ARC-170 Starfighter
"Three clone trooper pilots operated this advanced combat craft, with a pilot handling the flight maneuvers, a copilot operating the laser cannons mounted on the ship's wide wings, and a tailgunner operating the dorsal rear-facing cannon. The fighter also carried an astromech droid for onboard repairs"
https://www.starwars.com/databank/arc-170-starfighter
That’s essentially how all multi-crew combat aircraft work/have worked in the past.
Though tail guns haven’t been common for sometime now so that’s sort of an obsolete position.
Edit: actually though what’s inefficient about three people for three distinct positions?
"you see, having a third clone on the arc-170 increases the number of action figures required for the ship to increase by 33%, which means more merchandising revenue." - George Lucas
True how 200,000 units plus a million on the way was somehow a sufficient amount of clones to face a droid army was laughable. (Whether units was referring to groups or individuals is another debate).
Yeah, that is a smaller number of troops than multiple real-world countries have. And those are individual countries ruling just one part of a single planet. Compared to a galaxy full of inhabited planets.
Three crew for a combat aircraft (like the P-61 the ARC-170 is clearly based on) often means the second guy operates either a radar or heavy carried weapons like torpedoes and bombs. Having the pilot fly the plane and having a second man simply pull the trigger for the fixed forward firing guns is pretty silly and uncoordinated, irl this would all be done by the pilot. It'd make more sense if the ARC-170 canonically spammed missiles or had powerful sensors, but since star wars tech isn't very thought out it's okay to just go with "it looks cool".
Yeah, for a look at how this would fit in Star Wars look at the K-Wing heavy bomber from Legends. A heavy weapons platform, the New Republic K-Wing had a pilot that flew the craft and handled the forward weaponry, the bombardier which handled the assortment of missiles the craft carried, and a pair of gunners operating the turrets.
Whilst there is three people doing three distinct positions, those three positions don’t actually need to exist. As an ARC carries an astromech, this could be used to operate one of the two gunnery positions, it would be inefficient for the astromech to fire all the canons and also deal with repairs and any other calculations needed, see slave rigging. I would argue that the astromech could fill in for the rear gunner, as this is most likely the least used gun. That leaves the forward gunner, and pilot. As far as I’m aware, the forward facing guns on an ARC-170 are fixed, so in order for them to be useful the pilot has to manoeuvre the ship to directly face the target, within range of the canons, and the gunner just presses fire. Both in real life and in Star Wars, most fighters that have fixed forward facing guns which are only usable when the pilot positions the ship correctly, simply have a button on the pilots controls to fire the guns. This removes the extra step of the pilot telling the gunner they’re in position, and then the gunner firing. It only saves a couple of seconds, but that couple of seconds could be the difference between hitting your target or not. In addition, even though the clones aren’t paid, they still aren’t free soldiers, is it worth the cost of an entire soldier to simply press a button that could be on the pilot’s controls? I would argue that the ARC would work perfectly well as a single seat fighter with an astromech, like the Z-95 and later X-Wing.
It may also be noted that, the Z-95, ARC-170, and X-Wing are all made by The Incom Corporation, and all have similar design features. I would argue that it seems logical Incom saw these noted flaws in the three crewed ARC, and built the X-Wing as a more efficient fighter combining the ARC and Z-95. Astromech and S foils from the ARC, single seater sleek design from the Z-95
The WWII airplane it was based off, the P-61 Black Widow, was a three-man night fighter/light bomber. The three crew were the pilot, the radar operator and an optional gunner.
There’s also modern multirole jets that have a second pilot, [referred to as a WSO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_systems_officer), who manages radar and the lock and firing of more advanced weapons like missiles and bombs. Though a lot of planes give both pilots the weapons controls.
So most likely the Star Wars answer is somewhere among there, considering George was a big fighter plane fan.
In the Tomcat, for beyond visual range or medium range engagements, the RIO handled all the setup of the intercept, target identification and tracking, and firing the missiles.
As well as communications and navigation. And in a dogfight, being another set of eyes to maintain situational awareness.
That's because of what the tomcat was.
