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Why the Navy Misses the Old F-14 Tomcat, Despite All of the Problems
- sandworm101 8y agoFYI, Canada was very close to getting f-14s. (Canada made an offer on the F-14s sold to Iran.) Had that happened, no doubt Canada would still be flying them today. The 14 had range and speed, but using those abilities was very difficult. Midair refueling is headache on a carrier. The faster and further the 14s had to go, the more tanker aircraft had to be launched. They were great for fleet defense, sticking close to home, but were ill suited for escorting bombers on long ground attack missions. So as cold war battles on the high seas were replaced by pocket ground wars, the 14 lacked purpose. The 14s weapon system, the phoenix, would not be acceptable today. It was meant for downing incoming waves of bombers over open ocean, where the enemy is clearly identifiable. It wouldn't work well in a mixed environment such as over Syria. So the 14 would need a new missile/radar to compliment its speed/range.
- ebikelaw 8y agoThe F-14 didn't have any purpose during the Cold War either. It was an idiotic fantasy toy, just like the carriers on which it sailed. All of that hardware would have been on the bottom of the ocean in the first half hour of a war with the USSR. They're absolutely brilliant against barbarians, though.
- qubex 8y agoCan you please elaborate? How do you reckon the USSR would achieve such a feat? (If your answer involves ‘submarines’, you’re under-estimating the ASW capabilities of a carrier group.)
- netjiro 8y agoHmm. Around 15 years ago the $100M "gotland" submarines sank the $6B carriers multiple times without detection during war games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotland-class_submarine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotland-class_submarine As those kinds of subs are available to more and more countries you can't always "park" a carrier group without risk.
- perilunar 8y agoOne of the Australian Collins class diesel-electric subs also 'sank' a US carrier during war games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_Waller_(SSG_75)#Operational_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_Waller_(SSG_75)#Operation...
- sandworm101 8y agoSuch wins are generally based on defined senerios. Specificaly, the carrier group is sticking to a known heading, allowing the sub to park itself ahead and wait. And the carrier group's use of active sonar is limited (whales). And the actions of the protecting sub(s) are classified. And we still havent mentioned the rise of anti-torpedo/missile technologies. ... the real outcomes never makes it into the public domain.
- saiya-jin 8y agoI would expect a carrier group would be a prime target for medium/long range nuclear missiles. They can't be hidden from military satellites so they would be like sitting ducks. Send 2-3 per group, at Mach 5-6 nothing can stop them and group is no more.
- jabl 8y ago> The faster and further the 14s had to go, the more tanker aircraft had to be launched. Speaking of crazy refueling, does anything beat the Vulcan raid during the Falklands war? 13(!) tankers supporting one bomber going from Ascension to Port Stanley and back. Not only tankers refueling the bomber, but tankers refueling tankers etc. Here's a documentary about the raid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBJ99bIhAVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBJ99bIhAVk All this massive effort, and in the end one single bomb out of 12(24?) managed to actually hit the runway.
- jabl 8y agoCorrection to myself, 11 tankers and 21 bombs.
- crunchlibrarian 8y agoI'm so confused, we already spent how many billions on the F-22 and there is no carrier capable version that outperforms the F-18? How on earth did that happen?
- ethbro 8y agoThe article references the NATF history. http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2011/04/natf-better-is-enemy-of-good-enough.html?m=1 http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2011/04/natf-better-is-enemy-of...
- jasenmh 8y agoF-22 was funded by the Air Force and I don't think there was ever a carrier-based version planned. The F-35 has a carrier variant being worked on.
- mdorazio 8y agoAs far as I can tell, the F-22 was never intended for the Navy at all. It was specifically requested and paid for by the Air Force as an air superiority fighter with no real plans to ever retrofit it for use in carrier operations. Also, the F-22 is significantly larger than an F-18 (about 6 feet longer and 2 feet wider), making it a bit harder to cram a bunch of them into a carrier.
- spchampion2 8y agoThe F-22 is an air superiority fighter that was always intended for exclusive use by the Air Force. There was never a plan to have a carrier based version of the F-22. Perhaps you mean the F-35? There are two carrier based variants - the F-35B and F-35C. The B is a STOVL and the C is designed for takeoff and landing on carriers. Both variants are still in testing, and I believe the C is closer to operational than the B at this point.
- hooves 8y agoLet's keep in mind the F-18 is just the second place in the F-16 development. Navy wanted two engines and something different than the Air Force.
- duxup 8y agoThe F-14 wasn't a multi role plane though right? I thought that was one of the issues, and would still be an issue today wouldn't it?
- dingaling 8y agoIt was single-role for the first half of its life due to Navy policy. From 1992 onwards it was modified for multi-role, see 'Bombcat'.
