We RIOs are going the way of the Dodo..what we are becoming are WSOs in the Super...
Last class at the RAG will be either sometime next year or the very shortly thereafter. Last Topgun class to go through with Tomcats graduated last fall. So anybody in flight school now has only a very limited, if any chance to fly Toms. Which in a way is too bad, because for a NFO it is a great jet, for two reasons.
The first is that because the pilot had essentially no radar control, you were pretty much running the show in back, a field general being chaffeured around. That power dynamic is of course a little bit different now with the -18F, though the community will never let the WSO just be a GIB.
The second is that because the Tomcat is such a non-integrated, cantankerous, temperamental, ergonomic nightmare in back, I think it makes the RIOs better aviators than if they just had to flip a switch and everything is turned on (E/F, basically.) I always figure that if I can just get everything turned on and set up before we get out of the line/taxi to the cat, the actual mission will be a breeze.
So, what does that leave our young apprentices? As was alredy posted, the jets you could think about are:
F-14/F/A-18F Good job, though the WSO has less to do in the F (but that is still plenty. Good blend of airmanship and all-around tactics/airpower employment.
EA-6B/F/A-G Good job, though I wonder about the career dynamics of going from 3 ECMO's to one, while keeping the number of jets and squadrons the same. Good blend of airmanship (especially when ECMOs go to the "Growler"), but a little more unidimensional when it comes to warfighting.
E-2 Good job. Hey, on the carrier side the Navy's only buying JSF, E/F/G's...and Hawkeyes. Tradeoff with the E-2 is that the airmanship side loses out once you leave the training command and start flying in the back of the tube, but you really know how the entire fleet works. So you got that going for you. Which is nice.
P-3/MMA No comment.
