilizer became a speed brake that slowed the Hun from 400 knots to 150 knots in seconds. The pursuing pilot was thrown forward and now Boyd was on his tail radioing "Guns. Guns. Guns."
The Russians call that 'the Cobra' maneuver. We call it 'biiiiiiiig deal'. Forty Seconds Boyd already done it and did it without the avionics level of today's fighters. The Hun was the F-100. Anyway...It was the aircraft that made possible and even easy the 'Cobra maneuver'. Am not saying today's pilots could not do it. Am saying that the aircraft made the maneuver smooth, predictable, and recoverable.
No need for the trainer versions for the -22 and -35.
