This is all very interesting. Twenty-four years ago as I was completing my final critique after getting winged, I (and many other NFOs) wrote that we felt it would be beneficial to have some pre-VT10 syllabus that gave us some stick time as we thought that would equate to better air sense, or at least more comfort in the aircraft. As it was, the first syllabus flight was pretty intense (mine was in IMC) and everyone felt way behind the power curve. After five T-34 flights you needed to pick whether you wanted to go P-3s or TACAIR. I'm sure many chose P-3s just to get out of there ASAP. We were not allowed to touch the stick. Like I said on a previous thread, a middie on a CORTRAMID fam flight got more stick time on that one flight than we did for the whole NFO syllabus. We had nothing like an on-wing, so you really couldn't gauge if you were improving. We had some of the worst SERGRADS who would pay lip service to Crew Concept and then do whatever they wanted to do, especially on the Spin hop. I thought some of them were full of crap then, but chalked it up to me not knowing any better. The reality is they had no desire to be there (they did not volunteer), and their CRM, Crew Concept, whatever just plain sucked. Not their fault so much as they never flew missions in a multi-place cockpit as anything other than a student themselves.
After a few highly visible mishaps where the B/N, RIO, ECMO, or whoever was tweaking and geeking instead of co-piloting, CNATRA decided it might be prudent to invest some time in getting SNFOs some more air sense with hands-on stick time and started a pilot appreciation syllabus of a few flights that has morphed into IFS. I wish I could have done that. To possibly get to solo is icing on the cake.
You can learn something from EVERY flight, especially early on, and EVERY flight can kill you.
If a SNFO openly verbalized his opinion that IFS was a waste of time because he'd never get to actually fly, I would have to agree, because in his case it is a waste of time, since he clearly knows everything about everything. Perhaps he should be shown the door and save everyone lots of time and effort.
Funny how things go full circle. 25 years ago we didn't have it and wanted it; now that they've got it, some of them want to get rid of it.