TACAIR may be single seat but it is not alone and unafraid. On any given mission, you go out at least as a 2-plane. Let’s take a notional 4-plane strike package launching from the USS Flattop at 0 dark thirty. For starters, the crew has been planning the strike for at least several days, studying targets, calculating bingo fuels, ingress and egress times etc. This is not done in a vacuum, there is a small army of staff coordinating with the rest of the wing and the other services. The night before the strike the crew probably gets some fair amount of rest, but they were still up later than they wanted to because, hmmm, E-6 evals are due to the XO the same day as the strike was planned, or some other ppwk needed to get done. Forget about getting real sleep because staterooms are directly under the flight deck, so if night ops are going on, well, use your imagination. An hour prior, you and your 3 buds are pre-flighting up on the deck in a moonless night, oh yea, the sea state has picked up so the deck is pitching. Man up, launch and join up, no crew coordination needed there. Checkin with the AWACS before pressing on to the target. Did I mention that the AWACS crew had just gotten into theater 4 days prior and they been on station for 7 hrs already? Their home base is on the other side of the planet, no flight planning involved to get the jet over here to the war, don’t worry about backing Ops up on the DIP clearances either. Back to the strike package…they’ve been airborne now for about 40 mins, now the fun begins, drop down to 500’ or less, at the speed of heat, oh yea, on the NGVs, find the target, pickle, 6G turn to get the F out of Dodge. Out of the hot zone now, climb up to find the tanker. Sun’s coming up now but still need to keep the head on a swivel; AWACS cleared the tanker w/I 1 mile of the RECCE bird. Top off and head back to the ship. Weather’s picked up and vis is down to less than 1/4SM. Somewhere nearby the P-3 is tooling around at 500’ in this mess prosecuting the idiots with the hand-helds that want to shoot your behind down. They came half way around the world to, just the other way. 4 days ago the 2P with 550 hours made his first night landing in the snow and low vis in N Japan. In the stack at the boat, ¾ of a mile and clara (ball not sight) and the LSO tells you to keep it coming. Finally trap and put the jet to bed, we just logged a 4.5 with 3 hrs of night, 2.5 instrument a precision approach and flew thru airspace with the traffic volume equivalent to London.
Need we say more?