The F-14 was a cool plane, but it went away because its mission went away.

If the Navy had had more money it would still have bought something else for one simple reason… it didn’t need a long range interceptor and it certainly wasn’t interested in funding ongoing production and upgrades for a specialized long-range bomber killing missile.

Ugh. So one dimensional.

The Navy needs range. Range for interdiction and range for interception and airframe size for power gen for EW. Always has, always will – keep the boats as far away from harm as possible. They were able to use the E/F Hornet in the 90s and 00s without boat loss due to the nature of the threat environment. But, don’t be under any illusion that Navair didn’t suffer for it. The most obvious example would be the severe limits imposed by the E/F’s payload-range over Afghanistan. In the future, their primary EW asset will also be severely range/endurance limited.

A hypothetical F-14E (or, the F/A-XX) will rectify matters.

[Note that even NATF wouldn’t have solved the problem as the F-22’s range is not where it would need to be for Naval ops.]

The F-18E/F may not have the legs of the F-14 but is a much more capable weapon system, however unsexy.

The E/F is a more capable weapons system now and even then only in certain aspects as it received the benefits of 20 additional years of development.

With that big nose, long range, loiter capability and payload capacity, an F-14 that seen the same development budget as the “Super” Hornet would be capable of hoisting hypothetical AIM-54E for over a hundred miles guided by a big, massive AESA radar.

If you wanted to put a CVBG into the South China sea or perhaps more topically, into the Barents, its chances of survival would be significantly better if the USN had developed the F-14/AIM-54 combination rather than going with the F/A-18/AIM-120 option.

Yes, the SH can turn a bit better and yes, it is easier to maintain (although given the typical comparisons drawn was between 20 year old airframes and brand new ones it is questionable if the difference would be as pronounced as oft proclaimed).

But, if the lack of outright fleet interceptor performance means your runway is now resting on the bottom of the ocean, then was it really such a good idea?

The USN has got by till this point, which is very good work from their threat assessment folks – but they are now aware of their Pacific limitations… hence the F/A-XX noises.

And thats a reasonable design compromise for a craft that will not be going supersonic or be required to do hard turns in a2a battles!

Yes…

Because only the Americans have the wit to deploy home-on-jam missiles.

Doesn’t the RCS also fit in here somewhere..?

Have you been reading ahead at home?

Gold star for you today!

We’ll deal with RCS next week.

Tonight’s homework is to write a 50 line essay on: “What is the difference between a drop tank… which you can drop, and a much heavier jamming pod… which you cannot drop”.

[Submissions using MS Powerpoint are not allowed]

I can’t imagine it being a comfy ride…

Why not?

Fairly high wing loading would mean a pretty comfortable ride.

we had the perfect platform binned after a ton of cash was put into development

What now?

The Nimrod was a complete disaster from start to finish.

Anyone involved in the decision to pimp up the Nimrod airframe should no longer be in public service. They are too stupid to trust with our money. It really is that simple.

The F-35 is far better than anything they could have gotten on their own given the situation post-cold-war.

I am very unconvinced of that.

The USMC would appear to be getting a fairly decent deal on the face of it*, everyone else is getting a bitter lemon.

*Till at least the real operational availability is ascertained.