Bye Bye F-14

Gotta agree with the logic, only I wouldn't allow sales of parts to museums...I'd allow direct transfers or allotment only as overseen by the USN. Remove the money, remove the market, maintain the traceability.

S'funny. I remember when a F-14 was the most modern-looking airplane model money could buy. Now a scrapyard/museum piece.

(kim)

Rats. I always wanted a 1:1 model of a F-14.

Its career wasn't that long (by modern standards at least). They were supposed to be getting to be real maintenance headaches with age. It is a case though where we didn't replace it with a weapon system of greater or equal capability... we don't have any AAM in service now with the range of the Phoenix. On the other hand, the Air Force intends to keep flying the B-52 till

2040, so its service life is going to be nearly 90 years. Not bad for something that got redesigned from turboprop to jet propulsion over the weekend in a hotel room...using balsa wood and building supplies from the local hobby shop: model builders = no hobby shops = no balsa wood = no B-52 = Communist domination of the world! :-) "Model builders: Scaling the heights of freedom!"

Pat

All bunk. 30 years is a VERY long lifespan indeed for a fighter aircraft (first flight 21 Dec 1970) and for a Naval aircraft at that - try slamming a B-52 onto a carrier deck for 30 years and see what happens, and your observation about them becoming a maintenance nightmare only proves that.

And as far as "capable" goes, you also have to consider "necessary". In

30 years there have only ever been two AIM-54 fired in anger, and as I recall both missed...due to trying to employ the system within currently mandated and accepted ROE. Most air to air kills since the Viet Nam era have been with AIM-9 - which I also believe is the current record holder for most air to air kills, all nations considered. The remaining ones have been with either AIM-7 or AIM-120, and I'm also pretty sure that the Tom never gained the capability to fire the 120. The Tomcat never even met it's original spec thrust requirement until the installation of the GE-F110 some 15-odd years after IOC. And I won't even start on F-14 limitations for Strike warfare employment vs a more modern strikefighter...try sticking a HARM, SLAM E/R or Mk-77 on one. And that's just the short list.

They were old, obsolete, and ready for the boneyard. May they rest in peace...peices.

"The initial acquisition cost of an F-14 is quoted by the US Navy at around $38 million. However, the primary disadvantage of the aircraft is not its purchase cost but maintenance expenses. As discussed previously, the life-cycle costs of operating and maintaining an aircraft far exceed the initial acquisition cost. These costs only grow as planes age and require increasingly more maintenance hours per flight hour. This trend has hit the F-14 harder than most of its contemporaries because of its complex airframe (including the variable-geometry wings) and harsh salt-air environment at sea. The F-14 is currently the most expensive aircraft to operate in the Navy inventory, requiring 40 to 60 maintenance manhours per flight hour. For comparison, the F-18 Hornet requires only 20 hours of maintenance and the latest F-18E/F Super Hornet requires just 10 to 15 hours. These high maintenance costs played a large role in the Navy's decision to move the retirement of the F-14 up from 2010 to 2006."

I was comparing it to all all aircraft, not just Navy fighters. There are loads of fighters and bombers around the world that have served longer than the F-14, and as far as the Navy goes, how about the Hawkeye? That came into service at the same time as the F-14, and is scheduled to fly to 2015.

So there you are in your FA-18 with your AMRAAMs, and way off in the distance sits the brand new Syrian (or possibly Iranian... nobody is sure about that) MiG-31 with its Amos missiles, which are Phoenix clones, and locking its radar on you, which is superior to that of a F-14. And your AMRAAMs have a range of 35 to 45 miles, and the Foxhound's Amos' has a range of 65-75 miles. So you've got a problem here. And it gets worse, because Syria is also getting advanced MiG-35s (souped-up MiG-29s) And they could also be carrying Amos' which they interlock with the Foxhounds to use. They just launch them in the right direction and the Foxhounds, after firing their own missiles, take over their guidance updates and target tracking. The end result is that they can engage you from beyond your range to engage them. That's not a good position to be in.