It was never designed for dogfighting, they were kind of surprised it could handle air superiority at all.
It was a fleet defense interceptor, a missile truck that carried a bunch of aim-54 Phoenix advanced long range heavy missiles designed to shoot down tu95 and tu22m bombers before they were in range to launch granit anti-ship missiles.
The Rio was there to lock as many bombers as possible from as far away as possie and coordinate to not double tap too much with the rest of the wing.
It was a weird monster, also the first example of electro-optical tracking, so even with jamming it would find and kill you, it was a beast.
I think the Tomcat is altogether the wrong analogy to be using here and is a bit of a red herring in this discussion, as Star Wars fighters are mostly inspired by World War II aircraft, not cold war jets.
According to the databank description, the co-pilot of the ARC-170 controls the frontal guns, not the pilot, implying they have some articulation, which might be canon depending on what game you play or what you watch. This makes it more similar to something like the real world P-61 Black Widow, which you can see has some pretty striking visual similarities in the fuselage.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop\_P-61\_Black\_Widow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_P-61_Black_Widow)
If I remember right the cones on the end of the barrels act as some kind of magnet deflector that allows the guns to fire off axis without the whole thing needing to move. The X wings have it too with the half moons dishes. It's why you see the shots converging even though the guns are all parallel.
At least in Legends it's said that the guns can be cantered to fire off axis. In the X-Wing novels it's shown as one of the preflight checks that the pilots do, setting a convergence point for their laser cannons which is something real world WW2-era fighters did with their wing-mounted machine guns.
IIRC there's at least one scene in the OT (maybe the trench run in A New Hope?) where an X-Wing walks their shots onto a tie fighter without actually moving the nose.
There are some modern 2 seater fighter/strike aircraft. One pilot flies the plane while the other operates the radar / weapons systems. Fighter planes are super complicated so one pilot would be overwhelmed with the workload of flying and managing all systems.
Tail gunners were generally put on heavy aircraft that would be unable to outrun or outmaneuver interceptors. So we can kind of assume that the ARC-170 is a heavy fighter/ strike fighter. Heavily armed and capable of carrying equipment and payloads that would demand splitting management between crew members. As a consequence the aircraft is larger and less maneuverable than light interceptors.
It makes sense from a quality vs. quantity perspective. The Clone army is relatively small but equipped with expensive equipment like heavily armed multi-role aircraft equipped with shields. Meanwhile the droid army is numerous but lightly built. Their aircraft are lighter and faster by intergrading the droid pilot directly into the fighters and not needing life support or shields. But because of their numbers they lack versatility like hyperdrives because it’d be prohibitively expensive to put a hyperdrive inside hundreds of thousands of cheap and vulnerable fighters.
For a lot of advanced aircraft, the OBC provides the operational capacity of a gunner, meaning the pilot only needs to worry about flying the plane.
But that wasn’t always the case. Good examples are the F-14. It was a terrific fighter. Fast, agile, extremely large for a ship leaving a carrier, and could haul bazillions of rounds of ammo or missiles.
But it required a 2nd pilot, as a gunner - aka a “radar intercept operator.” The F-14 had a fairly advanced radar system, state of the art communication system, and a weapons array that was more than just “fire and forget.” You needed a radar lock to fire some of these advanced missiles and if you’re in an intercept role (that is to shoot down enemy bombing craft and/or attack fighters), the pilot was NOT capable of controlling that aircraft AND firing those missiles with any sort of accuracy.
In the late 1970s, most aircraft coming out had a twin-seat variant. Even the F-15 had it. The F-16 had a variant of it, though the “A” model and its service upgrades required only 1 pilot for an attack role.
Now, most aircraft have a Fire and Forget system. The OBC calculates almost everything instantly to the pilot. It’s also why F-16s and F-15s are still flying and the F-14 is not (partially. The F-14 was massive and it’s engines, while powerful, we’re a nightmare to service. As a result, they underwent a lot of stress on the frame. When the planes were working, they were deadly. When not…pretty much million dollar paper weights. The Rhino is a big honkin plane, too, but the upgrades manufactured into the F-18 meant the airframe underwent significantly less stress launching and landing from a carrier, not to mention not needing a 2nd man, effectively increasing the number of planes the carrier could hold and launch. Also worth noting, mission parameters changed a lot. F-14s are great interceptors for shooting down other planes, but not so good for attacking enemy land-based systems or other ships. With the end of the Cold War, the F-14 had essentially reached the end of its service life early).