- csharpminor 8y agoI'm not sure that a replacement F-14 is thinking big enough here. David Wise's post in War is Boring, "The U.S. Navy’s Big Mistake — Building Tons of Supercarriers" (https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-u-s-navy-s-big-mistake-building-tons-of-supercarriers-79cb42029b8 https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-u-s-navy-s-big-mistake-...) puts forth a strong argument as to why the U.S. Navy needs a paradigm shift from carrier groups to increased funding for drones and submarines. Carriers are an extremely costly asset that are also vulnerable to cruise missiles (and those missiles are getting much more advanced).
- devoply 8y agoWhen your usual target for a beat down is a third world country that has no real way to defend themselves against your attacks, strategy matters very little as does the ability to simply deploy your weapons quickly and easily.
- godzillabrennus 8y agoThat sort of thinking dismisses the real threats. We have a maginot line floating at sea.
- ISL 8y agoAnd a legion of apocalyptic missiles to back it up.
- kurthr 8y agoWe (and Russia) each have between 1500 and 8000 strategic nuclear warheads deployed or deployable. That's not a Maginot line, it's just air superiority anywhere it matters. Personally, having F14-like drones would probably be much better at keeping opponents airpower down/out than JSF or F18s, but that's my silly civilian opinion.
- et2o 8y agoBeing pedantic, that's not the definition of air superiority or supremacy. You can't shoot down a fighter plane with a nuclear warhead.
- poof131 8y agoAs a former F-18 pilot, I don’t think v2 of the Tomcat is what we need. Unmanned missile trucks are the future. The Joint Strike Turd should be the last manned fighter. The services are bankrupting the country with the current crop of do-it-all aircraft. Other countries are on a better track adding the latest tech to older airframes and accepting their expendability. Carriers themselves should be phased out for smaller more expendable ships that can launch and recover the missile trucks.
- dforrestwilson 8y ago100% agree. We have 2 problems which I think are compounding each other: 1. The classic problem of defense: Fighting the Last War 2. An extremely strong defense industry lobby.
- cinquemb 8y agoI don't think #2 is a big problem (well from a natsec perspective, deff a problem from keeping down costs perspective), assuming you can get top pentagon officials to push modernization initiative with key industry partnerships. Question is, which DoD brass can see the writing on the wall and push the initiative with the highest probability of success?
- influx 8y ago3. It's cool (and promotable!) to be a fighter pilot, and not cool to fly drones remotely or to program automated drones.
- golergka 8y agoWouldn't that incentivize the high command to abolish figher pilots? It's much easier to manage uncool, replacable and easily trainable drones than expensive rockstars.
- thrill 8y agoSeeing as the US military has been crying out (for 20 years now) of their shortage of fighter pilots, then this could generally be considered as happening. It's a situation that could have been far more easily handled in the late 90's, but is now being "handled" by attempting to reduce the training latency (not viable and quite unwise, IMO, but happening regardless) and by reducing the staff billets demanding fighter pilot backgrounds. Technology will indeed replace (and has been) much of the need to put a highly trained human on the bleeding edge. That doesn't obviate the current significant under-staffing.
- FighterMafia 8y agoTop Gun notwithstanding, the F-14 was one of the biggest pieces of garbage the Navy ever fielded. Incredibly heavy, horrible E-M characteristics, expensive, crappy swing wing (a wing design that was in-vogue in the 60s but has now been discredited). Interestingly the Navy wanted to keep buying more and more of these until the Fighter Mafia foisted the F-16 on the air force, and the Navy reluctantly took a variant of the F-16 and blew it up in size and renamed it the F-18 (the F-18 variant was actually the losing contender to be the F-16). If it wasn't for the Fighter Mafia, the Navy would still be buying pieces of crap like the F-14. Interesting that nowhere in this article are the capabilities of the F-35 STOVL variant discussed, a weapon that the Navy is paying $100M+ for. That they are skipping that discussion and jumping into why they need NGAD is just disgusting. Oh well, the Pentagon is just a giant building that buys weapons. Always looking for the next piece of kit to blow cash on. And just while I'm on this tirade...there are almost no use cases where you need an airplane that goes faster than Mach 2. At that speed you are outside the envelope where you can fire a missile. If you are trying to design a fighter aircraft as an interceptor, you are doing it wrong...
- poof131 8y agoSTOVL is the marines, and the shiniest of the Joint Strike Turds. And I think Boyd and the Fighter Mafia were actually wrong. For BVR air-to-air, I would have rather had an F-14/F-15 with phased-array radar and AMRAAM, than an F-16/18. Although the F22 clubs them all like baby seals. The Vietnam lesson was only good until missiles improved. Now the war is between missiles and radar more than planes. And a fast missile truck is better than a slow missile truck. Mach 2+ would be nice after you’ve shot your load and are running away.
- AtlasBarfed 8y agoThe entire air force and navy are sitting ducks and totally obsolete in the face of a somewhat modern cheap drone air force and antiship missles, to say nothing of naval and submersible drones.
- manicdee 8y agoAnd amongst all this nobody considers electronic warfare or cyber warfare. How do you control your military when communication and GPS satellites are feeding you incorrect information?
