For me the issue with this concept has always been about survivability since I flew many missions in danger close environments.. You won't necessarily be engaged by ZSU's slinging 23 mike mike or fixed 37 or 57 mm AAA most of the time but however you slice & dice it this is a very fragile airframe, I doubt its ability to absorb even the smallest amount of punishment and survive..Redundancy is next to zero and the fact they plant a WSO in the back seat just because it's inherent to the airframe design makes no sense.
Guess we will just agree to disagree on this one ...
For the Navy the FAC mission is designed to be flown two seat. The USMC was with the F/-18D but that plane is either gone or gone soon and I think the USAF is going that way with their buy of more F-15Es. The amount of data and coordination the FAC faces today is loads more than the past and it's about to get worse with UAVs'.