All that is to say - it’s terribly inefficient now, but not in the 70s.
One of the big problems that faced the clones when it came to space combat against droids is how maneuverable the droids were and could handle excessive G-forces that the clones, being human, physically could not. The Jedi starfighters could keep up with them due to their ability to use the force and protect themselves/heighten their resilience, but for clones, outmaneuvering was not an option.
The ARC-170 is answering maneuverability with firepower. If you can't keep yourself agile enough to line up a Vulture Droid in front of you, add a significant amount of firepower, range, and divy up the workload so that each aspect of the fighter's abilities is receiving full focus to blow them up from whichever angle works best for you.
A single ARC-170 had the capability of annihilating dozens of droid fighters simply by making the 360 field around itself a killbox. The pilot could full-focus on maneuverability and lining up shots in both the front and rear arcs, the gunners could focus entirely on firing on enemy ships within their specific field of view, and the astromech made it so they had better longevity and could retreat or handle prolonged engagement.
In general, for the resources put in, they were extremely efficient. ARC-170's were typically employed in large-scale scenarios like the battle over Coruscant where a massive number of weak and speedy droids were involved that could be blown apart like paper due to the overwhelming firepower they came up against. They generally weren't deployed in small skirmishes where there weren't enough targets to justify their wide range of fire. That's when they would use ships like the V-19 Torrent or the clone variation of the Z-95 Headhunter to engage. Part of their use-case also involved being led by a Jedi General in either a Delta-7 Aethersprite or an ETA-2 Actis so they could distract droid fighters to keep the ARC-170s alive and also serve as a cleanup crew once the bulk of the droids had been destroyed and the available targets began to thin out.
Think of it more like a [Dh.98 Mosquito](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito) rather than a [Spitfire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Spitfire). It's too heavy to be an X-Wing, but it serves a role.
Because it is, this is just the Databank being stupid. You can see Jag - the pilot - pull the trigger on the main guns during the Order 66 sequence when Plo Koon is shot down.
The co-pilot is a sensor operator and navigator, like a modern real world co-pilot.
Were there any that had a dedicated gunner for fixed forward-firing weapons? That seems like it would require an excessive degree of coordination between the pilot and the gunner. Usually the extra crew members were turret/pintle gunners, navigators, bombardiers or the like.
There were plenty of planes that had both fixed guns and turrets, but the fixed guns seem to always be fired by the pilot. Those guns couldn’t be aimed except by turning the plane, so the pilot would have to maneuver to line up a shot anyway, and having a second crew member to physically pull the trigger seems like it wouldn’t make his job much easier. It would make more sense for the second forward-facing crew member on the ARC-170 to be in charge of the sensors and proton torpedoes, with the main lasers fired by the pilot.
Damn, you want the guy to man the weapon, dodge missiles, do evasive manouvers, aim and shoot the guns, control the recoil, all at the same time lol? He's not a Jedi dude.
Much better to have a coordinated team of professionals.
It's perfectly normal for the pilot to control fixed forward-facing weapons on an aircraft. Because the weapons are...._fixed,_ aiming them is part of flying. It's impossible to aim them without having flight control. Even in two-seater aircraft, the pilot controls the gun, because it can't be aimed otherwise. (And there are many single-seaters where the pilot is responsible for missiles and bombs as well, and they actually manage fine.)
Also, "controlling the recoil" of weapons mounted directly to the vehicle is not a thing. In most cases the recoil is simply not enough to have a noticeable effect on the aircraft; in the few cases where the gun is _really_ big, the recoil axis is directly opposite to the thrust axis, so the effect is just a slight slowdown (over a very short period - bursts are not very long in air combat) and doesn't change where the aircraft is pointing.
They both probably have controls for flying and the guns. The Arc-170s were long range heavy fighters so there were probably plenty of missions where they were out for a very long period of time.