- llukas 8y agoAs long it is not submersible CIWS can shred pretty much anything to pieces: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system
- dingaling 8y agoAssuming that its radar has not been jammed / duped / EMPed and that the enemy is chivalrous enough not to send an overwhelming number of multi-Mach missiles. The Zumwalt DDG discarded CIWS in favour of missiles.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- throwaway2048 8y agoCWIS isnt going to hit a hypersonic missile going mach 6
- rustcharm 8y agoMy first job out of college was as a software developer on the F-14D project, and the AIM missiles. It was probably the most interesting job I ever had. We programmed in CMS-2 and AN/UYK assembly language
- mothsonasloth 8y agoWow, that's cool. Assuming you are allowed to, could you share some more info? How did you program AIM missiles for following heat signatures, was it a case of reading bits from the IR sensor? Did missiles logic have exceptions e.g. FuelRanOutException, IRSensorUnresponsive?
- rustcharm 8y agoI can tell you this: the two problems were not being fooled by your own heat signature, or that of the Sun.
- cyberferret 8y agoI am constantly amazed that Iran manages to keep some of their F-14s airworthy decades after the US stopped supplying spare parts and knowledge. Seems to me that they have worked out how to manufacture certain parts themselves, or are getting them on the black market somehow. For all the F-14s many faults, at least it proved to be a serviceable aircraft that proved itself in an actual dogfight situation. Our own RAAF is slated to receive F-35s soon, but I recall last year during an airshow to display their capabilities to the local crowds, the aircraft could not return to their home base to land and had to be diverted to an alternate due to... light rain. Fair enough the aircraft were not certified for flight into inclement weather yet, but it strikes me (pun intended) that the new generation of aircraft are far more sensitive to issues like these than the older generation aircraft that could be flown while held together with sticky tape and chewing gum.
- m_eiman 8y agoConsidering the cost of one of the new aircraft, I think it’s understandable that everyone tries to stay away from doing anything untested unless they really have to…
- pjmlp 8y agoSpecially when taking into account the state of many during the WWII that still managed to land somehow.
- dgudkov 8y agoThere was an airshow recently in Toronto and all aircraft (including F35) stopped flying because of a light rain. I guess it's a common precaution measure on airshows.
- cyberferret 8y agoI understand about not flying a display routine in inclement weather, fog or low cloud (I am a former pilot). In this case, then F-35 squadron had done the flyover at the actual airshow in clear weather and were returning to their temporary airbase several hundred miles away. They could not land back there due to the light rain over the base and had to be diverted to a dry base elsewhere.
- freediver 8y agoThe article misses an important point - the brand. There was never an aircraft before or after F14 that did so much for the Navy in terms of branding as Tomcat did. Every kid in 1980s wanted to fly one.
- gdubs 8y agoI spent all of my mom’s quarters in the basement of the local flea market playing “Afterburner” (with the motorized arcade cabinet). Was also way into Top Gun. Can attest to your hypothesis.
- twic 8y agoIn the 1980s, i wanted to fly an F-4 Phantom. I suppose i was retro before that was cool.
- King-Aaron 8y agoI still have a real soft-spot for the Phantom, as a kid growing up the RAAF used them (along with the F-111's). I remember seeing one pass overhead pretty low while we were out on the boat fishing, and immediately made me want to go down an air force career. Then I went blind and decided if I couldn't fly a jet, then meh, I'd do something different.
- Animats 8y agoGood article on this subject from Naval Institute Proceedings.[1] Non-carrier surface combatants with missiles can be more useful than carriers against an enemy that can fight back. There are just too many long-range weapons an advanced enemy can shoot at a carrier - cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, ballistic missiles, long range torpedoes. Some of those will get through. China, of course, has been investing heavily in land-based anti-ship missiles. Those arrive from almost straight up at re-entry speeds, too fast to shoot down. [1] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2018-09/use-carriers-differently-high-end-fight https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2018-09/use-carri...
- smacktoward 8y agoIt sounds like what the Navy misses isn't so much the F-14 as the AIM-54 Phoenix (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-54_Phoenix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-54_Phoenix), the long-range air-to-air missile paired with the F-14 that let the Tomcat knock down airborne threats much further out than the F-18 can.
- cyberferret 8y agoPity the Phoenix was never tested under actual battle conditions. Even the shoot down of the Sukhois (which inspired the opening scene of Top Gun) was done with the older AIM-9 Sidewinders. Interesting proposition, but I don't know how effective BVR air to air missiles would have been?
- lmm 8y agoIsn't the problem that one rarely operates under RoE where BVR missiles would be permitted? Particularly in these days of mostly-counterterrorism, hitting the wrong target is worse than not hitting at all.
- Ricardus 8y agoWell DUH. Two words: TOP GUN.
- SwingingShips 8y agoBecause people like being able to hum "Danger Zone" while they are flying
- mothsonasloth 8y agoLanaaaaaaaa!