Pat

You can't do that - it's simply not a valid comparision, and that has nothing to do with operational costs, other than to drive them. It has more to do with the effect of operations on how an aircraft ages...which even today isn't completely understood. For example, a fighter like an F-14 may spend most of it's operational life pulling 5+ G, and a Hawkeye only 2. When you consider that, an across the board comparision becomes invalid.

Yes, you do. And the reality is that you won't be allowed to shoot ANYTHING at that bogey until you know EXACTLY what/and whom it is, so your AIM-54s are operationally useless.

Yes, I agree. And so you get into an opposition of philosophies on how to fight. In the current day, ROE is geared to having positive ID, producing minimal collateral damage, and furthering the achievement of political objective. You can't just "go out and fight". At least from a western perspective. The western approach has been to emphasize the advancement of sensors and focus on politics - the eastern approach has been to counter that, which is only as should be expected. So you change your tactics (on both sides), because the situation dictates it.

There are a number of ways to counter a threat as you describe it, the most straight forward being not to allow it to occur in the first place

- welcome Tomahawk, SLAM E/R, and a host of modern precision strike munitions. I know it's not as glamorous as a dogfight, but if you destroy an enemy's jets on the ground first before you penetrate it's airspace in numbers there is no longer a problem. The Six Day War is probably the best example of the employment of such a strategy, even without having precision munitions. And if you look more at recent events in the Gulf, that's also the way things have gone.

I served with VF-124, VF-24 and VF-211 back in the days when Miramar was a NAVAL, I SAID NAVAL!! Air Station, and it has been my dream to one day own one, or at least be in a joint partnership in one. Even now with twenty years gone by, all I need do is close my eyes for a moment...all my senses come to life with the memories....Thank you Grumman.

I got to hang at the O-Club in Miramar back when it was an NAS and the Top Gun school was still there...

...I can close my eyes and and remember a few things I'd like to forget...I think.

Thanks for the service, Disco.

Rufus typed out:

262 into the F-86, and the same for the Mig-15 on the Russian > side.

Hence the yellow bands (B&W stripes first) on every Sabre in Korea.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

I imagine they got the idea from the white-and-black D-Day invasion stripes on the aircraft. Some of the late war home defense FW-190D's sported red and white stripes over their entire underside:

Pat

I think the first Sabre stripes were black and white, weren't they? Or at least some were, like these examples:

I wonder how many F-14s will be preserved for museums or as gate guards?

Pat

I'll bet Grumman would like to forget the Jaguar; here's the "joys" of flying one:

till you get to the part about the ejection seat. :-D You know, that was the only real flop they ever had; that's quite the record.

Pat

Yeah, according to this (and like another poster mentioned):

started out as black-and-white, then went to black-and-yellow: "Arriving in Korea on November 8, 1950, the new Sabres didn't take long to prove their mettle. F-86 wings and fuselages were initially painted with high-contrast black-and-white stripes (eventually changed to wide yellow bands with black borders) to prevent U.S. pilots from confusing them with the similarly shaped MiGs during combat." They sure looked sharp painted like that. There was some Korean war movie that had F-84F Thunderstreaks standing in for MiG 15's, probably due to their high-set horizontal tail.

Pat

When I was working the T-45, it came out a bit too good - the stall was so subtle a rookie could miss the onset. So we had to add trippers to make the break a bit more "noticable". And it was supposed to be spinnable...but we overdid it on that too, and unless you really kno whow all the jet will do is spiral. At least that's how it was at Fleet intro.

I like the look of the black and white ones better.

"The Hunters" with Robert Mitchum and Richard Egan. I spotted those on my first viewing, ca. 1964-5.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

My fave is still "The Bridges At Toko-Ri" but I've been a big Grumman Panther fan since I had my Aurora kit of one as a kid. There was some movie about the RAF I saw as a kid that had Hawker Hunters in it, and that's another of my favorite planes. I had a 1/72 Airfix Hunter way, way back. It had a removable ammunition magazine for the cannons! How exciting! No cannons to look at, just that magazine. I once tried to figure out which model I had as a kid had the most working parts. The Monogram Helldiver had:

1. Folding wings.
2. Retractable landing gear.
3. Sliding canopies.
4. Swiveling rear gun.
5. Opening bomb bay doors.
6. Swing out bomb of release crutch. That may be it.

Pat