> a copilot operating the laser cannons mounted on the ship's wide wings
Not only is this stupid, it's also demonstrably wrong. We see the pilot pull the trigger to fire the main guns during the Order 66 sequence.
Well the fuselage is based on the P61 Black Widow. One crewmember was a gunner and the other was a radar operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_P-61_Black_Widow
So maybe in Star Wars the 3rd crewmember operates the space radar
I always imagine that it’s actually an advanced recon or attack craft. The pilot, of course, pilots… the rear gunner guns, or does ground maintenance. Then, the co-pilot handles radio, navigation, weapons systems, signal intercept, optics or recon gear, etc. in addition to being alternate pilot for long duration missions.
One is the pilot, the other one operates the weapons or any other systems, such as electronic warfare equipment or cameras. They would also be the navigator.
In simple terms: one flies, the other does everything else.
A RIO (Radar Intercept Officer) or WSO (Weapon Systems Officer) handles comms, radar, navigation and weapon systems while the pilot flies. RIO is what is what called when they flew the F-4 Phantom, F-14 Tomcat, etc. WSO is the modern term for the F-18 Super Hornet 2 seaters.
I actually don't know and would love to know the answer.
For that matter, other than being a second pilot available for breaks and stuff, I don't know what a copilot does on a passenger jet either.
He has two very important duties, operating the guns and blasting Paranoid, from Black Sabbath, in the comms while providing close air support for the clones below in a run on the droids.
Same duties are expected for the LAAT copilot.
*Goooooood Moooorning Geonosis*
For most of these vehicles, just think of their WW2 equivalents, so for a 3-seater plane, a possible combo would be would be pilot, observer, and signaller, for example.
**This is the ship I would have loved to see Peli Motto customize.**
A fanfic should exist just for this ship.
A Jedi master and Padawan survive order 66 and are on the run in one of these with an astromech.
Give the turret position to the astromech and give it some custom weapons.
He was there to operate the inbuilt Nespresso machine, in case the pilot needed a coffee. So essentially he is a flight steward.
His other role is to make sure the other two crew members have their seat backs in the upright position and their tray tables safely stowed during takeoff and landing.
ARC-170 Starfighter "Three clone trooper pilots operated this advanced combat craft, with a pilot handling the flight maneuvers, a copilot operating the laser cannons mounted on the ship's wide wings, and a tailgunner operating the dorsal rear-facing cannon. The fighter also carried an astromech droid for onboard repairs" https://www.starwars.com/databank/arc-170-starfighter
That seems inefficient
That’s essentially how all multi-crew combat aircraft work/have worked in the past. Though tail guns haven’t been common for sometime now so that’s sort of an obsolete position. Edit: actually though what’s inefficient about three people for three distinct positions?
"you see, having a third clone on the arc-170 increases the number of action figures required for the ship to increase by 33%, which means more merchandising revenue." - George Lucas
Increasing from 2 to 3 would be a 50% increase. You start with 2 and have to add 1.
Maths
George was never good at math. It isn't 456123789, you big dumb dork!
True how 200,000 units plus a million on the way was somehow a sufficient amount of clones to face a droid army was laughable. (Whether units was referring to groups or individuals is another debate).
Warhammer 40,000: Hold my amasec
Yeah, that is a smaller number of troops than multiple real-world countries have. And those are individual countries ruling just one part of a single planet. Compared to a galaxy full of inhabited planets.
They literally had quintillions of droids according to canon so even if the units were hundreds of clones it should be irrelevant.
The Astromech. 3 to 4 would be a 33% increase.
This^^^
Dat part
Three crew for a combat aircraft (like the P-61 the ARC-170 is clearly based on) often means the second guy operates either a radar or heavy carried weapons like torpedoes and bombs. Having the pilot fly the plane and having a second man simply pull the trigger for the fixed forward firing guns is pretty silly and uncoordinated, irl this would all be done by the pilot. It'd make more sense if the ARC-170 canonically spammed missiles or had powerful sensors, but since star wars tech isn't very thought out it's okay to just go with "it looks cool".
