The thing is.. I understand your frustration, Furbs, as I can see that the devs did make some rather odd decisions along the way. It would also be great to have more purpose and meaning behind the missions in single player also. Multiplayer, on the other hand, is a case of getting out of it what you put into it. Sure... for some it is just airquake, and there's nothing wrong with that, but there are people out there beavering away constantly making campaigns, historical missions etc. It may not be exactly like the Battle of Britain, maybe, but the technology for that kind of thing is still years away and, even then, until they find a way of building holodecks like in Star Trek, with the added ability to convince you that, if you fail to open the hatch, jump out and engage your parachute... you really ARE going to die..... You will never have a simulation that comes even close to the real thing. To be honest with you, teeth curling, eye popping terror and heavily browned underwear isn't really my cup of tea when it comes to entertainment.
I think many of us jumped into this with high expectations and, whether we want to admit it or not, fairly unreasonable ones at that. I would go so far as to say Oleg (Who is responsible for much of those expectations) was a dreamer... and dreamers are great! They are the people of vision who make this world what it is and, where you find a dreamer, you find innovation.... but for every great idea they have, there are the 100 that just aren't practical. What we do have, though, is a simulation as close to that vision as is possible for now.... of course it would help if it worked properly.
As for coop..... you just open a mission in the FMB and reconfigure it to allow coop. It is there... just not signposted.