It was mostly TOPGUN Instructor Tomcat pilots (that's who populated the Topgun instructor cadre, along with RIOs) and a few Hornet pilots who learned how to set up intercepts with the F-16N from the senior F-15C FWS instructors. These guys were already checked out as IPs in A-4s and F-5E/Fs used for adversary work in the school. They did ground training on the F-16N with General Dynamics, then did fighter conversion training at Luke AFB before transitioning to their weapons school tactics development in conjunction with the F-15C guys, most of whom had 2000-3000hrs of single seat Eagle time.
What it was like to fly the F-16N
The main adjustments were learning to use all their fingers and thumbs for HOTAS so they could manage the radar and modes, control range and altitude bands on the MFD, and employ the F-16N within the various threat profiles.
They said it was a game-changer for TOPGUN because they only had 2-seat fighters before that were really capable of setting up their own radar intercepts without as much of a GCI focus. The F-8 Crusader, especially the F-8J, was designed to be able to detect and track off-axis, but the radar rarely worked and several Crusader pilots said it was garbage, so the F-4B was really the first Navy fighter that had a workable radar, and a back-seater to drive it.
F-16N pilot perspective on a 2 v 2 sortie against F-14s:
USN F-14A Tomcat vs. F-16N Adversary Air Combat Training Mission
I suspect what they're going through now with the F-35C is a full spectrum and battle space analysis approach, not just limiting things to what fighters can do to other fighters, especially since they already changed the course to the
Strike Fighter Weapons Instructor Course with the Hornets.
I'm looking for any literature on whether that happened with the F-14D as well in the Bombcat/Fighter-Interceptor training syllabus when F-14Ds started coming online.
Even if you look back at what they were doing in the
1970s and early 1980s, TOPGUN was a very BVR-centric course, with every intercept designed to start with optimum positioning from 2-ship F-4s or F-14s against A-4s simulating bait, with F-5E/F in high perch, just like the North Vietnamese and other Soviet clients were trained to do by the Russians/Soviets.
The ACM portions were baseline for worst-case merges after BVR missiles had reduced PID'd fighter tracks, but others survived to the merge, or surprise attacks from unseen ambushers who had been set up on them outside of their AWG-9 detection envelope.
For the 1vUNK sorties, they would often start the fight with long range detection of adversaries at roughly 30 miles out, set up on them, only to have F-5s come from a totally different direction and higher altitude and present a major problem for them to solve. That would be augmented with surprise attack single or 2-ships along the way.
The TACTS and ACMI pods would record everything and weapons had to be employed correctly or else kills wouldn't count, mainly the AIM-7F and later AIM-7M, since AIM-54s were a carrier defense weapon for bombers that required specific authorization, not a handy BVR missile for taking out fighters.
Most of what went on was driven by RIO's running the AWG-9, talking to each other in a 2-ship, their pilots on intercom, while the pilots looked outside the cockpit for surprises and vectored appropriately to the RIO's calls.