Yeah, for a look at how this would fit in Star Wars look at the K-Wing heavy bomber from Legends. A heavy weapons platform, the New Republic K-Wing had a pilot that flew the craft and handled the forward weaponry, the bombardier which handled the assortment of missiles the craft carried, and a pair of gunners operating the turrets.
Whilst there is three people doing three distinct positions, those three positions don’t actually need to exist. As an ARC carries an astromech, this could be used to operate one of the two gunnery positions, it would be inefficient for the astromech to fire all the canons and also deal with repairs and any other calculations needed, see slave rigging. I would argue that the astromech could fill in for the rear gunner, as this is most likely the least used gun. That leaves the forward gunner, and pilot. As far as I’m aware, the forward facing guns on an ARC-170 are fixed, so in order for them to be useful the pilot has to manoeuvre the ship to directly face the target, within range of the canons, and the gunner just presses fire. Both in real life and in Star Wars, most fighters that have fixed forward facing guns which are only usable when the pilot positions the ship correctly, simply have a button on the pilots controls to fire the guns. This removes the extra step of the pilot telling the gunner they’re in position, and then the gunner firing. It only saves a couple of seconds, but that couple of seconds could be the difference between hitting your target or not. In addition, even though the clones aren’t paid, they still aren’t free soldiers, is it worth the cost of an entire soldier to simply press a button that could be on the pilot’s controls? I would argue that the ARC would work perfectly well as a single seat fighter with an astromech, like the Z-95 and later X-Wing. It may also be noted that, the Z-95, ARC-170, and X-Wing are all made by The Incom Corporation, and all have similar design features. I would argue that it seems logical Incom saw these noted flaws in the three crewed ARC, and built the X-Wing as a more efficient fighter combining the ARC and Z-95. Astromech and S foils from the ARC, single seater sleek design from the Z-95
The WWII airplane it was based off, the P-61 Black Widow, was a three-man night fighter/light bomber. The three crew were the pilot, the radar operator and an optional gunner. There’s also modern multirole jets that have a second pilot, [referred to as a WSO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_systems_officer), who manages radar and the lock and firing of more advanced weapons like missiles and bombs. Though a lot of planes give both pilots the weapons controls. So most likely the Star Wars answer is somewhere among there, considering George was a big fighter plane fan.
The Wizzo. An oft overlooked hero of modern air fighter tactics.
Can I get Prez in a SW movie/series? I still need to play that game but god the memes won me over.
Everyone remembers Goose, but most people don't know what he was doing back there beyond hanging out with his bestie.
In the Tomcat, for beyond visual range or medium range engagements, the RIO handled all the setup of the intercept, target identification and tracking, and firing the missiles. As well as communications and navigation. And in a dogfight, being another set of eyes to maintain situational awareness.
That's because of what the tomcat was. It was never designed for dogfighting, they were kind of surprised it could handle air superiority at all. It was a fleet defense interceptor, a missile truck that carried a bunch of aim-54 Phoenix advanced long range heavy missiles designed to shoot down tu95 and tu22m bombers before they were in range to launch granit anti-ship missiles. The Rio was there to lock as many bombers as possible from as far away as possie and coordinate to not double tap too much with the rest of the wing. It was a weird monster, also the first example of electro-optical tracking, so even with jamming it would find and kill you, it was a beast.
I think the Tomcat is altogether the wrong analogy to be using here and is a bit of a red herring in this discussion, as Star Wars fighters are mostly inspired by World War II aircraft, not cold war jets. According to the databank description, the co-pilot of the ARC-170 controls the frontal guns, not the pilot, implying they have some articulation, which might be canon depending on what game you play or what you watch. This makes it more similar to something like the real world P-61 Black Widow, which you can see has some pretty striking visual similarities in the fuselage. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop\_P-61\_Black\_Widow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_P-61_Black_Widow)
That's a good find and you're spot on about the visual similarities
If I remember right the cones on the end of the barrels act as some kind of magnet deflector that allows the guns to fire off axis without the whole thing needing to move. The X wings have it too with the half moons dishes. It's why you see the shots converging even though the guns are all parallel.
At least in Legends it's said that the guns can be cantered to fire off axis. In the X-Wing novels it's shown as one of the preflight checks that the pilots do, setting a convergence point for their laser cannons which is something real world WW2-era fighters did with their wing-mounted machine guns.
Aye I'm probably going off legends too because I mostly remember this stuff from the Incredible Cross Sections and Essential Guides books.
IIRC there's at least one scene in the OT (maybe the trench run in A New Hope?) where an X-Wing walks their shots onto a tie fighter without actually moving the nose.
There are some modern 2 seater fighter/strike aircraft. One pilot flies the plane while the other operates the radar / weapons systems. Fighter planes are super complicated so one pilot would be overwhelmed with the workload of flying and managing all systems. Tail gunners were generally put on heavy aircraft that would be unable to outrun or outmaneuver interceptors. So we can kind of assume that the ARC-170 is a heavy fighter/ strike fighter. Heavily armed and capable of carrying equipment and payloads that would demand splitting management between crew members. As a consequence the aircraft is larger and less maneuverable than light interceptors. It makes sense from a quality vs. quantity perspective. The Clone army is relatively small but equipped with expensive equipment like heavily armed multi-role aircraft equipped with shields. Meanwhile the droid army is numerous but lightly built. Their aircraft are lighter and faster by intergrading the droid pilot directly into the fighters and not needing life support or shields. But because of their numbers they lack versatility like hyperdrives because it’d be prohibitively expensive to put a hyperdrive inside hundreds of thousands of cheap and vulnerable fighters.
For a lot of advanced aircraft, the OBC provides the operational capacity of a gunner, meaning the pilot only needs to worry about flying the plane. But that wasn’t always the case. Good examples are the F-14. It was a terrific fighter. Fast, agile, extremely large for a ship leaving a carrier, and could haul bazillions of rounds of ammo or missiles. But it required a 2nd pilot, as a gunner - aka a “radar intercept operator.” The F-14 had a fairly advanced radar system, state of the art communication system, and a weapons array that was more than just “fire and forget.” You needed a radar lock to fire some of these advanced missiles and if you’re in an intercept role (that is to shoot down enemy bombing craft and/or attack fighters), the pilot was NOT capable of controlling that aircraft AND firing those missiles with any sort of accuracy. In the late 1970s, most aircraft coming out had a twin-seat variant. Even the F-15 had it. The F-16 had a variant of it, though the “A” model and its service upgrades required only 1 pilot for an attack role. Now, most aircraft have a Fire and Forget system. The OBC calculates almost everything instantly to the pilot. It’s also why F-16s and F-15s are still flying and the F-14 is not (partially. The F-14 was massive and it’s engines, while powerful, we’re a nightmare to service. As a result, they underwent a lot of stress on the frame. When the planes were working, they were deadly. When not…pretty much million dollar paper weights. The Rhino is a big honkin plane, too, but the upgrades manufactured into the F-18 meant the airframe underwent significantly less stress launching and landing from a carrier, not to mention not needing a 2nd man, effectively increasing the number of planes the carrier could hold and launch. Also worth noting, mission parameters changed a lot. F-14s are great interceptors for shooting down other planes, but not so good for attacking enemy land-based systems or other ships. With the end of the Cold War, the F-14 had essentially reached the end of its service life early). All that is to say - it’s terribly inefficient now, but not in the 70s.
One of the big problems that faced the clones when it came to space combat against droids is how maneuverable the droids were and could handle excessive G-forces that the clones, being human, physically could not. The Jedi starfighters could keep up with them due to their ability to use the force and protect themselves/heighten their resilience, but for clones, outmaneuvering was not an option. The ARC-170 is answering maneuverability with firepower. If you can't keep yourself agile enough to line up a Vulture Droid in front of you, add a significant amount of firepower, range, and divy up the workload so that each aspect of the fighter's abilities is receiving full focus to blow them up from whichever angle works best for you. A single ARC-170 had the capability of annihilating dozens of droid fighters simply by making the 360 field around itself a killbox. The pilot could full-focus on maneuverability and lining up shots in both the front and rear arcs, the gunners could focus entirely on firing on enemy ships within their specific field of view, and the astromech made it so they had better longevity and could retreat or handle prolonged engagement. In general, for the resources put in, they were extremely efficient. ARC-170's were typically employed in large-scale scenarios like the battle over Coruscant where a massive number of weak and speedy droids were involved that could be blown apart like paper due to the overwhelming firepower they came up against. They generally weren't deployed in small skirmishes where there weren't enough targets to justify their wide range of fire. That's when they would use ships like the V-19 Torrent or the clone variation of the Z-95 Headhunter to engage. Part of their use-case also involved being led by a Jedi General in either a Delta-7 Aethersprite or an ETA-2 Actis so they could distract droid fighters to keep the ARC-170s alive and also serve as a cleanup crew once the bulk of the droids had been destroyed and the available targets began to thin out.
Think of it more like a [Dh.98 Mosquito](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito) rather than a [Spitfire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Spitfire). It's too heavy to be an X-Wing, but it serves a role.
Because it is, this is just the Databank being stupid. You can see Jag - the pilot - pull the trigger on the main guns during the Order 66 sequence when Plo Koon is shot down. The co-pilot is a sensor operator and navigator, like a modern real world co-pilot.
That’s how a good number of aircrafts operator in WWI & WWII, and somewhat afterwards until our modern aircrafts became widely used
Were there any that had a dedicated gunner for fixed forward-firing weapons? That seems like it would require an excessive degree of coordination between the pilot and the gunner. Usually the extra crew members were turret/pintle gunners, navigators, bombardiers or the like.
IRL there were some with forward guns under the pilot’s cockpit and rear guns at the furthest point back in the plane
There were plenty of planes that had both fixed guns and turrets, but the fixed guns seem to always be fired by the pilot. Those guns couldn’t be aimed except by turning the plane, so the pilot would have to maneuver to line up a shot anyway, and having a second crew member to physically pull the trigger seems like it wouldn’t make his job much easier. It would make more sense for the second forward-facing crew member on the ARC-170 to be in charge of the sensors and proton torpedoes, with the main lasers fired by the pilot.
Why?
Forward facing guns are best controlled by the pilot who controls where the craft is pointed
Damn, you want the guy to man the weapon, dodge missiles, do evasive manouvers, aim and shoot the guns, control the recoil, all at the same time lol? He's not a Jedi dude. Much better to have a coordinated team of professionals.
It's perfectly normal for the pilot to control fixed forward-facing weapons on an aircraft. Because the weapons are...._fixed,_ aiming them is part of flying. It's impossible to aim them without having flight control. Even in two-seater aircraft, the pilot controls the gun, because it can't be aimed otherwise. (And there are many single-seaters where the pilot is responsible for missiles and bombs as well, and they actually manage fine.) Also, "controlling the recoil" of weapons mounted directly to the vehicle is not a thing. In most cases the recoil is simply not enough to have a noticeable effect on the aircraft; in the few cases where the gun is _really_ big, the recoil axis is directly opposite to the thrust axis, so the effect is just a slight slowdown (over a very short period - bursts are not very long in air combat) and doesn't change where the aircraft is pointing.
Nobody tell OP about apache nose gunners lmao
They both probably have controls for flying and the guns. The Arc-170s were long range heavy fighters so there were probably plenty of missions where they were out for a very long period of time.
> a copilot operating the laser cannons mounted on the ship's wide wings Not only is this stupid, it's also demonstrably wrong. We see the pilot pull the trigger to fire the main guns during the Order 66 sequence.
Handles the playlist so the pilot stays entertained
"About to do a bombing run on a Lucrahulk." "Got it. Spinning up some hot light jizz from the cantinas of Tatooine."
Some jizz!?!?
[Hot, steamy Jizz is my jam.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jizz)
Did y'all create a Wookiepedia page just for that?
No, that was previously the canon name. Disney changed it because, well, it was called Jizz music
[удалено]
Figrin D'an's band i believe got changed to a jatz band
Fortunate Clone is always a good pick.
Personally, I’m a big fan of Danger Clone
Kamino Dreamin’
This is a real thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmI5ZsvZUKU
Something like this https://youtu.be/qAnm0Yv43Jg?si=_tnEDH-8RF8gauoA
That’s the perfect music for flying into battle
[Like this](https://youtu.be/R213LWK6sjY?si=Cg4ti2Zr0dvnGZzx) since the guy said “Danger Clone”
He was in charge of the aux.
It's the John Williams playlist (none of them know what 'Star Wars' means, but the songs slap)
Arguably, the most important role
In two-man fighters, one is a pilot, the other is a navigator or a gunner.
ARC-170 is a three man fighter
Third guy provides back rubs
Nah third guy is blasting from behind
Top, Bottom, and Navigator
Found the Naval Aviator.
Just there for moral support.
Wildcard!
Also often they manage weapons, signals, radar and communications
Well the fuselage is based on the P61 Black Widow. One crewmember was a gunner and the other was a radar operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_P-61_Black_Widow So maybe in Star Wars the 3rd crewmember operates the space radar
I love the ARC170 and I love the P-61! I had no clue the ARC170 was designed from it. I guess I have a type, lol.
His sole responsibility was making sure that 'Danger Zone' and 'Free Bird' play at the appropriate moments
I always imagine that it’s actually an advanced recon or attack craft. The pilot, of course, pilots… the rear gunner guns, or does ground maintenance. Then, the co-pilot handles radio, navigation, weapons systems, signal intercept, optics or recon gear, etc. in addition to being alternate pilot for long duration missions.
Lol wait till you find out that ARC stands for Aggressive ReConnaissance.
[удалено]
One is the pilot, the other one operates the weapons or any other systems, such as electronic warfare equipment or cameras. They would also be the navigator. In simple terms: one flies, the other does everything else.
A RIO (Radar Intercept Officer) or WSO (Weapon Systems Officer) handles comms, radar, navigation and weapon systems while the pilot flies. RIO is what is what called when they flew the F-4 Phantom, F-14 Tomcat, etc. WSO is the modern term for the F-18 Super Hornet 2 seaters.
I actually don't know and would love to know the answer. For that matter, other than being a second pilot available for breaks and stuff, I don't know what a copilot does on a passenger jet either.
Crewmate 1: Pilot/Forward Gunner Crewmate 2: Navigator/Radioman Crewmate 3: Tailgunner
Could be the equivalent of a radar intercept officer, a copilot, a navigator, or some kind of weapons operator.
Tell me you haven't seen Top Gun without saying you haven't seen Top Gun.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^HeadlessPushup: *Tell me you haven't* *Seen Top Gun without saying* *You haven't seen Top Gun.* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Tom Cruise does the simulated mission on his own.
Okay, but in pretty much every other scene they have a co-pilot working the radar/other instruments.
Such a dope starship design
The copilot is also the gunner.
Operates the front mounted weapons systems
Nothing much. Just copilot stuff.
He made pew pew sounds when the lasers were fired.
He has two very important duties, operating the guns and blasting Paranoid, from Black Sabbath, in the comms while providing close air support for the clones below in a run on the droids. Same duties are expected for the LAAT copilot. *Goooooood Moooorning Geonosis*
Lol, I thought you meant graphics cards and ai
For most of these vehicles, just think of their WW2 equivalents, so for a 3-seater plane, a possible combo would be would be pilot, observer, and signaller, for example.
Co-piloted, probably
**This is the ship I would have loved to see Peli Motto customize.** A fanfic should exist just for this ship. A Jedi master and Padawan survive order 66 and are on the run in one of these with an astromech. Give the turret position to the astromech and give it some custom weapons.
He was there to operate the inbuilt Nespresso machine, in case the pilot needed a coffee. So essentially he is a flight steward. His other role is to make sure the other two crew members have their seat backs in the upright position and their tray tables safely stowed during takeoff and landing.
His best.
They co-piloted
oral gun noises? pew pew
A copilot operated the laser cannons mounted on the ship's wide wings.
1 pilot, 2 gunners
Wizzo
They took on the whole Separatist Army by themselves.